Page 47 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm (Highland Cookery School #2)

The wind was starting to get up as Pavel and his mum walked back over the Low Bridge towards the village.

He pulled his phone out and checked the weather forecast. The storm warning that had been yellow that morning had been upgraded to amber and they were right on the edge of a red zone.

‘Better just check the boat’s secure,’ he said.

Pavel never slept on stormy nights. He never had. He remembered his granddad always staying up listening to his old radio, and checking the shoreline to make sure all the boats were in. Pavel would sneak downstairs and curl up on the sofa next to him, feeling comforted by his presence.

His granddad would open the curtains in the lounge and they’d sit together listening to the lash of the wind, watching the lightning and counting the gap between the flash and the rumble of thunder as the storm rolled by them.

Pavel would never admit to being scared, but big storms still made him feel small.

They made him feel out of control. That put him on edge.

When his granddad had been here he’d always seemed like he had everything under control.

Right until the end, when he seemed to shrink away, but even then he’d still made Pavel lean in close to him so he could whisper his words of wisdom.

With his granddad around everything had felt calmer and like someone was looking out, not just for Pavel, but for everyone.

That was the man Pavel had always wanted to be.

He sat up on his sofa, curtains open, and watched the dark clouds roll over the loch. Just after midnight his mum came up, raincoat wrapped around her. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said. ‘Wind’s too loud.’

He shifted over to let her sit down next to him.

‘Your granddad would have been in his element,’ she said.

‘Yeah. He loved storms.’

His mother let out a laugh. ‘No, he didn’t.’

‘What?’

‘He hated them. He used to do all that faffing around with the radio and checking in on everyone to keep himself busy.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Distracting himself from the big, dark scary thing.’

That couldn’t be true. ‘Really?’ Pavel asked.

His mum nodded.

‘But he always seemed so in control.’

‘That’s what he did wasn’t it?’ His mum sighed.

‘What?’

‘Keep calm. Run around after everyone else. Push whatever he was worried about way down.’

‘Granddad didn’t…’ he started, and then stopped.

Nearly all of his memories of his granddad were of him in action.

Out on the boat, sleeves rolled up in the kitchen, driving the van.

He was always doing something. Not quite always.

‘He talked a lot about wanting to visit Warsaw again. At the end, when he was ill.’

‘I think he missed the family over there more than he said,’ his mum replied. ‘Especially after his mum and dad passed. I think he felt a bit rootless.’

‘He never said that,’ Pavel murmured. ‘He seemed like he belonged here.’

‘That doesn’t mean he didn’t hanker for somewhere else as well, but, like I said, he pushed it down, kept himself busy didn’t he? Running around after everyone else.’ His mum gave him one of her more pointed looks. ‘Seems to be what the men in this family do.’

He stared at his mum, with her Christmas Lights committee, and her parents and toddler group, and her shifts at the pub. ‘Not just the men,’ he muttered.

Jodie came downstairs on Boxing Day morning to find her dad and brother drinking coffee in front of the breakfast news.

‘Strong winds battered the west coast of Scotland last night, reaching gusts of up to one hundred and ten miles per hour, leaving hundreds in communities along the coast without power this morning. Falling trees and debris continue to pose a threat to life.’

Jodie stared. The pictures on the screen changed from the reporter framed neatly by a camera operator to shaky mobile phone footage.

‘These pictures, sent in by a member of the public, show the impact on the village of…’

Jodie didn’t need to hear the name to know exactly what she was looking at. The roof of Anna and Hugh’s garage shop was flapping violently in the winds. A boat, usually beached on the shoreline, was lying on its side in the middle of the road.

The reporter continued. ‘…where injuries have been reported and villagers are still trying to assess the damage to property.’

‘Dad?’

‘Yes, love?’

‘Can I take the car?’

He turned towards her. ‘You don’t like to drive.’

‘I don’t. There’s no trains on Boxing Day though and I have to go.’

‘Go where?’

She pointed at the screen. ‘There.’

Pavel ventured out – when the rain had stopped and wind had dropped to merely inconvenient rather than actually dangerous levels – on Boxing Day afternoon to check on the damage.

Some things were easy. Pavel nodded a greeting to a gaggle of Strachans who were carrying a garden trampoline back down the main street to its proper home.

Garden benches and fallen gnomes were righted easily enough. Pavel stopped outside the shop.

