Page 25 of Autumn at the Willow River Guesthouse
Pete grinned. ‘Yeah, one of his, too. I imagine Hugh Grant was in it, or Colin Firth. In fact, your mother almost certainly has it on DVD somewhere. Anyway, for about a year, it was absolutely huge. Kind of like Bridget Jones’s Diary for complete outcasts, not just pretty girls pretending to not be pretty.’
‘So, she’s a bit of a star, then?’
‘That’s the funny thing. She absolutely was, and she had a ton of books out beforehand, so a few of them got popular too, but since The Trainspotter’s Guide to Romance came out, she hasn’t published anything. We obviously thought nothing of it, until she went and moved into the annexe two years ago. Gus is convinced she’s hiding in there now trying to write some masterpiece of a follow up.’
‘It’s quite exciting really, isn’t it?’
‘It’s a little bit complex. Gus obviously doesn’t want her to leave because she’s paying a small fortune, but at the same time, her fans are starting to home in on her, because he told me random nerds are showing up every week or two now. Luckily, none of them know about the annexe, because the rooms are no longer advertised. So, for now she’s safe, but if they find out … she’ll probably have to move on.’
Lily mulled this all over while she went back into the house, leaving her dad to finish his latest project. Mum had gone out to a board game night at a friend’s house, and with nothing else to do, Lily squatted by her parents’ DVD cabinet, and there, sure enough, was a copy of The Trainspotter’s Guide to Romance.
One hundred minutes and a bottle of wine later, Lily found herself wiping her eyes while at the same time rubbing her cheeks, aching from the constant laughter.
In the movie, a hopeless twenty-something trainspotter—rejected by her own community for being a girl—falls in love with a handsome train conductor along a stretch of line about to be closed down. After many adventures, farcical situations, and stupid, so-bad-they’re-good jokes, not to mention a couple of proper tear-jerker scenes, the two main characters end up married, buying an old station building, and turning it into a bakery. She turns out to be more attractive than at first appeared, while he is revealed to have numerous nerdy pursuits such as jam-making and embroidery. The movie’s tagline, “When is a train, not a train?”, stayed on Lily’s mind long after she’d turned off the TV and retired to bed.
The “answer”—somewhat forced in Lily’s opinion—was revealed in a voiceover at the end of the movie, when the main characters share a smile before delivering a tray of high-calorie chocolate-filled muffins to a family sitting on a table outside, the woman gently touching a pregnancy bump as she looks at the man: “When it’s a fresh start.”
It didn’t have any of the catchiness that Lily might have considered for a potentially successful advertising campaign, but it had clearly worked. The parallels of Victoria being holed up in just such a converted station building hadn’t been lost on Lily, however, nor that she had briefly imagined turning the station into some kind of restaurant or café, almost exactly as had happened at the movie’s conclusion. Perhaps the movie had some kind of universal appeal, and Lily, who had felt enough moments of déjà vu to suggest she might have seen it before, perhaps on some drunken night at university, wondered if its overarching theme and meaning had slipped into a collective consciousness.
Whatever the truth was, she felt certain that Victoria, perhaps in her wisdom, or perhaps not, had holed herself up at the fictional end of her own story in order to try to write a sequel.
Clouds spotted the sky the next morning, and Lily took an umbrella with her as she rode out to the annexe, just in case. With Aunt Gert rather shockingly now in a plaster cast—Lily had initially assumed the fall was a ruse to cajole her into making the annexe delivery—Lily had no choice but to take on more kitchen duties. With Uncle Gus humming along to a tune on the radio, and Aunt Gert giving directions from a chair in the corner, Lily fried eggs, grilled bacon, stirred beans, toasted bread, chopped mushrooms, and arranged bread rolls into wicker baskets with a speed and robotic efficiency that made a mockery of her two days on the job. When it came to preparing Victoria’s hamper, however—essentially a large plate of fried food all held in place by a generous helping of cling-film—Lily decided to take a different tack. She allowed the sausages and beans—although she gave the sausages a squeeze in some kitchen tissue to soak up a bit of the fat, but instead of the bacon and fried mushrooms, she added a side salad and a bowl of fruit, and also included a mini-box of bran flakes and a small carton of milk. While the author photo had obviously been studio enhanced, it was quite clear that Victoria had put on a bit of weight during the intervening years, and if Lily was going to be responsible for delivering the woman’s breakfast, she felt it necessary to introduce both a little variation and some vitamins.
And just to make sure Victoria finished everything, Lily wrote down a joke she had heard on the internet recently and slipped the piece of paper on top of the hamper. Before serving the food, she taped the answer to the plate’s bottom.
She whistled as she rode along the cycle path. A couple of fishermen whom had already become familiar gave her a wave, and not far from the annexe an older gentleman walking a dog gave her a kind smile. The leaves of the willows were starting to change colour, and the breeze was getting colder. Soon she would need to start wearing a hat or jacket, but Lily couldn’t remember the last time she had felt happier. The hamper on the back of the bike, which both Uncle Gus and Aunt Gert had worried about, felt like a true purpose. Only time would tell whether it would make her—and the entire guesthouse—crash and burn, but she turned on enough charm to convince her aunt and uncle that she knew what she was doing.
As she climbed the stairs to the upper floor, however, the doubts began to creep in. What if Victoria threw a tantrum and decided to leave? Uncle Gus’s business would take a real hit, and Lily would possibly need to start job hunting all over again.
Her hand shook as she knocked on the door.
‘Mandy? Is that you?’
‘Yes, it’s me, Lily,’ Lily called through the door. ‘Breakfast delivery.’
The door flew open, and Victoria stood there, flamboyantly dressed in a floral sweater over a long, ankle-length skirt. One half of her hair was in rollers, the other half hanging straight to her shoulder. Victoria was yet to apply makeup, and looked every bit of her fifty-something years, her eyes a little gummy as though she’d been on the wine, her skin a little puffy. Under her eyes, liver spots had begun to appear from beneath yesterday’s peeling concealer.
‘Ah, Mandy, you’re fifteen minutes early.’
‘Twelve. And it’s Lily. I felt certain you would want to get breakfast over with in order to enjoy the rest of the day.’
‘What’s got you so chirpy this morning?’
Lily couldn’t help but grin. ‘I’m afraid there have been a couple of alterations to the menu. I hope you’ll be forgiving … because forgiveness is an art form not often studied in itself.’
She wondered whether Victoria would spot the quote lifted straight from the movie made of her book. The older woman cocked her head a little, cleared her throat, and reached out for the hamper.
‘Yes, well, that may be so. I suppose I’ll have to see what alterations you’ve made, first.’
‘I’m thinking only of you,’ Lily said.
‘Well, that’s good, because I don’t do tips,’ Victoria said. ‘Something of a personal rule.’
‘A noble one,’ Lily said. ‘Should I wait downstairs as usual?’
‘Wait a moment.’
Victoria set down the hamper and lifted the whicker lid. Lily watched as the old woman crinkled her nose and frowned.
