Chloe’s Cornish Christmas (The Blossomwood Bay #7)

Chapter Twenty Five

With the rain trying its best to emulate a waterfall, Chloe started the Renault’s engine and headed slowly out of the pub’s car park, turning left onto the road back to Perrinsby. However, after everything that had happened, she knew she couldn’t return to Fairholme Farm, so she resigned herself to locating a sheltered spot where she could park up and try to get a few hours of sleep before presenting herself as early as possible at the village hall.

As she drove past the Dog it’ll do you good.’ Liz handed Chloe one of the brandies, scrutinising her face as she did so, and Chloe thought she was in for a session of intense cross-examination, but fortunately she was wrong. ‘Right, it’s late. There’s a room upstairs with your name on it, if you want it. Whatever’s going on can wait until tomorrow.’

‘Thanks, Liz.’

Chloe finished her brandy in one gulp, then did as she was told, but not before pausing to give Liz a grateful hug.

***

The next morning Chloe woke early, and for a few moments she struggled to remember where she was. When she did, everything that had happened the previous day came flooding back to her like a particularly distressing stage show, and she groaned out loud, tempted to simply pull the rose-patterned duvet over her head and hide until it was all over.

It was barely light, but she could hear movement downstairs as Liz and Gordon prepared for the day ahead, both behind the bar and at the village hall. She didn’t want them to think she was taking advantage of their kindness, so she headed into the shower, spent a few minutes appreciating the rose-scented toiletries, then selected an old pair of jeans and a frayed tee-shirt for her day of painting landscape and interiors.

She had her hand on the door handle when her phone buzzed, and she saw it was a text from Nick, pleading with her not to tell Liz and Fran about the sale of Fairholme Farm. She wondered briefly how the two friends would react, especially if she told them that the people buying it wanted to get rid of the orchard because it was “too much like hard work”, but she didn’t want to cause any more upset after the worries over the potential cancellation of the pantomime. There would be plenty of time to inform them when the final curtain came down, but she had no intention of telling Nick that.

She slotted her phone into the back pocket of her jeans, pulled open the door, and paused. She might not be ready to talk to Nick, but there were two other people she had promised herself she would talk to the previous night when she was sitting in her car, alone, in the rain, and she knew exactly what she needed to say to them.

So, she shut the door, made herself comfortable on the bed, inhaled a deep breath, and selected the number of the first person on her list, smiling when she heard her familiar voice.

‘Hi, Holly.’

‘Hi, Chloe, I was just about to call you!’

‘You were?’

‘Yes, I thought you’d like to know that Dexter’s funeral went off okay yesterday.’

‘Oh, yes, of course.’

A wave of remorse rolled though Chloe’s chest; she had been so involved in everything that was going on in Perrinsby that she had completely forgotten about what was going on back in Blossomwood Bay.

‘Kath said there were only a dozen or so people at St Peter’s Church, which is what Dexter wanted. There was no wake afterwards, either, which means there’s still no news about who’s inherited Blossomwood Manor and the rest of the estate, including the marina and the boardwalk, so, we’ll just have to wait until the new year, which is disappointing. Kath tried to talk to Andrew, but she said he was vague and distracted, which is understandable, of course. He’s been Dexter’s business manager, and friend, for over thirty years. Anyway, how are things with you?’

This was it. Time to tell Holly the truth.

No more deflecting her friend’s concern with an “I’m fine”, which she realised belatedly was more than a little insulting. She hoped Holly hadn’t seen it that way, which gave her even more of an incentive to come clean now.

‘Actually, that’s why I’m calling. I was wondering if the offer to spend Christmas with you and Oscar was still open? If it is, I’d love to come and stay with you both, and Ariel and Max, at the Fox that she’d resorted to living – temporarily – in her car until the insurance money came through.

For several long seconds, there was silence on the other end of the phone, and Chloe wondered whether they’d lost the connection, but then she heard her father clear his throat and when he spoke, his voice was soft and gentle and filled with empathy.

