Stella must have exhausted her small reserves of energy, because Ma brought her back to us before wandering over to examine the plant stall. It was so crowded in the hall that we folded up the buggy and I parked it in a corner behind a screen while Jago carried Stella.
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘Raffy told me that when he announces the tea and coffee are ready, he’s also going to tell them they can buy my cake by the slice and I can see the urns have been brought out.’
My cake was on a table to itself next to the refreshments, along with a stack of paper plates and napkins. I took up my place behind it and one of the ladies at the next stall handed me a cake knife.
‘Wow,’ Jago said. ‘That one’s even better than the last – it could have been professionally made.’
I blushed with pleasure. ‘Thank you – and I took your advice and wrote it up for “The Cake Diaries”.’
‘You know, a prinsesstårta would make an excellent alternative wedding cake, alongside my croquembouche,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘If you ever want a job, I’ll take you onto the payroll.’
‘Actually, I’d love that, because I think I enjoy making them as much as you do the croquembouche. Perhaps one day, when Stella’s well enough to start school, I’ll take you up on it …’
I looked at my now-sleeping daughter, whose arms were linked in a fond stranglehold around Jago’s neck. ‘If all goes well, that is,’ I added, a lump suddenly forming in my throat.
‘Of course it will, but I do wish you’d change your mind and let me go to America with you,’ he said, continuing an argument we’d been having off and on for a few days. ‘I’d pay my own way, and come back as soon as Stella was starting to recover after the operation.’
‘Absolutely not, you know you’ve got to get your business up and running by Christmas and you’ve already got croquembouche orders to fulfil for autumn,’ I said firmly. ‘Anyway, you’ve done enough, and I’ll have Jenny and Ma.’
‘You’ll at least let me drive you to the airport and see you off, though, won’t you?’
‘Of course and, God willing, meet us again when we come back.’
‘“All shall be well, and all shall be well,” to quote Dame Julian of Norwich,’ Raffy assured us, arriving in time to overhear this last sentiment.
‘I’m just about to announce that the tea and coffee is being served, along with slices of your very excellent cake, Cally, so would you like to take up your station with the cake knife and paper plates? George from the local newspaper is going to take a picture or two of you cutting it.’
‘Oh, yes, I’ve met George before,’ I said, seeing the familiar figure of the local reporter bob up, camera in hand.
‘I’ll buy the first slice,’ Jago said. ‘I want to test if it tastes as good as it looks.’
Stella was still fast asleep against his shoulder and he glanced down at her and added, ‘Make that two pieces: we’d better save one for Stella when she wakes up.’
I’d teamed a pretty, flowery, floaty tea dress that I’d got from the jumble sale with a pink cashmere cardi, so I hoped I’d look all right in the photographs, even if my hair had been tangled by the breeze. I thought my lipstick had probably vanished after that kiss, too …
When the cake had all gone and the cups were empty, Raffy announced that everything remaining on the stalls was half price, and he wasn’t going to close the fête until they’d all been bought, so there was a minor stampede. Ma must have been in the mêlée somewhere, because she came back with a carton full of foliage, which she parked by the pushchair behind the screen.
‘Have to do my bit,’ she said bravely, before diving back into the fray, only to return with two jars of blackcurrant jam, her favourite.
‘Where did Hal get to?’ I asked.
‘He was here for a bit, but he’s not really one for crowds,’ she said. ‘He got you some herbs for your garden, Jago – you owe him four pounds fifty.’
‘That was kind of him,’ Jago said.
She eyed us both closely. ‘I saw that Scott of the Antarctic earlier, he was heading out of the exit gate with some skinny tall blonde woman in ridiculously high heels.’
‘The Abominable Aimee, Jago’s ex,’ I explained.
Jago, as was his casually friendly habit, had draped the arm that wasn’t holding Stella around my shoulders and I suppose we must have suddenly looked to Ma like the perfect family unit.
‘Anything you want to tell me?’ she asked, as I had once asked her, and I blushed slightly.
