‘Oh, no, I’m sure she’ll be delighted. This barter idea has been such a godsend, dear. I don’t know how we would have managed without it. And being in the co-operative scheme too, so we can club together and bulk-buy things that you can’t grow, makes the money go so much further.’
‘Yes, it certainly does, and I must go out to Mark and Stella’s and pick up the latest order as soon as Ben comes back with the van. Harry’s so touchy about his beloved car, I don’t really want to load sacks of henfood and brown rice into it.’
I had the Diamonds Are Forever cake sitting in the larder ready to deliver too.
‘These icing roses are very pretty,’ Violet said. ‘They remind me of when I was a girl, and used to do barbola work. One could turn all kinds of old jars and pots into pretty gifts, if you had the knack.’
‘I’m baking a hundred and fifty cupcakes for the reception, and each has to have a flower on top, but they’re very fiddly and will take for ever,’ I said gloomily—but then what she’d just said sank in and I had a brilliant idea. ‘Violet, do you think you could model some for me, if I gave you a finished rose to copy, and some sugar paste? It can’t be a lot different from barbola work, can it?’
I’d seen one or two examples of her handiwork about Poona Place, and barbola seemed to be an early type of self-hardening plastic clay.
‘Oh, yes, I could easily!’ Her face lit up. ‘In fact, I would enjoy it.’
So I packed up an example, along with an optimistic amount of icing. ‘If you lay them out on greaseproof paper on a tray to harden, like these, I can collect them in the van when I have it again.’
‘Give me a ring later and I will tell you how I’m doing with them,’ she suggested. The Graces never make outgoing calls, except in emergencies, due to economy.
I saw her pedal off on her trike, the big boot stuffed with spare vegetables, some cheese and vegetable pasties from a freezer batch I had made the day before and, carefully wedged in, the little box containing the rose.
‘A hundred and four, dear, before I ran out of paste. Is that enough?’ Violet said when I rang that evening.
‘Gosh, yes, more than I thought you could make, especially in such a short time! I’ve done fifty, so that’s plenty, with a few spares. And you now have lots of Acorns!’
‘Even better,’ she said, and rang off, to save me money.
Ben didn’t come back on the day I expected him to and, what’s more, he wasn’t answering his phone either, so I was quite in a panic about what might have happened to him.
When he finally picked up next morning, he sounded sleepy.
‘At last!’ I said, with a huge feeling of relief. ‘I was getting so worried! Where are you, Ben? Are you on the way home?’
‘No, actually I’m still here.’ I heard him yawn hugely and started to feel cross.
‘But the wedding’s on Friday—when are you coming back? I tried to ring you last night, but your phone was off’.
‘Sorry, darling, I was out having dinner with that art collector I told you about. I did try and ring you before I left, but there was no answer.’
‘Oh? It didn’t say I’d missed any calls.’ But then, I thought, it didn’t always—or it only tells me about them hours later. ‘So was last night’s dinner a sort of celebration because he’d bought your work?’
‘He’s certainly very interested. The Gallery think he might buy the whole new series, but he hasn’t quite made his mind up.’
‘That would be wonderful! So now, I suppose, you’re just about to set off for home?’
‘It’ll have to be this afternoon because I’m going down to the gallery first, to discuss it with them, then I’ll collect my stuff and set off’.
‘Can there be anything left to discuss? I thought they handled all the sales side.’
‘They do, but it’s the personal touch that seems to clinch the deal,’ Ben explained, ‘and it’s important to me.’
‘Yes, I do understand that, only what with it being the wedding on Friday…And then, you’ve got the van. I could have done with it today to deliver that Diamonds Are Forever wedding anniversary cake, because they live in Mossedge. I had to borrow Harry’s car and I’m always petrified I’ll scratch it.’
‘I’m sorry, that was thoughtless of me.’
‘We need to go and collect the co-op stuff from Mark and Stella’s too; the order’s come.’
