Emma crept downstairs in the dark, bleary-eyed, trying hard not to step on stray nails and splintered floorboards. As she moved through the middle floor past the bathroom, which had lain untouched since David’s rescue four days ago, she fought away an uncharitable thought. In her heart she knew the most important thing was David’s recovery from hypothermia, but she couldn’t quite rid herself of the idea that if he hadn’t been so foolish as to practise swimming in a storm, her en suites might be finished by now. With only three weeks left until Christmas, they were cutting the build perilously fine, and her reputation was on the line.
Tiptoeing down the stairs so as not to wake Aidan, who’d been going out drinking then sleeping on the couch each night since the storm, Emma padded into the kitchen, the ceiling still bulging ominously, and into the utility room where Bertha was fast asleep.
‘Time to go out,’ she whispered, giving her a morning tummy rub, then letting her out into the snow.
Emma then mopped up the puppy’s night-time accident. With Wilbur still recovering at the vet’s, Bertha’s house-training had deteriorated, much to Aidan’s annoyance. He’d barely uttered a word since his return, other than the odd grunt about wishing the course hadn’t been cancelled, or an exclamation about the dog’s toileting. Emma felt certain he was pushing her away, her concealment of Bertha had been too much of a betrayal, and then there was the misunderstanding with George, plus the pressure added by having committed to the building project.
With the first job of the day taken care of, Emma and Bertha wandered through the dining room, which was warm, natural and inviting, and into the guesthouse, where she turned on the oven before cleaning out the fire in the living room, ready for the first guests of the morning to come down.
By the time that was done, Peggy had arrived, on the dot of seven as always, to begin the breakfast prep.
‘How many guests have we this morning?’ she asked, tying her apron around her long lilac waistcoat and matching trousers. Emma delighted in the fact that she looked more like a Vogue sewing-pattern illustration than ever.
‘Just the three rooms, and George,’ replied Emma, who was busy traipsing back and forth to the dining room with the chilled drinks from the fridge. ‘But it’s just the two of us. No Zoe or Skye to help.’
‘Keep everyone plied with coffee and croissants and they’ll be happy to wait a minute or two longer for their breakfast,’ said Peggy.
‘Good plan,’ said Emma.
Neither Zoe nor Skye had been at work since the house reopened three days previously, their mothers agreeing, after the incident at the caves, that they should only be allowed out of the house for school. Emma had hoped that Aidan might help out in their and Rhona’s absence, but his mood had been so leaden since he returned, and his conversation so sparse, that she quickly realised it was better for him to stay away, in case he put a dampener on the atmosphere. One way or another, Emma and Peggy had found a system that worked, Emma keeping the guests distracted with coffee and conversation while Peggy cooked up a storm in the kitchen. For now, it was doing the trick, though she wasn’t certain how much longer they could maintain it, and she made a mental note to ask Rhona and Zoe’s mum when the girls might be allowed back to work. It was one thing managing a handful of rooms with Peggy, but another entirely managing a full house almost unaided at Christmas.
By the time Emma had a chance to look at the clock again, it was already half past ten, by which time she’d served breakfast, cleared the dining room, organised taxis and tickets, checked out guests and kept the fire going. It took her straight back to the previous year, when she’d run the place pretty much single-handedly.
‘Time I went and cleaned the rooms,’ she said, even though she’d have preferred to sit down with a relaxing coffee and a handful of Peggy’s perfect stollen bites.
‘I’ll reset the dining room and prep the afternoon teas,’ said Peggy.
‘I’d be lost without you,’ she called, as she headed upstairs to the linen cupboard.
Emma was halfway through cleaning the Island room when she heard Eve calling for her.
‘I’m in here, Eve,’ she hollered back, and a moment later Eve appeared in the doorway, wearing her knackered sweatpants and an old lumberjack shirt of Aidan’s. ‘How come you’re not at work?’
‘I start at eleven.’ She plonked herself in a chair at the window and put her feet up on the coffee table.
‘You’re not volunteering at the school today?’
‘Nope,’ she replied, biting down hard on a fingernail.
‘Is everything okay?’ Emma asked, resisting the urge to tell Eve to take her feet off the table and help bag up some towels and bed linen instead. Like Aidan, Eve had been in an odd mood since the night of the rescue. It had crossed Emma’s mind that Aidan might have told Eve some concocted story about Emma and George, and that Eve was siding with her brother. But she hadn’t said anything, and Emma didn’t want to press her. She figured whatever it was, it would come out in the wash sooner or later.