‘Darling, I’m so sorry all this happened to you. As your father, all I’ve ever wanted was for you and Martha to have the very best life possible, to do what made you happy. I don’t understand why you felt you couldn’t tell me what you were having to deal with, and we need to talk about that so I can put that right. Will you come over to California for Christmas with your sister and Marcus? I’m more than happy to sort out your flight.’

‘Thanks, Dad, but I can’t come over right now. There’re a few things I need to do here. I’d like to take you up on your offer to talk, though. I need your advice on what to do when the insurance money for the beach hut finally comes through.’

‘Then we’ll do just that. I love you, Chloe.’

‘Love you, too, Dad.’

When Chloe cut the call, she was barely hanging on to her emotions, and there was nothing she would have liked better than to curl up in the warm, cosy bed and sob her heart out. Throughout her whole conversation with her dad, despite giving him the surprise of his life, there had been no judgement, not even a little gentle chastising, just caring words and a wish to talk about what had happened.

She pushed herself up from the bed and went to splash cold water on her face, then headed down the stairs to the pub’s dining room and accepted a coffee and a warm cinnamon roll from Liz who looked very festive in a scarlet Christmas sweater featuring a rotund snowman surrounded by a bombardment of snowflakes made from pompoms the size and shape of tennis balls.

‘Morning, Chloe. Did you sleep well?’

‘I did, thank you.’

When Liz went on to ask if she was okay, for the first time in what felt like decades, she didn’t parrot her habitual response of “I’m fine”, but instead told her that she was in the process of working through a few personal things, and that getting busy with a paintbrush was exactly what she needed to help with that.

‘Great. Let’s go then.’

When they arrived at the village hall, the front door was already open and Fran and Derek were inside, hard at work polishing the floor where the roofer had left a sprinkle of plaster, and making sure there was no further damage to the stage or backstage area. With Gordon and Derek’s help, Chloe arranged the three tri-folding boards that made up the background scenery into a semi-circle, and Fran handed her several photographs showing the images that Ryan had created.

‘Have you told anyone else what happened?’ asked Chloe.

‘No, we decided not to,’ said Fran, supervising Derek as he arranged an assortment of paint pots in a rainbow of colours on top of an old curtain and set about prizing off the lids. ‘We didn’t want to panic anyone unnecessarily, and as it turns out, that was probably the right decision. Derek and Gordon went straight to the hardware store when we left here last night, and they bought as many different shades of paints as they could find, so just use whatever you need. Do you want any help, or shall we leave you in peace?’

‘Would it be okay if I just got on with it?’

‘Of course.’

Chloe spent the next three hours immersed in all things art. She started with the woodland scene because that was the easiest to recreate; a dark, menacing background with spindly trees and a crescent moon sending shards of bright ivory light through the naked branches. It was a foreboding backdrop to Goldilocks’ first few scenes as she became lost in the woods.

After a while, Chloe’s creative juices began to flow and as her confidence grew, so did her desire to try something a little different to what Ryan had done. She realised that she didn’t have to copy what he’d created, just interpret it, as long as the scene depicted what the audience expected to see for the remaining two stage sets – the three bears’ dining room and their bedroom in the eaves of their quirky log cabin.

With every rhythmic stroke of the paintbrush, she could feel the stresses and strains of the last few days melt away, allowing her the mental and emotional bandwidth to focus solely on the shape, tone and texture of the images she wanted to depict. Everything she had learned in her art classes – form, perspective, composition – came flooding back, as well as the constant refrain of her teacher that “there are no mistakes in art”, which gave her the permission, and the freedom, to just go for it.

When she finally took a step back to scrutinise the finished artwork, a surge of satisfaction spread through her whole body and her spirits soared. She was delighted with the result of her hard work, and as a broad smile spread across her lips, she recalled something else Mrs Dobson had said to her and her fellow would-be artists: “painting provides a peaceful pause in a world that is filled with cacophony, confusion and chaos”. That was how she felt at that moment.

Completely at peace.