A Christmas Cracker

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘We need to totally immerse visitors in the Christmas experience the minute they walk through the door, starting with the right background music,’ I said to Arlene.

  ‘What, have carols or Christmas pop songs playing?’ she asked doubtfully.

  ‘Actually, I was thinking more of some kind of electronic mood music, with jingle bells, tinkling noises like icicles falling off windowsills and a sound like an icy wind blowing through snowy pine trees …’

  Arlene looked totally blank.

  ‘Something like you find on those stands of CDs in garden centres.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ she said, enlightened. ‘I’ve got one for meditation, all trickling water and bamboo wind chimes. One of my eldest son’s friends might be able to come up with something like that, if you want me to ask him.’

  ‘Great,’ I enthused, making a note. ‘And since we’re already going to stock those wooden incense burners shaped like nutcracker figures, we can light one or two of them every day, so the whole mill will smell seasonal.’

  ‘Yes, that should get them in the mood for buying lots of lovely glass baubles and tree toppers, and all the rest of it,’ Arlene agreed.

  ‘Not to mention realistic fake trees, scented fir cones, tinsel, snow, traditional stocking fillers, door wreaths, cards, tags, gift-wrap, cribs, snow globes … and perhaps even chocolate tree decorations,’ I said.

  ‘There’s a chocolate maker over in Sticklepond who might do special ones just for us,’ suggested Arlene. ‘Though they’d be very expensive, I expect.’

  ‘Expensive is OK as long as they’re really individual, because we want to stock things you can’t get anywhere else. What about sourcing some unusual Scandinavian decorations and maybe those funny little trolls they have in Norway?’

  ‘I’ll have a look on the internet,’ she promised. ‘And the shop will have a huge display of Marwood’s crackers, too. The new ones do look much prettier and more special than the old.’

  ‘It’s a pity you can’t post them because of the snaps, or we’d probably do a great mail-order business through the website,’ I said regretfully.

  ‘I think the cracker workshop’s more than busy enough now, anyway,’ she pointed out, ‘what with all the orders for the new crackers to fulfil and the Liberty ones to complete and pack off in good time.’

  ‘Freda and Job have offered to work for a couple of hours each afternoon, because a bit of extra cash would be welcome,’ I told her. ‘And I’m putting in time making them, when I’m not running around after Mercy and being sent off on errands to buy things, or pick up yet more old sewing machines.’

  ‘Silas got me to confirm the order for the museum display cases and extra signage yesterday,’ she said. ‘He’s bound to want you to help with that, too.’

  ‘I don’t mind; it’ll be fun. And eventually there’ll be more staff anyway, what with the shop and café, so perhaps they’ll take on extra cracker makers too.’

  ‘We’ll need proper cleaners,’ Arlene suggested. ‘Bradley pushing a broom around the floor from time to time isn’t going to cut the mustard when the mill is open to the public, is it?’

  ‘It’s OK, Mercy’s already sorted that angle out. Dolly Mops do business cleaning as well as domestic, so she’s going to give them the contract.’

  Arlene looked down at the drawings of the shop interior again. ‘What’s going in this empty space at the back?’

  ‘Father Christmas’s grotto. He’ll have to be there from mid-November onwards, but the rest of the time we’ll just hang a notice on the door saying he’s gone on holiday to Lapland and if they pop their Christmas lists in the special postbox, he’ll read them when he gets back.’

  ‘I’m starting to feel all nostalgic and Christmassy myself now,’ Arlene said. ‘It’s going to be lovely.’

  ‘I just hope we’ll have enough to keep the visitors amused until the gallery and craft workshops are opened,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I think so. When the visitors have seen the mill, they can always go for a walk up the footpath in the woods, or use the picnic area,’ she said. ‘I wonder how long it will be before we’ll open the first phase.’

  I don’t know – Mercy would like to wait till Randal can be here all the time. He’s off abroad again at the moment.’

  ‘Where’s he gone this time?’

  ‘India and Nepal, he said. Sounds wonderful to me, but I think he’s had enough, so I suppose even world travel palls after a while.’

