Читать книгу The Chocolate Collection - Trisha Ashley - Страница 13

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 Tête-à-tête 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 cafés 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.’