The Windmill Café: Christmas Trees

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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2018

Copyright © Poppy Blake 2018

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018.

Cover illustrations © Shutterstock.com

Poppy Blake asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008285142

Version: 2018-09-20

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

To my lovely family who make Christmas special every year

Chapter 1

Rosie trotted down the spiral staircase from her studio above the Windmill Café with a song in her heart and a spring in her step. When she reached the bottom step, the smile melted from her lips and the clutter demons began to circle, causing the muscles in her stomach to contract and a familiar light-headedness threaten to overwhelm her.

“Oh my God, Mia! What’s going on?”

“Hi, Rosie. I thought I’d make a start on choosing the design for our entry into the Christmas Tree Carousel competition on Saturday. Which theme do you think we should go for? Gastronomic Gorgeousness with these cute knitted cupcakes? Or what about Windmill Wonderfulness with these little wooden windmill-shaped decorations?”

“Neither! We’re hosting the contest – not taking part!”

“The two are not mutually exclusive! We’re not involved in the judging, that’s the Rev’s unenviable task, so why shouldn’t we be allowed to join in the fun?” Mia held up a cherubic ornament that had seen better days, a smile stretching her lips. “Don’t you think this angel is simply adorable? Hey, we could go with a celestial theme – you know, fluffy white clouds made of cotton wool and glitter, home-made silver stars, papier-mâché moons, a few planets and these sweet little angels?”

“Mia—”

“What? You prefer something along the lines of my first suggestions? A creative culinary masterpiece? Actually, I do love those miniature silver whisks and spatulas you sourced for the Christmas crackers, and we could use the doll’s house kitchenware Grace found in the vicarage’s attic instead of baubles.”

Rosie heaved a sigh at her friend’s bubbling enthusiasm. However, there was no way she could stay irritated with Mia for long as she watched her skip from one decrepit cardboard box to the next, dipping her hands into the treasure inside like a toddler taking part in her first Christmas lucky dip. Like her approach to Christmas tree decorating, Mia had a quirky dress sense too – more nineteen sixties flower-power than twenty-first century chic. That day’s outfit was a pair of white dungarees embroidered with what might have looked to a casual onlooker like silver snowflakes, but were in fact bunches of cutlery.

Rosie allowed herself a wry smile – at least Mia had ditched the sausage-bedecked apron that usually forced their customers to perform a double-take just to make sure it wasn’t depicting something altogether more risqué. She loved Mia and was grateful for the way she had welcomed her into the community of Willerby with an all-encompassing hug, not to mention introducing her to the group of people she was now lucky enough to call friends. What she struggled with was the chaos that Mia scattered in her fragrant wake; and if there was one thing Rosie didn’t cope with very well it was clutter.

The tickle of alarm she’d experienced when she’d walked into the café was now threatening to burgeon into full-blown panic. Her heartrate increased even further when her eyes landed on the twisted garlands of lurid pink tinsel, the mounds of multi-coloured paperchains, and the tumble of old-fashioned glass baubles that were piled high on every available surface as well as the floor. Prickles of perspiration swept uncomfortably across her skin. She commenced the counting exercises her sister Georgina had taught her for when such occasions threatened to overwhelm her, but that morning those techniques did not help to wash away the mounting stress. Diversionary tactics were called for.

“I thought I’d rustle up a few dozen mince pies, and maybe a batch of chocolate yule logs and some iced ginger biscuits for the party after the judging on Saturday. What do you think?”

“Great idea. If you give me a few minutes, I’ll help—”

“No! You just concentrate on repacking all this—stuff—into the right boxes and taking it back to your car.”

Mia paused in her contemplation of an overweight plastic gnome dressed in a Santa suit, her green eyes creasing in apology. “Sorry, Rosie. I forgot about your aversion to—well, to all this…” She swept her hand around the room, lifting her mahogany waves from her face and dropping them over her shoulder in a familiar gesture. “I truly only intended to bring one box of ornaments over, but I just got carried away. Let’s go with the culinary theme, eh?”

“Agreed!”

Rosie exhaled a long calming breath, blew a wayward cooper curl from her lashes and began to help Mia return as much of the festive paraphernalia as possible to its cardboard home. When they had finished she waited for Mia to balance the boxes in a wobbly stack and carry them to the car park before selecting one of the Windmill Café’s peppermint-and-white aprons and turning her attention to the mince pies. Baking had always provided her with a sojourn of solace when all those around her were going crazy, and she couldn’t wait to delve her hands into a bowl of flour to get her fix.