‘Sorry about that, as well. I know I must seem horribly self-centred,’ he added with a rare moment of introspection, ‘but I was just so excited about this major collector I forgot about everything else and…well, I don’t get taken out to dinner at the Ritz every day of the week.’
‘I suppose not,’ I agreed. ‘Swanky!’
‘Look, I’ll be back early this evening, I promise.’
‘You’d better be, Ben Richards,’ I said threateningly. ‘I’m cooking your favourite dinner, and if you’re late, I’ll feed it to Mac!’
He laughed, and someone in the background said something—a female voice.
‘Is that Mary? Put her on, will you? We haven’t had a chat for ages.’
‘No, it isn’t Mary. Actually I’m at the studios, in the coffee shop-cum-gallery they’ve set up.’
The voice spoke again in the background, rather insistently. ‘Look I’d better go. See you later, OK? Did you want me to bring anything back?’
‘Just yourself and your suit for the wedding, plus smart shoes, tie, whatever. You’re ushering, remember?’
‘Umm…’ he said, his mind obviously drifting elsewhere, which seems to happen a lot with artists, I’ve noticed.
‘Love you,’ I said.
But instead of his usual, ‘Love you, too,’ he simply muttered, ‘Damn, the battery’s about to run out. I forgot to charge it,’ and was gone.
Still, at least I knew he was all right and would soon be on his way home, even if he did sound overexcited and exhausted, like a child after a party. I really didn’t think London was good for him.
A pallid young bride-to-be, with blue-black hair, blood-red lipstick, multiple facial piercings and a resigned mother, came to discuss ordering a wedding cake—a Goth one.
She requested purple and black, but left the design to me. I thought a sort of silver stud effect would be nice, using those little silver ball cake decorations or, even better, silver-coated almonds, pointy end out. I would have to order them from a specialist supplier, though. Luckily, it’s to be a December wedding, so although it’s short notice, I’m unlikely to get many other orders during that month, and it will at least keep my hand in.
I wondered about a sort of half-ruined Gothic tower with a stained-glass window, made like you do traffic light biscuits, using melted toffees—only purples and greens. And maybe a marzipan dragon curled up inside the ruin? The Goth bride had had a dragon tattoo up her arm, so she was presumably keen on them.
I hadn’t made a Goth cake before and I found the challenge quite interesting after the tedium of making a hundred and fifty identical cupcakes. I did a few sketches and worked out how many round cakes I needed for the tower, which would not be quite of the same proportions as Libby’s Pisa cake.
I might have to make the half-ruined top part, with the toffee stained-glass window, out of biscuit…but I could experiment a bit. It would be fun.
Chapter Ten
Slightly Adulterated
I put a couple of new fruit bushes in today, accompanied by the hens—there isn’t much in the vegetable garden they can damage at this time of year. As usual, my favourite hen, Aggie, edged so close behind me as I dug that I kept having to shoo her away in case I caught her with the spade on the backward swing.
‘Cakes and Ale’
‘Ben’s on his way back right now,’ I said to Harry when he came in that afternoon for a mug of tea and a chat, just as it was getting dark. ‘He’ll be here for dinner and I’ve got Lancashire hotpot on in the slow cooker, his favourite. Would you like me to bring you some over when it’s re
ady?’
‘No, that’s all right. I’ve a fancy for kippers and brown bread and butter tonight and then I’m going to the pub.’
‘Ben might come down for a quick one later too,’ I said. He often strolled down to the Griffin about ten, allegedly so he could make sure Harry got safely back home, though I suspected he enjoyed an occasional pint of Mossbrown ale as a change from our own homebrew.
‘Aye, I’ll maybe catch up with him then—and I’ll tell him to stop all this gallivanting off to London, leaving you on your own so much too!’
‘He can’t help it at the moment, Harry. He has to consolidate his reputation while he can. But soon he—’ I broke off as my mobile rang. ‘I’d better answer that, in case it’s a cake order,’ I apologised, ‘though most of my calls lately are through that article in Country at Heart, asking about cakes for next year’s wedding season, so they aren’t exactly urgent.’
