Christmas at Hope Cottage

by Lily Graham

‘Oh, he might do – old Moira Bates is a bit of a stickler,’ said Dot. ‘I handed a book in late at the library, when it was still open,’ she went on, and then pulled a face. ‘Could have sworn I’d killed her old cat the way she looked at me afterwards, mean thing too, that little monster – do you remember that time—’

  ‘When did Mr Grigson come?’ asked Emma.

  ‘While you were sleeping on the sofa, after Mary Galway left.’

  Emma marvelled that so much had happened while she was sleeping, but she was still trying to process what Evie had said about Sandro. Besides, she wanted to steer the conversation away from their mad recipes as much as she could.

  ‘Back to Sandro, sorry, I’m confused – why would you offer him the annexe in the first place? Wasn’t there anywhere else he could go?’

  Evie shrugged. ‘I suppose he could have.’

  ‘But he’s a stranger, why would you even offer?’

  Emma worried that perhaps Evie was struggling financially. It had never been easy keeping Hope Cottage; aside from Aggie, who was a semi well-known artist, the sisters had always made the recipes and the cottage a strictly non-profit affair, so perhaps there was something Evie hadn’t been telling her. Why else would she open her home to a strange man?

  ‘He isn’t a stranger, you’ve chuffing lived in London too long – we’ve known him for a couple of years now,’ said Aggie.

  Emma was shocked. ‘You have?’

  ‘He’s a good friend,’ agreed Evie.

  ‘He is?’

  ‘You’d know this if you’d been home more often,’ Aggie pointed out.

  Emma ignored this. Suddenly a new thought occurred to her. She widened her eyes, snapped them back at Evie, a slow grin spreading on her face. ‘Are you and he…?’

  Evie snorted. She wasn’t the only one. ‘Are you serious – he’s young enough to be my grandson!’

  Emma shrugged. ‘So, like you said, I’ve been living in London, it’s not that uncommon, trust me.’

  Evie shook her head. ‘He’s not my type, all right?’

  Dot shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t know about that… I mean, he’s the type you’d make an exception for, am I right?’ she said, eyebrows waggling.

  Aggie hooted with laughter. ‘Oh yes, I could have those boots under my bed,’ and they all dissolved into giggles, only laughing harder when they saw Emma’s slightly shocked expression. ‘Your generation,’ said Dot. ‘Such prudes.’

  ‘I am not a prude,’ said Emma, somewhat prudishly. ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He runs the Tapas Hut,’ said Evie pulling The Book towards her. She began flipping the page, then stopped at a recipe titled Wind-change Wine.

  Evie tapped her chin, reading out the instructions, which included allowing several months of fermentation. ‘Not sure Mr Grigson has that sort of time on his hands at his age, but it’s his best chance really.’

  ‘A tapas hut?’ asked Emma, resolutely trying her best to ignore being sucked back into the family pastime of meddling in other people’s lives via food.

  ‘You haven’t heard of it?’ said Dot in surprise.

  Emma shook her head.

  ‘Oh, it’s wonderful,’ she said, going misty-eyed. ‘The best tapas I’ve ever had. Authentic, well, I suppose it would be, he’s the real thing.’ She laughed. ‘But it’s something else, rather special. It’s down by the moors with these really gorgeous views. In summer when the heather is in bloom it’s such a treat, a purple carpet, next to these long wooden tables that overlook the heath. It’s even better at night with all the fairy lights, and the stars… And if you ply him with enough wine and encouragement, he plays his guitar. It’s… bliss,’ she sighed, obviously a little smitten.

  All three of them nodded.

  Emma blinked. It was hard to picture this happening here. Very few things changed in Whistling, where the Brimbles had always run the local store, the Leas had always run the vicarage and there had always been a Halloway in Hope Cottage. As far as she knew, no one had ever run a tapas hut…

  Evie shrugged. ‘Stranger things have happened.’

  Emma doubted it.

  * * *

  When she went to bed that night, she thought of Jack. She hadn’t seen him since she’d moved to London, since she’d tried to put him and the family legacy behind her, relegate it to where she believed it deserved a place – in her past. She thought of how quickly he’d left when Sandro had mentioned The Book, the expression on his face, of disbelief, mixed with something that almost looked like fear. Some things, she thought a little sadly, fluffing the pillow beneath her head, never changed.

