Grunting, she reached for her phone and swiped the screen to wake it up. As usual, this was the only time she’d had all day to check her messages. The little badge on the app told her there were five waiting. It wouldn’t take a genius to guess who at least one of them was from. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she stared at the screen, promising a reprieve, but then, rather annoyingly, they refocused themselves again.
It had been the day from hell. Toby Thornton had had one of his legendary meltdowns and Gemma hadn’t even had the time to eat, let alone sit down in the last twenty-four hours. It was her job to sort things out again, to charm their star into setting foot on set again, and it was taking every last ounce of her resources to make that happen. Millions of dollars were at stake. She didn’t have time to indulge Juliet’s petty moans about the right kind of ivy or whether they should have a red or gold theme for the Christmas table settings.
She couldn’t deal with her sister now. She needed a bit of down time first, so she decided to check Facebook instead.
Cute cats who couldn’t spell … Sick-making chain-posts about how wonderful women friends were … Her cousin Shelley’s dog dressed in a party hat … Yada, yada, yada.
But then Gemma stopped scrolling and blinked. Holding her breath, she went back up and had a proper look at the photo in her timeline.
It was Michael. Damn, he looked good. Even though it had been seven months since they’d split, she still felt a little jolt go through her.
He’d look even better if he wasn’t wrapped around some trollop with glossy brown hair and a wide smile. Well, not wrapped around wrapped around. He was hugging her from the back, his arms draped over her shoulders like he was a preppy cardigan. Their cheeks were pressed together and they were laughing at the camera.
Cow.
Even though she knew she shouldn’t, she tapped his profile picture to visit his timeline. Big mistake. If she’d thought she’d felt terrible when she’d climbed into bed, she felt even worse now his status had smugly morphed from ‘in a relationship with Allie Cameron’ to ‘engaged to Allie Cameron’.
She felt sick. Her thumb was shaky on the home button as she hid the picture and closed the app without looking at it again. Suddenly she wasn’t sleepy in the least. Michael had been different from all the others. Perfect, she’d thought. He was supposed to have been the one that lasted.
Ugh. Well, she might as well get all the crap over with at once …
Without waiting to talk herself out of it, she checked her messages. As predicted, there was one from Juliet.
Gemma! Will you PLEASE reply to my texts! I know you don’t realise it, but you’re being very selfish. I need to talk to you. SOON. Call me! J x
She stared at her phone, unable to produce a noise from her open mouth. Who did Juliet think she was? Honestly! It wasn’t as if she was just lounging around doing nothing all day. There was a reason she hadn’t had time to text back. It was called having a job, having a life. Just because Juliet didn’t have one and decided to cram her days full with fussy little craft activities and gourmet cooking, it didn’t mean she could pass judgement on anyone who didn’t want to do the same.
But that was typical Juliet. If you weren’t doing things her way, you were doing them wrong. And it had always been like that, no matter how hard Gemma had tried.
No wonder the people she worked with felt more like family than her own sister did. Not the actors, of course. They were a law unto themselves. But the rest of the crew. For a few months at a time they’d live together, eat together, share everything. It felt more like home than sitting on Juliet’s pristine sofa trying not to drop biscuit crumbs. At least film people knew how to work as a team, and they needed and respected her contribution.
She lay still and stared at the ceiling. Why? Why was she putting herself through this? And the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if spending Christmas with her sister was a good idea after all. Goodwill to all mankind? Hah! The way she was feeling right now, Juliet might end Christmas night in a body bag.
It was so quiet in the house that Juliet was tempted to slump into an armchair with a bottle of wine and not get up again. The only thing that stopped her was a good, hard look at the kitchen clock. It was only ten past three on Saturday afternoon. She’d resisted the urge to do that kind of thing after Greg had left and she certainly wasn’t going to do it now. Besides, she had too much to do. The clotted cream fudge the kids were giving out as teacher presents this year wouldn’t make itself.
She was just measuring out the golden syrup when she became aware of a dull electronic hum in a nearby garden. She listened to its comforting droning while she boiled the mixture, then whisked it until it began to crystallise, but as she poured it into the pan to cool she frowned.
The mower had started off as a muffled hum, but now it sounded as if it was much closer, almost as if it was right outside her kitchen window. She walked over to the other side of the room, wiping her hands on her apron, to look out over her back garden.
The next second she was running outside, wooden spoon still in her hand.
‘Will! What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she shouted.
Her next-door neighbour just looked up then kept walking the mower along her lawn. ‘I think I’m cutting your grass,’ he said, totally deadpan.
Juliet’s mouth opened and closed. She put her hands on her hips and frowned. Eventually she said, ‘I was going to get around to that myself, you know.’
‘Do you want me to stop?’ he yelled over the noise of the engine.
She frowned even harder. She knew he would if she asked him to, but the thought of having to add one more job to her schedule made her shoulders sag. He was almost two-thirds of the way through now, anyway. It would be silly to ask him to stop, but it didn’t sit comfortably with her to let him do it for nothing, so she went back inside and returned a few minutes later with two brightly patterned bone-china mugs of tea and held one aloft. He nodded but didn’t come and collect it until he’d dealt with the extra tough grass round the bottom of her lone apple tree.
She sipped her tea and watched him over the rim of her mug as he switched the mower off and jogged lightly up her long, thin garden to join her. She blushed as he approached.
She’d always considered him a nice-looking man. He was tall and sporty looking, with chestnut-brown hair and eyes that she thought of as warm, even though she couldn’t remember the precise colour. He was younger than her by a couple of years, but she never got the feeling he was taking pity on the middle-aged woman next door. Besides, she didn’t look too bad for a woman who’d just hit forty. She took good care of herself, dressed nicely.
‘Thanks,’ Will said as he took the mug from her and gave her one of his rare but rather captivating smiles.
They both stood and looked at Juliet’s freshly mown garden. ‘Actually, it’s me that needs to thank you. I’ve been meaning to do that for weeks.’
He shrugged. ‘I was doing my garden anyway …’
‘I know. I could hear you while I was in the kitchen making fudge for the kids’ teacher presents. It just took me a while to work out the rumble of the mower had moved closer and was in my garden instead of yours.’
His eyebrows lifted. ‘Fudge? That sounds very labour-intensive.’
She