But she couldn’t blame Mia for her enthusiasm. What had she expected? It was the week before Christmas, this sort of frenzied behaviour always happened at that time of year. For the first time, she was spending Christmas in the close-knit community of Willerby, the Norfolk village whose residents had woven their personal brand of magic through her veins. She loved it here and that was one of the reasons she had agreed to host the inaugural Christmas tree decorating competition at the café – to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone for their kindness. It was just that she hadn’t expected so many entries! Fourteen!

For a woman who loved to be organised and in control of every aspect of her life, Rosie definitely hadn’t thought through her seasonal gesture properly. She was fully aware of the cause of that unfortunate lapse in concentration – as was Mia – and for that she was paying the price. However, she refused to linger on the grenade-splattered landscape of her love life and began to rub the shards of cold butter into the flour to make the shortcrust pastry. Immediately, the tension in the back of her neck started to dissipate and when she added the orange and lemon zest, her mood improved even further and she could envisage the arrangements for Saturday’s competition begin to slot into the schedule template etched on her brain.

“I’ll make us some coffee,” said Mia when she returned, pressing their prized Gaggia machine into action. “Freddie called when I was at the car. He’s on his way over to set up the marquee this afternoon, and then he and Matt will deliver the trees tomorrow – no cost because they sourced them from the woodland around Ultimate Adventures. That’ll please Graham!”

Rosie rolled her eyes at the mention of the habitually absent owner of the Windmill Café - and the adjacent luxury holiday site that housed a selection of Scandinavian lodges and a perfectly proportioned shepherd’s hut painted in the same colours as the windmill and its sails. Once again, with a regularity that was becoming highly suspicious, Graham had managed to come up with an unbreakable prior engagement – this time with a snowboard in the Swiss Alps – when she and Mia had presented their plans for the café’s Christmas promotional event. At the Summer Breeze garden party in August, her erstwhile boss had taken a ‘well-earned’ break from the routine in his villa in Barbados, and during the Autumn Leaves bash he had sailed away from Palma harbour on his brother’s yacht.

However, his absence had turned out to be fortuitous because on each occasion one of the guests staying in the holiday lodges had suffered a terrible accident. First, pop star-to-be Suki Richards had been poisoned, and then Rick Forster, an avid myth-seeker, had been shot with a bow and arrow. Fortunately, both incidents had been wrapped up by the time Graham returned home and he’d only heard the details after the event – a much better scenario as far as Rosie was concerned. In fact, had Graham been there she suspected he would never have agreed to their plans to hold the Christmas Tree Carousel competition at the Windmill Café and Mia would have been devastated. Nevertheless, this time she had every intention of ensuring that everything ran smoothly.

“Do you think we’re crazy?” asked Rosie as she slid the last batch of mince pies into the oven and began the ritual of squirting every worktop with anti-bacterial spray to eradicate any lingering germ from existence. Whilst she loved the delicious aroma of nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves that was currently ballooning through the air, she preferred the satisfying smell of Flash with a top note of chlorine.

“What do you mean?”

“Holding the competition the day before Grace and Josh’s wedding?”

“It’s perfect!” declared Mia, as usual only seeing the positive in any given situation. “It means that their guests can take part in the contest too. It’s a great way to break the ice and give everyone something else to focus on before the frenzy starts.”

“And added another six people to our competitors list!”

“The more the merrier! We’ll set up the trees in the marquee tomorrow morning, and then, after the men’s cycle race has finished, the contestants can make a start. That’ll give everyone a full three days to complete their masterpieces before the judging takes place on Saturday afternoon.”

Rosie finished her session of extreme cleaning with a flourish and felt the last vestiges of her earlier stress drain from her veins. She swept her eyes around the room, satisfied it was as pristine as she had left it the previous evening before Mia had landed with her cornucopia of Christmas knick-knacks.

“It’s a bit of an usual activity for a stag party, don’t you think? A ten-mile cycle race?” said Rosie, wrinkling her nose in bewilderment at Josh’s choice of pre-wedding celebration with his closest friends.

“Not if cycling is your passion. And according to Grace, Josh is not only passionate about his bike, he’s obsessed! You know, last weekend he did the Coast-to-Coast with his best man, Sam, and a group of other friends who couldn’t make it down to Norfolk this week. If I were Grace I’d have him on flower arranging duties!”

“So how many are taking part in the stag party sprint in the morning?”