  Chapter Four

  Since she was a little girl, Emma had been taught that there was an art to cooking. A science too. Some things add texture and flavour. If you add cream to eggs it will go thick and rich. Some things though, when you add them, curdle and separate. Like oil and water. Or Sandro’s presence in Hope Cottage; at least as far as Emma was concerned, him being there was just making life even harder than it needed to be. He was just too damn loud, for one thing.

  He was forever barging into the kitchen and disturbing her peace, chatting loudly on the phone, turning up the radio, his body jangling to some tune in his head, so that he would look at you while beating a drum on his knee, his whole being thrumming to its own secret music.

  When he wasn’t making a noise, he was invading her space, moving aside the screen and trying to engage her in conversation.

  ‘Hola, Pajarita,’ he said the first morning after they met, his dark eyes taking in her bruises with a sad frown. Making her aware, suddenly, of the tangle of her sheets and the state of her unwashed hair.

  ‘What does that mean?’ she asked. ‘Pajarita?’

  He gave her his mellow smile, a dimple appearing in his cheek. ‘Well, it’s like you, like a little bird with a broken wing.’ He mimed it, his arm making a flapping motion.

  Her eyes popped in outrage. ‘I am not.’

  Still, her grumpiness did nothing to dissuade him; if anything it seemed to fuel him even more. As the days passed, he was always there, strumming his guitar, to the delight of her aunts, helping himself to food, listening as Evie, Dot and Aggie worked on a recipe, his dark eyes wide as he turned to her in amazed delight. ‘Marvellous. Really marvellous, eh, Pajarita? Imagine curing arthritis like this, eh?’

  She’d just roll her eyes, then head out for the sofa, trying to escape. That’s all she needed: more recruits for the family madness. Shoulders slumping when she’d realise that Pennywort, like Evie and her aunts, would stay with him. They seemed to bask in his attention. Making him endless cups of espresso and feeding him biscuits that they made just for him. Ginger snaps, peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip – nothing was too much trouble for him. Hearing his sighs of pleasure as he ate them made her grit her teeth, partly because she would have given anything just to taste one herself.

  He was always around, or at least so it seemed, oddly for someone who owned his own business. Though to be fair, as she napped so often he might well be leaving and returning; she couldn’t always be sure.

  Every morning of the first week that she was back, his dark, curly head would appear next to the silk screen and he’d offer her a cup of coffee, or suggest that she come to the window to see something ‘interesting’, or to ‘take a short walk in the garden’ or go with him while he picked up some groceries.

  He didn’t get offended when she told him to simply ‘Bugger off.’

  He would just leave, chuckling. ‘Maybe next time, Pajarita, eh? Adios.’

  She had to swallow the urge to shout, ‘I am not a bloody little bird!’ Not because doing so would be mean, though partly it was that, and she didn’t like that that was who she’d become, but more because shouting would hurt like hell.

  When he was gone there was quiet and stillness, and the blue calm of the kitchen. Quiet was one of the few pleasures she had left and she savoured it when it came, the way she had once savoured the first delicious
bite of chocolate.

  The second week she was back, shuffling into the kitchen in her robe, she looked around and sniffed, though it wasn’t like she could smell anything. Signs of his presence were everywhere. The different types of tapas in the fridge, neatly stored in glass containers. The shiny, new coffee machine that was constantly on, the Halloways providing him with a steady supply of espresso – she saw now that he’d left one behind, stone cold, half full and forgotten, while he dealt with some crisis at the Tapas Hut.

  She picked the little cup up, but with her hazy vision, misjudged the distance and knocked it over, cursing as it oozed inky liquid onto the table that seeped into The Book. She grabbed a dishcloth and quickly mopped it up, pressing hard to make sure it didn’t soak into the pages. She flipped a page to dab on the other side, then paused with a frown as her fingers traced over the stubby ends of what looked like a set of pages that had been torn out.

