Lottie twisted in her seat, her face pained. ‘I’m not giving up.’
‘Oh, okay,’ said Emily, feeling pretty sure that doing nothing was exactly the same thing but she didn’t know Lottie well enough to push her on it.
Lottie’s expression softened. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I have been mulling it all over and there’s really nothing I can do.’
‘Is he not worth fighting for? If it was Zach I wouldn’t walk away without a fight.’
Lottie opened her mouth, but instead of saying anything she sipped her tea and turned back to stare out of the window at the snow-painted trees.
When the timer buzzed, Emily helped Lottie get the cakes out of the oven. They had risen well, but mainly in the middle, so they all had a massive peak in the centre.
‘They look good,’ said Emily, kindly, feeling her stomach grumble.
‘They’re a bit pointy. They look like volcanoes.’
‘Or perky breasts,’ said Emily, giving them a sideways look.
Lottie hastily covered the naked buns with a clean tea towel and they left them to cool.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Zach grabbed Lottie while they were all putting on coats in the hallway ready to go to the pub for lunch. He pulled her in to the dining room.
‘Emily’s worried about you. She still thinks you’re going to dump her,’ said Lottie, before Zach could speak.
‘That’ll be resolved in the next couple of hours,’ he said. ‘I need your help.’
‘Why?’ Lottie was suspicious.
‘Because I’ve had a brilliant idea. I need you to do something for me. Top secret.’
Oh dear, thought Lottie. ‘I will if I can.’ She wrapped her scarf round her neck twice.
Zach waved his hands animatedly. ‘When we all go to the pub, you need to sneak off—’
‘Hang on. Where will Emily be?’ After her conversation with Emily, she was losing track of who’d be sneaking off where.
‘With me, of course. Where else would she be?’
She couldn’t answer that. He had a good point. ‘Nowhere. Come on, tell me the plan.’
After Zach had relayed his instructions and Lottie had asked far too many questions, he joined the others andLottie made an excuse about needing to check everywhere was locked up. Instead, Lottie put on her wellies and headed out the back door where, as Zach had explained, she found a large sack. She peeked inside. As expected, it was full of holly branches. Lottie pursed her lips in thought. It was a lot of holly, but was it enough? She grabbed the secateurs and another sack and went to give the holly bush another severe pruning.
When she was happy with her haul, she locked up the house, picked up the sacks and began her trudge to the pub. It was gently snowing, and silent flakes were floating through the air serene and mesmerising. Within a couple of paces she identified a problem: no matter how she held the sacks they bumped against her, and because they were woven the holly easily poked through and spiked her. ‘Ow! Stop pricking me!’ she shouted at the sack when it grazed her for the umpteenth time. Somehow shouting at it made her feel slightly better. She wasn’t usually a shouty person. Perhaps it was something she should do more often, rather than bottling up her anguish. She stopped, gave her scratched thigh a rub, rearranged the sacks and set off again. ‘Ow!’ It was no good. She was going to have to grit her teeth and accept it was going to hurt.The things I do for other people’s happiness, she thought. Maybe one day karma would shine on her. She muttered a string of mild expletives and then decided to utter one with each jab the holly gave her. She soon got into a rhythm: ‘Bugger, arse, damn, prick; bugger, arse …’
Halfway down the hill she stopped again and jiggled the sacks round. At this point her right thigh probably had more holes than a teabag. It wasn’t too far now to the village green.
‘Bugger,’ she said as she set off. The sack spiked her in the bum. ‘Arse.’
She concentrated hard on her goal, ignoring the door opening nearby. ‘Damn, prick,’ she said, loudly, as Joe stepped out of the doorway and into her path. He recoiled from her verbal assault. She blushed and was about to apologise and explain, but she caught sight of Megan and decided against it. Lottie skirted around them and continued down the hill. ‘Arse.’
She focused on her goal. She had far more important things to think about today than Joe Bloody Broomfield. She neared the green and watched as the door to the village stores opened and a furtive-looking Emily came out. Lottie quickly slung the sacks into a hedge and kept walking. As anticipated, Emily looked around, saw Lottie and waved. She waited for Lottie to reach her.
‘Did you get it?’ asked Lottie.
‘Yep,’ said Emily, biting her lip and patting her bag at the same time. ‘It was a nightmare getting away from Zach. I had to say I needed tampons before he’d let me out of his sight. I got some fizz,’ she held up the bottles, ‘in case we need to celebrate.’ Lottie didn’t like to ask which result they would be celebrating.
‘Good idea. Look, I just need to …’ She needed a reason to delay going to the pub with Emily, but her brain wasn’t being terribly quick coming up with something.
