Chocolate Wishes

Chocolate Wishes Trisha Ashley Featuring an EXCLUSIVE FREE SAMPLE of Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues by Trisha AshleyLife is sweet for chocolate maker Chloe Lyon…In the picture-perfect Lancashire village of Sticklepond, Confectioner Chloe dispenses inspirational sweet treats containing a prediction for each customer. If only her own life was as easy to forecast – perhaps Chloe could have foreseen being jilted at the altar…But when a new Vicar arrives in the village, the rumour mill goes into overdrive. Not only is Raffy Sinclair the charismatic ex-front man of rock band 'Mortal Ruin', he's also the Chloe's first love and the man who broke her heart.Try as she might, Chloe can't ignore this blast from her past. Could now be the time for her to make a wish – and dare to believe it can come true?A charming novel for chocoholics everywhere, perfect for fans of Katie Fforde, Jill Mansell and Carole Matthews. Chocolate Wishes Trisha Ashley Copyright (#ulink_11f943fb-7bf9-54de-a230-3577955d9909) This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. AVON A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) Copyright © Trisha Ashley 2010 Trisha Ashley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication Source ISBN: 9781847561145 Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2010 ISBN: 9780007365722 Version: 2018-06-20 I think it is time my wonderful agent had a dedication all to herself, so this one is for Judith Murdoch, with love and thanks. Table of Contents Cover Page (#u747553e6-02f4-52fe-95cc-197f73516280) Title Page (#ue3864b93-6729-5997-b9c3-7dc6830c70fa) Copyright (#u64432181-2eb3-51d5-9def-189431798376) Dedication (#ubdbac5f3-f6ef-5bc1-a9bf-ceeb46218610) Prologue Mortal Ruin (#ud3d38d90-f2cf-54a6-8316-a4a4d44ee31b) Chapter One There Must Be an Angel (#u6f2c4bcc-057c-5153-b597-76806b6c4b86) Chapter Two Satan’s Child (#u33af0e46-a15c-58ac-8836-0662bf192dae) Chapter Three Chocolate Wishes (#u0b9bfaae-df55-511b-ae39-86a9fb3cea33) Chapter Four Falling Star (#u6701ac0e-e0f3-5214-b638-025a62ca7cc4) Chapter Five Pay Dirt (#uea32b2e8-e2ad-5a1d-b449-1373ba59c665) Chapter Six Stupid Cupid (#u679eb8b4-16bf-5944-947e-0a40d3522dff) Chapter Seven Brief Encounters (#u5093d3e5-bd71-5b15-9a6e-2f9b6023d32a) Chapter Eight Good Libations (#uec20f541-1890-53e7-bddf-2f76bb46af0b) Chapter Nine Drawing the Lines (#u41d34cf6-e990-5878-a671-dc0dc91d095b) Chapter Ten Comparative Evils (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Eleven Birthday Wishes (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twelve Desperate Dates (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirteen Ashes of Roses (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fourteen Fairy Dust (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fifteen Welcome Gifts (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Sixteen Dead as My Love (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Seventeen Written on the Cards (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Eighteen Charm (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Nineteen In the Mix (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty Fallen Angels (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-one Garnish (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-two Darker Past Midnight (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-three Pax (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-four Gift Bag (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-five Mixed Bag (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-six High Maintenance (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-seven Pure Criollo (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-eight Home Alone (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-nine Rites (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty Grave Concerns (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-one Party Animals (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-two Delivering Angels (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-three Candy-Coated (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-four Melting Moments (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-five Proposals (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-six Behind the Scenes at the Museum (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-seven Gran Couva! (#litres_trial_promo) Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo) Excerpt from Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 1: Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 2:Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) By the same author: (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Prologue Mortal Ruin (#ulink_58319863-405b-58a1-bfec-ba0d56db00ee) When the normally innocuous radio station she always listened to while she was working suddenly started pumping out Mortal Ruin’s first big hit, ‘Dead as My Love’, Chloe Lyon was in the kitchen area of her small flat, carefully brushing a thick coating of richly scented dark criollo couverture chocolate into moulds, to make the last batch of hollow angels before Christmas. That seemed pretty appropriate, because a hollow angel was what Raffy Sinclair had proved himself to be, but it meant that it was a couple of minutes before she had a hand free to reach across and snap down the off button. By then they’d moved on to Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears in Heaven’, so it was becoming obvious that the guest on Desert Island Discs (she’d missed the start) had much happier memories of 1992 than Chloe did. In fact, she’d take a bet on the next song being Whitney Houston and ‘I Will Always Love You’, and that really would finish her off. But the music carried on playing in her head even after the radio was silenced and it was already too late to suppress the memories. The dark, viciously searing tide of anger and pain at Raffy’s betrayal was rushing in as sharply as if it had all happened yesterday and she was once again that love-struck nineteen-year-old, thinking she’d found a kind of magic more potent than any of her grandfather’s chants, charms and incantations. She’d loved that Clapton song, though Raffy’d teased her that it was mawkish. But then, as well as being keen on Nirvana, he’d had a worrying penchant for Megadeath and older bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath, all of which influenced the lyrics he wrote for his own band, Mortal Ruin. This obsession with the dark side was part of the reason why she’d never mentioned her grandfather to him – he might have been too interested had he known about her connection with Gregory Warlock. But actually, there had simply not been enough time to explore their family and backgrounds, since they’d met and fallen in love at the start of her first university term and those few weeks spent intently engrossed in each other encompassed the whole span of their relationship. It wasn’t surprising that she’d loved him at first sight – he was tall and handsome, with long black curling hair, a pale, translucent skin and eyes the greeny-blue of the Caribbean Sea in a holiday brochure – but he’d seemed as transfixed as she was…And anyway, the Tarot cards, when she consulted them, had told her that change was coming and she would meet her soul mate, so she’d naturally assumed he was the one. Big mistake. She hadn’t believed it was the end, even after that final argument on the last night of term, when he’d told her he and the other three Mortal Ruin band members had decided to gamble their futures on a recording contract and he’d asked her to go with him, rather than head home for the holidays as she’d intended. She hadn’t explained why she absolutely had to go home either, though she might have done if she hadn’t been so angry – or if he had been capable of talking about anything other than Mortal Ruin by that point. If only she’d known she wouldn’t be going back for the next term…If only they hadn’t had that final, bitter argument, so she never even gave him her home address…There was a whole series of ifs, but they probably wouldn’t have made any difference in the end, because he turned out to be so not the man she’d thought he was. A hollow angel: dark and handsome on the outside, an emotional void within. A Lucifer echoing with false promises. Of course, she hadn’t known that then. Looking after Jake, her baby half-brother, while waiting for her mother to come back from her latest fling, she’d had plenty of time to worry about what would happen when Raffy finally got her letter. She’d sent it via her former roommate, Rachel, to hand to him when he came to his senses and went back to look for her. Because, despite their last argument, she’d been quite sure of his love and that somehow they would find a way of being together, of working things out. He’d told her he loved her often enough… Even in her darkest moments she’d believed that, right up to the day she received the note from Rachel, telling her that Raffy had returned briefly at the start of the new term and she had given him the letter, but after reading it he’d simply crumpled it up and shoved it in his pocket without comment. She hadn’t needed the tear-stained confession on the next page to know how easily and quickly he had replaced her, or how little she meant to him. Out of sight, out of mind. It was not so easy for her to forget him, when his music seemed to be out there everywhere, assailing her at unexpected moments, but eventually her searing anger had cauterised the wounds and given her a certain measure of immunity. So why now was she sitting at the kitchen table weeping hot, scalding tears? Saltwater and chocolate are never a good combination. Chapter One There Must Be an Angel (#ulink_0becf75e-498e-50a6-b8cc-3571a6144768) You know those routines most people have, the ones they fall into automatically when they wake up? Well, until a few years ago, my morning rota had ‘read Tarot cards’ neatly sandwiched between ‘brush teeth’ and ‘breakfast’. It was just the way I was brought up, and nothing to do with magic – or not the sort my grandfather practises, where the effects of his rites are so hit-and-miss that most positive results are probably sheer coincidence, like the way the sales of my Chocolate Wishes went stratospheric right after he gave me part of an ancient Mayan charm to say over the melting pot. Fluke…I thought. I have to confess that I’ve never been entirely sure. But really, apart from the novelty value of the concept, my success was probably more the result of my having finally perfected both my technique and the quality of my moulded chocolate, mostly by trial, error and experimentation – and the really good thing about working with chocolate is that you can eat your mistakes. What originally sparked the whole thing off was coming across a two-part metal Easter egg mould at a jumble sale when my half-brother, Jake, was a small boy. I made lots of little chocolate eggs and put messages inside them from the Easter Bunny, then hid them all over the flat and courtyard for him and his friends to find. And while I was making them I started thinking about fortune cookies, which are fun, but not really that good to eat. And from there it was just a short bunny hop to creating a line of hollow chocolate shapes containing ‘Wishes’ as an after-dinner novelty and selling them in boxes of six or twelve. The ‘Wishes’ are encouraging thoughts or suggestions, inspired by the Angel card readings that have replaced my earlier devotion to the Tarot, and I’m positive that each person will automatically pick the appropriate Chocolate Wish from the box – their own guardian angel will see to that! It was all very amateur at first, but now the Wishes come in printed sheets and the boxes are also specially made to hold and protect the chocolates in transit, because most of my orders come through the internet, via my website, or by word of mouth. Nowadays I favour mainly criollo couverture chocolate, the best and most expensive kind, which not only tastes delicious but has a superior gloss and good ‘snap’. I temper it in the machine Jake christened the Bath and then, with an outsize pastry brush, coat specially made polycarbon moulds in the shape of angels or winged hearts until I have a thick enough shell. When they’re cold, I ‘glue’ the two halves together with a little more chocolate – but before I do that, I put in the ‘Wish’. And I am so much happier since I began to read the Angel cards instead of the Tarot! They never seemed to come out right when I read them for myself and I often wonder if my future would have been different if I hadn’t always looked for signs and portents before I did anything. Do we make our own futures, or do our futures make us? Granny, who was of gypsy descent and taught me how to read the cards in the first place, said they only showed what might be the future, should the present course be held to; but I’m not so sure. She would have approved of the Angel cards, though, which is more than my grandfather (whom Jake and I call Grumps, for obvious reasons) and Zillah, who is Granny’s cousin, do. But I truly believe in angels and have done from being a small child when Granny, who despite her Tarot reading was deeply religious, assured me that the winged figure I glimpsed one night really was a celestial visitor, rather than a figment of my imagination. (And my friend Poppy saw it too, I do have a witness!) Why an angel should appear to an unbaptised and ungodly child of sin is anyone’s guess, unless it was my own personal guardian angel making an early appearance in my life, to counter Grumps’ influence and set my feet on the right path. But if so, she hasn’t visited me since in that form, though sometimes I can hear the soft susurration of wings and feel a comforting presence that is almost, but not quite, visible. And the Angel cards…maybe she guided me to those too? Granny died when I was twelve, but she too did her best to counter Grumps’ influence, flatly forbidding any kind of baptismal ceremony involving his coven, or involvement in its rites until I had reached the age where I could make a considered decision for myself – a resounding ‘No way!’ She had already done the same for my mother, though unfortunately without instilling in her any alternative moral code. That February morning, when I shuffled the pack of silky smooth Angel cards and laid them out on the kitchen table, they predicted change, but at least they also assured me that everything would work out all right in the end, which was a great improvement on coming face to face with the Hanging Man or Death over the breakfast cereal and trying to interpret the reading as something a little less doom-laden than the initial impression. Rituals completed, I went to wake Jake up, which took quite some effort since, at eighteen, he could sleep for Britain. I made sure he ate something before he set off for sixth form college, dressed all in black, from dyed hair to big, metal-studded boots, a cheery sight for his teachers on a Monday morning. When he’d gone – with a cheeky ‘Goodbye, Mum!’ just to wind me up – I checked my emails for incoming Chocolate Wishes orders and printed them out, before going through to the main part of the house to see what Grumps was up to. Our flat was over the garages, so the door led onto the upper landing, and was rarely shut, unless Jake was playing loud music. In the kitchen Zillah was sitting at the table over the remnants of her breakfast, drinking loose-leaf Yorkshire tea and smoking a thin, lumpy, roll-up cigarette. As usual, she was dressed in a bunchy skirt, two layers of cardigans with the bottom one worn back to front, a huge flowered pinny over the whole ensemble and her hair tied up in a clashing scarf, turban-fashion. Grumps says she was bitten by Carmen Miranda in her youth and after I Googled the name, I suspect he is right. Today’s dangly red earrings made her look as if she had hooked a pair of cherries over each ear, so the fruit motif was definitely there. She looked up – small, dark, with skin not so much wrinkled as folded around her black, bird-bright eyes – and smiled, revealing several glinting gold teeth. ‘Read your tea leaves?’ she offered hospitably. ‘No, thanks, Zillah, not just now. I’m running late, it took me ages to get Jake up and on his way. But I’ve brought you another jar of my chocolate and ginger spread, because yesterday you said you’d almost run out.’ ‘Extra sweet?’ ‘Extra sweet,’ I agreed, putting the jar down on the table. It’s really just a ganache of grated cacao and boiled double cream, with a little finely chopped preserved ginger added for zing. It doesn’t keep long, though the way Zillah lards it onto her toast means it doesn’t have to. Zillah turned up on the doorstep the day after Granny died. She’d read the news in the cards and come to burn her cousin’s caravan – metaphorically speaking, anyway, because she’d had to make do with burning Granny’s clothes and personal possessions on the garden bonfire instead. Grumps seemed unsurprised by Zillah’s sudden appearance, as if he’d been expecting her, which maybe he had, and his purported magical skills aren’t a complete figment of his imagination. She’d never given any suggestion of remaining with us permanently, yet here she still was several years later, cooking, cleaning and caring for us, in her slapdash way. She handed me the fresh cup of tea she’d just poured out, put two Jammie Dodger biscuits on the saucer and said, ‘Take this in to the Wizard of Oz then, will you, love?’ ‘Grumps is up to something, isn’t he?’ I asked, accepting the cup, because although he is taciturn and secretive at the best of times, I could still tell. I only hoped he wasn’t about to try some great summoning ceremony with his coven, because on past form all they were likely to call up was double pneumonia. Zillah tapped the side of her nose with the fingers holding her cigarette and a thin snake of ash fell into her empty cup. I hoped it wouldn’t muddle her future. In the study Grumps was indeed sitting at his desk over a grimoire open at a particularly juicy spell, which he was probably considering trying out when the weather improved. (The coven practised their rites in an oak grove, skyclad, and none of them was getting any younger.) His long, silver hair was parted in the middle and a circlet held it off a face notable for a pair of piercing grey eyes and a hawk-like nose. His midnight-blue velvet robe was rubbed on the elbows, so that he bore more resemblance to a down-at-heel John Dee than a Gandalf, but it was a look that went down well with the readers of the beyond Dennis Wheatley novels he wrote as Gregory Warlock. Sales had been in the doldrums for many years, apart from a small band of devotees, but they were suddenly having a renewed vogue and his entire backlist was about to be reprinted in their original, very lurid covers. Grumps is one of those annoying people who need very little sleep, so that by the time I pop in to see him in the mornings, he usually has achieved quite a heap of handwritten manuscript. There are often lots of letters too, because he corresponds with equally nutty people all over the globe, and since his handwriting is appalling I take everything away and type it up on my computer. When I was younger there was a time when I thought Grumps was a complete charlatan. You can imagine what it was like growing up in a small town like Merchester, with a relative who both looked and proclaimed himself with every utterance to be totally, barking mad. For example, his eccentric clothing, the ghastly novels and his definitive book on the magical significance of ley lines. (Leys are straight lines that link landmarks and sites of historical and magical importance.) Add to all that the rumours of secret and risqu? rites in remote woodland, and you will begin to see my point. Yet as I grew older I came to realise that he believed completely in what and who he was and then it ceased to bother me any more: if he wasn’t embarrassed by it, then neither was I. Now I picked my way towards the desk through a sea of unfurled maps that covered the carpet, each crisscrossed with red and blue lines showing both established and possible new ley lines. The crackling noise as I inadvertently trod on one drew Grumps’ attention to my presence. ‘Ah, Chloe – I believe I have found the solution to my financial problems,’ he announced in his plummy, public-school-educated voice, looking distinctly pleased with himself. He is distantly related to lots of terribly grand people, none of whom has spoken to him since he chose his bride from a fortune-telling booth at the end of a Lancashire pier, at a time when one simply didn’t do that kind of thing. ‘Oh, good,’ I said encouragingly, putting his tea down on the one empty spot among the clutter on his desk. ‘Yes, it came to me and I acted upon it, once the clouds of confusion sent by Another to conceal it from my knowledge were suddenly dispelled.’ Grumps has a private income, but he’d settled Mum’s huge debts six years before, after her last, permanent, vanishing trick. Besides, his investments weren’t paying out in the way they used to and even the recent four-book contract his agent had secured wouldn’t be enough to cover the bills and still enable him to purchase rare books and artefacts in the manner he seemed to think was his birthright. Even now his desk was littered with auction catalogues sporting bright Post-it notes marking things that interested him. ‘Great,’ I said cautiously, because Grumps’ good ideas, like his spells, have a marked tendency to backfire or fizzle to nothing. ‘Did Zillah read the cards for you and spot something nice?’ ‘She did, and foresaw change.’ ‘She always does. You’d think we lived in a sort of psychic whirlpool.’ ‘Well, change there certainly will be, because I am selling the house and we are moving to Sticklepond.’ I’d started gathering up the loose sheets of paper inscribed in a sloping hand, which were the latest chapter of Satan’s Child. Now I stopped and stared at him. ‘We’re moving? But how can that help?’ Then the penny dropped. ‘Oh, I see. You mean you and Zillah are downsizing to a small cottage? That’s a good idea, because now that sales of Chocolate Wishes have taken off in a big way through the internet, I can easily afford to make a home for Jake on my own.’ ‘No, no,’ he said impatiently, ‘I am not downsizing – the opposite, in fact – and there will be room for us all. An estate agent recently approached me with an advantageous offer for this house from someone who has taken a fancy to it, just at the very moment when I happened upon an advertisement for the Old Smithy in Sticklepond, which a friend had sent me, and which had somehow got mixed up among some other papers. It became apparent to me that this was a sign, and I therefore moved quickly.’ He pushed the grimoire aside and handed me a leaflet that had been underneath. It pictured a low, barn-like building, set longways onto the road, with a small ancient cottage at one side and a larger Victorian house at the other, like mismatched bookends. ‘It’s Miss Frinton’s Doll Museum!’ I said, recognising it instantly, because it’s not only just up the road from Marked Pages, the second-hand bookshop run by my friend Felix, but almost opposite the pub where I meet up with him and Poppy two or three times a week. ‘It was, though of course not for some time – it has lain empty. I knew it was for sale prior to this, of course, I just hadn’t realised its significance.’ He indicated the larger house with a bony finger adorned with a substantial and oddly designed silver ring. ‘This is the main residence, where the Misses Frinton lived. There would be abundant room for my library and for Zillah to have her own sitting room, as she has here. The front room of the small cottage at the other end of the building was the doll’s hospital – and I thought it would be ideal for your chocolate business, with enough room for you and Jake to live behind it, although it needs a little updating.’ ‘When estate agents say that, it usually means it’s semi-derelict.’ I wished there were photographs of the interior of the cottage as well as the house in the leaflet. ‘Not derelict, just neglected. It used to be rented out, so there is a kitchen extension with a bathroom over it and two bedrooms. It is larger than your current accommodation.’ ‘It could hardly be smaller,’ I said, though of course without Mum we had more space, especially since I’d packed up all her belongings and stacked the boxes in Grumps’ attic on the first anniversary of her disappearance. But since Chocolate Wishes had taken off, I really needed a separate workshop. ‘The cottage also has a walled garden behind it,’ he added slyly, because he knew I longed for a garden of my own. Here we just had a gravelled courtyard and although I did grow lots of things in tubs and pots and in my tiny greenhouse, including herbs both for cooking and for Grumps’ rites, salad vegetables, strawberries and a small fig tree, there were limitations…especially for my cherished and constantly growing collection of scented geraniums, currently over-wintering on every available windowledge in the flat. I was sold. ‘The cottage is linked to the main house via the Smithy Barn, the former doll museum, and my intention is to open a museum of my own there,’ Grumps explained, ‘one dedicated to the study of witchcraft and paganism. I will be able to display my collection and increase my income, thus killing two birds with one stone.’ ‘Well, goodness knows, you have enough artefacts to stock ten museums, Grumps!’ I exclaimed. ‘But you surely wouldn’t run it yourself? I can’t see you selling tickets to a stream of visitors!’ ‘I fail to see why not,’ he said testily. ‘I will open only in the afternoons, from two till four, and can have my desk in one corner and let visitors roam freely, while I get on with my work. Zillah has said she will also take a hand.’ ‘But if you don’t keep an eye on the visitors, half your collection will vanish!’ ‘Oh, I think not: I will put up placards pointing out that any thieves will be cursed. In fact, I might have it printed on the back of the tickets.’ ‘That should go down well,’ I said drily. ‘It will serve: they will ignore the warning at their peril. I shall have signed copies of my books for sale too, of course, both fiction and non-fiction.’ After my first surprise, the idea began to grow on me. ‘Do you know, I think you might be right and it would be quite a money-spinner, because since that Shakespeare connection was discovered at Winter’s End, hordes of tourists come to Sticklepond. At least one caf? and a couple of gift shops have opened in the village lately, and passing trade at Felix’s bookshop is much better. There’s a strong witchcraft history in the area too.’ ‘Precisely! And besides,’ he added as a clincher, ‘the Old Smithy is on the junction of two important ley lines; that was what was so cunningly obscured from my vision by the malevolence of Another. There may even be a third – I am working on it.’ ‘I expect the conjunction of the ley lines was a major selling point the estate agents managed to miss,’ I said, ignoring the second mention of a mysterious and malevolent opponent, which was probably just a figment of his imagination. He gave me a severe look over the top of his half-moon glasses. ‘Its unique position imbues it with magical energy, my dear Chloe, and since the museum area is large, my coven may meet there with no diminution of power. Rheumatism has affected one or two of them,’ he added more prosaically, ‘and they have suggested we move to an indoor venue.’ ‘Yes, I can see that the museum would be ideal, provided you put up good, thick curtains,’ I agreed absently, still turning over the whole idea of the move in my mind. ‘What about Jake, though? He has to be able to get to sixth form college and he isn’t going to want to move away from his friends, is he?’ Though now I came to think of it, a fresh start in a new village might be a good idea for my horribly lively brother. He’s outgrown his childish pranks, but will still forever be ‘that imp of Satan’ to those inhabitants of Merchester who’ve been his victims. ‘Jake may borrow my car and drive himself to school until he has taken his final examinations, and then of course he will be off to university,’ Grumps said. ‘He likes the old Saab for some reason. In the holidays, he can help me in the museum and I will pay him.’ Grumps seemed to have it all thought out. I looked down again at the leaflet. A cottage of my own with a garden, separated from my grandfather by the width of a museum, and with room for my Chocolate Wishes business, sounded like bliss… ‘So, have you actually seen the property and made an offer for it, Grumps?’ ‘Yes, of course – and the people who want to buy this house have also been to view it, though you were out at the time. I thought I would wait until everything was signed and sealed before I told you.’ ‘I certainly didn’t see this coming!’ ‘If you will read Angel cards instead of the Tarot…Angel cards – pah!’ ‘They seem to work for me, Grumps.’ ‘Not, apparently, very well: Zillah saw the changes coming and she has already decided on her rooms in the new house.’ If Zillah knew and approved, then really, there was no more to be said: it looked like the Lyons were on the move. A thought struck me. ‘When Mum finally decides to stop playing dead and comes back, how will she find us?’ ‘Like a bad penny,’ he said bleakly. Chapter Two Satan’s Child (#ulink_37fb3781-a2f2-552c-9ca8-352abdedf959) On the way back to the flat, with a lot to think about and a chapter of Satan’s Child and three letters to type up, I found Zillah still in the kitchen stirring something savoury-smelling in a large pot. The cat, Tabitha, was draped around her neck like a black fur wrap, her tail practically in the stew. Hygiene was possibly not Zillah’s strong point but neither she nor Grumps (nor even Tabitha) ever seemed to suffer ill effects. Nor did Jake and I, come to that, because although I did some of our own cooking in the flat, we shared quite a lot of meals. We must all have been immune. ‘Zillah, if you have time, maybe you had better read my cards,’ I suggested. ‘Grumps just told me that we’re on the move.’ Zillah silently turned down the heat and put a lid on the pot, then fetched her Tarot pack and handed the cards to me to shuffle. Under my fingers they felt cool, snakily smooth and almost alive. ‘You could read them yourself,’ she grumbled as I gave them back, but she began to lay them out in a familiar pattern on the table. The cat, bored, disentwined herself and stalked off, holding up a tail like a bottlebrush that has seen better days. ‘You know I’ve given up reading them, especially for myself, because there never seemed to be good news. I simply don’t think I could bear it if I saw yet another dark stranger scheduled to enter my life bringing change, because it never turns out well,’ I added gloomily. It would have been really useful if the cards had ever given me some helpful hints about whether the changes would be good or bad too, especially regarding my ex-fianc?, David. ‘It’s all in the reading and how you interpret it, Chloe, you know that,’ Zillah said. ‘You don’t have to make a self-fulfilling prophecy.’ While I puzzled over that one, she looked at the cards that showed what was currently going on in my life. ‘Hmm…no surprises there, or in what will happen if you continue on your current course.’ She turned over more cards and pondered. ‘But my course is about to be changed, isn’t it? Not only are we moving, but Jake will be off to university later this year.’ I’d had the maternal role for my half-brother thrust upon me and I’d done my best, torn between love and resentment, but although I adore Jake, I couldn’t say I wasn’t relishing the idea of being my own woman again. That my own childhood had been a happy and secure one was entirely due to Granny but, though kindly and affectionate, Zillah seemed to have been born without a maternal gene and could not take her place. That hadn’t stopped Mum from thinking Zillah could quite easily assume Granny’s role as mother substitute when she was off with her latest lover, though – but then, she didn’t have the maternal gene either. At least Zillah loved us in her own unique way, even if, like Grumps, she didn’t find children terribly interesting until they were capable of holding a conversation. ‘It doesn’t say anything about Mum turning up again, does it?’ I asked, following this train of thought. ‘Only it would be just like her to walk back in, now there aren’t any responsibilities for her to shoulder, what with Grumps having paid her bills and Jake an adult.’ My mother had spent less and less time at the flat until she had finally vanished altogether from a Caribbean cruise six years previously and was currently presumed by everyone except the family to be dead. We presumed her to be fornicating in sunnier climes, even if this time her absence had been inordinately prolonged. Her disappearance had coincided with David jilting me, too: cause and effect. Zillah ignored me, turning over the cards showing what was happening with my relationships, which was not a lot apart from a platonic and fraternal one with my old friend Felix Hemmings, the bookseller of Sticklepond. Through the thin spiral of smoke from her latest cigarette I automatically began to read the meanings upside down, and groaned. ‘Oh, no, please don’t tell me another man really is coming into my life? I can’t bear it!’ ‘Maybe more than one person,’ she said, frowning. ‘Perhaps there’s unfinished business with someone you knew before?’ ‘No way! Now I’ve realised I’m stuck in some endless Groundhog Day cycle of love and rejection, I’m not even going to look at another man.’ ‘You can’t call two failed relationships an endless cycle, Chloe.’ ‘Two? Have you forgotten Cal, or Simon or—’ I stopped, unable to remember the faces, let alone the names, of some of my more fleeting boyfriends. ‘I did not mention men, but in any case they were obviously unmemorable. And can we help ourselves if love strikes?’ She thoughtfully fingered the card depicting a tower struck by lightning. ‘We can if it strikes twice,’ I snapped. ‘But even if I’d been tempted to take any boyfriend seriously after David jilted me, they weren’t prepared to take on Jake too. He’s the ultimate love deterrent.’ I shuddered, recalling some of the hideous pranks my inventive half-brother had got up to over the years in order to get rid of my boyfriends. I was sure Grumps had had a hand in some of the more fiendish tricks. ‘He was, but he’s now an adult, and once he’s at university he’ll have other things to think about.’ ‘So he will…and it seems like only five minutes since I went off to university, too,’ I said with a sad sigh, for that had been my one, abortive bid for independence, the year after Jake was born. It had been all too easy for Mum to absent herself for longer and longer periods, leaving me literally holding the baby, but I’d thought if she didn’t have me to fall back on, then she would be forced to stay at home and behave like other mothers. How wrong I was! I got back at the end of the first term to find she had dumped the baby in Zillah’s unwilling hands, leaving me a scribbled note with no idea of when she would return. Jake was touchingly happy to see me, making me guilty that I had been so engrossed in my love affair with Raffy that I had hardly thought of him for weeks. Grumps and Zillah were also happy to have me back, in their way, but I was the one who could have done with a mother’s tender care just then, rather than have to take on the role myself. But surprisingly, in the end, Zillah proved to be a tower of strength when I most needed one… I looked at the spread of cards again and asked hopefully, ‘Can the future be altered, Zillah?’ ‘People can change, and then the future also changes. Or perhaps the true future remains fixed, the other is merely a warning to put us on the right path to our fate.’ Her gnarled hand reached out and flipped over the final cards. ‘Your future has interesting possibilities.’ ‘What, you mean interesting in the Chinese curse sort of way?’ ‘Well, what are the angels telling you?’ she asked acerbically. ‘That change is coming, but it will all turn out right in the end.’ ‘Whatever “right” means, Chloe.’ She swept the cards together, tapped them briskly three times and wrapped them up in a piece of dark silk. Back in the flat I felt unsettled, which was hardly surprising when a positive Pandora’s Box of painful recollections kept escaping from where I thought I’d had them safely locked away. Memories not only of my first love, Raffy, which even after so many years evoked feelings of loss and betrayal far too painful to dwell on again, but also of my ex-fianc?, David. We met in Merchester’s one upmarket wine bar and he had seemed so different from any of my other, short-lived boyfriends. He was several years older, for a start, solid and dependable. Maybe I was looking for a father figure, having never had one? He was a partner in a firm of architects, so more than comfortably off, and even Jake’s attempts to get rid of him (culminating in the plague of glowing green mice in David’s flat – I have no idea how he worked that one) just made him go all quiet and forbearing. He said Jake would grow out of it – which he had, only not until David’s presence in our lives was history. And Jake had been the sticking point in the end. It was odd how I had remained completely blind to the fact that David was so jealous of my close relationship with my half-brother until that last day, only a couple of weeks before our wedding. I’d also assumed he understood that whenever my mother was away, Jake would stay with us after we were married, for the first few years at least. But as Zillah often says, men don’t understand anything unless it is spelled out for them in very plain language. ‘Jake could live with your grandfather and his housekeeper,’ David had suggested when Jake was twelve and my mother had performed her latest vanishing trick. I let the ‘housekeeper’ bit go, since although Zillah certainly wasn’t that, her role in our lives defied definition. ‘Hardly, David! Social Services aren’t going to take kindly to a twelve-year-old living with a warlock, are they?’ ‘Now, Chloe, don’t exaggerate, when you know that’s just a nom de plume he adopts for his books. He may be a little eccentric, but the whole persona…’ He smiled indulgently, his teeth very white against his tanned, handsome face. ‘It’s a publicity thing, isn’t it?’ ‘No, it’s how he is. I keep telling you.’ ‘You’ll be saying your mother is a witch next, Chloe, and has simply flown off on her broomstick.’ ‘Oh, no, she never showed any inclinations that way and although Jake is interested in witchcraft, luckily it’s only from a historical point of view. It’s just a pity Granny isn’t still around to help me bring him up, but he isn’t a bad boy really, just lively.’ David shuddered. ‘What? You like him, you said so!’ ‘Yes, of course I do, but that doesn’t mean I want to live with him. And there’s no reason why you should have to sacrifice your entire life to bringing up your half-brother, is there? Fostering might be the making of him.’ ‘Fostering? I can’t believe you would even suggest that!’ I stared at him with new eyes. ‘Anyway, it’s going to be only for a few weeks at most, until Mum comes back. The longest she’s ever been away is three months.’ David’s expression softened and he came and put his arms around me. ‘Darling, you have to accept that she isn’t coming back this time – she’s dead. I know it’s hard, but look at the facts.’ The facts, as Mum’s friend Mags had reported them, were that Mum had simply vanished into thin air one night from the cruise ship taking them between Caribbean islands (a holiday won by Mags, who was ace at making up advertising slogans). ‘Mags was lying and she isn’t dead,’ I explained. ‘She’s probably somewhere in Jamaica with a man, and when she gets tired of that, she’ll come back again. She has a very low boredom threshold.’ ‘Look, darling, she was seen on the ship the evening after it left Jamaica, wasn’t she?’ ‘Someone wearing one of her more flamboyant dresses and with dark hair was seen, but I suspect it was Mags.’ ‘But your mother’s friend is blonde – and why on earth should she go to so much trouble anyway?’ ‘A wig? My mother often wore one when her hair looked ratty. And they were in the habit of covering up for each other.’ ‘Come on, Chloe! Look, it’s been several weeks now, and I think, however hard it is, you’ll have to accept that she had too much to drink – which you know was one of her failings – and went over the side in the small hours without anyone noticing. This time she isn’t going to reappear as if nothing has happened. Which brings us back to what to do about Jake.’ ‘Nothing, because you’re wrong. I expect she’ll be back in time for our wedding, but if she isn’t, then Jake can come and live with us, can’t he? I mean, you always realised he would have to do that whenever Mum was away, didn’t you?’ David was slow to answer, probably imagining the chaos one very lively boy could cause to his immaculately ordered life and minimalist white flat. I had already unintentionally caused enough of that while cooking chicken with a dark cacao mole sauce in his kitchen: chocolate does seem to get everywhere…And evidently he hadn’t understood the strength of the bond between Jake and me. ‘I’d like it to be just the two of us, for a while at least, darling,’ he said eventually. ‘You have to accept she’s not coming back and that other, permanent arrangements need to be made. I mean, your grandfather’s got a private income, hasn’t he? He could send Jake to boarding school.’ ‘I don’t think his private income would stretch that far and anyway, Jake would hate it. He’s always seen me as more of a mother figure than Mum. I’m the security in his life, and so it would simply be another betrayal. And his friends are all here in Merchester.’ ‘Then he’d hate being transposed to a city flat, wouldn’t he?’ David said quickly. ‘Yes, but we did say we’d find a house in the country, one you could commute from. That could be somewhere round here, couldn’t it?’ ‘I meant much later, when we want a family. I’d like to have you to myself for a bit. Anyway,’ he added with a wry smile on his handsome face, ‘I’m starting to think I’m allergic to the country because I come out in this damned rash every time I visit Merchester.’ ‘You can’t really call Merchester country,’ I objected, but it was true about the mysterious rash, because even now an angry redness was creeping up from the collar of his shirt. I reminded myself to speak to Grumps about that…He and David had not really taken to each other, mainly because David spoke to him like an adult humouring a child: big mistake. He tended to take that tone with Jake too, and according to most of the locals, he’d never been any kind of child at all, but an imp of Satan. ‘Look, Chloe, I really can’t live with your brother. It isn’t fair to ask me.’ He ran his fingers through his ordered dark chestnut locks in a distracted way that showed me just how perturbed he was. He even loosened his silk tie – good grief! ‘You’ll have to find some other solution,’ he announced with finality. ‘I keep telling you Mum isn’t dead!’ I snapped, losing patience. ‘She bolts all the time, but she’ll be back eventually: I’ve read the cards and I know I’m right. What’s more, so has Zillah.’ But although they had told us that Mum was alive, they couldn’t, of course, show us where she was or how long she would be gone. ‘It’s Jake or me,’ he said quietly. ‘But, David—’ ‘Do you love me?’ ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, which I did, even if not with the searing passion of my first love. ‘But—’ ‘Me, or Jake,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t want to be hard-hearted, but it simply won’t work having him to live with us – and I’m certainly not moving here, which I’m sure you were about to suggest next.’ ‘Well, yes, but it would be only until Mum comes back.’ He sighed long-sufferingly. ‘Which she isn’t going to do.’ He put on his jacket, which had been hanging neatly over the back of a chair in the chaotic kitchen area of the flat, where the paraphernalia of my budding Chocolate Wishes business covered every surface. In fact, there was a glossy smear of tempered couverture down one immaculate sleeve, which I decided not to point out. ‘The wedding’s in less than a fortnight, so you had better make your mind up fast, Chloe, hadn’t you?’ ‘You can’t really mean you’d end it all over this, David?’ ‘Yes, I do. Make other arrangements for Jake or you can call off the wedding.’ I still didn’t really think he meant it and I might have tried to soften him up a little, but I was distracted at that moment by catching sight of the imp of Satan himself through the window. He seemed to be closing the bonnet of David’s car…But no, David was always careful to lock it, so how could Jake…? The door slammed behind David and he strode across the gravel and got into his sports car without, so far as I could see, a word or look at Jake, who was standing innocently by with his hands behind his back. The engine roared into life and then coughed a bit, before the car sputtered off down the lane. It sounded pretty ropey; I’d be surprised if it got him home without breaking down. It hadn’t, either. He’d phoned me when he finally got back, incandescent with rage. ‘That child did it – and that’s the last straw, Chloe, I mean it. Make other arrangements for him, or this is the last you’ll ever hear from me.’ So that was it, and though I was heartbroken, I was also relieved that I had discovered how jealous he was of my love for Jake before we got married. I’d already known he resented my closeness to my old friends Felix and Poppy, but thought he would get over that. Funny how you can be so blind, isn’t it? I called off the wedding, which was both expensive and difficult at that late stage, and, resigning myself to perpetual spinsterhood, settled back into my life as before. Except that this time, Mum didn’t come back. And the awful thing was, none of us missed her. Chapter Three Chocolate Wishes (#ulink_c99fd49a-29cb-5425-9962-1554cdb46d63) I was jarred back to the present by the realisation that Radio Four was now traitorously playing ‘Darker Past Mid night’, yet another damn song of Raffy’s! Is there no escape from him? You hear it everywhere since it was used as the theme song for a film. And it’s still running as the soundtrack to that hugely popular car advert – the one in which a man is driving through the night alone, when suddenly a girl appears, sitting next to him, and you’re never quite sure if he’s imagining her or if she’s a ghost… This time it was the introductory music to a supernatural story, so clearly no radio channel is safe any more. But still, at least the hated sound of it brought me back to the present, because sitting about in a murky swamp of unwanted memories, feeling like one of love’s rejects, was not going to get me anywhere. My first impulse (apart from switching off the radio) was to phone up my best friend, Poppy, who together with her mother runs a riding stables called Stirrups just outside Sticklepond, and tell her the news about the move. But she was probably taking a lesson, or was out with a hack, and, even if she wasn’t, half the time she forgets to take her mobile phone with her, or it isn’t working because she’s dropped it in a bucket of water. Felix, my other best friend, was going to an auction that day to buy more books he didn’t have room for: Marked Pages was bursting at the seams. So in the end I just did what I always did at that time: typed up Grumps’ letters on the computer and put them into envelopes ready to post, then started on the latest instalment of Satan’s Child. The new episode was surprisingly gripping, with a very scary bit when the tall, dark and compelling warlock hero (who from the detailed description looked amazingly like photographs of Grumps when younger) was inside the pentagram, while a really nasty demonic beast was testing the boundaries and trying to get in. In fact, the scene was so realistic that I started to wonder if Grumps…But no, surely not? He just has a fertile imagination, that’s all, as evidenced by his constant hints that some mysterious rival was loosing the slings and arrows of outrageous magic at him, which was probably, as Zillah said, ‘all my eye and Betty Martin’ (though don’t ask me who Betty Martin is, I have no idea). But I made a mental note that once we had moved to the Old Smithy I would take care to avoid entering the museum area when the coven was meeting. Maybe I could make a little sign for Grumps to hang on the connecting door between the cottage and the barn: DO NOT DISTURB: IN FOR A SPELL I’m a fast touch-typist so it didn’t take long to input everything. Then I printed the manuscript out ready to take it across in the morning when I collected the next lot. I sort of fell into being Grumps’ PA when I returned after that disastrous first term at university. It gave me something to occupy my mind with, while looking after Jake and waiting for Mum to come back from her latest fling, other than worrying about my future and what would happen when Raffy finally got my letter telling him everything… I wrenched my mind back from the brink of yet another pointless trip down Memory Lane and reflected that I seemed to have managed pretty well without a Significant Other for the last few years. Among my blessings I had good friends (OK, only two, Felix and Poppy, but it’s quality not quantity of friendship that counts) and a social life, though that mainly involved meeting up with them at the Falling Star in Sticklepond. I didn’t think I’d made a bad job of bringing Jake up either, considering his lively disposition: the police never pressed charges, even when he painted the Arbuthnot statue in front of the Town Hall blue. (Luckily there was a downpour soon afterwards and the emulsion was not quite dry, so most of it washed off.) And the saying ‘Who needs men when you’ve got chocolate?’ was literally true in my case, since discovering a passion for it and then building up my successful Chocolate Wishes business had certainly put the icing back on the slightly jaded cupcake of life. Little did the purchasers of my expensive chocolates know that they were whipped up practically on the kitchen table in the kitchen end of our living room. I made the chocolate shells in big batches and often spent the evenings sitting putting in the Wishes and sealing the two halves together with melted tempered chocolate (because if you don’t use tempered chocolate, you get a white line round the join). I had the TV for company if Jake was out with his friends, or shut into his room, doing whatever teenage boys do – and whatever that is, it’s probably much better that their big sisters don’t know anything about it. The flat – and probably me, too – always smelled deliciously of chocolate. Maybe that’s why Felix, who has a sweet tooth, had started to look at me in a new, slightly appraising light…unless I was imagining it? I didn’t think I was, though, unfortunately. I first noticed it about the time Grumps gave me that allegedly Mayan chocolate charm to say over the melting pot and the business took off like a rocket, though as I said, I’m sure the two events had nothing to do with each other: it was simply all my hard work paying off. I had only part of the charm anyway. Grumps was trying to decipher the rest, which was written in some form of ancient Spanish, having specialised in dead and buried languages at Oxford. One of the letters I’d just typed up was to the archivist in Spain who had found the original document among some collection of papers he was cataloguing, though like Grumps his principal interest was in ley lines. Since I’d just created a whole new batch of Wishes I had enough to keep me going for a while, so I packed and labelled that day’s orders ready to post later with Grumps’ mail. All the time I was working I was thinking about the Old Smithy and the little cottage that I would have to myself once Jake had gone off to college, and especially what I could grow in the walled garden. Certainly a greater variety of herbs and, if there was room for a bigger greenhouse for over-wintering them, I’d have lots more varieties of scented geraniums. Pelargoniums were my newest passion. There were so many kinds I hadn’t got yet…even one that was supposed to smell like chocolate! And I would have tubs of hyacinths and those small, frilly T?te-?