During the drive back to Birchtide, Emily’s mind was awash with ideas. As she pulled up into her parking space in the teahouse’s empty car park, however, she felt doused with a sudden shock of cold water.
The rain had followed her north, and a deluge awaited her as she climbed out of the car and dashed across the sodden gravel car park to the overhang of the teahouse’s front entrance. Twilight had fallen, and the sensor-operated outdoor light, gone grubby over three months of neglect, emitted only a dim glow to help her retrieve her door key from her purse.
As Emily stared at it, she realised she didn’t want to go inside. This place, which had been her safe haven for as long as she could remember, now seemed dark and unwelcoming. She could barely take a step without meeting a memory of one kind or another: the crack in the ceramic plant pot to the door’s left, caused when she had fallen and struck her knee on it aged seven; the heavy fluff of the postbox which had done its best concertina on her university application response letter, leaving her a frantic extra day of waiting before the following day’s pizza flyers had pushed it free and sent it tumbling aerodynamically to the floor; the little table with the doily and the pot of plastic flowers where one morning she had found a car key which didn’t resemble her grandmother’s car key, and was in fact the key for a little mini parked out the front which had been Emily’s eighteenth birthday present. Her grandmother, aware of Emily’s need for street cred, had made sure to buy something a little bit rusted, a little bit banged up, and with a ripped Kenwood sticker across the back window. Emily had been so happy she had cried so much the first time she took it for a drive that she’d pulled over on three separate occasions.
‘Home,’ she muttered, only now it was anything but; it was an empty shell stolen of its glorious life force and subsisting only on past glories. An empty shell, the outer wrapper of a discarded box of chocolates, its glorious excitement long faded. Emily had thought she loved this place, but what she realised now was that she had loved what made it special: her grandmother. And without Elaine’s cheerful voice and constant hustle and bustle, Emily felt like a stranger.
She went straight upstairs to pack a bag.
Returning downstairs a few minutes later with a bag containing most of the clothes—now washed and dried—which she had packed for Germany, she found the postman had been. Another twenty unopened Christmas cards lay in a neatly fanned circle. Emily scooped them up and slipped them into a side pocket on her bag, along with a couple of pizza delivery circulars, which until her grandmother’s death had been unnecessary and unwanted. A firm believer in home-cooked food, Emily had never eaten anything at home which hadn’t been produced on Elaine’s immaculately clean stove, saving her forays into the world of fast food for rare nights out with her friends. Since Elaine’s death, though, she had eaten very little else, and her waistline had begun to suffer. A couple of weeks of trudging around German forests had helped, but with Christmas on the horizon, things were likely to take another turn for the worse. However, home-cooking was something they had always done together, and preparing food alone only brought more nostalgic memories.
Pizza it would have to be, then. Until the New Year, at least. Things would sort themselves out then, Emily hoped.
Either that or she would meat feast herself to death.
She put her bag into the car and set off, but as she reached the turning out of the car park she saw an old couple making their way up the road. The woman lifted a hand to greet her, and Emily reluctantly wound down the window.
Jane and Bert Thomas, two locals and former customers. Since her grandmother’s death, Emily had avoided the locals as though the village was infected with a zombie plague and she was the only survivor, but she couldn’t just speed past. She offered her best smile as they approached.
‘Emily, dear, how are you coping?’
Emily shook her head. ‘It’s tough, but I’m doing my best.’
‘Any news on when the teahouse will be opening up again?’
Emily grimaced. ‘I don’t know. Right now I’m still dealing with a few things.’
‘It must be hard, what you’re going through, but it’s what your grandmother would have wanted.’
‘Why don’t you sell up?’ Bert said. ‘Business like that shouldn’t be left fallow.’
‘Don’t be silly, you old fool,’ Jane admonished him. ‘She couldn’t do that. Elaine would turn in her grave.’
No pressure. ‘I haven’t made any decisions yet,’ Emily said.
‘Well, when you do decide to open up again, there’ll be a queue at the door.’
‘If we’ve not all died of starvation first,’ Bert added, receiving another stern look from his wife.
‘Bert, this isn’t a time for death jokes.’
‘Thought old Elaine’s millionaire’s shortcake was my death coming,’ Bert said. ‘As good a way to go out as any.’
‘You see?’ Jane said to Emily, offering a smile which was supposed to be reassuring. ‘Poor Bert’s on his last legs. It’s what Elaine would have wanted, you know.’
Elaine wanted to live forever, Emily was tempted to say. We don’t always get what we want in life. Instead, all she said was, ‘I’m still sorting through a few things.’
‘Of course, dear. We’ll be ready when you are. Where are you off to, anyway?’
Emily suppressed a groan. ‘Um, shopping,’ she said, which, in a sense, wasn’t entirely false.
‘Well, you have a good time.’