‘Yeah,’ she said distantly, staring out of the window.
Plumping up a duvet cover, Emma pushed aside a worry that had been building over the last couple of days. With the atmosphere in the house so difficult, she had begun to dwell on whether or not they’d made a huge mistake in agreeing to knock the two houses together, and Eve’s mood was doing nothing to quash the concern.
‘If you need to talk about anything—’ said Emma, not certain that she really meant it; part of her felt she’d prefer an atmosphere over a confrontation, which she always found so draining. Growing up with Jane, who liked nothing better than an argument, she’d always found it easier to avoid issues rather than tackle them head on. She was aware that her habit of burying her head in the sand only ever led to bigger problems in the end and yet, always hopeful that things would unravel themselves with time, she continued to do it.
‘I know.’ Eve got up and wandered absently out of the room, leaving Emma alone again with only her thoughts for company.
*
It was lunchtime before Emma had finished cleaning the rooms, and by the time she got downstairs, with her arms full of laundry and clutching a bin liner of rubbish tightly, her back ached and the muscles in her arms stung.
‘What you doing?’ she asked Aidan, when she found the front door open and him outside with a snow shovel in hand, Bertha yapping excitedly beside him.
‘What does it look like?’ he grumped.
‘Building an igloo,’ she joked, but it fell on deaf ears.
‘Can you get this dog away from me?’ he barked and, not wanting to aggravate him further, Emma said she would, once she’d dropped the laundry through the back.
‘Bertha,’ she called, returning to the front door. ‘Come on, girl.’
Bertha continued to bark playfully, trying desperately to get Aidan’s attention.
‘If you give her a fuss she’ll probably give up,’ Emma suggested.
‘Not going to happen.’
With a roll of her eyes, Emma bit her tongue. Aidan was driving her mad, there was no doubt about that, but, able to see it from his point of view – having come home to a dog he’d clearly said he didn’t want and his girlfriend looking cosy with another man, even if it was completely innocent – she decided to cut him some slack, or at least not poke the fire.
‘Bertha, come,’ she tried again, but the truth was that with Wilbur away at the vet’s, not only had Bertha regressed with her toileting, she had also gone backwards with her basic commands too.
Irritated by Emma’s lack of control, Aidan laid down his shovel, swept up Bertha, who tried desperately to lick his face, and handed her abruptly to Emma.
‘Take her,’ he said, thrusting the wriggling dog into Emma’s arms, then picking up his shovel, turning his back on her, he began his clearing once more.
‘Somebody’s not in a good mood,’ Emma whispered into the pup’s ear as she took her through to the kitchen, trying not to let Aidan get to her.
Emma threw back a sandwich, shoved on the laundry and left Peggy to put the scones on, while she nipped out to get the Christmas tree from the little garden centre on the outskirts of the village.
As she wandered up and down the rows of trees trying to figure out which had the richest scent, which were least likely to drop their needles and which would fit the space, she remembered the previous year, when Aidan had been with her. Twelve months ago, the task had been something to enjoy, the two of them holding hands, drinking hot chocolate and laughing about Aidan’s desire to have the biggest tree possible, even if it did mean lopping off its top when they got home. Eventually they’d picked the tree that felt intrinsically ‘theirs’ and manhandled it into the back of Aidan’s van. They had laughed themselves senseless when they had taken off the net in the house to discover it was almost twice as wide as they’d imagined. Aidan had then spent at least an hour pruning branches to make it fit, before they decorated it together while singing Christmas carols at the top of their lungs.
Standing there alone amongst the trees brought home the reality of their current situation but, just as she was fighting off the urge to have a little weep, she saw Jen at the wreath stall, all decked out in fairy lights and fir.
‘Emma,’ Jen waved, and she crunched her way towards her through the glistening snow.
‘How’s David?’ asked Emma, keen for an update, and not just because she wanted her builder back.
‘He’s doing okay. He’s still resting but it shouldn’t take too much longer,’ she said, adding, ‘idiot that he is,’ as an afterthought.
‘What was he thinking?’ Emma whispered, over-enunciating her words.
Beneath her duffle coat hood, Jen shook her head. ‘I’ve no idea. What I do know is that loads of lessons have been cancelled because of what happened. Honestly, I could swing for him. Who the hell goes swimming in a storm, in the dark, with somebody else’s dog?’
Emma winced, surprised at Jen’s wrath, but not disagreeing. ‘I have no problem with him making crap decisions for himself, but dragging Wilbur into it? That wasn’t cool.’