“Well, according to Freddie, apart from Josh and Sam, there’ll be another three; Dylan, Abbi’s boyfriend, Theo, an old friend of Josh’s who’s arranged the wedding cars at mate’s rates, and Archie, everyone’s favourite pub landlord from the Drunken Duck; so seven guys in total, if you include Matt and Freddie.

At the mention of Matt’s name, Rosie averted her eyes from Mia’s and became interested in choosing the perfect mince pie to go with her coffee, the surge of warmth spreading across her cheeks having nothing to do with the heat from the oven and everything to do with Mia’s not-so-casual reference to the owner of Ultimate Adventures.

“You’ve got to talk to Matt, Rosie.”

“I have talked to Matt!”

“You know what I mean – about Harry’s proposition.”

“I haven’t decided what to do yet.”

“Even more reason why the two of you should have a chat. Okay, so we all know you turned down Harry’s marriage proposal – we were there when he dropped the bombshell on you at the Autumn Leaves party. And, if I might add, you made the right decision when you chose to go with your gut instinct.”

Rosie’s lips twitched in amusement at her friend’s candour. “Thank you, Mia, I’m pleased you—”

“What I’m talking about is Harry’s business proposition. I don’t blame you for thinking about it, it was a great offer – a half share of a florist business in Pimlico is not to be tossed away without very careful consideration, especially when you were so good at it before Harry messed up by frolicking amongst the blooms with a random selection of blushing brides.”

“Hardly a random selection, there was only Heidi…”

“As far as you know,” added Mia, impishly. “But even as his business partner, I ask you one question, Rosie. Can you trust him? Are his motives selfless? Or has he simply discovered the hard way that it was your creative talent that attracted all those lucrative bridal contracts, not his, and he regrets letting you go?”

“That’s three questions!”

“And here’s another two. How can you even contemplate leaving the Windmill Café? And won’t you miss Matt?”

“Mia, I’ve told you, I love it here, but I’m just the part-time manager of a small holiday site that practically runs itself, and a café that is currently only open on Saturdays and Sundays until Easter. If, and it’s only an if, if I accept Harry’s proposition I will be the legal owner of a successful business enterprise in London. Before I stumbled on Harry and Heidi amongst the roses, I had a kaleidoscope of fresh ideas to take wedding floristry to new heights, you know that.”

“Well, I don’t know how you can even contemplate working alongside that unfaithful, disloyal, lying moron!” huffed Mia, who had spent the remainder of the Autumn Leaves party after Harry’s shock appearance – and very public marriage and business proposal – glaring at him as though he was the Big Bad Wolf personified. Even after he had left, having spent a fruitless weekend trying to persuade Rosie that he was truly sorry for what he had done, assuring her that Heidi was ancient history and that he’d learned his lesson and would never repeat it, Mia had refused to speak about him, apart from labelling him a Dastardly Destroyer of Dreams. “Anyway, Matt misses you.”

“Matt has avoided me for six weeks.”

Rosie experienced the familiar mule’s kick to the stomach when she uttered those pain-filled words. In the months leading up to Harry’s arrival at the end of October, she had grown close to Matt Wilson, the hunky owner of the outward-bound activity centre hidden in the woodland on the other side of Willerby, through their amateur sleuthing activities. More than that, Grace had even invited them both to her wedding on Christmas Eve and Rosie had been delighted to accept, especially as Mia’s meddling had meant she was going as Matt’s Plus One – until Harry had popped up unannounced and thrown a spanner in the works.

“You and Matt are made for each other!” declared Mia, grabbing a mince pie from the wire cooling rack and slumping down onto one of the café’s white leather sofas, holding her palm under her chin to catch any wayward crumbs – a crime punishable by a ferocious glare from Rosie.

“Mia, I’m still friends with Matt. It’s his decision to avoid me and the café.”

But Rosie knew Mia wasn’t listening to her assurances because she was intent on delivering her own agenda.

“You and Matt make a fabulous team. You solved those crimes before the police had even finished slurping their coffee! When you’re together, you are greater than the sum of your parts – and not just in the puzzle-wrangling arena. There’s something almost effervescent about you when he’s by your side – something that’s completely missing when Harry’s around. I watched you carefully when Harry graced us with his presence again at the beginning of December to press his case. Your sparkle was missing-in-action – he snuffs it out with his overbearing personality.”

Mia flicked her fingers to emphasise her point.