  ‘We haven’t seen a lot of that Lacey, have we?’

  ‘No, and she seems to have totally abandoned any idea of moving her business up here.’

  ‘So long as she doesn’t abandon Randal, too,’ Arlene said with a grin. ‘He’s totally besotted with her; you could see that, though she’s so beautiful it’s hardly surprising.’

  ‘She is,’ I agreed, though actually I’d thought at times Randal had looked a little impatient – even cross – with his lovely bride-to-be.

  I shrugged. ‘I expect they’ll work out their differences. I’m more worried about Mercy going off to Malawi with Liz and leaving us to cope!’

  ‘We’ll manage, and we can email her if we need to ask anything,’ she assured me. ‘It was always OK when she was away before.’

  ‘Yes, but now there’s so much more going on and decisions that need to be made daily!’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ she said soothingly.

  And she was quite right, because it was – exhilarating, exhausting, hugely busy, often challenging and a real rollercoaster ride – but we did it!

  Chapter 45: Guilt-Edged

  Randal

  It was the day after I got back to London before I could get hold of Lacey and she said she’d forgotten her phone charger and her battery went dead … though of course that didn’t mean she couldn’t have called me from a landline, or someone else’s phone, as I pointed out.

  Then I remembered Tabby’s suggestion that she’d been having so much fun she’d just turned her phone off and asked her if she still wanted to marry me.

  ‘Of course I do, darling!’ she cried, opening her blue eyes wide, like a startled Disney doe. ‘It’s just that I don’t want to leave London and move to Godsend right now, because I need just a little more fun before we settle down and have a family. But I absolutely adore the way you make me feel so safe.’

  She came over and wound her arms around my neck in a rare, spontaneous gesture of affection, but it didn’t have quite its usual effect on me.

  ‘But we’ve had all this out, Lacey: I’m going to be managing the mill site and I’ll need to be up there all the time, at least for the first few months – and anyway, I want to move back, because I’ve had enough of London.’

  She untwined her arms and pouted. ‘I think you’re very selfish – it’s all about what you want.’

  ‘I suppose I did spring it on you, but I thought you’d like the idea. You kept saying you’d like to have a house in the country.’

  ‘Yes, for weekends and holidays! At heart, I’m a London girl and now I’ve seen Mote Farm I know I don’t want to be stuck up there all year round – I’d go mad.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just give Mote Farm a bit more of a chance?’

  ‘That’s not going to be easy, with your family looking down their noses at me as if I’m selling something dirty.’

  ‘It’s not really like that,’ I protested. ‘But … we seem to have reached a bit of an impasse, don’t we?’

  She shrugged. ‘Not really – my business base can be here and yours up there and we’ll divide our time between them.’

  ‘Perhaps when we’ve got a family you’ll feel differently about spending more time up in Lancashire?’ I suggested, and she softened a bit and said perhaps she might.

  She promised to visit Mote Farm with me again after my next trip abroad and I expected we could work things out … I tended to forget how much younger than me she was, so maybe I just needed to give her more time.

  I asked Ch
arlie to show me the secret film footage he took of Tabby at the Champers&Chocs warehouse when she was showing him round, and he was right: she looked totally shifty and guilty.

  ‘It’s clear she knows what’s going on,’ he said.

  ‘You’re right, though that’s not the same as playing an active part in the scam, is it?’

  ‘But she was the one packing up those “special orders” in the evenings and being paid wads of cash – and both her friend and her boss implicated her.’

  ‘Wasn’t she supposed to be having an affair with her boss, too, even though he was years older and no oil painting?’

  Charlie shrugged. ‘People never fail to surprise me. Still, it doesn’t really matter any more, does it, so long as she’s going straight now?’

  ‘If she is, because it’s a worry when she’s working for someone as trusting as Mercy and has the free run of the house and mill.’

  ‘Oh, Mercy’s no fool when it comes to character,’ he said. ‘She likes me, so that shows you!’

