Christmas at Hope Cottage: A Magical Feel-Good Romance Novel(18)

‘Ah,’ said Evie.

‘Ah, indeed,’ said the tall, stout one, blue eyes dancing.

‘Were you on your way to us?’ asked the plump one, with a wide grin. ‘Wouldn’t that have been funny?’ she went on. Even with the distance between them, Emma could see that her nail polish was a pearly sort of purple, and most of it was chipped away.

‘Oh, I doubt that, Dot,’ said the other, opening the gate, giving Evie an almost apologetic look as she said, ‘We were in the neighbourhood…’

Evie’s lips twitched. ‘That’s not hard, is it?’

Dot grinned. ‘No, because we live here!’ she said, directing her reply to Emma.

‘Well, just up the road, anyway,’ she added, indicating the cobbled high street in the distance.

Evie rolled her eyes. ‘Emma, meet my sisters. Dot,’ she said indicating the one with the bottle-thick glasses on the end of her nose, and ‘Agatha Halloway,’ she said of the other. ‘Or Laurel and Hardy.’

‘Ha ha,’ said Agatha. ‘What does that make you – Curly?’

Dot cocked her head to the side and considered her great-niece, noting the freckles, the Halloway eyes, the small frame, then frowned.

‘Red?’ she asked, looking at Evie as if for guidance.

‘Red’, repeated Agatha, who looked rather taken aback at the thought as well.

‘That Scot…’ explained Evie.

Two nearly identical pairs of round blue eyes widened. ‘That cheeky madam,’ said Agatha. ‘She denied it like nobody’s business, told me she was moving to London for work.’ Her eyes grew sad and a tear leaked down her cheek.

Dot brushed the tear off her sister’s face, though her own eyes had filled too, just as Evie’s had.

Evie nodded. She couldn’t help wishing things had been different – that Margaret hadn’t left that day, hadn’t felt the need to get away, hadn’t felt the need to change everything she was.

‘To be fair, it’s a nice change,’ said Dot, who had that air of someone who despite the worst of circumstances tries to put on a brave, kind face, glancing from Emma’s mane to Evie and Agatha’s wild crops of hair.

Halloways were not often described as the sort of people who had ‘good hair days’, unless the definition was one that meant it was a day that one of them hadn’t broken a hairbrush, or made the local hairdresser consider closing up shop just because they had decided to make an appointment.

Silence followed this rather sore point. Which Dot, with her relatively sleek-by-comparison hair, often pressed.

‘So… have you shown her The Book?’ asked Agatha.

‘She’s just got here,’ protested Evie. ‘But yes, I did. We’re taking it easy, mind – that goes for you two as well. I was hoping to introduce you both a little later, actually… Once Emma has had a chance to catch her breath,’ she said pointedly.

Agatha gave Evie a long-suffering look; Agatha was not the type of person who believed in taking anything slow, or easy for that matter. ‘Because there’s an easy way to break the news to a six-year-old that she’s just been handed over to a family who many think are witches?’

Emma gasped.





Chapter Six





‘To be fair, the child doesn’t look scared any more,’ said Dot, cowering a little under Evie’s glower as the latter set down cups of tea in front of her and Agatha, with a heavy thud, then proceeded to pour a liberal amount of brandy into her own, despite the relatively early hour.

Evie pinched the bridge of her nose, closed her eyes and prayed for strength. ‘That’s only because I told her the truth.’

‘Emma,’ she went on, addressing the child, who had been watching the exchange like a ping-pong match since Evie’s face turned tomato red and she began shouting at her sisters from the doorway, arms gesturing wildly, pointed fingers shaking; a few nosy neighbours started craning their necks over garden fences to witness the commotion, so Dot had shooed the four of them all into the cottage.

‘You remember how I explained about The Book?’ said Evie.

Emma gave a hesitant nod.

‘Well, that’s really what Aggie means. It’s something all Halloway girls are born with – your mother too. We offer hope, which is a magic all of its own, and it affects the food we make.’

‘The boys get other things,’ chipped in Dot.

Aggie snorted. ‘Like the power of evaporation – they disappear at will.’

‘That’s not true,’ said Dot. ‘Anyway, Daddy wasn’t a Halloway, technically.’

Evie looked away. ‘It isn’t easy on the men, this, we have enough failed relationships in our family to attest to that, but that’s a story for another day.’

‘It isn’t easy on the women either,’ pointed out Aggie. ‘I mean look at your mother,’ she told Emma, whose ears perked up at her mention.

‘Oh, she was excellent in the kitchen, a real natural,’ enthused Dot, her eyes wide behind their thick lenses. ‘She cooked with her heart, and you often felt what she did in what she made. Which, of course, came with its problems, especially when she was a teenager, struggling with her emotions. And later too, really, perhaps it was harder for her because it called so loudly.’