Page 11 of One Snowy Day
This woman clearly hadn’t seen Glasgow today.
‘We’ll also be shooting in LA and Croatia over the course of the season. I’ll get all the details in an email to you, including the compensation package, living arrangements and the terms of the contract. I do have to tell you that it’s a six-month contract and we don’t usually hear whether we’ll be commissioned for another series until this one airs, but we’re on season ten right now, so, all being well, the run will continue. We’re so excited to have you on board. Ollie speaks so highly of you. Do you have any questions?’
Georgie had at least a thousand, but they all appeared to have deserted her for now. Except…
‘Can I think about it?’
There was a brief silence at the other end of the line. Bonnie Katowski was obviously used to a more enthusiastic reaction.
‘Yes, of course,’ she spluttered when she recovered. ‘As I said, I’ll put it all in writing. Ollie gave me your email address, so I’ll fire that over to you now. We are in a time crunch though, so we would need your answer in the next twenty-four hours. Would that work for you?’
Would that work? Absolutely not. It took her twenty-four hours to decide whether to have chips or a baked potato fordinner. Life-changing decisions required at least a month and a half of angst.
‘Yes, of course. Thank you for calling.’
She disconnected the call, then stared at her phone for several seconds, before making her way to the reception area at the front of the shop and slumping onto the stool behind the desk.
This was it. The kind of job that could change her life. At least for a while. And her pragmatic head told her that was one of the problems. Six months. And no guarantee of another season.
Finding someone she trusted to come in and run the salon on that basis would be just about impossible. More importantly, her mum would never allow it. When Aunt Cathy had retired, one of her long-term stylists had taken over the business, but that was a plan that had been in the making for years before it happened. Here, it had always been just Jessie, Georgie and junior stylists who stayed with them until they invariably went off to trendy salons in Glasgow or Edinburgh. No, Mum wouldn’t trust the salon she’d treasured for forty years to a stranger. Georgie knew she’d cancel her plans to move to Tenerife and stay here to take care of her third child. It was the way it had always been. Grant. Georgie. And Copper Curls. The three much-loved offspring of Jessie McLean.
And then… Oh God, Georgie’s mind began to spiral. What if her mum or her dad were one of those statistics that you read about, where someone retires and then drops dead almost immediately, despite being in apparently good health. Then Georgie would have deprived them of their last weeks or months together and the surviving parent would never forgive her.
Although, yes, she was fully aware that she was now catastrophising this whole situation and her mother would live until she was a hundred, but still…
If Georgie wanted to take this job, she knew her mum would move heaven and earth to make this happen for her, even if it was at Mum’s own expense. And that was the very reason Georgie couldn’t do it.
‘Did someone say there was a party happening around here tonight?’ Ten minutes late, Grant McLean entered the building, a bottle of champagne in each hand.
Georgie’s first and only reaction was to groan and put her head on the reception desk.
‘There is. But first I need you to hold my hand while I turn down the opportunity of a lifetime.’
7
ALYSSA
‘Mum, what are you doing here? I didn’t expect to see you this morning.’ Alyssa’s mum, the very glamorous Dorinda Canavan, popped into the café maybe once a week, and even then, it was usually only because she wanted a quick cuppa or some free cakes to take to whatever client she was trying to woo. Working as an estate agent gave her lots of flexibility, especially now that she was a freelance agent for a national franchise, with no office to report to every day.
‘I took the day off because I was doing showings all weekend, and I was on my way to the nail salon for a touch-up when I saw your grandad trudging here, so I gave him a lift. Ridiculous a man of his age being out in this weather.’
Just at that, her grandad, Hugo, came through the doorway, after kicking his boots against the step to get rid of the snow.
Alyssa shook her head in her grandad’s direction. ‘Grandad, I told you I’d come and pick you up. Why were you walking?’
Hugo shrugged off his anorak. ‘Because my coat is warm, my legs still work perfectly well, and maybe a man just wants toenjoy a bit of snow. That used to be the biggest excitement of the year when I was a boy.’
There wasn’t really any arguing with that. Her grandad had every right to live his life however he pleased and if that meant taking a walk in the snow, that was up to him.
‘Good morning, ladies! How are we all doing on this fine day?’ Hugo greeted Jessie, Val and Cathy, and got a rousing chorus of ‘Good morning, Hugo’ in return, before Val added, ‘I was just saying to Jessie earlier… I remember when we would all make sleds out of scraps of linoleum and head up the Weirbridge hill when it snowed like this…’
This was exactly why Grandad loved working here. He was sixty-nine, a few years older than Jessie and Val, but all the born-and-bred villagers knew each other and enjoyed their memories. If Alyssa had a pound for every time she heard a sentence that began, ‘Do you remember when we used to…’ she’d be able to buy out her frigging landlord and own this building.
The thought made her wince on the inside. She couldn’t close the café. Not just because she had poured her heart and soul into building her business, but because as well as it being her favourite place and a much-loved, invaluable hub for the community, it was a lifeline for her grandad too. What would he do without all this chat every day?
Apparently, her mother didn’t feel the same about her father’s employment status, because as she followed Alyssa back behind the counter at the far end of the room, she hissed. ‘As I’ve said too many times to count, I don’t know why you humour him by having him work here.’
Alyssa felt the hairs on the back of her neck bristle. ‘I don’t “have” him work here, Mum. I’m grateful that he works here, and he enjoys it because he doesn’t want to be at home all day. He loves it here. And I love that I get to spend time with him.’