  She frowned. It had been years since she’d looked at The Book properly, but despite this, she knew the pages by heart – or at least, so she’d thought. The torn pages were between a recipe for mending fences and another for overcoming heartache. These recipes had always been there though, which meant that the torn pages must have always been there too, and she’d simply never noticed them before. It was strange. Not all the recipes worked. Even Evie admitted that. But they were kept all the same – they were lessons, or at least that’s what Evie had always maintained; they’d simply add an annotation in pen or pencil to explain what had gone wrong. But if that was the case, why then had this one been torn out?

  * * *

  ‘Package for you,’ said Evie coming to her bed and handing her a small red cardboard box in the shape of a dog bone. Stuck on the front was a small white envelope, addressed simply to ‘Emma’.

  She frowned. ‘Who’s it from?’

  Evie shrugged. ‘Open it,’ she said, making her way back into the kitchen to get started on a recipe for another dawn caller.

  Emma opened the envelope, curious. Then laughed.

  Flowers for Pennywort. Gus is sorry for his ungentlemanly behaviour. He has realised that despite how fetching Master Pennywort is, he shouldn’t have got so carried away.

  * * *

  Jack.

  * * *

  P.S. Glad you’re back.

  Inside the box were heart-shaped dog biscuits. She gave one to Pennywort, who seemed less than charmed – he was a bit too spoiled by Evie and her aunts, a factor that she was sure had resulted in his commendable longevity.

  She was smiling when Evie came back into her alcove. ‘So, who is it from?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh – um, a friend,’ Emma hedged; she wasn’t up for a discussion about Jack Allen, not today.

  Noting the biscuits, Evie frowned. ‘Dog biscuits?’

  ‘Bit of a joke.’

  ‘A good one, I hope,’ said Evie as she went back into the kitchen, ready to tackle Mr Grigson’s recipe so that Moira Bates might be persuaded to give him a second chance at love.

  * * *

  You look better than I imagined,’ said Maggie, her oldest friend, pushing up her glasses and taking a seat on the edge of Emma’s bed. She cocked her head to the side. ‘The hair though?’

  Emma’s godchild Mikey, a fetching two-year-old who had fallen instantly in love with Pennywort, was now asleep on the bed, his thumb in his mouth, his curly blond hair catching the last of the autumnal light as they caught up.

  ‘Shut up.’ Emma snorted. ‘You try washing your hair with pins in your fingers and a cast on your wrist.’

  Maggie laughed, her green eyes dancing. ‘Yeah, okay, you may have a slight excuse… try motherhood, Jase had to deal with bun hair for the first year.’

  ‘Jase’ was Maggie’s husband, Jason Foster, a sweet-natured footie fanatic, who’d made the move from Manchester to come live with Maggie after they met at a match a few years ago, falling in love over a shared passion for the boys in red. He had his own business building websites, which did fairly well, and he’d offered her the chance to give up work, but Maggie loved her job as a route planner for a trucking company – she said it allowed her to speak to adults during the day, though for the first few months she was back at work she had spent most of her time mooning over pictures of Mikey and becoming her own worst idea of a soppy mum. She’d told Emma all this once over the phone. ‘It’s nuts, isn’t it? I’ve become one of those women I used to laugh at,’ she said, sobbing, from the ladies’ loo. ‘I mean I spent months looking forward to going back, I found one of his stupid socks in my bag today, when I was looking for a tissue for my nose, and my eyes started leaking – it was in the middle of a meeting and I was sitting there all gormless and soppy staring at his sock. Me.’

  Emma had tried to soothe her, tried not to laugh, picturing no-nonsense Maggie, who worked in a male-dominated field and had a reputation for being a bit of an iron fist, crying over a sock.

  ‘Things will get easier, Mags. It’s hormones or something, you’ll get used to it, I’m sure no one noticed,’ she lied.

  ‘Oh, they noticed. Luckily, Bob, he’s the general manager, he said he was just the same when he and Jim adopted their baby girl, so that’s good.’

  Maggie looked at her now, her eyes taking in Emma’s hair with a pained expression. ‘But I mean – I’m not really sure how you have that situation going on though,’ she said waving a hand at Emma’s rather ratty, in-need-of-a-wash hair. ‘When you’ve got Alessandro living under your roof.’

