The Peridale Cafe Cozy Box Set 4

by Agatha Frost

  “Are you kidding?” Julia tittered. “You’ve just given me a sanctuary above the post office for when I need to get out of the house and leave the baby to Barker. It’s the perfect plan. C’mon, should we go back in before Percy’s—”

  Before Julia could finish her sentence, the fire alarm inside the village hall blared, and the doors burst open. Drenched Victorians ran out, giving Julia and Jessie a glimpse of Percy and Dot on the stage, fanning the burning red curtains as the sprinklers poured down on them.

  “And we’re back to normal!” Julia exclaimed. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “Not quite yet.” Jessie nodded to the minibus that was making its way around the village green. “Not if that’s who I think it is.”

  The minibus pulled up outside the church, and a bemused and tanned Brian climbed out as Victorians scattered away from the fire.

  “What is going on?” he cried. “I go away for two weeks, and you’ve all travelled in time? Why do I get the feeling my mother is behind all this?”

  “Forget about that!” a squeaky voice called from within the minibus. “Help me out, babe! You know I can’t walk without assistance yet.”

  Brian ran around the minibus and helped Katie out. Along with a beaming tan, she also sported a bright pink leg brace encasing a scaffold of metal pins.

  “Nice gear.” Jessie nodded. “Hurt?”

  “Only when the pills wear off.” Katie gave a woozy laugh. “Where’s my baby?”

  Brian went to find Vinnie, but Katie started to lean like the Tin Woodman. She cried out, and Jessie and Julia dived in, each grabbing an arm to steady her.

  “Thanks, girls.” Katie wrapped her arms around their necks and kissed them each on the cheek. “I missed you both so much. Thank you for looking after my baby. Was he good?”

  “As gold,” Julia said.

  “Sometimes,” Jessie added. “He was okay.”

  Brian emerged from the crowd with Vinnie in his arms. Apparently forgetting she couldn’t walk, Katie dived forward, leaving Jessie and Julia to catch her again.

  “He’s tripled in size!” Katie wailed as she took Vinnie into her arms. “Did you miss mama?”

  Leaving them to reunite, Julia and Jessie handed Katie over to Brian. Julia joined Barker in front of the open church gates. He clutched her hand in his and kissed it.

  “I think I might miss Vinnie,” Barker said.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I think I might.”

  “Me too.”

  “Should we have one?”

  “Have what?”

  “A baby.” Barker belly-laughed as he pulled Julia to his chest. “What do you say? The chimney sweep and the maid?”

  Julia nuzzled her face into his costume, unsure what to say.

  Eventually, she settled on, “Are you being serious right now?”

  “Don’t you want one?”

  “Of course, I want one!” Julia’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Then let’s have one.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.” Barker kissed her on the lips. “I think this party is pretty much over. Why don’t we sneak away and start practising?”

  Dot burst through, breaking their embrace. Despite the sprinklers, the feathers in her hat were somehow still burning.

  “Let me extinguish my gran first.” Julia patted him on the backside. “She appears to be a little bit on fire.”

  As Julia chased her screaming gran around the green, trying to rip off her burning hat, she was fully aware that tonight was the night her life would change forever. With no drama or heartache, they had agreed to have a baby, and Julia couldn’t be more excited.

  The story continues in the 17th bestselling Peridale book, Vegetables and Vengeance, which is OUT NOW! Turn the page to read the FIRST chapter

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  Julia South-Brown had signed up to take part in Peridale’s annual half-marathon in good faith, but as she trailed behind her husband, Barker, and their daughter, Jessie, she intensely regretted the decision.

  “Keep up!” Jessie cried over her shoulder after swigging from a water bottle. “We’ve only been running for twenty minutes. How are you going to cope during the actual race?”

