Chocolate Wishes

by Trisha Ashley

  Grumps has a private income, but he’d settled Mum’s huge debts six years before, after her last, permanent, vanishing trick. Besides, his investments weren’t paying out in the way they used to and even the recent four-book contract his agent had secured wouldn’t be enough to cover the bills and still enable him to purchase rare books and artefacts in the manner he seemed to think was his birthright. Even now his desk was littered with auction catalogues sporting bright Post-it notes marking things that interested him.

  ‘Great,’ I said cautiously, because Grumps’ good ideas, like his spells, have a marked tendency to backfire or fizzle to nothing. ‘Did Zillah read the cards for you and spot something nice?’

  ‘She did, and foresaw change.’

  ‘She always does. You’d think we lived in a sort of psychic whirlpool.’

  ‘Well, change there certainly will be, because I am selling the house and we are moving to Sticklepond.’

  I’d started gathering up the loose sheets of paper inscribed in a sloping hand, which were the latest chapter of Satan’s Child. Now I stopped and stared at him. ‘We’re moving? But how can that help?’ Then the penny dropped. ‘Oh, I see. You mean you and Zillah are downsizing to a small cottage? That’s a good idea, because now that sales of Chocolate Wishes have taken off in a big way through the internet, I can easily afford to make a home for Jake on my own.’

  ‘No, no,’ he said impatiently, ‘I am not downsizing – the opposite, in fact – and there will be room for us all. An estate agent recently approached me with an advantageous offer for this house from someone who has taken a fancy to it, just at the very moment when I happened upon an advertisement for the Old Smithy in Sticklepond, which a friend had sent me, and which had somehow got mixed up among some other papers. It became apparent to me that this was a sign, and I therefore moved quickly.’

  He pushed the grimoire aside and handed me a leaflet that had been underneath. It pictured a low, barn-like building, set longways onto the road, with a small ancient cottage at one side and a larger Victorian house at the other, like mismatched bookends.

  ‘It’s Miss Frinton’s Doll Museum!’ I said, recognising it instantly, because it’s not only just up the road from Marked Pages, the second-hand bookshop run by my friend Felix, but almost opposite the pub where I meet up with him and Poppy two or three times a week.

  ‘It was, though of course not for some time – it has lain empty. I knew it was for sale prior to this, of course, I just hadn’t realised its significance.’ He indicated the larger house with a bony finger adorned with a substantial and oddly designed silver ring. ‘This is the main residence, where the Misses Frinton lived. There would be abundant room for my library and for Zillah to have her own sitting room, as she has here. The front room of the small cottage at the other end of the building was the doll’s hospital – and I thought it would be ideal for your chocolate business, with enough room for you and Jake to live behind it, although it needs a little updating.’

  ‘When estate agents say that, it usually means it’s semi-derelict.’ I wished there were photographs of the interior of the cottage as well as the house in the leaflet.

  ‘Not derelict, just neglected. It used to be rented out, so there is a kitchen extension with a bathroom over it and two bedrooms. It is larger than your current accommodation.’

  ‘It could hardly be smaller,’ I said, though of course without Mum we had more space, especially since I’d packed up all her belongings and stacked the boxes in Grumps’ attic on the first anniversary of her disappearance. But since Chocolate Wishes had taken off, I really needed a separate workshop.

  ‘The cottage also has a walled garden behind it,’ he added slyly, because he knew I longed for a garden of my own. Here we just had a gravelled courtyard and although I did grow lots of things in tubs and pots and in my tiny greenhouse, including herbs both for cooking and for Grumps’ rites, salad vegetables, strawberries and a small fig tree, there were limitations…especially for my cherished and constantly growing collection of scented geraniums, currently over-wintering on every available windowledge in the flat.

  I was sold.

  ‘The cottage is linked to the main house via the Smithy Barn, the former doll museum, and my intention is to open a museum of my own there,’ Grumps explained, ‘one dedicated to the study of witchcraft and paganism. I will be able to display my collection and increase my income, thus killing two birds with one stone.’

  ‘Well, goodness knows, you have enough artefacts to stock ten museums, Grumps!’ I exclaimed. ‘But you surely wouldn’t run it yourself? I can’t see you selling tickets to a stream of visitors!’

  ‘I fail to see why not,’ he said testily. ‘I will open only in the afternoons, from two till four, and can have my desk in one corner and let visitors roam freely, while I get on with my work. Zillah has said she will also take a hand.’

  ‘But if you don’t keep an eye on the visitors, half your collection will vanish!’

  ‘Oh, I think not: I will put up placards pointing out that any thieves will be cursed. In fact, I might have it printed on the back of the tickets.’

  ‘That should go down well,’ I said drily.

  ‘It will serve: they will ignore the warning at their peril. I shall have signed copies of my books for sale too, of course, both fiction and non-fiction.’