Hugh was surveying the damage. ‘Water’s got in, so most of the stock is gone. And the freezers all shorted out so that’ll all have to go too. Plus the cost of actually fixing the roof.’

Pavel shook his head straight away. ‘No charge for that.’

‘Don’t be silly. You’ve got to earn a living too.’

His granddad would never have charged a friend in these circumstances. ‘It’s fine. The village needs a shop.’

Hugh opened his mouth to object.

‘No charge,’ he insisted. ‘I’ll get that tarp properly anchored down right now so you can start cleaning up inside and I’ll come over tomorrow to look at it properly.’

‘You’re a lifesaver, Pav.’

He headed back through the village, promising to come back and fix Mrs Timberley’s gate later in the day. The power was back on, and the shop roof had got the worst of it that he could see so far.

He jogged over the bridge to the castle. From what he could see the coach house still had most of its roof tiles. That was a relief. He headed inside. Bella was in the kitchen. ‘What’s the damage?’

‘Couple of panes in Adam’s greenhouse. He’s out driving the rest of the estate to check things over.’ She paused.

‘Not too bad then.’

Her face told a different story. ‘And the backup generator failed so we lost all the food for Hogmanay when the power went off.’ Her tone was bright but the smile was glassy. ‘So yeah. I don’t know what we’re going to do about that at all.’

Darcy came into the kitchen. ‘Did it all magically get better while I was away?’

Pavel could fix this. ‘So we need food?’

‘And a lot of it.’

‘Could you cook the stuff that was frozen right now? Would it keep if you did that?’

Bella rubbed her forehead. ‘Some of it maybe. We could cook it to prolong the life and then refreeze it. That won’t work for everything.’

‘But some stuff?’

She nodded. ‘I’ll work out what’s safe and won’t taste like dirt and start on that.’

‘Right. They lost the freezer in the shop too. I’ll call Hugh and ask what he’s got that you might be able to use.’

Bella closed her eyes. ‘I don’t think we can pay him.’

‘I think he’ll be chucking it if you don’t take it. I’m sure you can work something out.’

‘Thank you.’

They set to work on the food. Pavel drove back and forth from the shop bringing over whatever was salvageable. By early evening he was ferrying ingredients back to the village for Flinty and his mum to cook in their ovens or store in their freezers.

The whole community worked like a machine. Chopping, mixing, frying, roasting and repeating under Bella’s instruction.

It was close to midnight by the time he slumped onto a stool at the kitchen island, rubbing his eyes. Bella was wiping down the worktops, while Flinty made coffee and Adam, Veronica and Darcy organised the last few dishes into the remaining fridge and freezer space. Finally the group was still.

‘What else do we need to do?’ Pavel asked.

‘Sleep?’ Darcy suggested.

‘No time,’ Bella murmured. ‘We still don’t have a band, and three more people cancelled this morning.’

Pavel didn’t have a clue what to do about that.

The door swinging open behind him made him turn. He was tired enough that he could easily have believed the woman standing behind him was a hallucination, but there she was. Really here. ‘Maybe I can help?’ Jodie said.

Jodie had come straight to the castle when she’d arrived in Lowbridge. It had taken seventeen hours, with a break for a nap in the car and a detour around a closed road near Fort William, but she was here.

She’d known she’d see Pavel at some point. She hadn’t thought he’d be the very first person she walked into. He looked up to face her very slowly. ‘I’ll let you get on.’ He walked straight past her without meeting her eye. ‘Call me if I can help with anything, Bella.’

‘Well, that could have been worse,’ Jodie tried to joke.

Nobody was laughing. And Pavel had been right there in front of her.

The Gemma she’d spent weeks trying to be would have stayed calm and tried to focus on the work that needed doing.

She wasn’t being Gemma any more. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. ’

Jodie dashed out of the kitchen and into the courtyard, catching Pavel outside the coach house.

‘Pavel!’

He stopped and turned. ‘You came back.’

‘Yeah. I saw the storm. I was worried about…’ She nearly said ‘everything’, but no more lies. ‘About you.’

‘I’m fine.’

He didn’t sound fine.

‘They said on the news there’d been injuries.’

He shook his head. ‘Netty’s Gareth sprained his ankle trying to rescue the green bin.’

‘Right. Well, I wanted to say sorry too.’

‘Go on then.’

‘I’m sorry. I really am.’

Pavel stared at her. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’