  Emma winced, quickly taking off the cardigan she was wearing; it suddenly felt like someone was scratching her lightly all over with long fingernails. In her confusion as she tried to pull a sleeve over the arm with the cast, Maggie getting up to help, she frowned and asked, ‘Who?’

  She sighed in pleasure as her skin went back to normal. Making a mental tally. Cotton good. Wool, not so much.

  Maggie raised a brow. ‘You’re joking, right? The crazy hot Spanish guy living in your house – ring any bells?’

  Emma’s eyes widened. ‘That’s his full name – Alessandro?’

  ‘Yeah, Alessandro Sandoz,’ said Maggie with a schoolgirl sort of smile.

  Emma pursed her lips. Of course it was.

  ‘You’re welcome to him – honestly, I wish Evie hadn’t let him the annexe, he’s just always in the way…’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Emma sighed. ‘It’s not a big house, and he’s just always around. He helps himself to the things in the fridge, he’s always trying to chat, coming into my room… He drives me mad.’

  Maggie raised a brow again. ‘He wants to chat to the invalid girl. Eats things from the fridge in the house where he lives. Gosh, you’re right, what a dreadful human being.’

  Emma’s lips twitched. She closed her eyes, groaned. ‘I’m a cow.’

  Maggie gave her a look of pity mixed with amusement. ‘A little, but, well, you’re in pain, it can make anyone grumpy.’

  Emma sighed. ‘I suppose, but it’s not a great excuse, I don’t like that I’m like this. I think it’s just that he invades my space. I know he’s trying to be nice… But that just makes it worse.’

  ‘I can get that. Also, I mean, it’s always just been you and Evie here, well, and your crazy aunts too, but now it’s A Man in Hope Cottage,’ she said, a little theatrically, her hands making a rainbow across the air as if her words were on a movie poster. ‘What will Emma Halloway do? Find out, this Saturday on Film Four…’

  Emma laughed. ‘You’re crackers. God, I missed you.’

  ‘Me too. I’m sorry it took being knocked over by a van to bring you home, but I’m glad you’re here, for a while at least.’

  ‘Yeah… it’ll be a while too,’ Emma said darkly.

  ‘They still don’t know how long the recovery might take?’

  Emma shook her head. ‘Or if I will completely recover.’ Admitting what she hadn’t had the strength to say to her aunts.

  ‘Oh, you will. I’m sure of it. I me
an, they’re probably working on it already,’ Maggie said, her eyebrows dancing meaningfully as she made a vague gesture towards the empty kitchen beyond the screen.

  Emma rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t get me started. I’ve told them not to bother.’

  ‘Why not? Surely every little bit helps, and if you don’t believe in it, what’s the harm?’

  ‘There’s other reasons.’

  Like the fact that she was in this situation because they’d sent The Book, and the postal worker who’d tried to deliver it knocked her down. She knew, logically, an inanimate object hadn’t been the cause, but it was hard to forgive it all the same.

  As if she could read her mind, Maggie glanced at the table and said, ‘Is that it? The Book,’ she added in reverential tones.

  Emma shrugged. ‘Yes, in all its two-hundred-year-old glory.’

  ‘C-could I –’ she cleared her throat, ‘Would you mind if I had a look? I didn’t dare ask when I was a kid… and there was always someone around so I couldn’t really sneak a peek.’ She winked.

  ‘Knock yourself out,’ said Emma, easing herself back on her pillows next to Mikey, who was still fast asleep. Maggie crept forward eagerly, flipping through the pages. ‘Some of these are ancient!’ she said, turning to one that dated back to 1818, her mouth flopping open. ‘This newsprint on some of them – it’s amazing, it’s like a bite out of history!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Emma, ‘I think it’s partly why I became a food writer, I mean, moving aside all the folklore and stuff attached to this book and us. The recipes offer a real sense of history – from the early recipes before the introduction of spices, times when meat was in short supply, and before sugar was a staple.’

  Maggie nodded eagerly, still flipping the pages, ‘Like this – “Peasebread”?’

  ‘Yeah, that was popular in these parts back in the day. Some of the recipes call for these forgotten foods, like peasemeal. Evie’s good that way though – I mean, in the garden she grows lots of old-fashioned herbs like tansy and rue, and she kept almond milk long before it became fashionable to do so.’