Chapters (39)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Epilogue
- Author’s note
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
‘It doesn’t look good,’ Cathy admitted. ‘Two of the houses look as if they’ve been completely demolished. And that landslide that took out the road…’
Anna shut her eyes. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know.’
The phone rang again almost as soon as she’d finished the call with Cathy. Anna answered it without paying attention to the number and regretted it immediately as she heard Geoff’s self-satisfied voice on the line.
‘Saw you snatching another five minutes of fame on the news,’ he said. ‘Getting to be quite the celebrity, aren’t you?’
‘What do you want?’
‘How about a bit of gratitude?’
‘For what?’
‘For calling to give you another chance to say yes to my offer after seeing what a mess your life is in.’
‘What?’
‘That’s right, I’m going to save your career,’ he said, voice unctuously smug. ‘You’ll still come aboard in the new kitchen, although I’ve decided that I’m going to take on the executive chef role myself, at least to begin with. We can take it from there once I know for sure you can handle the pressure. So you’ll be under me. But you always worked best like that, didn’t you?’
Anna let a beat of silence hold the line as she contemplated what he’d said.
‘Geoff,’ she said then, with slow deliberation. ‘Please believe that this is said with all due respect. You are such a dick.’
She cut the call and blocked his number.
Thirty-Two
Frank’s funeral took place at the church in Gardenstown. The place was full – he’d had a lot of friends. The vicar spoke movingly about Frank’s life, both before he moved to Crovie and since. Anna learned so much about him that she hadn’t known, and it was the thought that she could no longer find out these things from him that made her weep. She hadn’t realized how very important a figure Frank had become in her life, a fixed point by which she had begun to navigate. He could never replace the hole her own father had left, but she’d been thinking of Frank and Pat as her family for months now. It was only with the diminishment of their trio that she realized the true depth of that connection.
The wake was held in the Garden Arms in Gamrie. The pub was crowded, mostly with people Anna didn’t know, or knew only vaguely. She stayed with the Usual Suspects, watching out for Pat. Anna was amazed by the woman’s strength, by her grace, despite the deep well of her grief. Anna hated to think of her trying to deal with the aftermath of the storm alone, trying to sort out the mess that was the Weaver’s Nook, let alone the devastated rental house.