  Julia didn’t have the energy to call back. Panting for air, she waved for Jessie to run ahead without her. Jessie, a fit and agile eighteen-year-old, zoomed ahead and caught up with her equally fit older brother, Alfie, who was already far ahead down the lane. Julia attempted to pick up her pace, but it only lasted a couple of seconds before she returned to a light jog—and even that was too exhausting.

  “It’ll be fun!” Barker had assured her two weeks ago when the flyer announcing the date of the marathon landed on their doormat. “We can train together. How hard can a half-marathon be?”

  As it turned out, a half-marathon was thirteen miles of constant running and was going to be incredibly difficult. They had been training solidly every night for a week, and Julia was nowhere near being able to run the full distance. She glanced down at her fitness watch, a gift from Barker, and groaned at having only completed four miles so far. It was a mile further than she had been able to run yesterday without stopping, but that didn’t lift her spirits or give her lungs more air.

  For Jessie and Alfie, who had hopped on the marathon bandwagon with enthusiasm, it was easy to jump into trainers and run around the village. They were younger and more in shape than Julia, whose body showed that she ate sensibly enough, while not being afraid to indulge in the baked goods she made for her café. Despite most people looking at Julia and seeing an ordinary woman with curves, a recent doctor’s appointment had made her second-guess her shape.

  Julia’s sister, Sue, who was also a nurse, had suggested the appointment as a routine check-up to make sure her body was in a healthy place to get pregnant. Though Julia and Barker had only recently decided to try for a baby, she had agreed with her sister about the appointment being a good idea. She had expected the doctor to give her peace of mind, which Sue had promised would happen, but it had only added to her anxiety surrounding the subject.

  Doctor Kundu, who was filling in for her usual and much nicer female general practitioner, was a sullen man in his sixties. Despite being older and heavier than Julia, he hadn’t minded peering over his glasses and pointing out that she was ‘moderately overweight’ and she was going to be a ‘geriatric mother’ if she got pregnant. He had run down a list of health risks and things Julia should do to help her body, with exercise and weight loss being at the top of the list.

  “You’re only two years older than Meghan Markle, and she’s pregnant at this very moment!” Sue had angrily pointed out after Julia left the appointment with dampened spirits. “I bet no doctor dared call her ‘geriatric’, did they?”

  “Well, she is a princess.”

  Julia’s first step had been cutting out alcohol, which had been easy since she only ever had the odd glass of white wine here and there. Next, she had adjusted her diet to cut down on the sweet treats, even if she did still enjoy baking them. Her own internet research had uncovered a whole host of things she should avoid, including drinking her beloved peppermint and liquorice tea since excessive amounts of liquorice were not advised for pregnant women.

  “You can’t cut out everything!” Sue had said. “You still need to live your life.”

  Despite knowing her sister was correct, Julia had come to the realisation that she wanted to have a baby with Barker more than anything, and that came before wine, cakes, and her favourite tea. That mentality had prompted Julia to buy her first set of work-out clothes in years.

  She had kept her incentives for hesitantly agreeing to the marathon from Barker; his motivations were somewhat more straightforward. He had spent the past three
weeks shut away in the dining room finishing his second novel. Sitting behind a laptop day and night, drinking nothing but coffee and eating quick junk food, had left him feeling worn down and sluggish. With his publishers currently editing the finished draft, the marathon was motivation to regain some of his lost fitness.

  Despite knowing it was the best thing for them both to do, it didn’t feel like it at that moment.

  She rechecked her fitness watch.

  Five miles.

  She slowed down to a walk, and then stopped altogether. Leaning against a rickety old fence, she looked into the distance as she gasped for breath. The roof of Peridale Farm was visible, which meant her cottage wasn’t far away. Yesterday, she had ducked out halfway through the training with a promise that she wouldn’t do the same thing today; it was a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep.

  A stitch developed in her side as sweat poured down her face. She wiped it away with the sleeves of her hoodie, which was tied around her waist. The weather had been milder during their first week of training, thanks to the come-down from the unexpected February snow, but now that they were in their second week and into March, an even more unexpected heatwave had gripped the country. It felt like they were in the middle of summer, despite spring’s official start still being two full weeks away.