‘No.’
‘Oh? Only someone told me they saw the pair of you having a bit of a moment in the middle of the field.’
‘We were just trying to convince Adam and Aimee that we’re a couple, so they leave us alone,’ I explained.
‘Fair enough. From the sound of it, you did that all right.’
‘I hope so, then maybe they’ll head straight back to London.’
Knowing the coast was now clear, I thought I’d better do my bit, so I left Jago with Stella and bought one of those peg bags shaped like a little flowered dress on a coat hanger, a knitted pink mouse with black cross-stitch woollen eyes, and a lot of tasselled bookmarks made out of old birthday cards.
I wasn’t entirely sure what I would do with any of them, but Ma said she thought she could find a use for the peg bag up in the studio, because a hanging pocket had to be handy for something, and she wandered off holding it as well as the bag of candyfloss with which Jago had presented her.
Stella chose that moment to wake up, sleep-creased and grumpy, demanding another session with Butterball the pony.
‘I’m afraid my mother’s taken him home,’ Poppy explained, overhearing. She was holding her own little girl in her arms, wrapped in what looked suspiciously like one of those sheepskin pads you put under saddles to cushion them. ‘But when you come back from America, perhaps you could come to the stables again and ride him?’
‘Oh, yes and you could have riding lessons when you’re well enough,’ I suggested.
Stella’s face lit up. ‘The doctors are mending me, so I can run around and go to school,’ she told Poppy. ‘I won’t be all wobbly or tired any more.’
She wriggled a bit and Jago set her carefully down on her feet.
‘Gingerbread piggie?’ she said, looking up at him hopefully.
‘I just brought stars today, but I saved you one, and a piece of Mummy’s princess cake.’
Stella took hold of his hand. ‘Now.’
‘Now, please,’ I corrected automatically, thinking how quickly Stella had grown fond of Jago … as had I. I’d willingly shouldered the heavy burden of her medical problems alone all these years, but how much easier life had been since I’d had Jago to share my innermost thoughts and worries with!
‘Are you crying, Mummy?’ Stella asked worriedly.
‘Yes, but only because I’m really happy,’ I told her, managing a smile.
Stella, having missed her long nap, was still sleepy when we got back to the cottage, but I kept her awake to eat some tea before tucking her up for an early night. There was no sign of Ma, so she was either in the studio or had gone to the Green Man.
It turned out to be the latter, because she rang me later, while we were in the kitchen looking up recipes for butterscotch sauce, to tell me Adam and Aimee were in the bar, drunk as skunks.
I think they must have gone straight there from the fête and presumably would stay the night, rather than drive home in that condition. I hoped so, for the sake of other road users.
I was glad Ma had warned us, though, because we both got inebriated calls on our mobiles before Jago went back to the Falling Star.
First Aimee rang Jago and he said she’d told him he’d ruined her life, shattered her dreams and broken her heart, followed by a lot of gusty sobbing that I’d been able to hear myself from across the kitchen.
Then only a few minutes later Adam informed me that he didn’t think Stella was really his daughter, but Jago’s! Aimee had told h
im that we’d known each other for years, so unless I could produce a DNA test proving he was her father, he was no longer interested in either of us.
‘Oh, well, it’s probably all for the best,’ Jago said when I relayed this unsavoury little nugget. ‘I expect we’ve heard the end of them.’
I could only hope he was right.
I lay awake for ages that night, thinking about that kiss … and finally, I admitted to myself that I was in love with Jago. I probably had been from the moment our eyes met across the croquembouche in the window of the Happy Macaroon.
I think since Stella’s birth I simply had never perceived myself in any light other than that of mother … and even if I had, I’d had no time or spare emotion left for any other kind of relationship.
But that long, tingling kiss had lit a slow fuse that still burned, though unfortunately not one that was likely to lead to a big bang in the distant future, for Jago obviously saw me as a friend. A close friend, a loving friend, but a friend.
