Wish Upon a Star

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘Good old-fashioned chocolate blancmange, served in individual ramekins, would be quick and simple for “Tea & Cake”, too,’ he suggested. ‘A swirl of cream on the top and one of those mini chocolate flakes.’

  ‘That’s another good idea, and I might even stretch my “Tea & Cake” remit to include mini cheesecakes – at least that has cake in the title. They don’t seem to mind at the magazine, so long as the recipe is quick and easy. Isn’t it amazing what you get served as buffet food at London events these days?’ I added. ‘Little pots of this or that, or tiny portions of paella served on Chinese soup spoons. Once, I was even given a teeny paper cone of fish and chips.’

  ‘I know, though I was usually on the other side of things setting up the cake display. I did go to some parties that Aimee organised but I felt like a fish out of water,’ he added slightly morosely. ‘Did I tell you that organising events for her friends was what she used to do for a living? But not really a living, because Daddy was still paying her a huge allowance then.’

  ‘I think you did mention that she organised parties.’

  ‘I went to one house party she organised as well, but it was all a bit wild and they played really silly games … it wasn’t my kind of scene, at all.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be mine either; I like a peaceful life. I used to enjoy going to the theatre and museums in London, and Stella loved the zoo, but that’s about all we miss.’

  ‘Yes, me too. It made it a bit difficult when I was engaged to Aimee, because she’d never been short of money and she didn’t seem able to grasp that I couldn’t afford to go nightclubbing in the kind of place she and her friends did, even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t.’

  ‘Funnily enough, my ex-fiancée was much the same and he had elderly, well-off parents to dole out a generous allowance, so he and Aimee would probably have been a better match for each other,’ I said and then it suddenly occurred to me that Jago and I also suited each other, which I suppose is why we’d instantly hit it off … in a friendly way. Neither of us was looking for more than that and perhaps that was why we felt so comfortable together?

  He sighed. ‘Really, Aimee and I had nothing in common at all. I can’t imagine what she saw in me and I certainly don’t know why she wants me back.’

  His thin, handsome face looked pensive and a lock of dark, shiny, curling hair fell forward over his forehead. I resisted the urge to reach out and smooth it back but it was a struggle.

  Part of his charm was that he had no idea he was gorgeous and I could see exactly why Aimee would want him back, even if they were polar opposites!

  And speaking of polar opposites, I didn’t suppose mine had ever given me another thought after he’d waltzed off back to the Antarctic!

  Stella was still tired on the Monday morning, which worried me so that I was in two minds about going to the playgroup, but in the end I drove her down and just popped in for half an hour.

  One side of the huge room was slowly filling up with stacked boxes and bags of things for the jumble sale, which apparently Effie Yatton’s Brownies would sort and then spirit across to the village hall on the day.

  Stella just wanted to sit on my knee and didn’t even look at the pink castle. Sophy’s little girl, Alys, very sweetly and gravely came and held her hand out to Stella in an invitation to come and play, but she shook her head so that all her silvery curls danced, and carried on sucking her thumb.

  Zoë and Rachel, the two young mothers who lived next to each other in the neat row of pebble-dashed council houses on the edge of the village, had both brought paperback copies of Around the World in Eighty Cakes for me to sign. Unlike all my own favourite cookbooks, they were pristine – entirely unmarked by greasy fingerprints or food stains, so I’m not sure they’d ever been opened.

  We didn’t stay long after that, but as we were leaving Poppy kindly invited us up on Friday to her riding school, Stirrups, to see the horses and the old donkey they had.

  ‘Stella hasn’t stopped talking about it since,’ I told Jago later when he rang to say how much he’d enjoyed spending time with us at the weekend and to hope it hadn’t been too much for Stella.

  ‘She does seem very tired today, but it was probably the fresh air and excitement that did it, because you carried her round practically the whole time,’ I said. ‘When she’s had another nap today, I think she’ll be fine again – she’s perked up already since Poppy told her about the donkey. No, I’m more worried about her catching coughs and colds, because she’s so susceptible and one of the children at playgroup had the sniffles.’