‘How is Wilbur?’ Jen asked, her eyes brimming with concern.
‘Not great. They’re struggling to stabilise him,’ she said. Emma’s heart leapt every time the phone rang, fearing the worst. ‘We just keep hoping for an improvement.’
Jen reached out a hand to Emma. ‘I’m so sorry, Em. I reckon David would have drowned if it weren’t for Wilbur. He said he kept him afloat long after he would have gone under on his own.’
‘Aidan said as much,’ Emma replied, though she didn’t mention it had been like pulling teeth trying to get anything else out of him. There were days at the moment when Jane’s comment about the importance of being with someone who was ‘capable of more than the odd grunt’ rang very true. He was a far cry from the man she’d loved sharing her life with this last year and a half, the man who’d made her laugh one moment and swoon the next.
‘The whole village has been talking about it. Shame they’re also talking about me being a crap swimming instructor.’
‘Don’t be crazy, nobody’s saying that! David’s decision reflects badly on him, not you.’
‘Well, let’s hope so,’ she said, though Emma sensed she wasn’t certain.
‘You won’t let it come between you, will you?’
‘Probably not,’ she laughed. ‘Everyone’s allowed one dumb mistake, right?’
‘I hope so,’ said Emma, thinking of her own and wishing she’d told Aidan about Bertha. If she had, things might not be in such a mess.
‘You sound weary,’ said Jen.
‘It’s nothing that can’t be fixed.’
‘Are you sure?’
Before she had time to reflect, Emma found herself in the middle of a monologue about how cross Aidan was about Bertha and finding Emma having a drink with George, how she worried she’d spoiled the trust between them, how Eve now seemed equally terse as her brother, and how the whole atmosphere in the house was the complete opposite of what she’d hoped for the run-up to Christmas.
‘And now I’m freaking out that merging the two houses, not to mention our lives, was a massive mistake,’ she said, remembering that Aidan had initially said they could always convert the house back if things didn’t work out. Now she wished she’d given more thought to how much work that might actually entail, and the consequences it could have for their relationship.
‘It sounds to me as if you might be worrying about nothing,’ said Jen. ‘If I were you, I’d carry on regardless. I’ve known that pair a long time, and trust me when I tell you they have a way of giving off vibes they don’t really mean to.’
‘I guess,’ said Emma, remembering that part of Aidan’s appeal was his rugged alpha-masculinity, which she realised sometimes came at the expense of ease of self-expression.
‘Give it time. If there’s one thing I know about Aidan, it’s that when he’s got something on his mind, he needs space. Trying to talk to him before he’s ready will just be counterproductive.’
Having agreed that they’d see each other over the next few days, they said their goodbyes. Conscious of her guests’ looming arrival, Emma quickly selected a tree that was heavily scented and as big as the Volvo would allow with the boot open, and drove slowly home, where Peggy had warm scones on a cooling rack and was whisking cream by hand.
‘I’ll go and get the tree out of the car,’ said Emma, dipping her finger into the cream as she passed.
Having somehow positioned the tree in the hall on her own, wishing Aidan was there to lend a hand, Emma then draped it in lights and hung the front door wreath, trimmed with cones and a huge red bow. She was giving the floor a quick hoover, just before her first guests arrived, when the cylinder lid sprung open and dust and pine needles cascaded all over the rug.
‘Shit,’ she exclaimed, furious with herself for being so clumsy.
‘Need a hand?’ came a voice.
Emma looked up to find George, in a cosy Christmas sweater, standing at the point of the stairs to which the Christmas tree reached. For a moment it looked to Emma as if he were the angel perched on its tip.
‘Would you mind?’ she asked, aware that she had precious few minutes to spare before her guests turned up.
‘Not at all.’
‘I’ll grab a bin bag and dustpan from the kitchen.’ She ran through to grab them.
On returning to the hall, she bent down to start sweeping, kneeling at the foot of the tree in front of George, who held the bin bag open for her.
‘It’s just typical for this to happen before guests arrive,’ she said, frantically sweeping it all up, then getting to her feet. But as she did, her foot caught on the rug and she tripped, falling directly towards George, who caught her in his arms.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, as he continued to support her, making sure she was steady.
‘You okay?’ he asked, his eyes full of concern.
‘She’s fine,’ said a voice from behind that made them both wheel round, to find Aidan standing broodingly in the entrance, his glare fixed on George.