He got up. ‘That’s all right. I’d better be off and shut up the hens. It’s almost dark. I’ll see you tomorrow, lass.’
‘Make sure Aggie’s in, won’t you? I thought I saw her behind the compost bins earlier.’
Harry jammed his old hat on and picked up his stick, and I watched him negotiate the small step down into the garden, followed by Mac, while I absent-mindedly answered ‘Hello? Josie’s Weird and Wonderful Cakes. Can I help you?’
‘Is that Josie Gray?’ asked a crisp, incisive voice, the kind that I knew from long experience belonged to the worst sort of mother-of-the-bride: a control-freak who would want to run the whole day with military precision and no margin for errors, or human weakness. She’d be certain to find fault with any cake I made for her…in fact, she didn’t sound the sort of woman to want a weird and wonderful cake at all.
‘Yes, that’s right. Were you enquiring about a wedding cake?’
There was an infinitesimal pause. ‘No, should I be? I think that’s a teeny bit premature.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘it’s just that I make them, so I automatically assume that it’s an order when a strange number comes up. So, how can I help you?’
‘My name’s Olivia Taunton.’
Olivia? Now, where had I heard that name recently…?
‘I don’t know if Ben has ever mentioned me to you?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said, puzzled. ‘In what context?’
‘Well, we originally met at his first one-man exhibition in London at the end of last year, and since then I’ve bought several pieces of his work and come to know him rather well.’
Now a different picture was forming in my head to go with that brittle, cut-glass voice, and my heart performed a quick, alarmed thump-thump-thump. This must be Ben’s middle-aged, blonde stalker, the patroness, out to acquire slightly more than just Ben’s art!
‘Ah, yes, he has mentioned you,’ I said cautiously, ‘only not by name. I suppose you want to speak to him, but—’
‘No, actually it is you I want to talk to,’ she interrupted.
‘Me? What about?’ I hoped she wasn’t going to launch into some kind of jealous personal attack, though she didn’t sound delusional—scarily sane, in fact. I suppose that’s how stalkers come across, because their fantasies must seem totally real to them.
She gave an impatient sigh. ‘This is sooo difficult! Ben should really have told you himself ages ago, but then the poor darling is so soft-hearted, I’ve realised he’s never going to bring himself to do it.’
‘Tell me what?’ I asked, though it was by now obvious that Ben was right about her, for not only was she losing her grip on her marbles, clearly one or two of the milkier ones had already rolled away into the corners. Perhaps I should just put the phone down?
But before I could do that, she said, ‘Look, if you weren’t obviously totally dim, you’d have sussed that Ben’s been having an affair with me for over a year now. He stays with me when he’s in London. He was here earlier when you phoned him.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Yes, really! I wanted him to ring you right back and tell you the truth, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He says you’re so insecure and needy that you couldn’t cope on your own. But after he’d gone, a friend showed me that article in Country at Heart, and I could see you’re in some kind of la-la land, thinking Ben’s going to stagnate in a rural backwater with you for ever! So, obviously, it’s unfair to let it drag on any longer and much kinder in the long run to put you out of your misery now.’
‘That’s very kind,’ I said, with as much patience as I could muster, ‘but Ben’s already warned me about you. Look, Olivia, I’ve read about older women who stalk attractive men, get fixated on them, think they’re having a relationship and then see their wives or partners as the intruders, so I do understand. But take it from me that you’re deluded and you need to snap right out of it, because my Ben would never do something like that! And by the way, he stays with old friends when he’s in London, not with you, and I frequently phone him there.’
‘Mary and Russell? Yes, I’ve met them, but he doesn’t stay there any more. He’s moved his things in with me. And yes, you’re forever phoning his mobile at the most inconvenient moments, as I know only too well.’
There was clearly no arguing with her and she sounded so calm and rational, but I suppose her delusion was perfectly real to her. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said levelly, ‘but this is all in your head. I mean, look at it logically—you’re in your fifties and Ben is—’
‘Is that what he told you?’ She sounded amused. ‘Well, I can assure you I’m not in my fifties—far from it. I’m only forty-two. And the minute we first met, the attraction was mutual.’