  ‘Weren’t you supposed to be warned if there was any infection going round?’

  ‘Chloe did promise to let me know, but obviously not everyone will tell her if their child’s a bit off colour before they turn up.’

  ‘If I catch anything, I promise not to come near either of you,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you could, but only wearing a surgical mask,’ I suggested half-seriously. ‘I think I’m going to get more and more worried about her catching something as the date to go to America gets closer. I might be terrified about the risks of the operation, but I couldn’t bear for anything to prevent it, when I know it’s her only chance of leading a long and normal life.’

  ‘That’s entirely understandable. I’ll mask up like an extra from a medical soap any time you like,’ he offered, and I laughed.

  ‘If you hadn’t been going to the stables, I’d have asked you if you’d like to meet me at Honey’s on Friday,’ he went on. ‘Tim Wesley from Hemlock Mill is going to see it. The estate agent spoke to Miss Honey, and she gave permission.’

  ‘I’d have loved to have seen it again, but hopefully before long you’ll have the keys and I can come and be nosy.’

  ‘You’ll always be welcome – we’ll nosy round together.’

  ‘I’ve written up some of those dessert recipes you suggested for articles,’ I told him, ‘and early this morning I froze a batch of brandy butter ice cream.’

  ‘How has that turned out?’

  ‘Even weirder than the first mincemeat one, though Ma had a taste and said she thought it would be good served with Christmas pudding.’

  ‘She’s probably right, and you could spice up a basic Christmas pudding “Cake Diaries” page with it, couldn’t you?’

  ‘True,’ I said, thinking that he had already spiced up both my life and my ideas no end …

  Stella was still not quite herself by the time we went to the hospital for her check-up on Thursday. They said she had a slight temperature, though nothing to worry about and a little Calpol should take care of it. But of course, everything worries me and sends me into panic mode, so instead of going into Ormskirk, we went straight home.

  That made Stella cross. ‘I want to see Jago and I want my gingerbread piggy! And we might have seen the three Graces in the café too!’

  ‘We’ll go in next week, darling, I promise.’

  ‘Jago will wonder where I am.’

  ‘We’ll tell him,’ I assured her and rang his mobile. Luckily he answered and I said, ‘Hi, Jago, it’s me, Cally. We won’t be in the shop today and Stella wants a word with you.’

  I handed the receiver across.

  ‘Mummy wouldn’t bring me to see you, because I had a tiny tiny tiny little temperature, so I’m cross with her.’

  I couldn’t hear what Jago said in reply and obviously he couldn’t see her nodding, but some kind of agreement must have been reached because she handed the phone back to me.

  ‘That’s all right now,’ she said. ‘Not as good, but all right.’

  ‘What did you say?’ I asked him as she wandered off towards her room, dragging Bun behind her by one threadbare ear.

  ‘I said I’d pop out later and bring her a special gingerbread pig … if that’s all right with you?’

  ‘Of course. But aren’t you way too busy?’

  ‘Unless I’ve got a croquembouche to make or David’s got a big order, I’m fairly redundant now
Dorrie’s here, actually. She’s so capable and she keeps saying she doesn’t want me under her feet. It’ll be even worse when Sarah moves up at the end of June!’

  ‘Let’s hope you complete on the house in Sticklepond quickly then.’

  ‘I’d settle for a bedroom of my own at the moment, now they seem to be storing the stepladders and pasting table in mine,’ he replied ruefully.

  Jago

  Jago was about to leave for his appointment with Tim Wesley at Honey’s when he made the mistake of popping his head into the shop to tell David and his mother that he was off.

  ‘There you are!’ Aimee exclaimed, with a triumphant look at the other two. ‘They said you’d gone out and they didn’t know where to, or even when you’d be back.’

  ‘I am on my way out. What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got to organise a ghastly lunch party at a racecourse somewhere round here tomorrow – Haydock? Something-dock, anyway – I’ve got it in my sat nav. So since I had to come up today, I thought I’d drop in and see you. I’ve brought the estate agent’s brochure for that hotel I told you about too, because I don’t think you’ve thought this pit village thing through properly.’