  Then he asked me how the beautiful Lacey was and I said, ‘Dragging me to every nightclub in London whenever I’m between assignments – and she’s got severe cold feet about moving to Lancashire. Never get engaged to someone ten years younger than yourself,’ I added darkly, but that might have been the beer talking.

  It was hell being in India and trying to work, when more than half my mind was worrying about what was happening at the mill, once Mercy and Liz had flown out to Malawi.

  It was such a critical stage in the development, and leaving everything in the hands of Silas, who’d hardly been a success at keeping an eye on it in the past, a secretary (however efficient) and an ex-con I didn’t quite trust was hardly likely to make me feel any better about it.

  Emails flew between Godsend, Malawi and wherever I could find an internet connection and I could always tell when Tabby was the one emailing, because she had a distinctly acerbic edge.

  And I really didn’t want to think about Tabby at all since that evening in the garden, because I still had absolutely no idea what had come over me! In fact, I was starting to wonder if Tabitha Coombs might actually be a witch. Or maybe that kiss never happened at all, because at breakfast next morning Tabby seemed totally unconcerned.

  And Lacey seemed totally unconcerned about me too, because she rarely answered my messages and when I phoned a couple of times in desperation, she was either sleeping or out.

  Chapter 46: Picture Perfect

  Q:How do snails keep their shells shiny?

  A:Snail varnish!

  Silas had taken on a new lease of life after buying a golf buggy! Jude Martland’s uncle Noël had one and suggested it, and it was a great idea, because now he could whiz down to the mill and home again whenever he felt like it, even on his bad days.

  It was a top-of-the-range super-duper one, too, since he was not short of money, and Job had taken to polishing it lovingly whenever he buffed up the estate car.

  While Randal was away we’d been having quite an acerbic and enjoyable exchange of emails about the final décor of the café on the mezzanine floor. He appeared unable to grasp the principle of simple Shaker style, which we’d agreed would suit the mill best, and instead indulged in an orgy of rustic gingham. Arlene and I had changed the order – or rather, I had, because she was afraid of him.

  But as his trip wore on, his messages became terser, with longer intervals between them, and I started to wonder if he was feeling ill again. When I broached it with Mercy she said she had been wondering the same thing, so she emailed and asked him directly and he said he’d found eating plain bland food almost impossible on this trip and a local doctor thought he might be starting an ulcer.

  I hoped not, because it wasn’t likely to do his temper any good, so I did a quick internet search (or a slow one, really, because the connection takes for ever here) on what he might safely eat in India and Nepal, and emailed it to him.

  He snapped one right back, saying I should use my time to do my own job, not give him unwanted advice and sounded so much more like himself that I sent him an attachment showing the lovely, simple white china I’d picked out for the café, along with six smiley emoticons. I thought that might finish him off.

  He certainly went silent for over a week and then he was back to the terse one-liners, so he was no fun to play with any more.

  He was scheduled to return to the UK just before Liz and Mercy got back from Malawi, and I wondered if he’d hotfoot it straight up here to check that I hadn’t stolen any crackers.

  At the very least, I expected him to ring and grill me the moment his plane touched down. But he didn’t … and then, a day or two later, the phone rang just as I got in from the mill and a voice asked to speak to Mercy.

  ‘Tell her it’s Charlie Clancy,’ he added.

  ‘I know, I recognised your voice straight away,’ I said. ‘This is Tabitha Coombs.’

  ‘Oh God,’ he said, sounding embarrassed. ‘I’d forgotten you were living there! But I really do need to speak to Mercy – it’s about Randal.’

  ‘She’s still in Malawi and not due back for a couple of days,’ I said. ‘Is Randal … all right? I mean, we’d been emailing and I think his digestion was giving him hell again. He said he might be getting an ulcer.’

  ‘Oh, he told you he wasn’t so good?’ he said, sounding relieved. ‘I went round to see him last night and he was feeling so crummy he’d struggled to file his copy. Then he went white as a sheet and keeled over, so when he came round, I made him go to A&E.’

