The Little Cottage on the Hill by Emma Davies

Author:Emma Davies
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786813503
Publisher: Bookouture

Chapter 12

It had taken a week, but at the end of it Maddie had felt her plans really beginning to come together. She had been tentative at first – mindful of her previous bull-in-a-china-shop approach – but as he’d listened, Seth’s smile had become a grin, and that grin had only grown wider and wider. Today he was practically jumping about in excitement as he, Maddie and Clara waited for Tom to come down from the roof so that they could update him on the latest developments.

The weather was still stunning and looked set to continue for at least another week, which had given them the perfect opportunity to move on apace with the new thatching. It was nowhere near finished of course, but the weather, together with the first of the contractors coming on site, had given things a real lift and Tom had been hard at it since early morning.

Maddie waited until he had joined them and passed him a cool drink.

‘So, I had some ideas for the barn originally, which were total rubbish, and—’

‘Aw, they weren’t total rubbish, Maddie… just a bit—’

‘Yeah, they were, Clara, stop trying to be kind.’ Seth grinned at Maddie. ‘Sorry, I interrupted… You had some totally rubbish ideas for the barn… and?’

Maddie swung her foot at him which he evaded easily. ‘Yes, thank you, Seth. And… now I’ve had some better ideas.

‘When I first heard that Clara was going to move into the thatched cottage, I got my knickers in a bit of a twist. Purely out of concern for the financial viability of the site, you understand, and when I looked into it the numbers just didn’t stack up. So I started to look at where else we might create accommodation that would give us other benefits too. Purely by chance, I had a conversation with someone who gave me the solution to how that might work.’

‘Her name’s Trixie,’ said Seth. ‘Former barmaid of the Frog and Wicket, and soon to be Joy’s Acre’s resident cook.’

There was a surprised look from Tom.

‘Trixie was the one who put me on to the solution for our broadband problem,’ Maddie explained, ‘but, she also happens to be an amazing cook. With a stroke of incredible timing, I also discovered that she was moving out of the pub and about to start looking for another job. It took a while to make contact with her after that, but when we did, Seth explained what we had in mind here and she jumped at the chance. So now we’re going to convert the barn and make somewhere for both Clara and Trixie to live, and at the same time create a space to use as a dining area. Trixie will be on hand to cook gourmet meals for our guests and we can make it a feature of the place; self-catering but with added wow. She’s also agreed to cook for us too.’

Tom belched. ‘Oh, I’m liking the sound of that. Although I’ve been thrown out of the Frog and Wicket before, I hope she won’t hold it against me.

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