  ‘Aimee, it isn’t in a pit village, and in any case, you’re way too late,’ Jago said impatiently. ‘I’ve had my offer accepted and I’m just on my way to meet someone there, who’s interested in clearing the old stock out of the shop.’

  Her mouth dropped open and for a minute she didn’t look quite so pretty.

  ‘So you see, I was quite serious and you’ve wasted your journey.’

  She rallied and smiled sweetly at him. ‘It’s not too late until you’ve actually signed the contract, is it? And anyway, aren’t you pleased to see little me?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted journey, because I really will have to go now, or I’ll be late.’

  ‘Then I’ll just have to come with you,’ she said quickly, and his heart sank.

  ‘Perhaps it has possibilities and I should at least see it,’ she suggested. ‘I mean, I’m not entirely fixed on the hotel idea because there’s the other one I told you about.’

  ‘Aimee, I already know what possibilities it has, so there’s no point in you seeing it. And today is more of a business discussion than a viewing.’

  She pouted. ‘You mean you don’t want little me to come with you?’

  ‘Lord love a duck!’ muttered Dorrie, and David made gagging noises.

  ‘Nobody asked your opinion,’ Aimee snapped in their direction, and Jago suddenly decided to give in and take her with him. He had a strong feeling she’d be horrified by the state of Honey’s, even though he was pretty sure that the survey would say it was substantially sound and just in need of rewiring, replastering and a whole lot of updating.

  ‘Come on, then. You’d better follow me. Where are you parked?’

  ‘In a small car park right behind this road.’

  ‘I know the one. You go and get in your car, and I’ll drive through it in a minute and you can follow me.’

  ‘What’s the name of this village we’re going to?’

  ‘Sticklepond.’

  ‘What the hell kind of a name is that?’ she demanded.

  ‘One that suits it,’ he said.

  He wasn’t actually late for his meeting at Honey’s, because he’d intended having a quick look round before Tim arrived, having got his hands on the keys.

  Aimee ominously remarked that the village looked quaint as they walked from the car park of the nearby Green Man, but once Jago opened the front door and ushered her into the dusty time warp of the shop, she went silent. After that, she barely said a word as he led her all over the property and since he’d brought a large torch with him this time it tended to make it all look even worse. In the circumstances, he thought this was a good thing.

  Finally, when she’d shudderingly declined any interest in looking at the garden and garage, he glanced at his watch. ‘Well, that’s the tour over then, and the man I’m meeting here will be arriving any second.’

  ‘But, Jago,’ she bleated, ‘it’s all so horrible! How can you possibly think of buying this?’

  ‘Once it’s renovated, it’ll have everything I need.’

  ‘But it’s so far out in the sticks, too.’

  ‘I thought you said Sticklepond was quaint? And there’s a lot going on in the village; you’d be surprised. I know I was.’

  But she was too busy angrily brushing off invisible dirt and cobwebs to listen. ‘I feel filthy and I haven’t even touched anything. And this dust is starting my asthma off – I have to get out of here!’

  She scrabbled in her bag and produced an inhaler and he suddenly realised that the faint creaking he’d been conscious of for several minutes was not, in fact, the old floorboards under their feet, but Aimee’s increasingly laboured breathing.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said contritely. ‘How thoughtless of me! Look, why don’t you go back to the Green Man and wait for me there? I shouldn’t be too long.’

  She agreed to this and tottered off in her spiky heels, wheezing histrionically. He felt a bit guilty … but then, if it finally put her off the place completely, perhaps it wasn’t so bad!

  Tim Wesley had brought a camera, a clipboard and his second-in-command, Candy. In marked contrast to Aimee they were absolutely bowled over by the shop and just as enthusiastic about the huge old dresser, heavy table and the organ in the living room.

  ‘How wonderful! Maybe we could get a volunteer in to play hymns, occasionally, when we’ve got it up in the mill house,’ Candy suggested.

  ‘Miss Honey told me her mother used to play hymns on it on Sundays,’ Jago said.

  ‘Good idea, Candy, but we’ll have to raise the money to have it renovated first,’ Tim pointed out.

