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Gwen knew she had been relinquishing it slowly, over time, so the possibility of it closing now felt sad, but not overwhelmingly so… just another chapter in a long and varied book. She was proud of what she and David had accomplished, and then what she’d managed on her own, but she also felt the weight of her years, the possibility of something different.
“I’m sure it will pay off,” she stated with as much conviction as she could muster. She patted Ellie’s hand and finished the last of her tea before rising from her seat. “I’m afraid I need to finish an email I was about to send.”
“An email?” Ellie raised her eyebrows, clearly intrigued because Gwen was not the most tech-savvy person—far from it; she was often asking Ellie for help on how to do something online. “Anything interesting?”
“Just… an old friend, who got in touch quite unexpectedly. We might meet up.”
“That’s nice,” Ellie replied with her usual easy warmth. “Is she someone you knew from before moving to Llandrigg?”
“A friend of David’s, actually,” Gwen replied, and realized, to her horror, she was blushing. What onearthfor? “From university. We haven’t seen each other in a decade, though, so…” She shrugged and she saw the curiosity brighten in her daughter-in-law’s eyes, although she just nodded.
With another murmured thanks, Gwen hurried from the room.
Back at her laptop, she stared once more at her screen. What to write? John had sounded so warmly enthusiastic, and she wanted to match his tone, at least a little.
After a few minutes’ reflection, she started to type.
Dear John,
How lovely to hear from you, and I am so very sorry to hear about Michelle. Grief always feels unexpected, in my view, as well as unnatural. I hope you are coping all right; I’m sure the prospect of a grandchild helps.
I’d argue (or at least David would) that you need a full English breakfast, a curry, and a Sunday roast in your repertoire. Maybe also a pudding—jam tart or treacle sponge?
I am trundling along well enough at the Bluebell—Matthew and his family moved to Llandrigg two years ago, and are doing the day-to-day running while I chip in with a bit of baking—see above!
It would be lovely to catch up over a coffee—I’ll give you my mobile number and we can arrange a time.
Kind regards,
Gwen
Was the “kind regards” too stuffy? She had managed a bit of banter, and included a dreaded exclamation point, which she was now wondering if she should take out. You could never really tell the tone of an email, but an exclamation point seemed to soften things a bit. She’d keep it in, she decided, and pressed send.
CHAPTER4
ELLIE
A WEEK LATER
Ellie scanned the ream of sheets she’d printed out as she took a deep breath and let it out slowly, to steady herself. They were about to have their important, emergency family meeting, and she wanted to be on the front foot. It was already past the middle of October, with their half-term guests arriving in just over a week, and there was absolutely no time to spare. Outside, in the garden, the leaves were tinged with yellow and red, windfall apples, turning soft and brown, littering the long grass. Even though the days were still fairly warm, the nights were drawing in earlier, and in the morning, every leaf and branch was tipped with frost, riming the world in white
Gwen had said there might be snow soon, dusting the hills that overlooked the little village, its few narrow lanes and rectangle of green touched with frost. Christmas felt ages away, but it really wasn’t—just over two months until the actual day, and hardly enough time to get ready for what Ellie was planning, and yet somehow they would have to. Ellie was determined to make this work, but she still wasn’t sure how committed everyone else was to her cause.
She’d only seen Sarah once since they’d had that chat, and her sister-in-law had seemed a bit dubious about her potential plans.
“If you want to try some last, big push, by all means, go ahead,” she’d told Ellie. “I’m just not sure what we need right now is to be spending moremoney.”
“You’ve got tospendmoney tomakemoney,” Ellie had replied with an attempt at breezy insouciance, and Sarah had given her one of her very dry, Sarah-like looks.
“Said no accountant, ever.”
Matthew hadn’t been much better. Unlike Sarah, he hadn’t been gloomily predicting the end of everything—quite the opposite. He’d been somewhat breezily dismissive, insisting that most outfits like theirs ran on a shoestring, cutting everything close to the bone. Having very little in the bank was, he insisted, a pretty normal state of affairs, and since their bills were minimal, his mum’s mortgage paid off, they really didn’t need to worry too much.
Ellie had been rather surprised by his carefree attitude, considering that they’d been running things ratherclose to the boneback in Connecticut, when Matthew had been made redundant and they’d been so behind on mortgage payments they’d almost had to hand their house back to the bank. They’d done a fire sale instead, but it had left them with very little, and Matthew had certainly taken it to heart at the time.
Of course, that thankfully wasn’t the danger this time around—Gwen owned the Bluebell Inn free and clear, and, like Matthew had said, their bills were minimal. The only danger they were in was not being able to afford to run the bed and breakfast anymore. Matthew could get a job elsewhere easily enough—or so he seemed to think—and Ellie thought she could probably pick up something, as well. She’d worked part-time for a literacy charity back in Connecticut, and when she’d been feeling low about the inn’s chances last week, she’d had a quick peruse of online job sites, and found several she was pretty sure she was qualified for. Now that her visa had come through, she was allowed to work, so nothing was stopping her from sending out her CV, just in case.
Nothing, of course, except the Bluebell Inn. The truth was, she didn’twantto get another job. She wanted, quite desperately, for the inn to survive, for them to keep running it the way they had been, for everything to go on the same. She just hoped everyone else wanted that, too. Hence, this emergency meeting—her, Matthew, Gwen, Sarah and Nathan, and all the kids. The inn was a family affair, and so saving it would be, as well, or so Ellie hoped.