Aimee
Aimee, who’d ended up in bed at the Green Man with Adam, said sleepily, slurring her words slightly, ‘I simply don’t know how it’s taken us this long to get together.’
‘Yeah, blindingly obvious,’ he agreed, his voice muffled since he was lying limply face down in the feather pillows.
‘We’ve a lot more in common than we ever had with Cally and Jago, haven’t we?’
‘I could never see you living in a dead-and-alive hole like this village,’ he agreed.
‘Or you playing the nine-to-five family man for ever – sooo boring.’
‘Especially when the family isn’t mine after all,’ he said bitterly, having been convinced by now, with a little assistance from Aimee, that Stella was Jago’s child. He rolled over and pushed the hair out of his eyes. ‘And I’d already started wondering how long I could stick my job.’
‘I absolutely loathe mine,’ Aimee said with deep feeling. ‘Life used to be much more fun! I’d love to simply throw everything up and go globe-trotting for a year. Daddy’d cut my allowance off again, but I could let my flat.’
‘Me too – and what’s to stop us?’ he said slowly.
Chapter 36: Surprise Package
Stella, unsurprisingly, was too tired for playgroup on the Monday, so we gave it a miss. I’d assumed a hungover Aimee and Adam would have set off at dawn in order to get back to London, but when we had a little walk later we avoided the village, just in case they were still hanging about.
I’d made some choux buns early that morning and, once they were cold, piped patisserie cream filling into them, so I could experiment with my own croquembouche later, though mine would be tiny compared to Jago’s.
So in the afternoon while Stella was napping, I made a cone out of a piece of cardboard taped together and covered in baking paper and then, dipping the buns in liquid caramel, began to build my cake around it. This is not the easiest of things to do, even if Jago had made it look that way!
Still, by the time Stella woke again I had a slightly loppy little tower, plus a kitchen covered in sticky strands of caramel. I must have flicked some over Toto and Moses too, because they spent ages frantically licking first themselves, and then each other.
At teatime Ma came down from the studio and we all had a piece or two of the croquembouche – or three, in Ma’s case – which pretty well finished it off, though I did save a bit for Jago to try when he popped in on his way back from the Happy Macaroon.
He couldn’t stop, because he’d managed to find a reconditioned red Aga and it was about to be delivered.
‘And it was just as well I had an excuse handy to get away,’ he added, ‘because Sarah tried to rope me into helping David retile the bathroom tonight, as if I hadn’t got enough to do with my own place.’
If Stella hadn’t still been a bit wan I might have taken her down to watch them manoeuvre the Aga up the garden and into the kitchen, which would probably be quite a performance, but since the new kitchen units I helped Jago to choose are being fitted soon, perhaps we’ll wait and see the whole effect.
The croquembouche, or pièce montée, is a very spectacular French wedding cake, consisting of a tall tower of patisserie-cream-filled choux buns, held together with melted caramel and decorated with fine sugar strands. It is time-consuming, but well worth the effort for a special occasion …
Cally Weston: ‘The Cake Diaries’
I mentioned at Stella’s next hospital appointment that she didn’t seem to have recovered her energy after our busy weekend, as she usually did and they gave me to understand that this was part of an expected slow decline in her health. Then they stressed that the important thing was to try to keep her clear of any illnesses and infections that might hasten that downward trend, before her operation at the start of November.
This unfortunately had the effect of making me even more anxious about her health, as well as causing me to step up my cake intake drastically and I continued to keep her quiet for the rest of the week. We didn’t even go to Celia and Will’s Crafty Garden Party and Selling Exhibition, though I did lots of baking and sent it over with Jenny, who reported that the event was another great fundraising success.
Over the ensuing days, which were blessed by warm sunshine, Stella and I took lots of lazy summer walks up the country lanes towards Winter’s End with Toto, or to the village to feed the ducks and see the angels.