  ‘That’s OK, we can put it on display as it is for the present, with a special collection box for the restoration fund,’ Candy said.

  ‘Would you want all the fixtures and fittings from the shop too, the counter and stands and everything?’ asked Jago as they took a few rough measurements, which Candy wrote down, though it was too dark to take any decent pictures.

  ‘Yes, lock, stock and barrel, if that’s OK with you? We want to recreate it as exactly as possible. It’s lucky the space it’s going into will be about the same size – maybe even slightly bigger.’

  ‘Sorry the electric’s off,’ Jago apologised. ‘I’ll get it back on again as soon as I’ve completed on the place.’

  ‘It’s all right, we can come back to take more thorough measurements and some pictures with lights, if necessary. This is just to make sure it’ll fit into the designated space. We want to move the gift shop out of the eco-lodge and put it next door to Honey’s, so that visitors have to go through the haberdasher’s to get to it, then exit into the courtyard again.’

  ‘The counter and a couple of little rope barriers will keep visitors from touching anything,’ Candy explained. ‘Maybe there could be an audio history of the family and the shop playing, too.’

  ‘Miss Honey is still alive and she’s a hundred and two, but her mind is clear as crystal, especially about the past: you could ask her if she’d let you record her memories,’ Jago suggested.

  ‘Great idea. To have the voice of the last owner telling the history and any anecdotes would be marvellous! Do you think she’d let us?’ Tim said eagerly.

  ‘I’m pretty sure she’d love it.’ Jago gave them the Pinker’s End phone number.

  He’d entirely forgotten Aimee until Tim and Candy had gone, when he realised it had all taken a lot longer than he’d expected.

  He dashed off guiltily to the pub, hoping she was feeling better, but when he got there she not only looked perfectly well, but was deep in conversation at a corner table with a handsome, if slightly raffish, man.

  She’d always had the ability to pick up strange men and he was tempted to sneak off again in the hope she’d either pulled, or met an old f
lame. But unfortunately she looked up and spotted him, beckoning him over with a turquoise talon and he supposed he couldn’t really have driven off and left her there, anyway, however tempting the prospect.

  ‘There you are at last, Jago, darling! Jack, this is my fiancé.’

  ‘Ex,’ Jago qualified quickly and then his eye fell on the engagement ring he’d given her, which was now sparkling on her left hand.

  ‘Silly! You’re such a tease,’ Aimee said playfully. ‘This is Jack Lewis. He’s related to the Winters up at the big house here and he’s been telling me about the village. I hadn’t realised how terribly trendy it is – I always thought Lancashire was all Coronation Street and too dim and dismal.’

  Jago shook hands with Jack Lewis, who gave him a warm, open smile and said he had to go, but it was nice meeting them and they should stay in touch.

  Jago, who was soft-hearted but not soft in the head, thought Jack Lewis looked both familiar and untrustworthy … and on the way out to the car park, he remembered where he’d seen him before.

  ‘That Jack Lewis was on a TV show a year or two back,’ he told Aimee. ‘I knew I’d seen him before. I think it was Dodgy Dealings, the one where they expose all kinds of rogue tradesmen and scammers, and he’d been defrauding old people into selling him their homes cheaply.’

  He suddenly hoped Aimee hadn’t told him all about Honey’s, or he might put in a higher offer! Mind you, he couldn’t see Miss Honey taking a fancy to him: she was too sharp an old bird to be taken in.

  ‘He’s very nice, so I’m sure you are wrong,’ Aimee said. ‘Or maybe he was framed.’

  She seemed so taken with him that Jago hoped she’d given him her number and lost any interest in himself, but no: suddenly her attention and all her charm was switched back onto him like a searchlight.

  ‘Maybe Honey’s won’t be so bad when you’ve done it all up. I can’t imagine what kind of social life I’d have up here, though!’

  ‘Then it’s just as well you won’t have to find out, isn’t it?’ Jago said pointedly. ‘I don’t mean to be unkind, but would you stop telling people we’re engaged when we’re nothing of the kind? And wear your engagement ring on another finger.’