  “You’re doing great,” Barker assured her after doubling back to join her by the fence. “If you want to quit—”

  “I’m not quitting.” Julia grabbed her water bottle and unscrewed the cap with sweaty palms. “I just need a minute.”

  Barker wasn’t as toned as he had been when they first met a little over two years ago, but she knew that was because he had developed a liking for her double chocolate fudge cakes. Sitting down for a career hadn’t helped either, but he was in no means overweight, just a little softer than he had once been, not that Julia minded; she quite liked it for cuddling.

  “Jessie and Alfie will be miles ahead by now,” Julia said when she finally caught her breath. “We’re never going to catch up.”

  “A marathon isn’t a race,” Barker reminded her. “Well, technically it is, but you’re only racing yourself. Let’s walk for a while. My knee isn’t feeling so good anyway.”

  Julia knew Barker could have continued running for miles without needing to stop, but she appreciated him lying to make her feel better. Sometimes, she couldn’t believe how much he cared about her, and it only made her love him even more; it was one of the many reasons she now had a wedding ring on her finger.

  Hand in hand, they walked down the narrow lane towards Peridale Farm as the sun faded from the sky. Julia didn’t bring up the recent murder there, but she knew Barker wouldn’t be able to help himself.

  “They still haven’t figured out who stabbed Ted Coleman,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice, rubbing his jaw as he stared at the farm. “DI Christie thinks one of the family killed him, but none of them are talking.”

  Julia nodded, but she didn’t respond. She let another thirty seconds of silence pass; she could feel Barker biting his tongue.

  “It’s been a full week,” he finally said, “and they still don’t have any hard evidence.”

  “I’m sure Christie will figure it out soon enough,” Julia replied as they took a longer path that led them away from the farm and joined up with the lane closer to their cottage. “This is one case I’m happy to sit out.”

  Julia knew Barker didn’t believe her, but she meant it. It had been a week since news of Ted Coleman’s murder had spread around the village. Even though she was intrigued, she hadn’t felt the need to throw herself into the mix this time.

  “First time for everything!” her gran, Dot, had sarcastically said in the café the morning after the murder. “You’ll be up there with your notepad within the hour.”

  A week had now passed. Julia had stuck to her word and hadn’t been anywhere near. She barely knew the Coleman family who owned Peridale Farm, despite them only living up the lane from her cottage. Generations of Colemans had run the farm since the early 1900s, according to villagers who had been gossiping about the case in her café, and yet Julia could count on two hands the number of times she had actually seen Ted or any of his sons. They kept themselves to themselves, and none of Julia’s regulars seemed to know much about the family, not that it stopped them speculating.

  Setting aside that she didn’t know the Colemans, she knew she needed to take a step back from involving herself in police business, even if she always did what she thought was the right thing. If she wanted to have a baby, she needed to keep herself safe. For now, at least, she planned to start as she meant to go on.

  “Let’s run,” Julia said when they joined the lane that would take them past their cottage and down into the village. “We’re not far off doing a quarter marathon at least.”

  “There’s still another seventeen days to train until the big day,” he reminded her while stretching out his legs. “By then you’ll be sprinting across that finish line like Usain Bolt.”

  “If you say so.”

  They set off jogging, but it wasn’t long before Barker sped up, intentionally or not, leaving Julia trailing behind once again. When her precious cottage came into view, it begged her to go inside and relax in the armchair with a cup of peppermint tea, which was now her new go-to since ditching the liquorice. The temptation washed over her like a warm hug, but something deep within commanded her to look away from the cottage and continue on. She hadn’t experienced determination like it during the previous training sessions. Were the endorphins that everyone kept promising finally kicking in?

  The intention to run past her cottage was so firm, she almost did exactly that, but one last glance made her abruptly stop in her tracks. A woman was standing in Julia’s garden, peering into the dark sitting room with her hands cupped against the glass.