  After my first surprise, the idea began to grow on me. ‘Do you know, I think you might be right and it would be quite a money-spinner, because since that Shakespeare connection was discovered at Winter’s End, hordes of tourists come to Sticklepond. At least one café and a couple of gift shops have opened in the village lately, and passing trade at Felix’s bookshop is much better. There’s a strong witchcraft history in the area too.’

  ‘Precisely! And besides,’ he added as a clincher, ‘the Old Smithy is on the junction of two important ley lines; that was what was so cunningly obscured from my vision by the malevolence of Another. There may even be a third – I am working on it.’

  ‘I expect the conjunction of the ley lines was a major selling point the estate agents managed to miss,’ I said, ignoring the second mention of a mysterious and malevolent opponent, which was probably just a figment of his imagination.

  He gave me a severe look over the top of his half-moon glasses. ‘Its unique position imbues it with magical energy, my dear Chloe, and since the museum area is large, my coven may meet there with no diminution of power. Rheumatism has affected one or two of them,’ he added more prosaically, ‘and they have suggested we move to an indoor venue.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that the museum would be ideal, provided you put up good, thick curtains,’ I agreed absently, still turning over the whole idea of the move in my mind. ‘What about Jake, though? He has to be able to get to sixth form college and he isn’t going to want to move away from his friends, is he?’

  Though now I came to think of it, a fresh start in a new village might be a good idea for my horribly lively brother. He’s outgrown his childish pranks, but will still forever be ‘that imp of Satan’ to those inhabitants of Merchester who’ve been his victims.

  ‘Jake may borrow my car and drive himself to school until he has taken his final examinations, and then of course he will be off to university,’ Grumps said. ‘He likes the old Saab for some reason. In the holidays, he can help me in the museum and I will pay him.’

  Grumps seemed to have it all thought out.

  I looked down again at the leaflet. A cottage of my own with a garden, separated from my grandfather by the width of a museum, and with room for my Chocolate Wishes business, sounded like bliss…

  ‘So, have you actually seen the property and made an offer for it, Grumps?’

  ‘Yes, of course – and the people who want to buy this house have also been to view it, though you were out at the time. I thought I would wait until everything was signed and sealed before I told you.’

  ‘I certainly didn’t see this coming!’

  �
�If you will read Angel cards instead of the Tarot…Angel cards – pah!’

  ‘They seem to work for me, Grumps.’

  ‘Not, apparently, very well: Zillah saw the changes coming and she has already decided on her rooms in the new house.’

  If Zillah knew and approved, then really, there was no more to be said: it looked like the Lyons were on the move.

  A thought struck me. ‘When Mum finally decides to stop playing dead and comes back, how will she find us?’

  ‘Like a bad penny,’ he said bleakly.

  Chapter Two

  Satan’s Child

  On the way back to the flat, with a lot to think about and a chapter of Satan’s Child and three letters to type up, I found Zillah still in the kitchen stirring something savoury-smelling in a large pot. The cat, Tabitha, was draped around her neck like a black fur wrap, her tail practically in the stew.

  Hygiene was possibly not Zillah’s strong point but neither she nor Grumps (nor even Tabitha) ever seemed to suffer ill effects. Nor did Jake and I, come to that, because although I did some of our own cooking in the flat, we shared quite a lot of meals. We must all have been immune.

  ‘Zillah, if you have time, maybe you had better read my cards,’ I suggested. ‘Grumps just told me that we’re on the move.’

  Zillah silently turned down the heat and put a lid on the pot, then fetched her Tarot pack and handed the cards to me to shuffle. Under my fingers they felt cool, snakily smooth and almost alive.

  ‘You could read them yourself,’ she grumbled as I gave them back, but she began to lay them out in a familiar pattern on the table. The cat, bored, disentwined herself and stalked off, holding up a tail like a bottlebrush that has seen better days.

  ‘You know I’ve given up reading them, especially for myself, because there never seemed to be good news. I simply don’t think I could bear it if I saw yet another dark stranger scheduled to enter my life bringing change, because it never turns out well,’ I added gloomily.

  It would have been really useful if the cards had ever given me some helpful hints about whether the changes would be good or bad too, especially regarding my ex-fiancé, David.

  ‘It’s all in the reading and how you interpret it, Chloe, you know that,’ Zillah said. ‘You don’t have to make a self-fulfilling prophecy.’

  While I puzzled over that one, she looked at the cards that showed what was currently going on in my life.

  ‘Hmm…no surprises there, or in what will happen if you continue on your current course.’ She turned over more cards and pondered.

  ‘But my course is about to be changed, isn’t it? Not only are we moving, but Jake will be off to university later this year.’

  I’d had the maternal role for my half-brother thrust upon me and I’d done my best, torn between love and resentment, but although I adore Jake, I couldn’t say I wasn’t relishing the idea of being my own woman again.

  That my own childhood had been a happy and secure one was entirely due to Granny but, though kindly and affectionate, Zillah seemed to have been born without a maternal gene and could not take her place. That hadn’t stopped Mum from thinking Zillah could quite easily assume Granny’s role as mother substitute when she was off with her latest lover, though – but then, she didn’t have the maternal gene either.

