Christmas at the Little Clock House on the Green. Eve Devon

and so quintessentially English, that she felt an unexpected pang of home-sickness.

      Which was completely ridiculous, since LA was her home, not England.

      The envelope closed up again and divided into four triangles with a number and a ‘play’ symbol in the centre of each one. Charmed she clicked on the top triangle of the invitation and as it ‘unsealed’ itself to open up, she read:

       Beauty @ The Clock House

       Day Spa

       Manager: Kate Somersby.

      Smiling, Emma clicked on the second leaf and with a smile on her face watched it magically open up to read:

       Hair @ The Clock House

       Hair Salon

       Manager: Juliet Brown

      She clicked on the third:

       Hive @ The Clock House

       Rentable Co-Working space

       Manager: Daniel Westlake

      And then she clicked on the last one:

       Cocktails & Chai @ The Clock House

       Tearoom/Bar

      Manager: Emma Danes

      Emma stared at the screen in shock.

      Absurd excitement shot through her, exploding like fireworks. Reaching out she quickly clicked back onto the email to make sure she wasn’t imagining things.

       How about it, Emma?

       Fancy coming to Whispers Wood and setting up Cocktails & Chai?

       p.s. I can help out with airfare.

       p.p.s. On days off you could finally get to visit where Jane Austen lived.

      Ooh, that was sneaky.

      Kate knew she’d wanted to do that for as long as she could remember.

       p.p.p.s. And as Jane Austen once famously said … If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.

       Chapter 7

       Making Cow Eyes

       Emma

      Emma adjusted her grey wool beanie to a more attractive angle and wrapped her dusky-pink pashmina more securely around her shoulders as she wrenched open the front door of Wren Cottage.

      She was late.

      So very late for her first day at The Clock House.

      She hated being late. Stupid jet lag. Now she was going to feel on the back-foot all day as well as feeling nauseous from the butterflies hurling hand-grenades at the walls of her insides.

      Quickly she bent down and shoved her feet into the pair of boots sat outside the front door.

      Holy moley, they were beyond freezing. Why in God’s name did people in this country leave perfectly good footwear outside? It was barbaric.

      Honestly, mid-November in Whispers Wood could not be more different to mid-November in LA.

      That was it, she thought, her toes curling and clenching inside the boots. When she got in tonight she was bringing these puppies inside and shoving them by the fire – once she’d plucked up the courage to ask again how to switch the fire on, that was.

      Quite sure her toes were going to drop off if she didn’t get moving, she half-shlepped, half-slid along the icy path and came to an abrupt halt at the front gate.

      ‘Wow. Cow.’

      Master of the understatement. That was her all over. Because, excuse me, but what the hell was an actual four-legged, real-life, black and white, farm animal doing standing in front of her, plain as day?

      Emma closed her eyes and then opened them again.

      It was still there.

      And it wasn’t moving.

      Oh God. Why wasn’t it moving?

      Was it dead? Did cows die standing up?

      And why was it staring at her, with those … cow eyes?

      Slowly, Emma reached out and unlatched the little wrought-iron gate separating her from the cow and tugging it over the frosted tufts of grass, pulled it open enough to slip through.

      The cow looked at her as if to say, ‘Hi there, it’s all good. Wanna chew the cud with me?’

      Emma shook her head because, you know, Day! As in, she had one. Had places to be and people to meet and she really didn’t fancy her first phone call to Kate to be along the lines of a sickie that went, ‘I’m sorry I can’t come to work today, I’m trapped in my house by a cow.’

      ‘Shoo,’ she whispered, watching her breath turn misty as it left her mouth. When nothing happened she mustered her courage and, feeling brave, flung a hand out from under her shawl to make a shooing motion.

      Her actions had zero effect.

      ‘Hey, you? Mr Moo? Please shoo,’ she tried again a little louder, totally wishing she was eating Moo Shu pork, or doing anything that felt in any way familiar to her old life in LA.

      She wasn’t sure this really fulfilled the ‘adventure’ brief she’d sold herself on when packing her case to make the move back to the UK, although, she’d only been here one whole night and one whole day so perhaps she should give it more time.

      Or maybe the jet lag was screwing with her reasoning?

      She blinked again in case it really was jet lag that had her imagining a cow had come to visit the tiny cottage Kate had helped her settle into when she’d arrived in Whispers Wood.

      No. It wasn’t her imagination.

      The cow was still there. Filling up her entire view because, as it turned out, cows were genuinely fear-for-your-life enormous close-up.

      As an antidote to not getting her dream role, not being able to get out of the wrought-iron starting gate wasn’t quite the look she’d been going for.

      Wisps of frosty fog wrapped themselves around her, and as the damp air seeped deep into her bones she was closer to admitting she may have misjudged this opportunity. What would Rudy think if he could see her now?

      She’d thought this would all be so very quaint, hadn’t she?

       How could you have been this wrong, Ems? This, So. Completely. Wrong.

      All it was, was freezing, she thought, wondering if she could get out of the back garden of the cottage and find her way to The Clock House, thus avoiding the cow-staring scary start to her rural adventure.

      Emma looked around helplessly and then, leaning closer, risked cricking her neck permanently to check out the pair of feet she could see approaching.

      ‘Is someone there?’ she asked.

      ‘Whack it on its arse,’ said a male voice.

      ‘What it on what?’ Emma asked.

      There was a sigh, and then, ‘Give it a good slap on its hind rear and it’ll move right on by.’

      Emma stared suspiciously at the cow’s rear-end. The instruction sounded a bit Fifty Shades Darker.

      ‘Thank