  “Hello?” Julia called breathlessly as she strolled towards the gate, hands on her hips as her lungs adjusted to the whiplash change of pace. “Can I help you?”

  The stranger, a meek-looking woman somewhere in her mid-thirties, whipped around. She shielded her eyes from the last rays of the warm evening sun and squinted down the path at Julia. She wore dark green wellington boots covered in mud and straw, tight and functional black leggings, and a green polo shirt, which was open at the neck. She had distinct redness on the visible parts of her chest and a clear line on her arms where the sunburn started. Her long, mousy hair was pulled back in a low and loose ponytail, and her face, which was as red as her chest and arms, was as bare of make-up as Julia’s. It didn’t take much deduction to figure out she was a farmer of some kind.

  “Peridale Farm’s the next stop up the lane,” Julia called, tossing her hand in the direction she had just come from. “You can’t miss it.”

  “Sorry?” the woman replied, her voice soft and unsure. “I’m looking for a woman called Julia?”

  Julia approached the stranger with her hand out. “You’ve found her. You are?”

  “Denise.” She accepted Julia’s hand and gave it a weak shake. “Denise Coleman.” She let go of Julia’s hand and bit into her bottom lip, glancing up the lane in the direction of the out-of-sight farm. “I—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here.”

  Denise’s head dropped as she walked around Julia and towards the gate. Julia, still trying to find her breath, almost let her go, but the curiosity of finding a woman looking through her window niggled too hard in the back of her mind.

  “Wait!” Julia called as Denise struggled to unlatch the gate. “Denise, why don’t we go inside?”

  “I can’t,” she replied, her voice trembling. “I left my daughter at the farm. She’s only four, and I don’t trust them.”

  “Trust who?”

  “Ted’s sons.”

  “Are you a relative of Ted’s?”

  “I am—I was his wife.” Denise’s lip trembled as she looked up at the cloudless sky the setting sun had painted a dark shade of pink. “I suppose I’m tech
nically his sons’ stepmother, but I’m not really old enough to be any of their mothers. It’s complicated.”

  “I understand.”

  “You do?” Denise forced a laugh as she brushed tears from her red cheeks. “You’d be the first.”

  “My dad is married to a woman my exact age, and she’s also ‘technically’ my stepmother.”

  “Really?” The admission appeared to soothe Denise a little. “I thought we were the only ones.”

  “It’s a small village.” Julia smiled softly. “Why did you come to my cottage, Denise? I don’t think we’ve ever spoken before.”

  “Which is why I should go.” Denise reached for the latch, but her fingers didn’t touch the metal this time. “It’s just … your sister said you’re good at this sort of thing.”

  “My sister?”

  “Sue?” Denise stepped towards Julia. “I went to school with her for a few years. I didn’t stay until the end, but I remember her being nice. I bumped into her at the kids swimming club. She was there with her adorable twin girls. We went for coffee afterwards, and I told her what I was going through. She said I should come and see you because you’re the best of the best when it comes to helping people.”

  “Sue said that?”

  “Best of the best,” Denise repeated with a nod. “Those were her exact words. She said you wouldn’t mind if I showed up here to talk.”

  Julia motioned to the front door. “The kettle can be on in a matter of minutes.”

  “I really can’t stay.” Denise glanced up the lane again as more light faded from the sky. “But I do need help. I don’t know what to do. I’ve reached the end of my tether, and I don’t know how much more I can take. It’s the boys, my stepsons. They’re making my life hell. Especially Ryan, the eldest.” She paused and inhaled deeply. “They’re convinced I murdered their father.”

  “Oh.”

  Denise’s lip trembled again. “It’s making life impossible, and it’s not fair on my Polly. I need to prove my innocence, and I don’t know how to do it, and when Sue said you’ve done this kind of thing before, I had the first glimmer of hope I’ve felt since Ted died.”