But whenever we visited any of the local shops, I now had to run the gauntlet of well-meaning banter about me and Jago. Rumours spread fast in a village, and by choosing to share a kiss in the middle of the fête, I suppose we were hardly going to go unnoticed or untalked about.
Jago told me it was happening to him too, and Mrs Snowball had asked him if she should get her wedding hat out of storage yet.
‘What did you say?’
‘That we were just close friends. She said, “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on,” so I suspect she wasn’t entirely convinced.’
‘Oh, well, I suppose we let ourselves in for it, but we had to make it convincing to fool Adam and Aimee,’ I said, though I could feel my face burning slightly.
‘We seem to have managed that, all right – there’s been a total silence from both of them since they called us, hasn’t there?’
‘Yes, so mission accomplished – and I expect everyone else will realise we’re not really a couple when they see we don’t make a habit of snogging at village functions,’ I suggested.
Though come to think of it, due to the casual way we held hands whenever we were out together, or Jago draped his free arm around my shoulders if he was carrying Stella, perhaps not …
One hot Sunday afternoon we took a picnic down to the Lido field, so Stella could paddle in the rock pool. It being a day that Winter’s End was closed to the public, Sophy and Seth were there, too, with Alys in a little swimming costume and arm bands, splashing about at the edge of the river. I wished Stella could have joined in, but despite the heat of the day, I knew it would still be too cold for her.
Afterwards we walked back to Honey’s, so I could see how the half-wheel herb garden that Hal had created and planted up was looking. The turf had settled in well and Jago, having discovered the joys of internet sites devoted to the free recycling of unwanted items, had installed a small, brightly coloured plastic slide and swing under the apple tree, as a surprise for Stella.
‘I wiped them down with disinfectant, so no germs,’ he assured me, and I told him he was getting as neurotic as I was.
‘No, I just knew you’d ask,’ he said. ‘I’m recycling a couple of things that I don’t want any more and I’ll start pouncing on anything that would do for the house that comes up. The Snowballs said if I bought anything big I could store it in one of the disused stables at the back of the Falling Star, till the house is ready.’
‘That was kind of them,’ I said.
Inside, most of the house was still an empty shell, though the conservatory was finished and the double glazing pu
t in. Jago would be moving in as soon as he’d finished painting his bedroom and tiling the en suite shower room, so he could get on with the rest of the redecoration while he was on the spot.
Currently the only finished room was the kitchen, which was so beautiful I want it for my own. The red Aga looked lovely and he’d splashed out on a big, retro fridge to match.
He may not so far have collected much in the way of furniture but, like me, he does have an awful lot of kitchen equipment!
I’d been so inspired by finding that the supermarket now stocked those delicious American Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, that I’d bought a huge jar of peanut butter and begun a whole new series of recipes using it.
Unfortunately, my cake consumption was taking on an even steeper upward curve as we moved through summer towards autumn and what it would bring, though for much of the time I managed to push my worries to the back of my mind and enjoy the moment. Some moments, especially those involving cake and Jago, I enjoyed more than others …
Aimee and Adam seemed to have vanished from our lives as if they’d merely been figures from a long nightmare and I’d almost managed to forget about them.
Then one day I answered a knock on the door and opened it to find an elderly couple standing on the doorstep. They were smartly dressed and vaguely familiar …
‘Hello, Cally,’ said the woman, in a frightfully posh voice. She had elegantly coiffed silver hair and was clutching a blue cashmere coat around her thin frame as if she was cold, though the day was warm and even slightly sticky.
The man, bald but with a flourishing white moustache, smiled hopefully and said, ‘Hello, my dear.’
Then it clicked – Adam’s parents! We’d only met once before, in London, and they’d aged noticeably since then … but then, Adam had been a late and unexpected only child.
‘Mr and Mrs Scott. Well – this is a surprise,’ I exclaimed. Then I remembered my manners and showed them into the sitting room, which was littered with toys. The rainbow teddy bear that Jago had won at the fête was sitting on the rocking horse in the window.
Wish Upon a Star Page 31
