Sunshine at Daisy’s Guesthouse: A heartwarming summer romance to escape with in 2018!. Lottie Phillips
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Hugh xxx
Daisy put down the letter, tears streaming down her cheeks, and tried to breathe through the onslaught of raw emotion threatening to drown her. James entered the room quietly and sat down next to her, taking her hand.
‘Holy shit, James,’ she said. ‘There was never a right time to give me this, the silly sod.’ She smiled through her tears. ‘And I am not stubborn.’
She waited, the gasps of her fast breathing the only sound.
‘James, have you read it?’ He nodded. ‘You see, the B&B was our dream. Our dream. It was after we watched that couple in France doing up that chateau. I remember we had had a couple of bottles of something Hugh had found in the cellar and we talked like we could do something like that here, in England.’ She snorted with laughter, tears still pooling. ‘But even though we often joked, if we were ever to have done it, it would have been together.’ She looked up once more. ‘Good lord, Hugh Ronaldson makes me angry. Why does he lay this idea at my feet and expect me to run with it? I don’t do as I’m told.’ James nodded his agreement with a wry smile on his face. ‘I know, I know, I’ve never done what anyone’s said. Well, there you go, I don’t plan to start now.’
She looked at James through blurry tears. ‘No offense but I don’t need you to look after me. I’ll be just fine.’ She circled the knots in the wooden farmhouse table with her finger. ‘In fact, maybe, just maybe I’ll move to France and meet some baker and eat croissants for the whole of my life and use that bit of French I vaguely learnt at university. I mean, as you know, James, I have five minutes on Le Front National down pat.’ She giggled. ‘Look, if those two off the telly box can manage, then so could I.’
She hung her head and let out a long shaky breath. He let her keep talking.
‘Shit me, James, why did he do it? Why did he go and leave me? We were meant to be together forever. That was the deal. I even changed the words at our ceremony. Until arguing over house furnishings do us part. Remember?’
James laughed with affection and grabbed her hand, holding it up to his cheek.
‘Do you also remember how appalled my mother was at our ceremony? She wanted to know why we had all this posh food, when we could have had her hog roaster for free…’
Daisy smiled, brushed more tears from her cheeks, and rose from her chair, her legs unsteady beneath her. She had not been expecting that. The grief suddenly felt so fresh and acute, the breath knocked from her lungs.
‘Do you know I sometimes talk to the ceiling?’ She smiled, wiped her nose with a sheet of paper towel. ‘Because I let myself believe he can hear me.’
James smiled kindly. ‘I’ve done that too.’
‘Well, we’re as barmy as each other.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Listen, James, this all feels quite odd actually.’ She held up the letter. ‘You see, many years ago Hugh and I watched this programme…’
‘I know.’ He nodded. ‘The couple in the French chateau. I saw it, Hugh told me you had been quite serious about this dream.’
‘He was very serious but I always thought it was a crazy idea.’ In her head, it had been more of a fantasy in which she would have never-ending guests who sipped G&Ts on the veranda and admired her peonies. She would, of course, wear a floppy hat and have a smudge of dirt from gardening on her left cheek as she greeted her regulars who would claim that the house was ‘looking more and more beautiful year on year and how did she stay looking so young too?’
Anyway, now Hugh wasn’t here, why would she even think about it? More to the point, why would she set up the B&B with James? She loved James dearly but this was such a huge commitment.
James cleared his throat. ‘Listen, he had just found out about the Big C so told me about this dream. I think he had started to think about you and how you would cope afterwards.’
Daisy lifted her head, and a familiar irritation at Hugh’s needing to control everything, even from the grave, flooded her body.
‘What? How I would cope? I am coping just fine, thank you. Good Lord. Why are men like that? Why do men feel they can just solve everything? So he thought he would get me to set up a B&B with you in order to get over my grief?’ She gave a sharp shake to her head. ‘God, a mathematician to the end.’ She gestured wildly with the letter. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to both you and Hugh for surmising that a sodding bed and breakfast would be a good idea but the thought, now, of anyone in my home is an abhorrent one, so the answer is no.
‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘don’t you have a job to get on with? You have, after all, just been promoted, haven’t you?’
His face flinched with hurt and he looked at the ground before looking back at her.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m not annoyed with you, more annoyed with Hugh. He knows I’m the sort of person who feels so guilty if someone asks me to do something. What about your job in London?’ she pressed.
A small smile appeared at the corner of James’s lips; he tried to hide it. ‘I quit a week or so ago, I didn’t enjoy it anymore anyway.’ He looked again at her face set in a defiant pose. ‘I’m actually not sure why I’m laughing but it is quite funny, but you look so lovely when you’re angry.’
‘That is not even funny.’ But then, she, too, felt a small bubble of laughter and she giggled. Once she started to giggle, James snorted as he tried to hold back his chuckling and then they started to laugh uncontrollably. James leant his hand against the wall as his broad frame convulsed with laughter.
Daisy wiped away the tears and realised how good it felt to let go like that.
Once they had both caught their breath, James smiled, resting his hand assuredly on her arm. ‘I didn’t quit my job because of this letter; I quit because I couldn’t bear working where Hugh had once been, the office wasn’t the same. You know?’
‘Yes,’ she said, calm now. ‘I know. I live in this house every day, remember?’
He nodded, his voice quiet. ‘I think that’s what Hugh was worried about, he thought you would stay here and perhaps feel you had to because it had been your home together. Then we agreed that there was no way you would ever consider selling it, so the next best option is to change it, invite people in.’
Daisy furrowed her brows. ‘You’re doing it again.’
‘What?’ Confusion crossed his face.
‘Being a man. Trying to solve it.’ She looked around her. ‘I love this house because it’s my home. I don’t need to invite strangers into it.’ She dipped her head. ‘Actually, if anything, I think I would resent that.’
James nodded. ‘Well, you know what’s best and you’re probably right but if you did want to try and you needed someone to look after the office side…’ He stuck his hands in the air. ‘I’m your man.’
‘Otherwise, what? You find another job in the city?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I thought I’d try moving.’
‘What? Out of London?’
‘No.’ He smiled. ‘Further afield. Australia. There are some great opportunities there at the moment and it would just mean properly getting away, starting again.’
Daisy’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Oh, I see.’ She was, for once, speechless. She knew he was right to want to move on but another country? Though why should it bother her? James was just a friend. Friends did that; they got on with their lives.
She stared hard at the ground, contemplative. Maybe it was because it felt like everyone else was moving on and she was stuck. Stuck in the thick quagmire of grief and memories that threatened to drown her. She couldn’t, however, stop other people from saving themselves.
‘Oh,