Christmas at Hope Cottage: A Magical Feel-Good Romance Novel(3)
While Emma was still wearing a puzzled frown, the door opened and an attractive, older woman paused before the entrance. She was tall, slim and wiry. She had wide blue Halloway eyes, the blue of lobelias and Cape starlings and secret springs. Her wild hair perched on her shoulders like a living thing, in a salt and pepper mix that was tending more to salt nowadays. She wore faded blue denim dungarees, a collared shirt printed with springing hares and an expression that always made those around her sit up just that little straighter, like she could tell just by looking at you what you were thinking.
‘Don’t worry our lass,’ said her grandmother, with a wry smile, taking a seat next to her, and patting her hand. ‘I’ll be taking you to Hope Cottage in the morning. The girls and me are working on a recipe, you’ll see, you’ll be right as rain soon enough,’ she went on with a wink.
Other people had nans, or grans; Emma had Evie. It had never occurred to Emma that it might be strange to call her grandmother by her first name, till it was too late and the habit had stuck. It suited her though. Evie had always been something of an original.
‘That’s the spirit,’ said the doctor, giving her grandmother the look people often gave Evie Halloway, which was part admiration, part bewilderment.
Emma closed her eyes, stifling a groan. This was the third thing, she realised. It wasn’t bad exactly, she did love Evie – and her crazy aunts, even if she was sure the whole lot of them needed medication – but in its own way this was the worst of the three, as it was everything she’d being trying to avoid: going back to Whistling, back to her ex Jack Allen and back to Hope Cottage.
Chapter Two
In the small village of Whistling in rural Yorkshire, with its rolling green hills, purple moors and butterscotch cottages, some things never change. October marks the start of the frost, it always snows at Christmas and whenever anyone’s in trouble they visit Hope Cottage, where remedies come on plates.
Emma was in trouble all right, as she stood outside the familiar cottage with its faded blue door, the colour of a duck’s egg. Leaning on her crutch, she looked up at the odd, cat-shaped knocker with its somewhat cantankerous expression and, despite the place’s picturesque beauty, she wished with all her might that she was anywhere but here. Wished that she was still with Pete and that her whole life and everything she’d so carefully built hadn’t turned to ashes in the space of a few days.
Since her accident, Evie had packed up her clothes from her flat in London and let her editor at the Mail & Ledger know what had happened so that they could plan what to do with her weekly food column, ‘The Historical Cook’. They had put up a notice on the column’s accompanying blog that she would be temporarily (at least, so Emma hoped) out of service. What had been worse had been telling her freelance clients what had happened. While they were incredibly supportive and sympathetic, the trouble was this small, prized collection of contacts from newspapers, magazines and blogs provided the bulk of her income, which paid for the rent in her tiny, hard-won flat in London, and without it she was afraid she might have to give the place up. It didn’t bear thinking about. The only thing worse than losing her flat in Catford was the idea of going back to living with weird flatmates. Somehow, she’d always had the worst luck with them. The last had tipped her over the edge, making her work harder than ever to get her own place: Bernard, who’d kept his toenail clippings in a jar on the shelf in the shared kitchen and sung all his responses to her attempts at conversation, had done a lot for Emma’s professional drive. Going back to another version of that just didn’t bear thinking about.
‘We’ll make the Mending Soup when you’ve settled in,’ said Evie, who had materialised by Emma’s side while she was lost in thought, her fingers coming up to touch a copper brooch she’d pinned onto the collar of her shirt, absently.
Emma shook her head. ‘It would be a waste; besides it’s not like I can taste it or anything.’
Of all her affected senses, it was taste she missed the most; the world seemed so flat without it. She would have given anything to taste something, anything.
‘You don’t have to be able to taste it for it to work,’ Evie pointed out, unlocking the door.
Emma sighed, ‘And you don’t need to give up every nice thing you own just for me.’
‘It’s my choice. Besides, you know it doesn’t work unless there’s some form of sacrifice.’
Emma didn’t want to get sucked back into her family’s mad beliefs about the recipes they made, so she just gritted her teeth, fighting a wave of fatigue and vertigo in the process. Mercifully, Evie said no more as she wheeled Emma’s bag across the threshold. Emma and her crutch followed slowly.
Inside, the cottage was as it had always been although it was all in duplicate due to her unfocused vision, she could see the familiar whitewashed stone, the same nooks and crannies in the walls, filled with dried flowers and sleeping cats named after herbs, a Halloway tradition. There was Marjoram, Parsley and Tansy. And if she were able to smell, she was sure the air would be thick with the scent of heather, wood fires and something that always seemed to hold that first whisper of Christmas. Cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger-snap biscuits.
She paused before the stone stairs, but Evie shook her head, leading her into the kitchen instead. It was a large room with an enormous navy blue range dominating one wall; next to this was a pale blue Welsh dresser, adorned with herbs and spices in clear jars with blue and white striped lids. Opposite was a large scrubbed wooden table with cream and indigo mismatching chairs. In the centre of the table usually sat the old family recipe book, the size of a concrete slab, which generations of Halloway women had filled over the years. Evie put it back in its place now, then gave Emma a smile as she indicated the small alcove towards the left, near the back door. ‘We’ve made a spot for you here,’ she said, showing her behind a large blue screen painted with wispy pink cherry blossoms. Behind this was a single bed, with a forest green, iron frame that had once sat in her childhood bedroom. Next to this was an old wooden wardrobe, with clawed feet and a three-legged stool, on top of which was a jam jar filled with dried bell heather, picked, no doubt, on one of Evie’s many foraging heathland walks. The effect was charming, old-fashioned and slightly quirky – like Evie herself.