Page 16 of The Holiday Cottage

She stared at her phone, her stomach tense until it stopped ringing. Despite the freezing temperatures she was drenched in sweat.

It rang again, and she curled her fingers into her palms to stop herself from picking it up.

She didn’t have to answer. There was no obligation. She’d answer it when it suited her to answer it. When she was ready. And right now she wasn’t ready.

The ringing stopped, but then her phone alerted her to a voicemail.

Tempted to delete it without listening, she paused for a moment and then played the message, hating that part of herself that made it impossible for her to step back from it.

“Hi, Imogen, it’s Tina. I need you to call me back as soon as you get this. It’s urgent.”

Imogen played the recording a second time, and then a third, although why she had no idea. It wasn’t as if the words would change.

Hi, Imogen, how are you?

Hi, Imogen, just wanted you to know I’ve been thinking of you.

Hi, Imogen, I know I should have said this before now but I’m sorry about everything.

But of course the message hadn’t said any of those things. She’d known it wouldn’t, but still she felt disappointment every single time. Even though she knew better, she couldn’t totally extinguish the glimmer of hope inside her. And maybe that was a good thing. You had to believe things could improve. You had to hold on to that hope. Otherwise, what was the point? Without hope, you lived your life in the dark, and she wasn’t prepared to do that.

She reached out and deleted the message so that she wouldn’t be tempted to replay it and sink lower than she was already.

This was why she’d invented a fictitious life, because her real life was something it was better to hide. To her colleagues she was Imogen with the dog, and a big loving family who had a swoon-worthy home in the country. It sounded so great that she was starting to feel envious of herself.

Still, she couldn’t think about that now.

Her phone rang again and this time she answered it, as she always did eventually.

“Imogen?” The voice was raspy and hoarse. “Is that you?”

Imogen closed her eyes. She wouldn’t call her Tina. She just wouldn’t. Not on a day when almost everything in her life felt fake.

“Yes, it’s me. Hi, Mum.”

5

Dorothy

Dorothy pulled on her ancient down jacket and a scarf and headed outside with Bailey by her side. The dawn sky was milky white and the ground and the trees were covered in a silvery frost. She loved the hushed stillness of these early winter mornings, the sense that the world around was snuggling down. The trees around had shed their leaves, as if tired of carrying them all year.

“It’s a cold one today.” She talked to Bailey the way she talked to all her animals. As if they were family. Which to Dorothy, they were.

Every animal she cared for had a story, usually a tragic one. They’d come to her because no other help had been available to them. She’d given them a home and a second chance.

Dorothy believed in second chances.

These animals needed her, and she needed them every bit as much. Every animal she rescued gave her a small degree of exoneration for her failures. She didn’t need a psychologist to analyze what she was doing. Even now, twenty years later, she was trying to make amends. Saving as many as she could to make up for the one she hadn’t been able to save. And it didn’t make up for it, of course. Not really. It didn’t compensate. But it helped. The animals benefited, and they kept her busy. And Dorothy needed to be busy. Busy was her therapy. Busy had saved her.

In those early days when her mind and her thoughts had tortured her, when her heart had broken, and then broken again, there had been days when she’d thought she wouldn’t survive it all. When she hadn’t wanted to survive it. But she’d always found a reason to carry on.

First it was Sara. Then Sara’s children—her grandchildren. The vineyard. The animals. They were her life now, and despite everything that had gone before, it was a good life. She was content. Yes, she thought about that time. She thought about it more often than she would have admitted to Sara, but the pain had settled into a dull ache that on some days she barely noticed.

But at this time of year, she noticed.

Christmas. The moment the berries on the holly bush turned red, she started to feel it. Her solution was to make sure she was even busier than usual. She spent more time in London. She involved herself more in the business. She filled every hour of her day and a fair few of her nights.

It was hard, but ultimately she knew she’d be fine. She’d done this before, so many times. If you survived something once, you could survive it again. And again. She couldn’t block it out in the way that Sara did, but she’d learned that the way to make it through the season was to focus on what she had, and not what she’d lost. Gratitude, not bitterness.

---