Christmas at Hope Cottage: A Magical Feel-Good Romance Novel
Lily Graham
Chapter One
They say that bad things happen in threes.
Emma Halloway, who made a point of not believing this sort of thing, found herself, nonetheless, wondering if there wasn’t a grain of truth to the superstition after all, on that particular, soggy, Tuesday afternoon, while she lay in a pool of her own blood on the ice-cold concrete, the ambulance sirens getting steadily closer.
She supposed, looking back, that the break-up Post-it left on her morning cup of tea had been the first.
I just can’t do this any more.
* * *
Pete.
* * *
P.S. Might not be the best time to mention it, but just so you know, you’re out of washing powder.
The postscript was typical Pete. He was breaking up with you, yes, but heaven forbid you might run out of clean underwear.
It’s what had attracted her to him in the first place. His practicality, his evenness, the fact that he was the polar opposite of everything she’d ever known growing up in Whistling, Yorkshire, where time stood still, families passed down centuries-old feuds like genetic maladies and people believed that the food the women in her family made could heal anything, even broken hearts.
Pete had been her ticket up the rabbit hole, away from all those Mad Hatters and March Hares. Her ticket away from Jack Allen most of all. The boy she’d given her heart away to at the age of six, who she’d spent the past four years trying to forget.
For a long time after she found Pete’s message, while she sat on the kitchen floor surrounded by the shards of the mug she’d thrown onto the linoleum, her eyes filled with hot, unshed tears, she’d tried to work up some blame that didn’t point inward. Some anger towards Pete. Breaking up with someone on a Post-it note was a fairly shitty way to end a four-year relationship, after all.
When she tried to phone him, it went straight to voicemail. Ten minutes later he texted back a response.
You know I love you. But the only one who seems oblivious to the fact that you don’t feel the same way – is you. I can’t do this any more. Please, Em, don’t reply.
But, of course, she did. Letting sleeping dogs lie wasn’t part of her make-up.
Pete! I do love you, don’t be silly.
He didn’t respond, so she sent another.
I’ll try harder, okay? I’ll do anything, please don’t do this. We can work this out, can’t we?
But he didn’t reply. Not even then. Which was when the tears really came.
Emma supposed – lying on the concrete, the pain starting to build, the flashing lights approaching – that the second bad thing was really a result of the first.
She’d decided, once she got up from the kitchen floor, her eyes puffy and swollen, a painful, barbed knot in the space where her heart used to be, that her weekly food column for the Mail & Ledger, and this week’s topic a cheery look into the history of Christmas food, could wait until the urge to throw herself off her building passed. To help it along, she’d decided to get some fresh air, and some vodka. She took her bicycle, the one Pete had bought her as a surprise in a rare display of spontaneity when she’d mentioned a longing for an old-fashioned bike, complete with wicker basket and floral-print panniers. It was a painful, sunlit memory that she tried to ignore. As she pedalled for the off-licence a few blocks away, she couldn’t help noting, somewhat wryly, that the basket, which had enjoyed an innocent life till then, filled with baguettes and flowers and Emma’s overflowing research bag, was now about to experience a significant fall from grace as a large bucket for an obscene amount of booze.
Which just goes to show that someone upstairs was having a bit of a laugh, because instead of getting a respite from her awful day, she’d just cycled into the little street round the corner when she was hit by the postal van.
With the bicycle wheels whirring above her head, her blood blooming on the concrete and the sharp, searing pain burgeoning in her skull, Emma might have expected that the day couldn’t possibly get any worse, but when the driver asked for her name, Emma realised, suddenly, that actually it could.
The driver, whose hands were shaking, looked dismayed when she told him who she was. Eyes wide with horror, he explained, ‘I had this package on the passenger seat and it fell off. I took me eye off the road for just a second to put it right, it was just a second mind, but then I hit you. It was like you came out of nowhere. But what’s really bizarre,’ he said, his large, grey eyes almost popping, ‘was – I was on my way to drop this off at your house! Crazy, innit?’ he asked, hefting a monstrous package from the car and bringing it down to where she could see. ‘Huge fing too,’ he muttered.
Which was when Emma started to laugh, the type of laugh when, really, you’re about to cry; when you realise how cruel fate can be. A type of laugh she was all too familiar with, being born a Halloway. Emma realised, judging from the size and shape of the package, that her grandmother had sent her the stupid family recipe book. The one she believed would change Emma’s life, and get her to admit that her life in London had been nothing but pain and heartache, and now as a result of The Book, everything would get better. Only it had done the opposite, as usual.