AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Granny!” Ash took the bottle from her and popped the cork out. “Don’t be daft.”
Gwen chuckled. “I know she didn’t kill him, poppet. I’ve just never asked that question before, and it sounds very dramatic.”
“You watch too much TV.”
I sighed, trying not to smile. “No. But I’m pretty sure Noah thinks I might have.”
“Oh, pish. Noah knows you didn’t kill him, either. People change drastically, but all you’ve done is gotten even prettier than you were before, Blondie. You’ve not turned into a crazed murderer.”
My cheeks pinkened with the compliment. “Maybe I have. You don’t know that I’m not a secret serial killer.”
“Well, if you are, can you make your next victim that girlfriend of his? She’s been on my list ever since she insulted my cottage pie.”
“Not the cottage pie,” Ash said, pouring the wine into the four glasses on the table. “Are you still not over that? It’s been three months.”
“No. My cottage pie is the best in town, thank you very much. I’ve won awards for it, and this little hussy came in and insulted my mashed potato topping. Said it had lumps!Lumps!As if my mashed potato would ever have lumps.”
“The audacity,” I said, appropriately dramatic.
“Oh, shut up about your mashed potatoes, Gwendoline,” another voice said, joining us. “I’m not listening to another section of you bitching about that girl again.”
“Piss off, Vivienne,” Gwen shot back. “If she’d insulted your lemon cake, we’d never hear the end of it.”
“People don’t insult my lemon cake,” Vivienne replied, unbuttoning her shocking pink cardigan. “I don’t get that recipe wrong. Ash, dear.” She kissed her cheek and looked at me. “You must be the famous Lottie.”
“Famous might be an overstatement,” I said.
Vivienne popped her light pink lips. “Nope. All I’ve heard is about you and that horrid man dying in the bed and breakfast. Oh, I’m terribly sorry about your grandfather, dear. He was a real gentleman.”
“You’d know,” a third voice said. “Although he wasn’t with me.”
“Betty!” came a fourth voice, but this one was accompanied by the appearance of two similar-looking ladies, both with perfectly curled white hair cut short. “You can’t say that in front of his granddaughter. She’s having a nightmare.”
“You’re right, Barb,” said Betty, turning to me. “Sorry, Lottie, dear.”
“Um, it’s okay,” I replied slowly.
“We do miss him ever so much.” Barb sighed. “He was the life and soul of the bingo club.”
Vivienne nodded. “We stopped going when he moved to live with you. Bloody boring sods there without him. Nobody called the balls like he did.”
That was quite the visual.
Ash bit back a laugh. “Everything’s ready for you, ladies.”
“Thank you, dear,” Barb said, patting her shoulder.
All four ladies walked over to the round table Ash had set up for them and located their garden gnomes—but not without Betty and Barb arguing over whose gnome was whose.
“Twins,” Ash whispered to me, leaning on the counter next to me. “Non-identical, but I don’t think they’ve gone a day in their life without bickering.”
“I think I remember them,” I replied. “Didn’t they once try to start a guerrilla gardening movement?”
“Yep. It was successful, too. That’s how the flowers in the town square came about. The council decided to take control of it instead of letting them throw seeds everywhere and have sunflowers growing through the cracks in the pavement. Not that it stopped them, mind you.”
“Huh. I suppose it doesn’t look good for the council if there’s a flower field in the middle of the high street.”
“Exactly. Viv moved here a few years ago. Came on holiday to visit her grandkids and never left,” Ash explained. “She got adopted into their little trio, and now she and Granny bicker over everything and anything. They donated cakes to the last bake sale for the hospice and ended up not speaking for a week over made the better Victoria sponge.”
