Welcome Home Lexie!

[Lexie Harrison]

Lexie didn't even bother driving back to her cottage first. Morrison's had been closed by the time she got to the local town and the prospect of cooking held limited appeal at the best of times. The pub was at the top of the hill and had a car park. Lexie and her black convertible pulled in around seven thirty and she switched off the engine, sitting for a few moments in the dark. Music turned off, she was assailed by stillness. Alone at last. It was a good feeling after two weeks split between her mother and father's houses and all the stupid family tensions that had arisen. Steph hadn't even come back for Christmas! All in all it had not been very pleasant, though she had enjoyed meeting Maria, her father's new girlfriend more than expected. Maria's teenage son Jake, on the other hand, had been exactly as irritating as she had imagined he would be.

She shook off the oppressive, country silence when her stomach rumbled and got out of the car, crossing the car park to the warm glow of the pub windows. Inside, there were fortunately not too many people that evening. Lexie was glad; she did not really feel up to chatting to the locals. Nobody was at the bar at that moment. She went over, pinged the bell for service and inched herself onto one of the high stools, picking up a menu sheet as she did so, not that she expected it to have changed since she had last come for supper.

[Janet Weston]

Janet swung in behind the bar from the kitchen, bearing a tray filled with glasses, still warm from the dishwasher.

"Miss Harrison! You're back!" she exclaimed delightedly, setting down her burden at one end of the bar and wiping her hands on the pansy-spattered tea-towel she had tucked into her pristine apron. "Happy new year, my dear. I trust you enjoyed your...time away?"

One could hardly call it a holiday when one had no particular job or pursuits the rest of the time, could they? It had hardly taken the village intelligence two weeks to determine that Miss Harrison was no longer in work for the time being, but given that she didn't seem to worry about her situation, Janet wasn't about to do the worrying for her, on that point.

[Lexie Harrison]

Lexie was not sure she would ever find being addressed as Miss Harrison by the pub landlord as anything other than amusing (literally nobody else had called her that in years), but there was an old-fashioned quirkiness about it that was quite appealing all the same.

"Happy new year, Mrs. Weston," she returned cordially. "Nice to see family, nice to be back. I hope you had a good one? Any chance of a cheeky G&T? Lots of T though because I've got the car."

[Janet Weston]

"Oh Christmas was as quiet as ever," said Janet as she whisked down the bottle of Bombay Sapphire and scooped a couple lumps of ice into a highball glass.

"That reminds me," she went on, pouring the single with a practiced hand and crouching to take the single bottle of fizz from the mini fridge beneath the bar, "someone was saying there ought to be some sort of Get Home Safe scheme, perhaps with volunteers to drive if one has had a drop too much--I don't suppose you'll have heard that Sam Ward put a tree in his bonnet the night before Christmas Eve? Escaped with two stitches in his lip, and God only knows how, the silly beggar."

She popped a slice of lime atop the glass and slid a short straw between the ice before she set it in front of Lexie on a neat black coaster.

"By the by--now there's no obligation on you, my dear, but I did notice that you were being something of a heroine and drinking whatever sort of white wine we had on hand, but I was looking over our order list the other day and had a thought--"

Wiping her hands on the tea-towel again, Janet went to the till and rummaged in her pile of paperwork until she found what she was looking for and slid the glossy little catalogue across the bar.

"If you'd like to pick something that sounds nice, I can get in a few bottles. Bertie was always the man for choosing wines, I'm afraid--I've the palate of a docker. Can't tell my Pinot Grigio from my Pinocchio. But here I'm going on and on and you must be ravenous after your journey--do you know what you'd like, or shall I let you alone for half a minute, you poor thing?" Janet let out a rich little laugh. "You can take that vintner's pamphlet home with you if you like, and think it over."

[Lexie Harrison]

"No, really?" exclaimed Lexie, her eyes widening. "That's dreadful. Poor old Sam! How fortunate he wasn't more hurt. I'll definitely take care; these narrow little roads are the devil at the best of times as it is."

She accepted the drink with a nod of thanks and took a sip, letting out a slight sigh as she did so. She was back. She could relax now. Nevertheless, she glanced up as the landlady spoke again.

She followed her progress with her eyes and received the piece of paper with a glance down. "Wow, um, okay. That'd be - right, cool. It's really kind of you - can I take this and look at it? If I can be helpful, definitely. Absolutely, I'll let you know."

Lexie was both touched and worried. The truth was that she didn't know very much about wine except that she liked drinking it. She knew all the names and knew she preferred dry to sweet but beyond that she did not really understand the subtleties. But she had no intention in letting Janet Weston know. If she could be helpful in this way, she wanted to be. She would go home and spend a few hours on the internet and call up her dad. He knew about wine.

She put down the pamphlet and picked up the menu instead. "Give me a minute. No, actually - scampi and chips, please, with peas instead of salad. That would be lovely. Thank you so much."

[Janet Weston]

"Not at all, my dear," said Janet, turning to the till and swiping at the touch-screen. "Now...now I've practiced this..." She took the black-framed glasses that hung about her neck on a blue beaded chain and propped them on the end of her nose. "...mains...and--substitute peas..." she murmured to herself, carefully tapping here and there. "And...sent to the kitchen! Aha! Excellent!" Janet seemed awed and delighted that it seemed to have worked.

"Well, I dare say that is a very useful sort of thing rather than running in and out of Lou's kitchen all the time with scribbled bits of paper," she said, turning back to Lexie with her hands on her hips. "Modernization, in moderation," she said firmly.

"Do you know I had a tourist from one of the bed and breakfasts up the north end of the village come at me last summer, raving because we didn't serve couscous instead of potatoes with the Sunday roast special? I asked him if he knew he'd come to England by mistake."

[Lexie Harrison]

Lexie watched Mrs. Weston put in her order with an almost indulgent smile. It was rather sweet to see how new technology was to some people here!

"Absolutely. Everything in moderation," she quoted from some half-forgotten school classics lesson. "And a few in excess!" She raised her glass of G&T and grinned.

"No really?" She laughed at the end of the story. "I know plenty of people who'd be the same. I love a bit of couscous but not with Sunday roast. That's just wrong! What did you do in the end?"

[Janet Weston]

"Well the next time I was in town I stopped by the travel-agent's and got some brochures for holidays in the north of Africa--Tangier, Tunis, and what-have-you," explained Janet, smiling a little at the recollection. She took up a fresh tea-towel and began to twirl it around the glasses off the tray she'd brought in, before putting them away neatly beneath the bar. "Had them waiting the next time he came sneering in for a cocktail, speaking appalling French and evidently trying desperately to impress the young lady who was with him at the time by finding fault with everything. Dropped them on his table along with their drinks and wished him a bon voyage. Never saw them again, after that."