“Do you really want to go back to being the old Rosie? Okay, so you were a florist to the stars and that’s amazing, but what you have here is more than just a job. You have a home and you are surrounded by friends who love you – not to mention a guy who thinks the world of you. When Matt, and Freddie, offer their help, they want nothing in return – unlike Harry!”

Rosie couldn’t fault Mia for her impassioned submissions on behalf of Matt. Everything she had said was true. Matt had come to her aid when she had been accused of poisoning one of the lodge guests with her baking, and she had returned the favour when one of his outward-bound clients had been speared with an arrow, an incident that had threatened the future of his business. There had been no expectations of anything in return, simply a celebratory drink at the local pub, the Drunken Duck.

“It isn’t that Matt’s not speaking to you, Rosie. He’s a decent guy, and he just wants to give you the space to make your decision without any external influences. He’s wrong on this occasion, in my opinion. He should be standing right here in front of you, telling you exactly why you should tell Harry to get lost and to stay where you are cherished – if not for your cheerful and generous personality, then certainly for your fig-and-walnut scones and these fabulous St. Clements mince pies.”

Mia did have a point. Harry’s reappearance in her life had sent Matt away. Once she had persuaded her ex-boyfriend that her response to his marriage proposal was a resounding no! she had promised to think about his business proposition, arguing to herself that she would be crazy not to.

When Harry made the return trip to Willerby at the beginning of December, he had brought with him the accounts, as well as a formal legal contract setting everything out in black-and-white that she would be a part-owner of the florist’s shop and business. Harry had been stoical about her rejection of marriage, but urged her not to turn down the chance of financial security for the rest of her life – unlike her position as the Windmill Café manager which, if the last few months were anything to go by, was precarious in the extreme.

However, what had really caused her to prevaricate over Harry’s offer was the fact that if she lost her job at the café, she would also lose her home and she didn’t think she could go through that trauma again. Residing in the dark recesses of her mind was a hard nugget of fear that history would repeat itself, and her dreams were filled with memories of the day her mother had been forcibly evicted from the family home after her father’s death. The incident had changed the path of her life and had been the catalyst for her battle with the cleanliness demons. She had no idea how she was going to make the decision, though, and Harry’s increasingly regular phone calls were not helping.

She had tried to seek Matt out, to reassure him that their friendship was unaffected by the recent turn of events. However, when she had arrived on the doorstep of the wooden reception cabin at Ultimate Adventures, Freddie had explained to her that Matt had jumped on a last-minute flight to Tenerife to climb Mount Teide with a group of his father’s climbing buddies, and since his return two weeks ago he had steadfastly avoided her.

“Maybe there’ll be another mystery for you to solve that will bring you back together,” mused Mia as she drained the dregs of her coffee and went to wash her mug in the sink and return it to its allotted space.

“God, I hope not! All our lodge guests are here for the stag party and then to celebrate the wedding on Sunday. Grace, not to mention, the Rev and Carole, would be mortified if anything untoward happened to them!”

Chapter 2

“Oh my God! It’s freezing! I can’t believe the guys still wanted to take part in the cycle race instead of adjourning to the pub for a cosy few pints like most stag party enthusiasts!” said Rosie, screwing up her nose in disgust as she wrapped her arms around her waist in an effort to fend off the relentless downpour and keep warm. “More to the point, I can’t believe you managed to persuade me to form part of the welcoming committee!”

A shiver of discomfort shot down her spine as she peered through the gloom into the densely packed woodland at the rear of the outward-bound centre. Ultimate Adventures offered a plethora of activities including mountaineering, gorge scrambling, a treetop zip wire adventure, and even an obstacle course that mixed physical strength with mental agility. She could understand how these pursuits would be appealing in the summer months, but not on a wet Wednesday morning in the middle of December. In fact, there was something almost menacing about the way the naked trees crowded forward, blocking out what little light was left in the pewter-coloured sky.

“Lots of cycle addicts love this kind of weather – makes the whole ride much more interesting.” Mia laughed as she blew on her palms and clapped her mittened hands together in excitement. “Anyway, it’s just a shower.”

“This isn’t a shower, it’s a monsoon!”

The rain was coming down in stair rods, hammering the wooden planks of the reception’s veranda with a vicious acrimony and drenching the small but courageous – and some might say crazy – gathering of spectators at the finish line. Rosie tightened the hood of her padded jacket around her chin in an attempt to prevent her curls from ballooning like copper candyfloss but she was fighting a losing battle.