-t?te daffodils in early spring, lavender and roses, nasturtiums, snapdragons and hollyhocks…My mind ran riot with horticultural possibilities. But I still couldn’t imagine Grumps running a museum, even a witchcraft one! He wasn’t in any way gregarious, besides being over eighty and very set in his habits, so I expected Zillah would end up collecting the entrance money and issuing tickets. But since she used to operate the Tarot-reading booth on a Lancashire seaside pier with Granny, I imagined she’d take to it like a duck to water, especially since, unlike Grumps, she was hugely inquisitive about people. Maybe she’d do Tarot readings on the side, and make herself a little nest egg? Jake came home briefly to eat and change, before going out to an eighteenth birthday party. Zillah had given me some goulash, having made gallons, so that’s what we had, together with crusty bread. I didn’t mention Tabitha’s tail to Jake, because I hoped perhaps it hadn’t quite gone into the stew pot. The goulash tasted OK, anyway. We followed it up with blackberry crumble, out of the freezer, with ice cream and then, while Jake filled any remaining interior spaces with about half a pound of crumbly Lancashire cheese (he is a bottomless pit as far as food is concerned), I broke the news of our imminent move to Sticklepond. He stopped shovelling food in and stared at me through a lot of thick, blue-black hair. When it isn’t dyed, it’s the same dark brown as mine and our colouring is quite similar, apart from his brown eyes. Mine are the typical Lyon grey. Jake’s father was an Italian waiter Mum met on holiday, while mine was Chas Wilde, the former manager of the Pan’s People-type dance troupe she performed in during the late sixties and early seventies, along with her friends Mags (Felix’s mother) and Janey (Poppy’s). Mum told me herself she only had me as an insurance policy after Wilde’s Women disbanded, since Chas was married and so paid up without a murmur to keep her from letting the cat – or the baby – out of the bag. But none of the three of them was much good in the motherhood stakes, which is probably why Felix, Poppy and I have such close bonds of friendship: we’ve always looked out for each other. Jake resumed chewing, swallowed, then said, ‘Grumps showed me the house agent’s leaflet and asked me what I thought of the Old Smithy ages ago. I didn’t think he was going to buy it, though. I just thought he was interested because it’s at the junction of two important ley lines.’ ‘Yes, that does seem to have been his driving motivation,’ I admitted, ‘but also he’s had a very good offer for this house, much more than it’s worth. Did you know that he intends reopening the Old Smithy as a museum, too?’ And I told him about Grumps’ plans. ‘So, you and me are to move into the little cottage, then? How do I get to college from Sticklepond – can I borrow your car?’ ‘No way! But Grumps says you can use the Saab.’ ‘Even better. I look stupid in your baby Fiat.’ ‘I’m going to try and get the Old Smithy key tomorrow and have a look, but it has two bedrooms and there’s a bathroom, though I don’t think any of it is terribly modern. One room downstairs was extended into a shop front for Aimee Frinton’s doll’s hospital.’ ‘For what?’ ‘One of the Frinton sisters mended dolls and teddy bears. There used to be a lot of doll’s hospitals, before mass-produced cheap toys took over. Grumps thinks it would be perfect for making Chocolate Wishes and I could even sell them directly to the public, if I wanted to.’ ‘You’ll be practically round the corner from Felix’s shop, too,’ Jake pointed out in a casual manner that didn’t fool me in the least, ‘so you can see a lot more of him.’ ‘I see quite a lot of him already,’ I said mildly. Having done his best to get rid of potential suitors for years, Jake had recently started to try to push me and Felix together – maybe that’s what gave Felix the idea in the first place? I suspected it was because Jake was about to fly the nest and felt guilty at leaving me alone, but little did he know how much I was looking forward to some me-time! Anyway, it was pointless, because I simply couldn’t feel that way about Felix – he was more like family. Wilde’s Women finally folded in the early seventies, when Janey suddenly married and had Poppy and then, as I’ve said, Mum had me for her own dubious reasons. Felix was a few years older, having been Mags’ teenage mistake, so he was always a protective older brother figure to us. So, you see, that’s why I loved my friend like a brother, my brother like a son and my mother…not at all. Was it any wonder I’d always had trouble with relationships? ‘Poppy’s only a couple of miles out of Sticklepond on the Neatslake road, so I can see a lot more of her too,’ I added pointedly. Jake looked at the clock and rose to his feet. ‘I’d better go. Ben’s picking me up in a minute.’ ‘Well, remember, Jake—’ I began warningly. ‘I know, I know,’ he interrupted me good-humouredly, shrugging himself into the long, black leather coat it had taken me ages – and hundreds of Chocolate Wishes – to save up for. ‘No drugs or drinking to excess, and safe sex – I should be so lucky!’ ‘Jake!’ I exclaimed, but he was gone. I felt like every exhausted mother of a teenager, trying to walk the fine line between keeping him safe and coming across as boringly old and uncool. And the irony of it was, I wasn’t even a mother. I rang Stirrups up later and told Poppy about Grumps buying the Old Smithy. ‘But that’s amazing!’ she exclaimed. ‘We were only discussing it at the last Sticklepond Parish Council meeting, because my cousin Conrad told me it had been sold and it was going to reopen as a museum. Didn’t I tell you?’ ‘Well, you might have done, but I’d forgotten.’ She and Felix are both on the Parish Council so they often tell me what they have been discussing, but it had never seemed either interesting or relevant – until then. ‘I can’t think why Con didn’t tell me who was buying it!’ she said. ‘Grumps probably swore him to secrecy, you know what he’s like. And why were you discussing it at the meeting? I wouldn’t have thought it would need planning permission, since it’s already been a museum. And the shop in the little cottage shouldn’t either, because that was Aimee Frinton’s doll’s hospital.’ ‘I don’t suppose either of them will need permission and we weren’t so much discussing it as chatting at the end about how many tourists the Shakespeare manuscript find at Winter’s End brings to the village, which is why we’ve got all the new gift shops and caf?s and the Witch Craft Gallery to cater for them. Even Stirrups is doing much better and Marked Pages gets lots more passing trade. So everyone was really pleased the Old Smithy is going to be both a family home and museum again. They hope it will be something suitable, like the doll’s—’ She broke off abruptly, so I expect she’d tried to put dolls and Grumps into the same mental picture frame and failed dismally to marry the two. ‘No, of course it won’t be dolls, will it? Silly me!’ ‘The only sort of doll Grumps might have in his museum is a poppet.’ ‘Poppet?’ ‘An image of someone used in magic.’ ‘You mean like a voodoo doll? Pins and stuff?’ ‘Sort of. They can be used for good things as well as bad.’ I paused. ‘So, do you think perhaps a museum of witchcraft and paganism might not be quite what the Parish Council is hoping for?’ ‘Well…no, not exactly. But I’m sure it will be hugely popular,’ she added hastily, ‘though I don’t quite know how Hebe Winter will take it.’ ‘You mean that having been the only witch in the village for so long, she might take umbrage when Grumps arrives?’ Poppy giggled. ‘Chloe, you can’t call her a witch. She goes to church and everything!’ ‘But Winter witches do, don’t they? In any case, she’s a much whiter witch than poor old Grumps. I’m pretty sure he strays across the line into the grey bits from time to time, though always with the best of intentions.’ ‘I think your grandfather is scary.’ ‘You know he’s all bark and not a lot of bite, really.’ ‘I can’t forget that when I was small he used to look at me as though he would like to turn me into something froglike. The fear has never quite worn off.’ ‘He doesn’t see any point in babies and children until they’re old enough to hold a sensible conversation,’ I explained. ‘It isn’t that he doesn’t love us, in his own way.’ ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Poppy said, not sounding totally convinced. ‘But your granny was adorable.’ ‘She was, wasn’t she? And though Zillah couldn’t take her place, I’m very fond of her, too.’ ‘Hebe Winter calls herself a herbalist, rather than a witch,’ Poppy said, reverting to the previous topic. ‘I’ve heard some of the potions, like the love philtre, really work – and actually, I bought one!’ ‘Poppy! Who are you thinking of trying it on?’ I demanded, because although neither of us had been lucky in love, Poppy still hadn’t totally given up hope of finding Mr Right, and she was such a truly special person she deserved all the happy-ever-afterness going. ‘Oh, no one,’ she said hastily. ‘It was just an impulse, Chloe. You know me – I can’t love anything without four hoofs and a mane.’ ‘I think that’s a slight exaggeration. You just haven’t met the right man yet, that’s all.’ ‘I think I often have, it’s just that they don’t think I’m the right girl. And nobody at all wanted to meet me from that internet dating site I joined.’ ‘Probably just as well, because you can’t tell what kind of men you’re in contact with. They could be really weird.’ ‘I suppose you’re right and at least if you’re going to be living nearby we can meet more often, so that will be fun.’ ‘And Felix too – we can be three singletons together,’ I agreed. ‘The Lonely Hearts Club of Sticklepond. Meanwhile, perhaps you’d better keep the news about who’s bought the Old Smithy to yourself for a bit, Poppy, if you think it might make an upset. Let it suddenly burst on Sticklepond as a fait accompli.’ ‘But you’ll tell Felix, won’t you?’ ‘Yes, I’m going to ring him in a minute, but I’ll swear him to secrecy too. In fact, the reason why I’m ringing you now is because I’ve arranged to get the keys to the Smithy from Conrad tomorrow, and I thought you might be able to get away and meet me for lunch in the Falling Star afterwards, so I can tell you all about it.’ ‘Hang on, I’ll just ask Mum how we’re fixed.’ She covered the phone, but I could still hear her shouting: ‘Mum! Chloe wants me to meet her for lunch tomorrow – could you manage? What…?’ But although Poppy’s mother has an equally healthy pair of lungs (despite being a chain smoker), the other end of the conversation was just a faint noise in the background, so she must have been upstairs. Poppy came back on. ‘Mum says that’s OK. It’s a quiet day for lessons and the work experience girl can help her muck out and clean the tack.’ ‘About twelve then – and you can tell me what you’ve been doing recently.’ ‘Not a lot. Staying up all night with a pony with laminitis is about the most exciting it’s got lately,’ she said sadly. ‘Oh, except that at the last Parish Council meeting, before we started talking about the museum, Miss Winter said the bishop is still looking for a non-stipendiary vicar to take over All Angels, because the alternative is to amalgamate our parish with another one and none of us is keen on that. That’s what the last emergency Parish Council meeting was about, and there’s yet another one this evening, so perhaps he’s actually found us a vicar now – but I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.’ ‘I can hardly wait.’ ‘At least we will be back in the village hall tonight. We had to have the last meeting in the church vestry because the Scouts were clearing away their jumble sale, and it was freezing. Mr Merryman, the temporary vicar, seems a very nervous man, though I don’t think the fact that three of the council were already wearing Elizabethan dress for the Re-enactment Society meeting afterwards really helped – Miss Winter as Queen Elizabeth the First is quite terrifying! And then Mr Lees, the organist, was practising fugues all the way through, so that was really gloomy.’ ‘I can imagine. And what did you say a non-stipendiary vicar was, again?’ ‘Someone who has got ordained but doesn’t need a salary, basically.’ ‘Oh, right – an economy vicar. And tell me again, who’s on the Parish Council as well as you and Felix and Miss Winter as chairman?’ ‘I don’t think you ever listen to a word I say,’ she complained, but complied. ‘Well, there’s the Winter’s End steward, Laurence Yatton…’ ‘Oh, I know – elderly, silver-haired and handsome, drives an old Land Rover.’ ‘Yes, that’s him. And you’ve probably seen his sister Effie, too. She used to be a gym mistress in a private school but now she works off all that excess energy by running the Brownies, the tennis club and the Elizabethan Re-enactment Society. Then there’s the vicar and the village policeman, Mike Berry.’ ‘I’ve met Mike a couple of times in Felix’s shop with his girlfriend, Anya, the one with red dreadlocks.’ ‘Yes, she’s very nice, isn’t she? She’s an old friend of Sophy Winter, who inherited the Winter’s End estate the year before last and she runs the gift shop there when the house is open to the public.’ ‘Is that everyone?’ She counted up: ‘Me, Felix, Miss Winter, the vicar, Mike, Laurence and Effie…Yes, that’s it.’ ‘Small, but perfectly formed,’ I commented. When I rang Felix he wanted to come over to the Old Smithy with me, but I wouldn’t let him. It was hard to explain, but I felt I wanted to be on my own this first time, especially when I saw the cottage where Jake and I would be living. He agreed to meet me and Poppy at the pub at twelve, though, to hear all about it. ‘In fact, I might as well shut for the whole day; the village is as quiet as a grave and probably will be until Easter, when Winter’s End reopens.’ ‘Oh, I think it might get slightly livelier before that. Don’t forget, Jake will be moving in too.’ ‘Oh my God!’ he said, though actually he had suffered much less from Jake’s practical jokes and general awfulness than any of my boyfriends had, probably due to being just a friend rather than a potential suitor who might take me away. ‘Not to worry, he seemed to grow out of that phase ages ago,’ I assured him. ‘Or maybe he just stopped because I’d finally given up on men?’ ‘But you haven’t really, of course, you’ve just been busy like me and the years have slipped away,’ he said. ‘Then one morning you wake up and think how nice it would be to have another person there to share things with, someone undemanding and comfortable and—’ ‘Like a cosy pair of slippers?’ I suggested sweetly. ‘Well, you are older than me, Felix, so I’m not saying I might not feel like that one day, but if I do, I’ll get a dog.’ Chapter Four Falling Star (#ulink_acaec168-d9ef-571f-9b8b-d0d630073eb7) As usual I couldn’t fall asleep that night until I heard Jake come in, which he did fairly quietly considering the size of his big, black boots. But I still got up extra early next morning, so I had time to pick up the latest chapter from Grumps and pack Chocolate Wishes orders, before driving over to Sticklepond. I collected the key from the house agents on the way there – the main branch is here in Merchester – and promised Poppy’s cousin Conrad that I would lock it up carefully behind me and return them later. ‘Not that I’ve shown the property to anyone else since the Misses Frinton accepted your grandfather’s offer, of course,’ Conrad said quickly. ‘And even before that, once he’d expressed an interest in buying it, because he told me—’ He broke off, looking embarrassed and uncomfortable. ‘He told you that if you did, he would put a curse on you, one that would render your life unutterably hideous?’ I asked helpfully. ‘Er…yes,’ he agreed sheepishly. ‘Of course, he was joking – I know your grandfather!’ He didn’t sound too sure about it, though. The Old Smithy is at the very end of the High Street, almost opposite the Falling Star, where I was to meet Felix and Poppy later. As I drove past, Mrs Snowball, the publican’s ninety-year-old mother, was outside the front door donkey-stoning a square of the grey pavement into sparkling whiteness. She’d done it all her life and old habits died hard. Behind her, the meteor-shaped brass door knocker sparkled blindingly in the weak February sunshine. The Falling Star is much older than the Green Man, the more popular pub at the other end of the village, and since it was once a coaching inn, I suppose it made sense at the time to have the blacksmith nearby. The Old Smithy itself is a collection of mismatched parts that have been rendered into a vaguely cohesive whole by the application of a lot of whitewash. As I arrived I was just in time to see the museum sign being loaded into a large van, presumably at Grumps’ direction, to be repainted. He must be pretty sure of himself, because I didn’t think he’d exchanged contracts yet, though I could have been wrong – he was infuriatingly secretive. Following Conrad’s directions, I parked in the small gravelled area behind the museum, which was sheltered by a bronze-leaved beech hedge. I had the most enormous bunch of keys, some of them so ancient as to be collector’s pieces, but luckily they were all labelled. I started with the Victorian house, which was quite substantial and also, since it was where the Frinton sisters had lived, perfectly comfortable and up to date as regards bathrooms and electrical wiring. If the d?cor was a trifle on the gloomy Victorian side, then so too was Grumps. But the scarlet Aga in the enormous kitchen struck a surprisingly modern note and Zillah would adore it. By the time she had swathed the windows in bright lengths of fabric in clashing colours, littered the place with lace-edged runners, splashily painted toleware jugs and hideous ornaments constructed out of seashells, it would look like an explosion inside a traditional gypsy vardo, just as our present kitchen did. A door from an inner hallway gave access to the museum, which was quite big, with a wooden floor and lots of ceiling lights. There were rows of empty glass display cabinets and a fixed mahogany desk near the museum entrance, with a cash drawer and a yellowing roll of admission tickets, all a bit sad and dusty. The room was certainly more than large enough to accommodate all of Grumps’ treasures, even if he divided one end off for his meetings. I hoped it would be the end furthest away from my cottage. And the cottage was the thing I most wanted to see – so of course I’d left it till last, like you do with the most exciting-looking present under the Christmas tree. But now I found the key for the door and entered what would be my new home with a feeling of excited anticipation. I went down two shallow, worn steps, straight into what had been the doll’s hospital, with a glazed shop window built out onto Angel Lane, round the corner from the museum. Presumably the Misses Frinton had had the extension done long before planning regulations became so restrictive. A polished wooden counter ran right across the front of the room and behind it were worktops, a sink and racks of drawers labelled with fascinating things like ‘Teddy Bear Noses’, ‘Doll’s Eyes – Blue’ and ‘Whiskers – Large, Black’. There were several electric sockets where I could plug in the Bath – the machine that tempered the couverture chocolate – and even a small double gas ring, presumably once used for melting glue, or something like that, but now perfect for a bain-marie, or for making toffee. The place was ideal! Behind it was a small sitting room that looked as if it had been used most recently for storage, since the one bare bulb dangling from the ceiling shone down onto flattened cardboard cartons littering the balding lino floor. The deeply recessed window facing onto the garden was murky and festooned with furry cobwebs, but had a seat built in beneath it. There was an open fireplace bordered by art nouveau purplish-pink glazed tiles, and a twisting staircase went up in one corner behind what I had thought was a cupboard door until I opened it. The kitchen had been added onto the back at some more recent point in time, with a very utilitarian white bathroom above it – though I was just grateful it had one at all and not just an outside toilet! But Grumps had said something about the Frintons having had tenants in the cottage in the dim and distant past, so I suppose they had updated it a bit then. Upstairs, as well as the bathroom, were two bedrooms and a small airing cupboard housing the water tank and an ancient immersion heater – all mod cons provided! And although the cottage smelled chilly and unused, it didn’t seem damp and the thick stone walls would keep the heat in in winter, and out in summer. Finally I went out through the kitchen into the garden, which was surrounded by a tall wall of mellow bricks, with matching paths in a herringbone pattern, slimy with damp and disuse. Large, half-moon beds ran around the walls and there was a big central round bed in which was a tree – plum, I suspected. It looked half dead, but plum trees love to fool you like that. It was all very overgrown, and at this time of year it was hard to tell what was there. It would be exciting to see what came up in the spring, and to clear and replant parts of it. There was certainly lots of room for my pots and my little greenhouse – there was even sufficient space to have a bigger one, when I could afford it. I absolutely loved it – it was like having my very own Secret Garden – and I decided then and there that I would have the back bedroom overlooking the courtyard, leaving the front for Jake, even though it was slightly larger. When I finally looked at my watch it was already noon and I had been there for hours, although it felt more like minutes! I left hastily, retracing my path through the Old Smithy and the house, locking the doors behind me, one by one. When I emerged the road was momentarily deserted, though to the right I could just see Felix’s swinging sign for Marked Pages, the first of the High Street shops. They were increasing steadily in number: as well as the Spar near the Green and an old-established saddlers, there was now a new caf?-cum-craft gallery (Witch Crafts), a delicatessen and a couple of gift shops. Another teashop was in the throes of being renovated. The Shakespeare find at Winter’s End a couple of years ago had really revitalised the village, so Grumps was lucky to have got the Old Smithy, especially at what seemed to be a very advantageous price. I wondered how he’d managed that. There was no sign of Felix and Poppy until I crossed the road to the Falling Star and saw them waving at me from the bow window of the snug. Mind you, if I didn’t know them so well, I wouldn’t have recognised them behind the thick bull’s-eye glass panes, because they looked like dubious sea creatures seen dimly lurking in green waters. As usual I tried to avoid stepping on the clean square of pavement as I went in, because it seemed an unlucky thing to do. Mrs Snowball was now sitting behind a tiny reception desk under the stairway (the inn lets rooms, mostly to business reps), knitting something voluminously pink and fluffy while watching a portable TV. She looked up at me, described a suspiciously pentagram-like shape in the air with one needle, and grinned gappily. Oh God, not another of them? She’d never done that before! Slightly shaken, I turned right into the snug, where Felix was now at the bar buying me a ladylike half of bitter shandy (I was driving, after all). He turned and gave me a hug – a tall, loose-limbed man with soft, light brown eyes, floppy hair and the sort of nose that has a knobbly bit in the middle. It’s a nice face, in its way, but you can’t call it handsome. ‘Hi, Chloe – you look lovely,’ he said warmly, though I was just wearing jeans garnished with cobwebs and the odd streak of garden slime, but he’d probably just said exactly the same to Poppy, because he’s nothing if not kind. I sometimes think I’m imagining that he’s trying to move our relationship onto a new, more romantic footing and actually I do truly hope so, because I like things just the way they are. ‘Is that my drink? I’ll carry it, then you can manage the other two,’ I said, kissing his cheek. He smelled, not un-attractively, of old leather book bindings. ‘Look what Felix found for me!’ called Poppy, gaily waving a paperback copy of I Had Two Ponies by Josephine Pullein-Thompson. ‘The last one of hers I hadn’t got!’ ‘Great,’ I said, sitting down next to her. She smelled of sweet hay and horses, and I expect I was permanently chocolate-fragranced, with just a hint of scented geranium, so anyone with a good nose could guess blindfold what the three of us did for a living. ‘I thought I had a Heyer for you, Chloe, but the cover was torn,’ Felix said. While Poppy loves old children’s pony adventure books, I collect vintage Georgette Heyer hardbacks in those lovely, misty, dream-like paper jackets. Felix also looks out for the rarer volumes Grumps would like to add to his already huge, esoteric and eclectic library, which is probably where most of his income goes. Poppy was almost as excited about my moving to the Old Smithy as I was. ‘But I still think it was mean, not letting us view it with you.’ ‘I just wanted to see it on my own the first time,’ I explained. ‘I’ll have to come back and measure for curtains and furniture, so perhaps if you can both get away, you can see it then?’ ‘I’ve been in the museum and the doll’s hospital, but not for years,’ Poppy said. ‘So, what’s the rest like?’ I described it all in detail, but I may have dwelled rather longer on the garden than the rest of it put together. Anyway, they both generously volunteered to help me clean and paint the cottage. ‘Or anything, really, that you need another pair of hands to do,’ Poppy added. ‘Now, do you want to hear our news?’ ‘Our?’ I looked from one to the other of them, with a raised eyebrow. ‘You’re getting married and you want me to be bridesmaid?’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ Poppy giggled. ‘It would be nice to settle down with someone, though, wouldn’t it?’ Felix suggested rather pointedly. ‘Just not Poppy!’ ‘Yes, because the three of us are so like family that it would be like marrying a sibling,’ she agreed. ‘Completely out of the question.’ ‘It certainly would be,’ I agreed heartily, and Felix looked gloomy. Poppy said, ‘What I meant was the news from last night’s emergency Parish Council meeting.’ ‘Did you tell them that Grumps had bought the museum?’ ‘No, though I expect we both looked totally guilty. Luckily, something else was distracting Miss Winter, because she usually has eagle eyes. You remember I told you that the bishop was trying to find a non-stipendiary vicar to take over All Angels?’ I nodded. ‘Have they found one?’ ‘Yes, and the brilliant thing is that he’s buying the vicarage too!’ ‘And he’s the kind of vicar you were telling me about, who doesn’t need to be paid?’ I asked. ‘A freebie?’ ‘Well, in effect,’ Felix agreed. ‘Basically, it’s someone who’s been ordained but is either still following another career, or so rich he doesn’t need a salary. Hebe Winter is terribly pleased about it, but the bishop didn’t say a lot about the new vicar except that he used to be some kind of pop star. And she seemed to think that when he came to look at the vicarage he should have called in to see her too, so she was a bit narked about that.’ ‘I expect he came when the estate agents had that open day and perhaps he hadn’t even made his mind up to move to Sticklepond then. But isn’t that exciting news, Chloe?’ Poppy’s cheeks glowed and her eyes, the soft blue of washed-out denim, sparkled. ‘An ex-pop star! I thought it might be Cliff Richard, but Hebe says that’s daft.’ ‘It is daft. Everyone would know if he’d taken holy orders,’ Felix pointed out. ‘Yes, but then who on earth could it be?’ ‘I think one of the Communards got ordained,’ I offered. ‘I didn’t know that,’ Felix said. ‘You’ll have to come to church and see him when he arrives, whoever he is,’ Poppy suggested. ‘Come on, Poppy, you know I haven’t been inside a church in my life! Grumps would have forty fits, the earth would tremble and the spire crumble to dust.’ ‘No, I’m sure it wouldn’t. Remember the angel in the churchyard?’ she reminded me. ‘I think she was trying to tell you something, so perhaps you should try it and see.’ ‘What? Which angel?’ Felix demanded. ‘Have you two been keeping secrets from me?’ I hesitated. We’d never discussed the angel with anyone except Granny, and at this length of time it was hard to know how much of what we remembered was real and what imagined. ‘Oh,’ I said as lightly as I could, ‘it was something that happened when we were little girls. Poppy had come to stay for a couple of nights because Janey was in hospital and since Mum was away too, we were in a bedroom in the main part of the house, near Granny. The window looks down over the wall into the old churchyard and the first night we both saw…well, we saw a white figure. With wings.’ ‘An angel,’ Poppy agreed positively. ‘But surely the churchyard is full of white marble angels?’ suggested Felix. ‘Two over-excited and tired little girls, late at night…the imagination does play tricks.’ ‘The angel was moving and we could see her clearly even though it was a misty night – swirly mist, like in horror films, only this wasn’t frightening.’ ‘Her face was a bit scary though,’ Poppy put in. ‘Scary?’ ‘I didn’t really mean scary – just sort of beautiful, but remote,’ she explained. ‘And then Chloe’s granny heard us whispering and came in, and when we told her and looked for the angel, she had gone.’ ‘There had to be a rational explanation,’ Felix said. ‘No, it was a holy sign,’ Poppy insisted. ‘We were going to stay up and watch for it again the next night, I remember, but your mum came home, Chloe, so we moved back into your room in the flat.’ ‘You know, I’d forgotten that! And Granny said she didn’t think we would see it twice anyway.’ ‘Oh well,’ Felix said good-naturedly, ‘I can see you both believe in it, so I’ll have to believe it too. But I see now why you have a thing about angels, Chloe.’ ‘We all have guardian angels, Felix. I told you that when I read the oracle cards for you.’ He looked over his shoulder nervously, as if his might be standing right behind him. ‘Let’s have another drink,’ he suggested. ‘Not for me. I have to get back and type up some letters for Grumps, and then make a big batch of Wishes because my stock of hearts plummeted what with Valentine’s Day coming up – I had loads of orders this morning.’ ‘And the blacksmith’s coming out any minute now,’ Poppy said. ‘Honeybun’s cast one of his shoes and it’s hardly worn, so I want to walk the paddock and try and find it before he gets there.’ ‘I suppose I might as well go back and open the shop up then,’ Felix said. ‘I’m thinking of putting a sofa into the front room and a coffee machine to attract people in – what do you think?’ ‘It’s a good idea. And you can leave out leaflets for Grumps’ museum when he opens, and we can have information about your bookshop on display,’ I said. ‘Mutual publicity.’ ‘Oh, but just wait until Hebe finds out about the witchcraft museum!’ Poppy said, shuddering. ‘Sparks will fly!’ ‘I sincerely hope you’re wrong,’ I replied. ‘I get enough of that with Jake and those firesticks he’s borrowed from a friend!’ Chapter Five Pay Dirt (#ulink_faeb540a-b0cc-5289-b6b6-27d52d825804) Grumps had exchanged contracts, so life suddenly became very hectic and I wished he or Zillah had given me a bit more warning about the move. My Angel card readings kept helpfully suggesting I spend a day at the seaside, or visit a garden to soothe my soul ready for a major but fortuitous change of direction, but there wasn’t time. My batteries would simply have to recharge themselves with solar power. By some alchemy (or so he said), Grumps had managed to get the purchasers of our home to let us stay there for two weeks while the Old Smithy was cleaned and repainted inside and out. They were a pleasant pair of middle-aged American antique dealers and I wondered why on earth they had fallen in love with a shabby chunk of Victorian Gothic, situated right next to a graveyard. I didn’t want to rock the boat by asking them, though. Felix recommended the painters and decorators he’d used when he moved Marked Pages from Merchester to Sticklepond a few years before, and he also suggested a local cleaning firm called Dolly Mops. Grumps must have promised them each an enticing bonus if they finished in record time, because the work was well under way when I went back with Poppy only a couple of days after my initial visit, in order to measure for curtains. Grumps did not revisit, but ordered everything from afar, choosing the interior paintwork colours from the gloomier end of the Farrow and Ball range and stipulating that all the original William Morris wallpaper was to remain. But Zillah had free range in the kitchen, her sitting room and her own bedroom suite, where a bold paper featuring an unlikely combination of giant red peonies against a blue trellis was destined to reign supreme. It was lucky that Grumps’ new home was also Victorian Gothic, because it meant that most of the furniture and curtains he already had turned out to fit perfectly. Even his huge range of bookshelves could be accommodated in the room that was designated as his new study. Our flat was a more recent addition, furnished with a mixture of the cheap modern stuff that my mother had favoured and bits and pieces I’d picked up in junk shops. Most of it just wouldn’t fit, and anyway, it was such a pretty little cottage that I yearned to go all chintzy and cabbage-rosy. Of course, Jake wanted his new bedroom painted black, like his present one, and threw a teenage hissy fit when I said the whole house was going to be cream with touches of the old-rose purply-pink colour of the tiles in the sitting-room fireplace, or as near as I could get to it. But in the interests of fraternal harmony we compromised eventually: he was to have one wall painted purple, plus some new black and purple curtains and a matching bed throw – very retro. It sounded vile, but could easily be fixed when he grew out of this phase…if he ever did. Grumps had opted to have the removal men pack everything up, and then unpack again at the other end, but Jake and I decided to do our own. Jake, because he was at just that secretive age when your most treasured possessions might be misinterpreted by alien (or even sisterly) eyes, and me because I didn’t have a huge amount of stuff…apart from the Chocolate Wishes equipment and stock, about a million ornamental angels and dozens of potted geraniums. And I had to make arrangements to move the geraniums, the mini greenhouse and all the pots and tubs of plants in the courtyard myself, since the removal firm refused to take them. ‘Poppy and I found some rose-patterned Laura Ashley curtains for the cottage in a charity shop in Ormskirk yesterday,’ I told Grumps, when I went in to collect the latest chapter of Satan’s Child and a letter that seemed to consist of several pages of barely veiled but mysterious threats. It was addressed to a book reviewer who had dared to say rude things about his last novel, The Desirous Devil. ‘And a lovely coffee table – it’s a big brass tray on knobbly black wooden tripod legs.’ Grumps had generously given me a cheque to buy anything I needed for my new home, but I was making it stretch as far as possible. Anyway, it’s much more fun (and a lot more ecologically sound) to search out stuff from charity and junk shops, though there wasn’t much time. It was just as well Stirrups was quiet at this time of year, so Poppy could get away occasionally and help me. I wasn’t really expecting Grumps to be terribly interested in what I was saying, so I was surprised when he stopped scribbling on a bit of paper, looked up and said, ‘I seem to recall that there are one or two pieces of furniture stored in the attic. Perhaps there might be something you would want among them? In any case, someone should decide what is worth taking with us, or can be left for the Meerlings.’ ‘Marlings,’ I corrected. ‘OK, I’ll sort that out, Grumps. And you’ve reminded me – that’s where I put Mum’s stuff, so I’d better go through it, hadn’t I? She isn’t going to want any of her clothes when she does come back now – they’ll be out of fashion – though I suppose I’ll have to keep her personal possessions.’ The day I put them up there was not a happy one. For some reason, Jake had been totally convinced Mum would turn up on the first anniversary of her disappearing trick and was correspondingly so deeply upset when she didn’t, in an angry, thirteen-year-old sort of way, that he took it out by trashing his bicycle with a tyre wrench and then vanishing for hours. In his absence I had shoved all her possessions into old suitcases and boxes, clearing the flat of any lingering trace of her presence, and I hadn’t thought about them since. ‘Label anything Lou might still want and it can be transferred to the attic of the new house,’ Grumps suggested. ‘OK. There shouldn’t be much.’ I paused. ‘Do you think she will ever come back? It’s been a long time.’ ‘You would need to ask Zillah that, but I would much prefer she didn’t. Life is more tranquil without her, and Zillah assures me that she is alive and well.’ He held out the slip of paper he had been covering in his black, crabbed writing and added, ‘The ancient Mayan chocolate charm I gave you was, if you remember my saying so, incomplete. I think I have managed to translate a little more with the help of my friend in Cordoba. He wrote to me this morning with some suggestions. You might want to add the additional lines when you are preparing your chocolate.’ ‘Since the ancient Mayan people didn’t have a written language, I can’t imagine how they could pass down a charm for chocolate making anyway, Grumps!’ ‘There is such a thing as oral history, you know, Chloe, and no reason why such a thing should not have been written down by one of the early Spanish conquistadores – as it was – and carried back to Spain.’ ‘Yes, but—’ ‘Just have faith. The last version worked, to a certain extent, did it not? Business boomed.’ ‘My sales did rise,’ I admitted, though I was sure that had more to do with the excellence of the chocolate and the novelty of the concept, rather than the brief incantation of some probably spurious spell over the tempering pot. Just out of curiosity, when he had managed to decipher the whole thing I thought I should try a sort of blind chocolate tasting session, with Felix and Poppy as the guinea pigs, to see if they thought it made any difference to the taste. I found one or two dust-sheeted gems among the rolls of moth-eaten carpet and broken furniture up in the attic – a white Lloyd Loom chair and matching small ottoman that would be lovely in my bedroom. I put them to one side and labelled them for the removal men, along with a small mirror that some long-gone Victorian miss had adorned with a frame of shells. A few were broken or missing, but I had an old sweet jar full of seaside treasures that Jake and I had collected when he was a little boy, so I could easily replace them. Other than that, there was just a sad huddle of Mum’s stuff. There weren’t any books (like Zillah, she didn’t read anything except magazines) and not much paperwork, since when it became clear that she wasn’t coming back any time soon, Grumps had taken her bank and credit card statements so he could settle her affairs, though I was sure he was under no legal obligation to do that. We thought escaping her spiralling debts was part of the reason she took off in the first place. I’d packed up what was left, together with her costume jewellery, makeup and beauty aids. Most of her extensive wardrobe I’d crammed into a huge cabin trunk that was already up here. Now I opened the lid, releasing a wave of Je Reviens and a lot of unwanted memories of when I had been a small child, convinced it was my fault that my mother didn’t seem to love me very much… I’d brought a roll of strong plastic bin bags with me and began to fill them with clothes. There were a lot of expensive labels in there, and even though they were out of date I could probably have made some money selling them on eBay. But there was not much time and, besides, I just wanted to clear as much of her out of our lives as possible. Time for Jake and me to have a whole, fresh new start. As I filled the bags and repacked the old suitcases, I carried them all the way down to the front hall and stacked them ready to go to a local charity shop, so I was getting tired, hot and grubby by the time I reached the last couple of boxes. The first and largest one was full of bric-a-brac, teddy bears and various trashy holiday souvenirs, so I labelled that for the attic and moved it over with the furniture that was going to the new house. Finally I was left with just a large shoebox of old letters. I hadn’t looked at them when I was packing her stuff up, but now I found myself sitting under the skylight on the Lloyd Loom chair with the contents spread across the top of the ottoman. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to read them; I didn’t really think they would suddenly illuminate some depths that my shallow and self-centred mother had kept hidden because I was sure she hadn’t got any. What you saw was what you got. There wasn’t a huge collection, though some dated back to just before I was born. My mother had scrawled remarks on a couple of the envelopes like ‘Yes!!!’ and ‘Result!!!’ so I started with those – and hit pay dirt with the very first one. Then, with horrified illumination dawning, I went through all of the rest, finishing with a couple of notes in Mags’ distinctive handwriting. After that, I just sat there unconscious of time passing, my lap full of secrets and lies, until I heard the unmistakable thumping of Jake’s big boots on the wooden attic stairs. Hastily bundling all the letters together, I thrust them back into the box and crammed on the lid, wishing what I had learned could be as neatly packed away and forgotten. ‘What on earth are you doing up here?’ Jake demanded, ducking his head to get through the low doorway. ‘The lights and radio are on in the flat, but Zillah hadn’t seen you for hours. I thought you’d vanished.’ ‘Like Mum’ was the unspoken inference. I’m sure that’s why he had always got rid of my boyfriends – every time I’d gone out with one of them, he’d been afraid I wouldn’t come back. ‘Sorry, Jake. Grumps asked me to sort things out up here ready for the move, and I lost track of time.’ ‘You look a bit pale.’ ‘I’m tired, I’ve been up and down stairs with bags of stuff. But I’ve just about finished now and I found this lovely Lloyd Loom furniture for my bedroom. What do you think?’ ‘It’s a bit girly,’ he commented, his attention clearly elsewhere. ‘But I like that huge trunk with all the travel stickers on it! Do you think Grumps would let me have it?’ ‘It would take up an awful lot of floor space in your room, you know.’ ‘Maybe, but I could store loads of stuff in it, so the rest of my room would actually be much tidier,’ he suggested cunningly. ‘I suppose it would fit at the foot of your bed, if you really wanted it, and Grumps won’t mind because he said I could have anything from the attic.’ I handed him the roll of labels. ‘Here, write “Cottage – front bedroom” on this and stick it on top.’ He did that and then I asked him to carry the last boxes and bags down to the hall. ‘OK,’ he said, grabbing two heavy bags in each hand as if they weighed practically nothing, ‘but I really came to find out what’s for dinner.’ I passed a weary hand across my forehead. ‘Oh, I don’t know…I haven’t thought about it yet.’ ‘Zillah says she’s doing steak and kidney pudding, mushy peas and crinkly chips, but you have to say now if you want any, before she starts cooking.’ ‘You have that, if you fancy it, Jake. I’m meeting Felix and Poppy this evening, and by the time I’ve showered all this filth off, there’ll only be time for a snack. What are you doing tonight?’ ‘I promised Grumps I’d help him with something,’ he said mysteriously, and then laughed at my expression. ‘No, I’m not about to become part of the coven, cavorting about with a lot of wrinklies, or do anything else daft! He just wanted me to research someone called Digby Mann-Drake on the internet for him.’ ‘Digby Mandrake? That sounds even more bogus than Gregory Warlock!’ ‘Mann with a double “n” and it’s hyphenated. I expect he made the Mann bit up, since he seems a bit Aleister Crowley – all fancy robes and “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”,’ said Gregory Warlock’s grandson, casually knowledgeable. ‘In fact, he sounds a nasty piece of work altogether and he’s been sending veiled threats to Grumps, because he wanted to buy the Old Smithy, only he fell ill at the crucial moment.’ ‘Opportune,’ I commented, thinking that this sounded awfully like the plot of Satan’s Child. Could this Mann-Drake possibly be the Secret Adversary, both of the novel and in real life? The man who had tried to prevent Grumps realising the significance of the Old Smithy’s magical position? The plot thickened. ‘Do they know each other, Jake?’ ‘They were at Oxford at the same time, but I don’t think their paths have crossed since, until now. Grumps wants to probe Mann-Drake’s weak spots so he can protect us if he tries any mumbo jumbo,’ he said with cheerful irreverence. ‘That’s why he wanted the information. I’ll see you later.’ I carried the shoebox of letters down to my room, then dashed back up to the attic one last time in order to blast the inside of the cabin trunk with Jake’s very overpowering Lynx aftershave, which entirely vanquished the scent of Je Reviens. There was no need for both of us to wallow in miserable memories. I showered quickly, so I had time to do an internet search for one of Mum’s correspondents, who turned out to be an actor, printing out his photo and some information to take with me to the Falling Star, where I was meeting Poppy and Felix. Zillah must have come into the living room just after I’d finished that and gone back into the bathroom to apply a bit of slap, because there was a plate of dinner on the table covered by a hot, inverted soup bowl. I hadn’t thought I was hungry at all until I lifted the bowl off and the aroma of steak and kidney pudding and chips hit me, but I ate it in five minutes flat, standing up, before dashing out. Indigestion was on the cards – if I could tell heartburn from heartache these days. Chapter Six Stupid Cupid (#ulink_a782f4f2-cd25-57b2-912b-7bf0440f6ba5) We were all sitting round the table in the snug at the Falling Star, Mum’s collection of letters and the computer printouts spread over the table between our glasses. ‘So, let’s get this straight, Chloe,’ Felix said, making a valiant attempt to untangle my incoherent narrative. ‘When Lou got pregnant with you, she didn’t just tell Chas Wilde that he was your father, she told another man he was too?’ ‘Yes, as a moneymaking scam. Since they were both married, once she threatened to tell their wives they agreed to pay her to keep quiet about it. She had quite a little racket going.’ I hadn’t thought I could feel any more disillusioned about my mother, but this sank my perception of her to whole new depths and I’m not sure anything could survive down there, certainly not love. ‘Gosh!’ said Poppy, wide-eyed. ‘So your father could be either of them?’ ‘Yes – or neither, because there’s no guarantee it wasn’t someone else entirely, is there?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Felix said thoughtfully. ‘Since she seems to have got pregnant as a means to an end, it probably is one of them. It’s still quite likely it was Chas Wilde, like she always told you, you know.’ ‘Yes, he’s always taken an interest in you and sent Christmas and birthday presents, which he didn’t do for either of us,’ Poppy agreed, ‘and called in to see you when he’s in the North.’ When I was a child those had been short, awkward visits, with me desperate to know why, if he was my daddy, I wasn’t allowed to call him that, or ask him anything else that puzzled me, like why he didn’t live with me and Mum. But later, when I was old enough to understand, we had grown closer and easier with each other. I hadn’t seen a lot of him since Mum vanished, but we kept in touch by phone and email. ‘But all that doesn’t prove he’s my father, just that Mum convinced him he was,’ I pointed out, and then looked down despairingly at the letters. ‘I wish now I hadn’t read these so I would still believe Chas is my father, because at least he’s kind and nice, despite being stupid enough to let my mother use him!’ ‘But, Chloe, he may very well turn out still to be your father,’ Poppy said. ‘I know, and I want it to be Chas,’ I said, picking up one of the envelopes from the table, ‘because when you read this letter he sent to Mum when I was ten, after he’d finally confessed everything to his wife, he made it clear he was still going to carry on supporting me – that he cared about me.’ ‘He is a nice man,’ agreed Poppy, ‘and he certainly paid for one weak moment, didn’t he?’ ‘Through the nose – and maybe for someone who wasn’t his child after all. Have a look at these two sets of photos I got off the internet and tell me if you think I look like any of them. The ones of Chas are from when he was younger, so he looks different.’ Felix and Poppy put their heads together over the photographs and Felix asked, ‘Who is this other man?’ ‘Carr Blackstock, an actor, mostly theatre work, especially Shakespeare, but he has appeared in one or two things on TV. When I Googled the name, he was the only one who came up, so it must be him.’ ‘He looks slightly familiar,’ Poppy said, then added hesitantly, ‘though actually that might be because you look a bit alike. Slightly elfin, if you know what I mean – like Kate Bush.’ ‘Elfin? I don’t look at all elfin,’ I said with disgust, ‘or like Kate Bush. I wish people wouldn’t keep saying that!’ ‘Well, it certainly wasn’t me who got called “Pixie Ears” at school!’ she retorted. ‘No, you were “Pudding” because you ate everyone else’s jam roly-poly and custard on Wednesdays!’ ‘Only because I needed the energy. I burned up loads of calories mucking out my ponies before school every morning,’ Poppy said with dignity. ‘Now, girls!’ Felix said mildly. ‘I think we’re straying from the subject in hand – and I have to agree with Poppy that if I had to pick one of these two as being related to you, then Carr Blackstock would be the man. It’s hard to tell from printouts, but he even seems to have the same unusually light grey eyes.’ ‘I think my printer cartridge is fading. But anyway, Grumps has grey eyes.’ ‘Yes, but ordinary grey ones,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing at all ordinary about Grumps!’ ‘That’s true, they are a bit piercing.’ ‘What do you know about this actor?’ asked Poppy, and I fished out the information sheet from the bottom of the heap. One of us must have slopped his or her drink, because it was a bit damp and wrinkly. ‘He’s been married to the same woman for ever and they have four children. Mum must have got him in a weak moment, like Chas. It doesn’t say a lot about men’s faithfulness, does it?’ ‘We’re not all alike,’ Felix said, which was quite true in his case. He is the faithful-unto-death sort and divorced his wife several years before, only when she had a very blatant affair. ‘But your mother must have been stunning at the time, if that’s a mitigating factor? And we all make mistakes in life, of one kind or another.’ ‘He must have been furious about making that one, because apart from his really terse answer to her news about the pregnancy, there aren’t any letters until my eighteenth birthday, when he sent the note saying he wasn’t going to pay any more and he’d never been entirely convinced I was his child anyway.’ ‘I suppose that was fair enough, because they didn’t really have DNA testing then like they do now, so he wouldn’t have been able to prove it one way or the other, would he?’ Felix said. ‘But if he’d actually seen you he’d have spotted the likeness,’ Poppy said. ‘I don’t think there is a likeness.’ I scrutinised the photos again. ‘You’re imagining it.’ ‘He’s just the most like you out of the two of them, that’s all,’ Felix conceded. ‘Or the least unlike. And whether he believed it or not, he paid up, just like poor old Chas, so Mum must have thought she was on to a good thing until the money stopped coming in altogether when I was eighteen.’ I tossed the picture back on the heap. ‘And then the truly awful thing is that she thought she’d try the same trick all over again – by getting pregnant with Jake!’ Poppy’s pale denim-blue eyes widened. ‘Oh, no, not Jake too!’ ‘Yes, only this time it didn’t work out.’ ‘No, well, I suppose it wouldn’t, these days,’ Felix said. ‘Things have changed and a lot of men wouldn’t care, except for being made to pay Child Support. And they could find out for sure if the child was theirs first, through a DNA test.’ ‘Lou was never the brightest bunny in the box, so that didn’t seem to have occurred to her until too late,’ I said, then gave a wry smile. ‘And the man she tried to trick into believing he was the father was very fair, so it wasn’t going to wash if he ever set eyes on the baby! I think for once she was telling the truth when she told me that Jake’s father was an Italian waiter she met on holiday. He had to get those lovely dark brown eyes from somewhere.’ ‘When she knew she wasn’t going to get any money out of it, I suppose there was no point in lying about who the father was,’ Poppy agreed. ‘So at least you don’t have to worry about Jake’s paternity, only your own.’ ‘Mags and Janey both seem to have been in on Lou’s original scam and it’s clear that Mags at least thought it was all highly amusing,’ Felix said, looking up from reading one of the brief notes in his mother’s scrawled handwriting. ‘Especially about Chas, since he’d never shown any sign of being anything other than a happily married man until he let Lou seduce him.’ ‘Well, he could have said no,’ Poppy said fair-mindedly. ‘And so could the other man.’ ‘They could have, but they didn’t,’ Felix said. ‘Lou knew what she was doing and she put it about a bit. In fact, all three of our mothers seem to have, though at least yours settled down after a few wild years and got married, Poppy.’ ‘That was just a timely combination of desperately missing horses and falling for Dad. Once he’d gone, she started trying to work her way through the male members of the Middlemoss Drag Hunt.’ ‘Quite literally,’ I said and Poppy giggled. ‘I suppose so! Still, at least she hasn’t brought any of them home since that time I caught her in a loose box with one of the whippers-in when I was thirteen. And on the whole, she’s not really been bad as a mum.’ ‘She certainly turned out the best of the bunch from that point of view,’ Felix agreed, ‘though that isn’t saying much. Chloe’s is a bolter with a blackmailing habit, while my unrespected parent dumped me on my grandparents the minute I was born and is still playing the field in her fifties, while nominally living with a smarmy git half her age.’ ‘At least she’s around, Felix,’ I pointed out, because Mags got lucky with a legacy from an elderly lover and opened the Hot Rocks nightclub in Southport a few years ago. The said smarmy git is the manager. ‘If she hadn’t had a business to run, she might have decided to vanish with Mum.’ I’d never believed Mags’ version of events about the night Mum disappeared. Lou and Mags had always been thick as thieves, whereas Janey had tended to go off and do her own thing after the Wilde’s Women years were over, though they all remained friends and sometimes hung out together at Hot Rocks. ‘God knows what Lou is up to all this time, or where she is, though I suspect Mags could give me a hint if she wanted to, Felix,’ I said. When she’d switched from taking all those holidays to Jamaica on her own and started visiting Goa instead, I’d wondered if that was a clue to Mum having skipped the Caribbean. He looked uncomfortable. ‘I have asked her and she swears she has no idea.’ ‘Yes, that’s what she told me, but I don’t believe her.’ ‘And I asked Mum if Mags had told her anything and she said she hadn’t,’ Poppy said, ‘though that means nothing when they’ve always lied and covered up for each other.’ She indicated the stuff on the table, which Felix was now neatly repacking into the box. ‘What are you going to do about this, if anything?’ ‘I don’t know, I’ll have to think about it. It’s been a shock finding out my father might not be Chas. But there’s no point in telling any of it to Jake, because it would only upset him and anyway, it looks like she was telling the truth about who his father was, at least. She even gave him a holiday snap of them both together, though it isn’t terribly clear.’ ‘He must have been nice, because Jake is,’ Poppy said loyally. She’d always adored Jake, who had never played tricks on her (apart from mild ones, like whoopee cushions and plastic flies in her coffee) and called her Auntie Pops. ‘I’m certainly not going to do anything hasty. Even if I wanted to, I have too much on at the moment, trying to keep my business running while sorting and packing and getting ready for the move. I’m dismantling my greenhouse tomorrow.’ ‘I could come and help,’ offered Felix. ‘No, that’s OK, Felix,’ I said quickly, since he is pretty useless as a handyman, besides being the kiss of death to anything breakable, being all elbows and feet. ‘It won’t take me long. It was dead easy to put up and I still have the instructions.’ ‘Really, Chloe, we make a good team,’ he insisted. ‘We’d get it done twice as fast.’ ‘Really, Felix, we don’t – especially where panes of glass are concerned.’ He looked slightly hurt, so I added, ‘But I’ll definitely need your help on moving day.’ I felt in need of another drink, so went to the bar to get a round in. When I got back, Poppy suddenly announced, ‘I’ve got a date for tomorrow night!’ ‘Where from? I thought you’d given up on internet dating sites and decided the private marriage bureaus were too expensive.’ ‘Who with?’ Felix demanded, in bossy big-brother mode. ‘Just a man I met through The Times lonely hearts ads,’ she said casually. ‘We’ve talked for hours on the phone and now we’re meeting up.’ ‘Where?’ I asked, distracted from my own problems. ‘I hope you’re being sensible and it’s somewhere very public, with other people about?’ ‘Yes, you have no idea what kind of man he really is,’ agreed Felix. ‘People can say anything.’ ‘I do know. I told you, we’ve talked for hours and we have so much in common. And it’s OK, because we’re meeting in Sticklepond, at the Green Man.’ ‘Do you know what he looks like?’ I asked. ‘Yes, he’s medium height and a bit like Tom Cruise.’ ‘If he looked like Tom Cruise he wouldn’t need to meet women through the lonely hearts ads,’ Felix said suspiciously. ‘He’s probably exaggerating a bit, but I expect he’s very nice really,’ I said quickly, seeing Poppy’s face fall. ‘Did you tell him what you look like?’ ‘I said I was fair and blue-eyed and an outdoors type and he thought that sounded perfect, because he was very energetic and loved outdoor pursuits.’ ‘That does it,’ Felix announced. ‘I’m coming too!’ ‘No, you’re not. Three’s a crowd and I don’t need a chaperone!’ ‘I didn’t mean exactly with you, Poppy, just in the pub to see how it goes. But don’t go off anywhere with him. I’ll have my car, but I might lose you.’ ‘Oh, honestly, Felix!’ she said, but actually I was glad to see him focusing on Poppy instead of me. I can take care of myself, but Poppy is distinctly soft-centred. Then suddenly, quite out of nowhere, I had a blinding flash of illumination – Felix had all the characteristics Poppy had recently listed to me as being what she wanted in a man! He was single, kind, honest, not a sex maniac or a weird obsessive, and attractive. And if Felix really yearns to settle down to a comfortable family life before it’s too late, then he’s barking up the wrong tree as far as I am concerned, but he and Poppy would be perfect for each other. Except that she only sees him in a brotherly light, of course, and Felix thinks of Poppy as a mate, only the wrong kind. We’ve all three of us been unlucky in love and, by some strange coincidence, we had our worst moments at more or less the same time, though in different ways. While I was having my heart torn to shreds by Raffy at university, Poppy was away getting her riding instructor’s certificates and falling heavily (in an unrequited, Villette kind of way) for one of the married staff and Felix’s marriage was thrashing about in its death throes. I suppose in our separate ways, we’d all got an education, just not the kind we’d hoped for. By the time we’d got together again we were ready to slip back into our old, comfortable companionship without any need for extensive emotional post mortems, mainly, I suspect, because all three of us were harbouring one or two secrets we didn’t, for once, want to share. I certainly was. And the longer I went without telling anyone, the harder it became to confide even in Poppy, to whom the whole of my life, up to the point I left for university, had been an open book. Chapter Seven Brief Encounters (#ulink_21983603-dddb-56dc-8c71-08ef3f308601) Although my discoveries about my mother had upset me deeply, there wasn’t really any time to sit about brooding or to work out what, if anything, to do about it. I still had lots of packing to do, including bubble-wrapping my extensive collection of ornamental angels, many of them given to me as gifts. I was also trying to make a large enough stock of Chocolate Wishes to tide me over until I could start up production again in the cottage, so the Bath was chugging away pretty well non-stop as it heated and stirred the couverture, and trays of chocolate-coated angel and heart moulds covered every surface, hardening before I could put in the Wish and seal them up. It would be wonderful when I had a separate workshop, because chocolate making had taken over the flat! Meanwhile, not even imminent house-moving could stop Grumps’ steady output of one or two chapters of novel per day, or his incessant correspondence: cranks of the world, unite! I told him again this morning that email would be easier and quicker, and I could show him how to do it in no time, but he said the devil was in the machine and it could stay there. Then he added that that had given him an idea, and started scribbling away, my presence forgotten, so I tiptoed off and left him to it, though I don’t suppose he would have noticed if I’d blown a trumpet in his ear and then slammed the door. ‘So, how did it go?’ I asked Poppy when she called round on the morning after her date. ‘Did he turn up?’ ‘Yes, but I didn’t realise it was him for ages. We were both sitting separately in the pub for half an hour, each thinking the other one wasn’t coming. Felix was in another corner, hiding behind a newspaper like a spy. He kept peering over the top of it.’ She gave her irrepressible giggle. ‘In fact, it was like a singles night for the severely shy!’ ‘I thought your date told you he looked like Tom Cruise? He should have been easy to spot.’ ‘Actually, he looked more like a spinning top. He had a small head but a huge stomach and little legs.’ ‘I don’t think Tom Cruise is very tall, is he?’ ‘No, but at least he’s good-looking! This one had a face that could stop clocks.’ ‘That bad?’ I said sympathetically. ‘Worse! I mean, I’ve no objection to homely, but Cruise Missile was gargoyle ugly! But eventually, when no one else turned up, the penny dropped that it must be him, because he was constantly watching the door as if he was waiting for someone.’ ‘Cruise Missile? Is that what he called himself in the ad?’ I asked incredulously. ‘You didn’t tell us that bit!’ ‘It didn’t seem important,’ she said simply. ‘Just a name to grab the attention.’ ‘It seems to have hooked you, all right. What did you call yourself?’ ‘Riding Mistress.’ ‘Riding Mistress?’ I looked at her and she gazed innocently back at me. Considering what her mother is like, I can’t believe how na?ve she can be sometimes, but she has a very literal mind, which must account for it. ‘Well, that’s what I am, isn’t it?’ ‘Ye-es…’ I said slowly, ‘but – well, never mind. What did you do next, sneak out of the back door under some pretext and leg it?’ ‘No, I went over and asked him if he was waiting for Riding Mistress, and he was, only I could see he was really disappointed in me too.’ ‘I don’t see why,’ I said loyally, though it’s true that Poppy’s idea of making an effort to dude herself up a bit was usually confined to applying rose-tinted lip salve and running a comb through her slightly frizzy, damp-sand-coloured hair, usually the comb she has just used on Honeybun’s tail. ‘He told me straight out why he was disappointed: it was because he’d thought I would be wearing riding breeches and carrying a whip!’ ‘Oh dear, one of those.’ ‘He certainly was. We hadn’t been talking more than five minutes – and he didn’t even offer to buy me a drink – when he said he’d been a very bad pony and why didn’t we go back to my place so I could school him. I was a bit gobsmacked.’ ‘I take it you didn’t oblige? How did you get away?’ ‘I caught Felix’s eye and mouthed, “Help!”’ ‘The gallant knight to the rescue – good old Felix!’ ‘Not immediately: he got up and slipped out of the back door and I thought for a minute he’d abandoned me, though of course I really knew he wouldn’t. I panicked a bit and I was just stalling Cruise Missile by telling him my mother was at home mucking out, when Felix came in again through the front door, marched right up and said, “There you are, Poppy! The children are crying for you – please come home with me, darling. I’m so sorry we argued!”’ ‘I think he’s been reading Victorian melodramas again,’ I said. ‘So then…?’ ‘I got up and smiled at Cruise Missile and said I was sorry, it had all been a mistake, and then we left and went back to Felix’s shop. It was horrible at the time, but after a bit it all seemed sort of funny and it was a pity to waste a night off, so we went to see a film in Southport. We did try phoning to see if you wanted to come with us, but there was no reply.’ ‘Yes, the phone rang,’ I remembered, ‘but I was at a tricky bit with a big angel for a personalised card reading, so I couldn’t answer, and then I forgot about it. I’ve swung into major production. The whole place smells like a chocolate factory.’ ‘It always does,’ Poppy said simply. ‘I like it.’ It was no surprise that Felix phoned to give me his version not ten minutes after Poppy left, and it was similar, except that he insisted Poppy’s would-be date was sinister and creepy. ‘In all fairness, I think Poppy unintentionally sent out all the wrong signals. He sounded to me more sad and insignificant than anything,’ I said. ‘Dangerously weird,’ he insisted. ‘I can’t imagine how, growing up with a mother like Janey, she manages to stay so…’ He paused, racking his brains to describe the puzzle that was Poppy, the Maria von Trapp (bar the singing) of Sticklepond. ‘Sweet and innocent?’ I suggested. ‘That’s just what I thought.’ ‘I’d say trusting and credulous. I’ve told her to stop answering that kind of advert.’ ‘Did she agree?’ ‘No, she said just because there was one rotten apple, it didn’t mean the whole barrel had gone squishy. You’ll have to make her see sense.’ ‘But she gets lonely, Felix, and I can’t always go out with her, I’m too busy with the business and trying to keep track of what Jake is up to.’ ‘Jake’s legally an adult now, you don’t have to do that.’ ‘He might be legally adult, but he’s still my little brother and part-boy, part-man. I want to make sure he stays on the right track until he goes to university. Then I’ll have done my best and it’ll be out of my hands.’ ‘Yes, and then you will be free to get what you really want out of life.’ ‘I seem to already have most of it, though I’m so looking forward to a bit of freedom too – being alone and doing my own thing,’ I said brightly. ‘I expect I’ll be spending all my spare time in that lovely little walled garden after I’ve moved. I can hardly wait.’ ‘Hmm,’ he said, sounding discouraged, which was my intention. I tried a bit more manoeuvring: ‘At the moment things are so frantic, getting ready for a move at such short notice, that I wouldn’t have time to keep an eye on what Poppy’s up to anyway, even if I wanted to.’ ‘Someone needs to, because what she’s doing really could be dangerous.’ He sighed long-sufferingly. ‘I suppose I will have to.’ I made encouraging noises, even though I’m not entirely sure that Poppy will appreciate continually being shadowed by Felix on dates with potential suitors. But if they are all as dreadful as the first one, which seems quite likely, she may start to see what’s under her nose in a new light. They both might. I reminded him, as I already had with Poppy, that I was not telling Jake anything at all about what I’d discovered in the attic. Mum’s behaviour had damaged him enough, he didn’t need to know that she only had him in order to try to extort money. I wished I didn’t know that that’s why she’d had me, but I’d cope – I always had. Apart from packing his own belongings up, Jake has been pretty useless the last few days, glooming about like a slightly Goth Lord Byron (but without the limp). When I asked him at breakfast one morning whether he was upset about the move, he said tersely: ‘No. It’s a girl.’ I looked at him in surprise. ‘I didn’t know you had a girlfriend at the moment, Jake. You kept that quiet.’ ‘I haven’t got one, that’s the trouble.’ ‘You mean, you fancy someone, but she won’t go out with you?’ He sighed heavily. ‘She doesn’t even know I exist! She’s new – her parents just moved to the area – and she seems only to want to work all the time. If she isn’t in class, she’s in the library.’ I wished Jake would be a bit more like that! ‘She sounds nice,’ I said kindly. ‘What terrible timing having to move college just before your exams, though. That’s probably why she’s concentrating on her studies.’ ‘She’s dead set on going to Oxford too,’ he said, even more gloomily. ‘Are you doing the same subjects?’ ‘Yes, that’s why I see her all the time. Only she doesn’t seem to see me.’ I didn’t really know how she could miss him – tall, brown-eyed, handsome, and all in black from dyed hair to big boots – but I saw an opportunity for some sneaky advice. Nagging him to revise always had the opposite effect, but revising to impress a girl could have a valuable knock-on effect… ‘You’ve got things in common then, Jake, and that’s a really good start. If I were you, I’d hang out in the library at the same time she does – ask her if you can check something in one of the books she’s using, that kind of thing. Show her you’re serious about your studies too.’ He gave me a suspicious look, but reluctantly conceded I might have something. I cleaned and mended the pretty shell mirror, then covered it in bubble wrap and put it in the ottoman in the attic, together with a few more breakable things, like our box of Christmas decorations and a particularly pretty, but very fragile, spun-glass angel ornament. While I was up there I noticed that Jake must have already transferred some of his more dubious treasures to the cabin trunk, because it now had a large padlock affixed to the hasp and, when I tried lifting the end, it weighed a ton. I only hoped the removal men could still get it down the narrow and steep attic stairs. Jake did seem a little more cheerful since we’d had the conversation about the girl he liked at college, so perhaps my advice about how to get to know her was paying off? I hoped it paid off in better exam grades, too. Chas phoned me up that evening, which took me by surprise, even though he does do that from time to time. And I suppose I must have sounded a bit odd, because he asked me if everything was all right. I wasn’t ready to discuss what was on my mind yet, so I just told him I was tired, and all about the imminent house move. He was kind and interested as usual, so that I found myself wishing again that he would turn out to be my father after all, though it would be even better to have one who didn’t make furtive phone calls from his mobile only when his family weren’t about! Poppy came over to the flat after the next Parish Council meeting, which seemed to be taking place thick and fast because of all the changes going on in Sticklepond, and told me that the cat still wasn’t out of the bag about Grumps and the Old Smithy. ‘But I’m terrified I’m going to let it slip, and I’m sure Felix and I look really guilty all the time.’ I could just imagine Felix and Poppy avoiding each other’s eyes and looking shifty, though the news would have to come out sooner or later. ‘Luckily they had some other news to distract them, or they might have spotted it,’ she said. ‘Oh?’ I looked up from enfolding the last of my collection of ornamental angels in bubble wrap. ‘Have they finally found out who the ex-pop star vicar is, then?’ ‘No, they still don’t know a thing about that, either. It’s just that an old cottage called Badger’s Bolt has been sold, after being on the market for absolutely ages, probably because it has spring water instead of mains and it’s a bit isolated – up a track near the edge of the Winter’s End estate. I only know where it is because we buy hay from Mr Ormerod, who has the farm next to it.’ ‘I can’t see what’s so fascinating about that, Poppy. People buy and sell houses all the time.’ ‘Yes, but Badger’s Bolt is important because it comes with the two pieces of land in the village where the tennis club and lido are, and if there’s a new owner then the lease might go up when the current one expires.’ The so-called lido field was a grassy picnic area next to a curve in the river, which had been partly dammed by large boulders to form a large, shallow pool where in summer the local families splashed about. ‘Didn’t you tell me ages ago that they were trying to raise money to buy the tennis club and lido? I’m sure I bought raffle tickets for it.’ ‘That’s right, and Effie Yatton’s been organising it, but they haven’t got enough money yet, and now maybe the new owner won’t want to sell. But Conrad said he was a very pleasant elderly man, a Mr Drake, so perhaps he will be happy to keep things as they are,’ she added optimistically. ‘I wouldn’t have thought an elderly man would want an isolated house a long way from any amenities and with a dodgy water supply.’ ‘He might not know the water pressure isn’t that good, especially in summer. I don’t suppose Conrad mentioned it.’ She giggled suddenly. ‘Do you remember when Felix moved into his shop and we found that trapdoor in the kitchen floor, under the lino?’ ‘Yes, leading to a cellar with a stream running through a stone channel, right in the middle of it, which he knew nothing about. His face was a picture when you told him having cold running water in the house was probably a luxury when the place was built.’ ‘It’s a pity there isn’t something like that at Badger’s Bolt. This Mr Drake told Conrad that he’d also bought the title of Lord of the Manor of Sticklepond when it came up for auction, and Hebe Winter thinks that is a sign that he will take a benevolent interest in the village generally.’ ‘I would have thought the Winters were Lords of the Manor.’ ‘No, some of these old titles don’t seem to go with local families, they get sort of detached and then sometimes they auction a whole load of them off. Miss Winter said she wanted her great-niece to buy it, but since it was just an empty title she thought the money could be better spent on the estate.’ ‘She’s probably right. It sounds like something you would just buy for vanity, like a fancy numberplate.’ I folded the top of the box down and taped it shut, then wrote ‘Angels – sitting room’ on top with a big, black marker pen. ‘Let’s have some coffee, and then you can tell me why you’re clutching a copy of The Times.’ ‘I’ve marked some men in the lonely hearts column and after that last disaster I want to know what you think before I contact them. You might be able to tell better than me if they sound weird.’ They all sounded weird to me, or desperate. But then Poppy is also getting slightly desperate (though she is not at all weird), since she would love to marry and have children before it is too late. I’d resigned myself to having neither, unless you counted mothering Jake, who hadn’t so much fulfilled my maternal yearnings as made them wither on the vine. Chapter Eight Good Libations (#ulink_bbe4658f-85ea-54ed-a3b1-8f00fd31cc85) Eventually, just as even the heroic patience of Grumps’ buyers was wearing thin, the day of our removal to the Old Smithy dawned clear and bright. The day before, Poppy had brought her big horsebox over, and we’d taken all my pots and tubs and the dismantled greenhouse across to the Old Smithy and put them in the walled courtyard. The pots of scented geraniums had to line all the windowsills, since it was too cold to put them outside yet. When we’d done that, Poppy showed me the house-warming present she and Felix had bought me between them: fixed to the wall next to my new front door was a painted oval sign, decorated with red geranium flowers, which read, ‘Angel Cottage’. ‘Angel Cottage, 1 Angel Lane’ sounded wonderfully soft and downy and safe, a home I could nestle into, like a cygnet under its mother’s wing. But I wasn’t sure what Grumps would make of it – angels on one side, pagans on the other! Still, there was a good chance he would never even notice. You know, Sticklepond was a very Angel sort of place, what with Angel Lane and the old church of All Angels, the graveyard of which seemed full of marble ones. Felix told me a nearby stonemason specialised in them, and I often admired them over the wall. And now there was my Angel Cottage too. It had been immaculately cleaned by Dolly Mops and was now repainted a soft, warm cream throughout, with one deep, old-rose, purply-pink wall in the little living room, to match the old tiles around the hearth. The only exception to the colour scheme was the dark purple wall in Jake’s room, of course, which actually didn’t look quite as bad as I’d thought it would, even after I had hung his retro red, black and purple curtains. Poppy helped me to hang the rest of the curtains before she had to dash back to Stirrups. She’d spent so much time in the previous two weeks helping me to scour the local junk and charity shops for furniture and furnishings that Janey was starting to complain, even though she was quite capable of going off on a bender herself at a moment’s notice. (A bit like Mum, though at least Janey’s disappearances lasted only a few days and she always came back.) But we had done as much as we could anyway and by the next day this would be my new home – and maybe a whole fresh new chapter in my life too, as a contentedly single and successful businesswoman. The team of removal men swung into action at dawn next morning. They had already spent days packing up the house, with Zillah and Grumps increasingly marooned in the kitchen and study respectively, among the packing cases. Jake and I were all ready to go, we just had to strip our beds and pack up the last few things, like the kettle and coffee mugs. Then the contents of our flat were loaded into a small van and whisked away to Sticklepond, while the rest of the men were only just starting to fill a huge pantechnicon with Grumps’ worldly goods (and otherworldly ones), as though they were doing some challenging kind of three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Felix and Jake were to direct unloading operations at the cottage, so Jake drove Zillah over in my Fiat, with Tabitha complaining bitterly in a basket on the back seat. When I rang his mobile later to see how they were getting on, he said he and Felix had just screwed our bed frames together (I made a note to check those out before sleeping on them) and put the mattresses back on, and Zillah had already got the Aga going in her new kitchen and was dispensing stewed tea and biscuits. ‘And she put butter on Tabitha’s feet before she let her out!’ ‘I think that’s supposed to make cats come back to the new house, though goodness knows why,’ I said. ‘Tell me when the phone landline starts working, won’t you? And I hope we can get broadband quickly, because I don’t want to have to conduct my business from the library or an internet caf?.’ ‘OK, though Felix has broadband and I’m sure he would let you use his computer…and here comes my stuff, so I’ll have to go,’ he said, then rang off. I expected he would spend hours rearranging his new bedroom, ignoring the rest of the cottage, but at least Felix was there to make sure all the boxes and furniture went into the rooms they were labelled for. Back at the old house, Grumps had written solidly in his study while it was emptied around him, so that his tall, Gothic chair and matching desk were the last things to go into the van – and therefore would be the first items out at the other end, meaning there would be very little disruption to his work. Clearly, there was method in his madness. Finally, I drove him to Sticklepond in the Saab, wrapped in a midnight-blue velvet cloak against the chill and with a sort of embroidered fez over his long, silver hair. I dropped him off at the door, then turned round and went right back to take a last look alone around the old house and say my goodbyes. It was just something I felt I needed to do, before I could move on. All the rooms echoed hollowly under my feet and looked strangely forlorn, especially the kitchen without Zillah’s bright cushions, throws and curtains. I wandered through the house, remembering mainly the happy things, like Granny and the strangely pagan-crossed-with-Christian version of Christmas we celebrated every year, Jake’s face as a small child, unwrapping presents (the one from Mum I always bought for her, because she never had any idea what he really wanted) and the night Poppy and I saw the angel… I tried not to let memories of the bad times seep in, the moments of heartbreak and despair, but it was still all a bit poignant. It was more than time to move on and, I wondered, maybe I could leave the past behind me, like an outgrown shell and slip into a more expansive future? In fact, a fresh start in a new place was just what we all needed – the Angel cards this morning had more or less told me so. I was sure Zillah had got her last reading wrong and the only visitors from my past likely to bother me were the ghosts I had just laid to rest. I placed a big glazed pot of tulips on the kitchen windowsill, with a note welcoming the new owners to their home. Then I left, dropping the keys off with Conrad on the way to Sticklepond. In our cottage Jake was still upstairs, which was much as I had expected, but Felix had lit a fire in the sitting room and was unpacking kitchen stuff into the wrong drawers and cupboards, though it was a kind thought, as was his having plugged in the little freezer and fridge the moment they were brought in. ‘I thought I’d make a start,’ he explained, ‘but I’ll have to go in a minute. I’ve got someone coming for a complete set of leather-bound Dickens and I’m hoping to offload some Thackeray onto them too. Is there anything else you’d like me to help you with, first?’ ‘No, you’ve done wonders, Felix, I’m really grateful. And I love the house sign that you and Poppy gave me!’ I said warmly, giving him a hug. ‘I’m going to make our beds up now and then everything else can wait until tomorrow.’ After he’d gone, I found a new little bookcase with a slanting top that fitted neatly under the steep staircase, with a card from Felix saying it was especially for my Georgette Heyer collection. He was so kind! In fact, he would make someone a wonderful husband, preferably Poppy. It certainly wasn’t going to be me, and any other woman would undoubtedly resent his close friendship with us, so Poppy was the only possible candidate, when I came to think about it. Grumps’ removal men had gone into reverse, and were now unloading and unpacking everything, though it was such a mammoth task that they would have to come back next morning to finish. Once I was sure everyone had a bed to sleep in that night, I suggested we went over to the Falling Star for a bar meal. We were all exhausted, with the possible exception of Grumps. Even Jake looked tired, though he didn’t seem to have done much more than drive Zillah across and then spend the rest of the day rearranging his bedroom and sticking posters – all featuring the blood red/funereal purple/dead black range of the spectrum with lots of skulls, dragons and swords – onto the freshly painted walls. When we trooped into the snug, which was empty as usual, since the regulars preferred the music, dartboard and slot machine of the public bar, they all came and peered at us through the hatch as if the circus had come to town. I certainly don’t usually merit this kind of attention, but I suppose as a group we did look a bit unusual, what with one near-Goth dressed head to foot in black and only needing a large axe in order to be a dead ringer for the Grim Reaper, an elderly Merlin in a rubbed velvet jacket and embroidered, tasselled fez, and a small, round gypsy clad in several brightly clashing layers and with a shocking-pink scarf wrapped around her head like a turban. But I expect they will quickly get used to seeing the family about the village and we will be a seven-day wonder. The young, pink-haired barmaid, Molly, was the exception, since she showed no sign of surprise or interest at our appearance, apart from eyeing Jake in a slightly speculative manner. There was no sign of Mrs Snowball, who kept early hours, and that was perhaps a good thing. Grumps, who rarely enters pubs, was very gracious about scampi in a basket and plastic sachets of tartare sauce – more gracious than Zillah, actually, who was affronted by the modest prices and said she could have cooked the meal at home for a fraction of the cost, and much better too. But she said it without her usual gusto, so she was definitely tired. I tend to forget she must be nearly as old as Grumps, because her face has been seamed, lined and folded like an old brown linen tablecloth for as long as I’ve known her. We went back to the Old Smithy and had what Grumps called a libation of good single malt in honour of our new home, then we all went to bed. It had been a very long day. Chapter Nine Drawing the Lines (#ulink_01492e3f-84d6-585f-a5a4-ffe2c36e2009) Grumps, needing little sleep, had already knocked out a chapter of Satan’s Child and was in the museum by the time I’d seen Jake off to college next morning (in Grumps’ Saab, with huge warnings about being careful and not driving too fast). Although I’d managed to find the toaster and the Pop-Tarts, Jake’s current breakfast of choice, the whereabouts of the porridge oats and jar of honey was still a complete mystery to me. I think my box packing and labelling must have been getting a bit random by the time I got to the kitchen, because I kept finding the most unlikely combinations, but I sincerely hoped I’d screwed the lid on the honey tightly and it was the right way up, wherever it was. I slipped silently through the door leading from the cottage into the museum. Grumps had his back turned to me, but even so he immediately said, ‘The removal men are here again already, Chloe, unpacking in the house.’ It’s always unnerving that he can tell who is behind him without looking – but equally unnerving that when he is completely absorbed in something he can be so totally unaware that even a herd of elephants stampeding through the room wouldn’t penetrate his consciousness. ‘Well, that’s good, Grumps and, going by yesterday, unpacking is much, much quicker than packing, so they should be done very soon and then you can get back to normal.’ Whatever normal is, in Grumps’ case. ‘Zillah is directing their activities.’ Zillah was more likely to be in the kitchen with Tabitha, smoking a roll-up fag, drinking tea and studying the cards, so I said, ‘Do you want me to go and help? I can tell them where to put things.’ ‘Thank you, but I do not think that is necessary, for they seem to know what they are doing. But they are currently in the study, so I thought I would come in here for a time. They should not be long, since they need not unpack my books. Jake will help me arrange them tomorrow, it being the weekend, since he tells me he is eager to earn enough money to purchase a pair of firesticks. Interesting – he must demonstrate these weapons when he has them.’ Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/trisha-ashley/chocolate-wishes/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.