CHAPTER ONE

‘LOOK AT THAT.’
Polly Fraser gave a dreamy sigh.
With a gentle thud, a deliciously scented cardboard box landed
on the pages of her gossip magazine, obscuring the photographs
Polly was swooning over. She looked up into the eyes of her friend
Anna, who had arrived with a delivery, and was standing on the
other side of the counter of Applemore Farm Shop with hands on her
hips and an amused expression on her pale, freckled face.
‘I don’t know why you read that stuff.’ Anna made a little ta-dah
gesture. ‘One delivery of cinnamon raisin cookies and double
chocolate brownies – with gold leaf for extra Christmas sparkle.’ She
lifted the lid, so the scent of sweet wintry spices and chocolate
floated through the air.
‘Yum,’ said Polly, still distracted. She glanced up, giving Anna a
quick smile of thanks and raised a finger. ‘Two secs.’ Then she turned
the page, sliding the box to the side of the counter so she could
examine the glamorous red-carpet photographs from a film premiere
in London.
‘Polly! You nearly knocked these off!’ Anna reached out to grab a
pile of delicate, hand-painted wooden Christmas tree ornaments
which were balancing precariously on the edge of the counter. ‘If
you don’t get your head out of that magazine you’re going to have
wrecked half your Christmas stock before it’s even on the shelves.’
She raised a disapproving eyebrow.
‘I know, I know,’ said Polly, as she turned the magazine around to
show Anna, who was carefully placing the ornaments safely away
from the edge. ‘But wouldn’t you love to be there?’
Anna shook her head. She was standing with one protective hand
on the box of cakes, as if to guard them from the same fate as the
decorations.
‘No, I can categorically state that I would not. Don’t know why
you read this stuff.’ Anna tucked an unruly curl of hair behind her ear
as she looked down at the open spread of the page. An assortment
of glamorous women with beautifully done hair and make-up were
standing on the red carpet of a premiere. The dresses were a riot of
bright coloured silks and satins – like an assortment of jewels, Polly
thought, or a tin of Christmas chocolates.
‘Because it’s a million miles from life in a tiny village in the
Highlands, and living vicariously is the only excitement I get.’
Polly lifted the wrapping on the top of the box to reveal an array
of delights. Taking out one of the new cinnamon and raisin cookies,
she looked at it reverently for a moment before nibbling the edge
with a groan of delight.
‘These are amazing,’ she said, as the biscuit melted in her mouth.
Anna was a genius.
‘Thanks. Anyway, what’s with the itchy feet? I thought you loved
being here.’ Anna glanced up at her, eyebrows drawn together
slightly, an expression of concern on her face. ‘You’re not planning
on upping sticks and leaving Applemore for the bright lights of
Hollywood?’
‘Of course I love being here.’ Polly snapped off another piece of
cookie and popped it in her mouth. She looked across the shop,
taking in the white-painted walls of the converted farm building and
the wooden shelves which were hung with greenery and glowing
with tiny sparkles of light. The archway led through to the cosy, busy
coffee shop which was full of customers. A tiny pink Christmas tree
dressed with coloured lights twinkled on the counter next to the till.
It was as lovely as ever, all of it. The word but hung silently in the
air. She wondered if Anna could sense it and almost confided how
she was feeling. A moment later a grey-haired woman walked into
through the door, the little bell tinkling a welcome, and the moment
was lost. She picked up one of the wicker baskets by the door,
popping it over her arm and smiling a hello in their direction.
‘Let me know if you need any help,’ Polly said, brushing crumbs
from the side of her mouth and closing the magazine, putting it back
under the counter. Never mind red carpet glamour, she had a shop
to run, and the Christmas preparations to organise.
Anna glanced at the clock which hung on the wall above Polly’s
head.
‘I’d better get back. There’s a Christmas show at the nursery
school and I promised I’d be there to bump up the numbers. I swear
Christmas gets earlier every year.’
Polly, who’d been playing Christmas tunes on the Farm Shop
speakers for the last few weeks, gave a rueful smile as she looked at
the wooden tree ornaments. ‘Guilty as charged. I’ve always been the
same. The moment Halloween is done, I can’t help getting excited.
Who doesn’t like hot chocolate with candy canes, and cinnamon
scented everything, and covering the place in fairy lights, and…’
Anna raised an amused eyebrow. ‘This place is always covered in
fairy lights.’
‘Alright, so I have fairy lights up all year round. It’s not a cardinal
sin, is it?’ Polly shrugged, laughing. Her little cottage glowed with
tiny lights as well, hanging round the front door and decorating the
wooden mantel over the fire all months of the year. Christmas,
however, was her time to go to town. She’d ordered another four
vast boxes of solar-powered lights to decorate outside, and her
brother Lachlan had promised her a freshly cut tree from his wood,
which he was planning to deliver later in the week. Ever since she’d
been a little girl, she’d wanted to make everywhere look as homely
and cosy as possible… which hadn’t always been easy, growing up in
the chilly, dilapidated Applemore House.
‘I’d better get off,’ Anna said, leaning over to rap Polly on the
knuckles with a finger. ‘Don’t eat all the merchandise.’
Polly widened her eyes in mock-horror. ‘As if I would.’
It was typical of Applemore, she thought, serving a customer a
few moments later, that even when she was busy, Anna was going
to help her friend. Here in the village everyone looked out for each
other. There were no secrets in a tiny place like this. Yes, that might
mean that everyone knew everyone’s business and you couldn’t
sneeze without hearing half an hour later on the grapevine that
you’d caught a terrible flu and should be at home in bed. But, if you
really were sick, the villagers would rally together to help. It was
that sort of place.