‘In your head,’ I snapped, losing patience. ‘And I don’t care how old you are, he still wouldn’t have an affair with you, because he loves me— always has, always will. You’re fantasising.’
The gloves came off and her voice went steely. ‘Look, it isn’t me who’s delusional, darling, it’s you. Get a grip on reality! You must have noticed how different he’s been for months? That he can’t wait to get back to London? I mean, I know you’ve had a platonic relationship for years, more like brother and sister, so the lack of that side of it probably hasn’t dawned on you yet, but—’
‘We have not had a platonic relationship,’ I said furiously. ‘Not that it’s any of your business! Ben and I have been together since our early teens—we’ve always been together, and we always will be, till death do us part. I understand why you’re trying to come between us, but it’s not going to work.’
‘Shut up and listen!’ she snarled. ‘In front of me I have a scan photograph showing our baby—Ben’s and mine. You just think about that one!’ And then the phone went dead.
By then, I was totally unnerved and upset, especially after that last, cruel touch. Logically I knew it was all untrue, but still, she’d sounded so convincing!
Then I thought of phoning Mary. Once she’d assured me that Ben had been staying with them as usual whenever he was in London, I would have proof that everything the woman had said was a tissue of lies, though as I dialled the number with unsteady fingers I felt guilty even doubting Ben enough to need that reassurance.
To my relief, Mary picked up immediately. ‘Hello?’
‘Oh, I’m so glad it’s you and not Russell!’ I gasped. ‘Mary, I’ve just had the most ghastly phone call from this mad woman called Olivia Taunton. Did Ben tell you about her stalking him?’
But before she could answer I poured out all the things Olivia had told me, hardly stopping for breath, let alone to let Mary get a word in. ‘But he always stays with you, so I knew it was all a lie,’ I finished, breathlessly. ‘It is, isn’t it?’
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.
‘Mary? Mary—are you still there? Hello?’
‘Y-yes, Josie,’ Mary said, sounding strained. ‘It’s just…well, I’m so sorry it has to come from me, but actually he hasn’t stayed with us since he met Olivia last year, though w
e’ve seen him at the studios, of course and—’
‘He hasn’t?’ I echoed numbly. Then the penny finally dropped and a horrible, unbelievable pattern began to emerge clearly, making my head reel with shock. ‘Wait a minute—you mentioned a friend called Olivia, didn’t you? The one who told you about the Chinese herbal practitioner.’
‘Yes, and I was grateful to her for that, but I would still have told you about her and Ben, only I didn’t like to interfere and I hoped it would just fizzle out—’
But I wasn’t interested in Mary’s feelings. ‘Oh my God! You mean it’s all true? Everything she said? Even the baby—Bens baby?’
‘Yes,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Olivia was desperate to get pregnant before it was too late. I think that’s why she made such a play for him in the first place.’
At that moment my entire life, from that very first meeting with Ben in the school playground to the last time he kissed me goodbye on the doorstep, flashed before my eyes as if I was dying—which, inside, I was. Only what I saw seemed as unsubstantial as stage scenery that trembled with each beat of my heart, and behind it lay only the echoing darkness of the void if it fell. And it was slowly falling now…
‘Josie, are you still there?’ cried Mary.
‘Yes—and I understand it all now. No wonder you’ve been avoiding my calls for months. You should have told me. I thought you were my friend!’
‘I am your friend,’ she said miserably, ‘but what good would it have done? Russell and I thought at first the affair would peter out eventually, especially once she got what she wanted, a baby. But instead she’s got more and more possessive. She came down to the studios and told Ben she was pregnant, right in front of us, and then said he was moving in with her full time. And he didn’t contradict her, he just looked a bit sheepish and harassed.’
There was a voice in the background and she said, sounding relieved, ‘Oh, here’s Russell now.’ Then I heard her whisper, ‘Russell, it’s Josie and she knows all about Ben and Olivia—everything!’
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