  ‘Is he all right?’ I demanded. ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They did a load of tests but didn’t find anything very wrong, so they thought it was mostly exhaustion and told him to rest up and eat a bland diet for a couple of weeks. But he’s always been so fit and I’ve never seen him in this state before. His doctor’s signed him off work for a fortnight but really he needs a bit of TLC and I’m off up to Scotland.’

  ‘Where’s Lacey?’ I asked, though I couldn’t really imagine her doing the Florence Nightingale stuff.

  ‘She went off on holiday with her chums to St Lucia for a fortnight the day before Randal got back, apparently. He was a bit miffed about it.’

  How odd, I suddenly thought: in one of his recent messages Guy had said he was going on holiday, too … but it was surely a coincidence?

  ‘Randal could come home,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll look after him till Mercy gets back. Perhaps you could drop him off here on your way up to Scotland?’

  ‘Not unless he’s wearing a parachute, because I’m flying. And anyway, he must have forgotten Mercy was still away, because he’s already on his way. He insisted he was fine to drive himself and you know what he’s like when he makes his mind up about something. I couldn’t stop him.’

  ‘Mercy and Liz were going to be back today, but then they changed their tickets so they could go to a wedding. Still, it’s OK, I’ll go and make his bed up and think of something bland to give him for dinner.’

  ‘Great,’ Charlie said, sounding relieved. ‘Well, I’d better be off, then and – well, sorry.’

  ‘What for? Palming a ratty invalid on me or being the instrument of my downfall?’

  ‘Both,’ he said, sounding amused, and rang off.

  I’d never been right into Randal’s apartments. Mercy had merely opened the door when she first gave me a tour of Mote Farm and I’d just looked in at a small but pleasantly sunny sitting room, with a glimpse through an open door of a bedroom beyond.

  The team of Dolly Mops cleaners who came every week had the place gleaming and dust free and his bed, a huge four-poster with curly columns at each corner, was already freshly made up.

  I wasn’t sure quite how ill he’d be feeling when he got back, but I turned down the corner of the quilt and plumped up the pillows, in case he wanted to go to bed straight away.

  It was only as I turned away that I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of one of my own papercut pictures on the wall o
pposite: there was no mistaking it, for it was of Mum seated like Boudicca in a chariot-like wheelchair among a Sleeping Beauty tangle of thorns.

  For a moment I was stirred by a maelstrom of feelings and memories: the renewed sadness that my lovely, free-spirited mother was no longer there; my first gallery exhibition, when I’d been filled with happiness and excitement at the future that suddenly seemed to be within my reach … and then Charlie, and the appalling sequence of events that followed, orchestrated by Kate.

  I wiped my eyes, filled Randal’s bedside carafe with cold water and then went downstairs to tell Silas what was happening.

  Charlie had been quite right and Randal shouldn’t have driven himself up, because he had enough trouble getting out of the car and standing. He looked so pale and drawn that Silas took one look and ordered him up to bed.

  And he must have felt ill, because he went. Luckily Job was by the garages giving the estate car a long, loving slow polish, so he brought in the bags and took them up.

  When he returned, he reported that Randal had gone to bed and said he didn’t want anything to eat or drink, only to be left in peace and he’d be fine in the morning.

  ‘But in my opinion, Tabitha, he has that nasty flu that’s going round and you should call in the doctor,’ Job said gloomily. ‘He admitted he felt dizzy and he’s alternating between hot and cold. I’ll pop back again later and see if he wants any assistance,’ he added, and I was grateful, because I couldn’t see Randal letting me tuck him up for the night, let alone anything else, and climbing stairs was beyond Silas.

  But anyway, Silas and I decided to do what Job had advised, to be on the safe side, and called the doctor out. I filled him in about Randal’s recent health issues and trip to the hospital and then took him upstairs to see the patient.

  Randal was sweating so heavily that his dark blond hair stuck to his forehead and his eyes were shadowed and vague, but he still had enough fight left in him to be furious that I’d called out the doctor without asking him.