Since she’d opened the Farm Shop in a collection of old
outbuildings in the grounds of Applemore House, it had become a
central hub for news and gossip, so she always knew what was
going on, despite being outside the village itself. The village was
busy in summer with tourists, but numbers were dropping at the
village school as more and more of the houses in the village were
bought up by second home owners. If they weren’t careful, the
place was going to be taken over by people who didn’t come from
Applemore, and who didn’t have the same tie to the place as they
did. Sales were noticeably down at the shop compared to the
summer season, although the new baking courses that Matt, who’d
taken on one of the other outbuildings, was offering seemed to be a
tremendous hit. There was a little gallery, now, too, where local
artists worked together to sell their work – taking it in turns to work
from the studio which looked across the fields and be on call for any
visitors that popped in looking for a piece of artwork to take home
as a souvenir from their visit to the Highlands.
Polly sighed again. Despite the sparkles that surrounded her, she
was feeling distinctly un-shiny. She needed to get herself out of this
slump – she knew what was wrong, but it was hard to admit it to
herself. She loved living here, catching up on village gossip, being
part of a little close-knit community. There was only one problem,
and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.
‘Penny for them?’ Gavin, who ran the coffee shop through the
little stone archway at the far side of the shop, strode towards her,
lean and immaculately attired as always, in a close-fitting black polo
shirt and matching black jeans. ‘What’s up with your grumpy face?’
‘Nothing.’ Polly shook herself into a better frame of mind. ‘Just
having one of those days.’
‘We all have them, lovey,’ he said, in his warm, deep Welsh
accent. ‘Leave Jen in charge of the till and come over and tell your
Uncle Gavin all your troubles.’
Jenny, who worked part-time for Polly, was re-organising a
display of Christmas-scented candles at the far side of the shop. She
looked up, glancing from Polly to Gavin and giving a brief nod. ‘I’ll
man the decks,’ she said, putting one more candle at the front of the
display and dusting herself down as she stood up.
‘Right then,’ said Gavin, taking her by the hand and towing her
across the shop, making her laugh, ‘Sit yourself down there, and I’m
going to feed you coffee and you’re going to tell me why my little
Polly Sunshine is so gloomy today. You’ve been like this for days
now.’
She sat down as instructed, and watched as Gavin ducked behind
the counter of the coffee shop, squeezing behind his boyfriend Tom
to make a couple of coffees. Meanwhile, Tom prepared pots of tea
and set out slices of cake on plates for a group of damp customers
in walking gear.
‘As if by magic,’ said Gavin a moment later, brandishing two cups
on China saucers, each with a biscuit perched neatly on the side.
‘This is a new roast. You can tell me what you think.’ He sat back
expectantly as she took a sip.
‘Lovely,’ said Polly, who couldn’t really tell the difference between
one coffee bean and another. She unwrapped the biscuit and nibbled
the edge.
‘Liar,’ said Gavin, with a grin. ‘They all taste the same to you,
don’t they?’
‘Busted!’ she laughed. ‘But if it helps they all taste really good.’
Gavin took a sip, closing his eyes in blissful appreciation. ‘No
finesse, that’s your trouble,’ he said a moment later. ‘You might come
from a big posh castle, but your taste buds are definitely more Heinz
beans on toast and Pot Noodles.’
‘Nothing wrong with a Pot Noodle.’ It was a standing joke
amongst her three siblings that she was the worst cook of the lot.
‘Well, you’ve got Harry to make you delicious gourmet meals on
tap. You two are thick as thieves.’
‘Hardly.’ Polly looked down into the depths of her cup, hoping
desperately that her face wasn’t giving anything away. Something
twisted in her stomach. Harry Robertson ran the Applemore Hotel,
which he’d taken over when his parents retired. Despite vague
protestations from stick-in-the-mud locals who weren’t fans of
change, he was about to drag the place into this century with the
help of investment from Rob Jones, who’d recently moved to the
village, and was in a relationship with Polly’s oldest sister, Charlotte.
When she’d come back to Applemore after a few years away, first
studying at university and then working for a well-off family as their
nanny, it had coincided with Harry’s return from almost a decade
away living and working in Sydney. The relationship between them
was so easy, and they’d quickly become closer – but as friends,
nothing more. Harry saw her as a buddy, someone he could run
ideas by, and chat about the difficulties of bringing a business into
the present when it’d been stuck in the past forever. The trouble
was, spending time with Harry made her heart thud in her chest and
filled her with a fizz of excitement she’d never felt before. That – not
that she could ever admit it to Anna, or to Gavin, or God forbid to
her siblings – was why she was so down in the dumps. Why would
Harry see her as anything other than his friend’s kid sister? Never
mind the fact she was almost 30 – her brother and sisters still had a
habit of treating her as the baby of the family. She sighed. Maybe it
was time for a change, even if escaping to Hollywood to dress up in
slinky satin outfits and pose at movie premieres was unlikely.
‘That’s a big sigh,’ said Gavin, breaking into her thoughts. ‘What’s
the gossip, then? Have you got the latest on what’s happening with
the hotel renovations?’
She brightened, reaching across and helping herself to his
cookie. Gavin gave a tiny nod to say that yes, she could eat it, as
she knew he would. He watched his figure like a hawk and
eschewed all refined sugars.
‘I think it’s all systems go as soon as the last guests are gone,
which should be… end of the week, maybe?’
‘And then?