Page 52 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm (Highland Cookery School #2)
The breakfast Bella and Flinty rustled up for the guests still standing as dawn broke was a celebration of fat, salt and carbs. Bacon, sausages, black pudding, haggis, tattie scones, mushrooms, eggs, piled up for guests to help themselves.
Jodie pulled up a chair and squeezed in at a big round table next to Pavel.
Across the room the Strachans were piling ketchup onto sausage and fried egg sandwiches.
Jill was deep in conversation with Kenny the tour guide, and Netty and her husband were half asleep in the corner.
Next to Jodie, Darcy was resting her head in her hands.
‘How can I be hungover? I haven’t been to bed yet. ’
Veronica raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t think it’s the sleep that causes the hangover, dear.’
‘How do you look as fresh as a daisy?’ Darcy shot back.
‘Oh, she grew up here, basically weaned straight on to whisky,’ Flinty explained.
Pavel cleared his throat and took Jodie’s hand under the table. ‘So while everyone’s here, we’ve got something we’d like to tell you.’
Nina smiled. ‘You’ve barely let go of her since midnight. I don’t think you need to make a formal announcement.’
‘No. Not that. Although, yes, that.’ He squeezed Jodie’s hand. ‘We are back together, but there’s something else. We’ve been talking and I think we’re going to go away for a little while.’
Jill took a gulp of her coffee. ‘Pavel Stone going off somewhere? Like Skye or…’ She pulled a face in mock horror. ‘Oban?’
Pavel stuck his tongue out. ‘That’s kind of the point. We both feel like…’ He looked to Jodie.
‘Like we need to work out what we want,’ she explained. ‘For ourselves. And each other. Like I’ve literally been living someone else’s life.’
‘And I have too in a way. Trying to live up to who Granddad was around here. So we’re going to go wherever we feel like for a bit and, I guess,’ he looked to her for confirmation, ‘see where fits?’
‘For both of us.’
He squeezed her hand. ‘Of course for both of us. I mean I won’t leave anyone in the lurch, and it won’t be forever and Strach’s pretty handy these days with the handyman stuff so I was going to see if he wanted to take my van while I’m not using it and, I mean, I don’t want to let anyone down.’
‘Pavel,’ his mother cut across the monologue. ‘You go and live your life. We’ll still be here. For both of you whenever you want to come and see us.’
Jodie looked around the table to nothing but nods and good wishes. ‘We’ll definitely come back.’
Pavel nodded. ‘For Christmas at least.’
‘Definitely,’ Jodie confirmed. ‘If not before.’
Only Bella looked bereft. ‘I was going to offer you your job back. What are we going to do without you?’
Jodie glanced across the room to where Fiona MacCellan was snoozing gently with her head on a table, next to her father – a late invitee to the party – who was tucking into a bacon sandwich with gusto. ‘Actually I did have an idea about that.’
Later when the tables were cleared and the guests waved off, with exhortations to come back for a cookery school or for Hogmanay the following year, Jodie and Pavel were alone in the ballroom where it had nearly started and then faltered so many weeks before.
‘Are you sure about this?’ she asked. ‘We don’t even have a plan.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘So where do you want to go first?’
He paused. ‘Where do I want to go?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I genuinely have no idea.’
She looked him in the eye. ‘Really?’
‘Truly. I’ve never even thought about travelling before. I’m excited not to know.’
Jodie saw nothing but honesty in his face. Unlike Pavel though, she was full of ideas. ‘Well, I’ve met your mum so at some point I’d like to take you to meet my parents?’
He pulled a face of mock horror. ‘OK.’
‘And then I’d love to go places I can draw. You know, the south of France, Italy, Cornwall. Places where the light dances across the landscape.’
He nodded. ‘Sounds like a good start.’
She did have one other idea. ‘And I wondered about Warsaw?’
‘That’s where my granddad’s family was from.’
She nodded. ‘I remember.’
‘I’ve never been there.’
‘I know.’ Had she misjudged this? ‘I mean we don’t have to.’
Pavel wrapped his arms around her. ‘No. I think I’d like that. I just wish I’d gone with him when I was younger.’
‘Can’t fix that,’ she pointed out.
‘You’re right.’ He smiled. ‘To Warsaw, my darling.’
‘Your darling?’
‘My darling. Always.’