Christmas at Hope Cottage: A Magical Feel-Good Romance Novel(25)
Evie gasped. ‘You didn’t!’
Aggie laughed. ‘She doesn’t really think that? Could she be that daft?’
‘She really does, the silly arse.’ Then Dot gave a little snigger. ‘It’s gobbledegook, obviously,’ she said, giving Emma a wink. ‘But she doesn’t know that. She looked like she was ready to pee her pants. She ran inside, howling like nobody’s business.’
Emma’s mouth gaped as she imagined the scene, Dot with her flyaway hair and jam-jar glasses making circles with a pointed finger, Netta Lea’s horrified face (she pictured an older version of Stella). A tinkling laugh escaped her mouth, her shoulders started to shake and tears leaked out of her eyes. Soon they were all giggling. It was the first time she’d made a sound since she’d arrived.
‘You might have made things worse though,’ said Evie, sobering, giving Emma a nervous look at the thought.
Dot sighed, bit her lip. ‘I know, I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself. That woman!’ she said, gritting her teeth.
Emma patted Dot’s soft, pale hand with its chipped polish, violet this time. Dot had become a firm favourite. Anyone who would ‘curse’ someone like Netta Lea, whose daughter had decided to be mean for no other reason than something that had happened hundreds of years before, for her was worth shouldering a few dirty looks for, she decided. Besides, it wasn’t going to be easy anyway – not being able to speak had already made certain of that.
Dot’s actions, however, did have one unintended effect, which was that they got the attention of Maggie Gilbert, who was the class chatterbox. She was slightly plump, with light brown, shoulder-length hair and sparkly pink glasses that were peppered with silver unicorns on the sides.
‘Is it true that Dot Halloway cursed Stella’s mam?’ she asked Emma the next morning at the school gates, pushing up the glasses on her small button-like nose. Her green eyes were curious.
Emma nodded, with a shy grin. She didn’t have the words to tell her it was only a laugh, but perhaps Maggie sensed the joke, because after that she decided that the quiet red-haired girl who smelt a little like cinnamon, and brought the best snacks of anyone she knew to school, seemed rather sweet, and so she took pity on her and welcomed her into her little group, which was made up of Gretchen Hannah, a serious girl with very straight black hair and a fondness for Star Wars, and Jenny Hughes, a tow-headed string-bean with a shy smile, who always had her head in a book.
Fairly soon no one remembered a time when Emma hadn’t been part of the group, and life took a decided upturn after that, even though she still hadn’t found her voice.
Emma’s real trouble, though, started a few months later on the day she fell in love with Jack Allen. It was also the day she got her voice back and the day that Jeremy Lea’s dog, Ripper, followed him to school and introduced himself to the children, and Emma in particular, showing that the Leas had passed down the family feud to every member of their family, even their dog, by going for her first and taking a sizeable chunk out of her leg.
In her swarm of fear and pain, she saw a slightly older boy with dark blond hair, who she hadn’t noticed before, run in front of the dog and distract it by letting it bite him too.
She found out his name while they were being rushed to hospital, sitting side by side in the ambulance, where she forgot all about the pain in her leg and noted that his eyes were hazel with flecks of green.
‘I’m Jack Allen, by the way.’
‘Nice to meet you. Does it hurt?’ she asked.
‘Not really,’ said Jack. ‘He didn’t get me all that bad.’
‘So you can talk,’ he went on, smiling slightly. ‘You haven’t before. Not for months – at least, that’s what everyone’s been saying.’
She nodded, eyes wide. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘Well then,’ he said, looking from the bite on his hand to her with a grin. ‘It was worth it then, just so I could meet you.’
Her mouth split into a wide, starry-eyed smile. By the time she was being stitched up, and she remembered the old family feud, it was already too late; she’d already started picturing their wedding.
She’d wear pink, of course, even if it did clash with her hair. It would go nicely with Jenny’s troll ring. This was a common playground game that usually ended with a few light-sabre noises from Jenny, daisy petals from Maggie and some important words of pronouncement and blessings from Gretchen, such as ‘Favourable tax treatment’ and ‘Off-shore banking’. Gretchen, who hadn’t quite made up her mind whether she was going to be a barrister or a tax solicitor when she grew up, listened in on a lot of her father’s business calls.
At A&E Emma waved goodbye to Jack as his mother came to fetch him, then blinked when Mrs Allen gave her son a smack on the head for returning the gesture, shooting her and Evie a look of pure loathing as she went past.
‘She hates me,’ Emma said in hurt and surprise, all thoughts of their troll and Star Wars-themed wedding crumbling to ashes. They were the first words she’d spoken to her grandmother since she arrived at Hope Cottage.
Evie sighed, shaking her head. An Allen could do that to you, crush you like you were something nasty under the heel of their boot.
Evie’s eyes were kind as she stroked Emma’s hair. ‘She doesn’t hate you, she just hates where you come from, the Halloway family,’ she explained with a sigh.