Emily forced a smile as the Thomases stepped back to let her drive on. She glanced back at them in the mirror as she headed up the street, and saw Jane’s walking stick waving dramatically in the direction of the teahouse.
She was letting people down, of course she was. But just for once, she wanted to make her own choice, to do what she wanted to do, rather than what was expected of her.
As she had guessed, the three holiday lets in Cottonwood were vacant. Emily found all three on the Airbnb website and booked the middle one. It was overpriced, she thought, but it wasn’t like she had any worries about money. She reserved for the next two weeks, comprising the full Christmas period. Then, after a quick stop for petrol and a few toiletries, she headed for her holiday home.
It was fully dark when she arrived, parking in a space outside the church she saw now was reserved for the lets. The residences on either side were still dark and unoccupied, but a downstairs light was on inside the one she had reserved.
Pulling her small suitcase through the potholes behind her, she walked up the cobblestone path to the door and knocked.
She had expected an old woman, or at least someone a little frumpy who might have changed bed linen for a living. The absolute last person she was expecting to open the door was a tall, well built man in his early thirties who could have stepped straight out of a fashion catalogue. Emily was so taken in by the dark eyes, strong jaw, and perfect wave of dark brown hair that would have fallen tidy in a hurricane, that she didn’t even realise he had asked a question.
‘You’re Emily Wilson? You, uh, didn’t say anything about disabilities.’
‘Huh? What?’
‘Your hearing.’ He chuckled. ‘Is it a problem?’
‘Um, say again?’ She forced a smile, trying to make a joke but already feeling her cheeks redden. It had been years since a man had left her starstruck, perhaps not since secondary school. She’d had a handful of short-term boyfriends over the years, but none of them had measured up to the stature and sheer poise of the man blocking the entrance to her holiday let.
It was like a Christmas present come early.
‘My name’s Nathan,’ he said. ‘I’m the owner of these properties. I have to say, your booking took me by surprise. It was what, an hour ago?’
Emily glanced at her watch. ‘Forty-five minutes,’ she said. ‘Sorry about that. I can be a bit … impulsive.’
The moment the word was out of her mouth, her cheeks began to redden. She might as well have just invited him up to the bed he had probably just made. I’m supposed to be grieving, she reminded herself.
‘It’s fine, don’t worry. I forget these places are still on some of those sites. I meant to delist them, but no one ever books them, so I must have forgotten. Well, I guess it’s up to you if you really want to spend your Christmas somewhere like Cottonwood.’
‘It’s charming,’ she said. ‘And this place looked lovely.’
‘Well, if you think so. Shall I show you around?’ Nathan asked.
‘Yes, please.’
‘This way, then.’ Nathan led her inside, through a narrow hallway to a quaint kitchen which had a window looking out onto a patio. ‘Garden out the back,’ Nathan said, switching on a rear outdoor light which briefly illuminated a neat rectangle of grass with a line of rose bushes at the end, before he abruptly switched it off again.
‘Take a look through the cupboards, and if there’s anything you need which you can’t find, give me a call.’ He tapped a piece of paper taped to the fridge. ‘Contact details. Before nine, please, otherwise the dogs will go mental when the phone rings and annoy the old bag next door.’ He smiled, but it was mirthless. She wondered if he was being sarcastic, or whether he really did live next door to someone who liked to cause him trouble.
‘Great, thanks.’
Nathan eased past her, out into the hall. He opened a side door and switched on a light. ‘Living room,’ he said, then pulled the door shut before Emily could get a good look. She was thinking to look for herself but Nathan was already heading up the stairs, waving for her to follow. He reached the landing and switched on a light.
‘Bathroom and toilet through there. Bedroom on the left. Any sheets you want changed, there’s a bag behind the door with instructions. Leave them out the front and I’ll have Audrey come and deal with them.’
‘Audrey?’
‘She’s my regular cleaner. She’ll leave them outside the front. I’m afraid you’ll have to make the beds up again yourself. After all, this isn’t the Ritz.’
‘Well, I’m sure that won’t be a problem.’
Nathan clapped his hands together. ‘Then we’re all sorted. I’m afraid that there isn’t much in the way of shops in this grotty little place, so if you want my advice, I’d get a lot of use out of your car. Heaven knows what’ll happen if we get snowed in next week.’
‘Okay, great.’
Nathan eased past her again and made his way down the stairs. At the front door, he turned back. Emily felt her knees weaken. From her vantage point at the top of the stairs looking down, Nathan was hopelessly attractive, his face like a thousand classic movie rogues all rolled into one.
‘If you need anything, just call.’
Emily nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘Enjoy your stay.’
Nathan let himself out. Emily stared at the back of the closing door for a few seconds before the brain haze that had descended on her began to clear. Well, that was a turn up she hadn’t expected. Too bad he hadn’t been a little bit more positive, but you couldn’t ask for everything.