  At least Zillah loved us in her own unique way, even if, like Grumps, she didn’t find children terribly interesting until they were capable of holding a conversation.

  ‘It doesn’t say anything about Mum turning up again, does it?’ I asked, following this train of thought. ‘Only it would be just like her to walk back in, now there aren’t any responsibilities for her to shoulder, what with Grumps having paid her bills and Jake an adult.’

  My mother had spent less and less time at the flat until she had finally vanished altogether from a Caribbean cruise six years previously and was currently presumed by everyone except the family to be dead. We presumed her to be fornicating in sunnier climes, even if this time her absence had been inordinately prolonged. Her disappearance had coincided with David jilting me, too: cause and effect.

  Zillah ignored me, turning over the cards showing what was happening with my relationships, which was not a lot apart from a platonic and fraternal one with my old friend Felix Hemmings, the bookseller of Sticklepond.

  Through the thin spiral of smoke from her latest cigarette I automatically began to read the meanings upside down, and groaned. ‘Oh, no, please don’t tell me another man really is coming into my life? I can’t bear it!’

  ‘Maybe more than one person,’ she said, frowning. ‘Perhaps there’s unfinished business with someone you knew before?’

  ‘No way! Now I’ve realised I’m stuck in some endless Groundhog Day cycle of love and rejection, I’m not even going to look at another man.’

  ‘You can’t call two failed relationships an endless cycle, Chloe.’

  ‘Two? Have you forgotten Cal, or Simon or—’ I stopped, unable to remember the faces, let alone the names, of some of my more fleeting boyfriends.

  ‘I did not mention men, but in any case they were obviously unmemorable. And can we help ourselves if love strikes?’ She thoughtfully fingered the card depicting a tower struck by lightning.

  ‘We can if it strikes twice,’ I snapped. ‘But even if I’d been tempted to take any boyfriend seriously after David jilted me, they weren’t prepared to take on Jake too. He’s the ultimate love deterrent.’

  I shuddered, recalling some of the hideous pranks my inventive half-brother had got up to over the years in order to get rid of my boyfriends. I was sure Grumps had had a hand in some of the more fiendish tricks.

  ‘He was, but he’s now an adult, and once he’s at university he’ll have other things to think about.’

  ‘So he will…and it seems like only five minutes since I went off to university, too,’ I said with a sad sigh, for that had been my one, abortive bid for independence, the year after Jake was born. It had been all too easy for Mum to absent herself for longer and longer periods, leaving me literally holding the baby, but I’d thought if she didn’t have me to fall back on, then she would be forced to stay at home and behave like other mothers.

  How wrong I was! I got back at the end of the first term to find she had dumped the baby in Zillah’s unwilling hands, leaving me a scribbled note with no idea of when she would return. Jake was touchingly happy to see me, making me guilty that I had been so engrossed in my love affair with Raffy that I had hardly thought of him for weeks. Grumps and Zillah were also happy to have me back, in their way, but I was the one who could have done with a mother’s tender care just then, rather than have to take on the role myself.

  But surprisingly, in the end, Zillah proved to be a tower of strength when I most needed one…

  I looked at the spread of cards again and asked hopefully, ‘Can the future be altered, Zillah?’

  ‘People can change, and then the future also changes. Or perhaps the true future remains fixed, the other is merely a warning to put us on the right path to our fate.’ Her gnarled hand reached out and flipped over the final cards. ‘Your future has interesting possibilities.’

  ‘What, you mean interesting in the Chinese curse sort of way?’

  ‘Well, what are the angels telling you?’ she asked acerbically.

  ‘That change is coming, but it will all turn out right in the end.’

  ‘Whatever “right” means, Chloe.’ She swept the cards together, tapped them briskly three times and wrapped them up in a piece of dark silk.

  Back in the flat I felt unsettled, which was hardly surprising when a positive Pandora’s Box of painful recollections kept escaping from where I thought I’d had them safely locked away. Memories not only of my first love, Raffy, which even after so many years evoked feelings of loss and betrayal far too painful to dwell on again, but also of my ex-fiancé, David.

  We met in Merchester’s one upmarket wine bar and he had seemed so different from any of my
other, short-lived boyfriends. He was several years older, for a start, solid and dependable. Maybe I was looking for a father figure, having never had one? He was a partner in a firm of architects, so more than comfortably off, and even Jake’s attempts to get rid of him (culminating in the plague of glowing green mice in David’s flat – I have no idea how he worked that one) just made him go all quiet and forbearing. He said Jake would grow out of it – which he had, only not until David’s presence in our lives was history.

  And Jake had been the sticking point in the end. It was odd how I had remained completely blind to the fact that David was so jealous of my close relationship with my half-brother until that last day, only a couple of weeks before our wedding. I’d also assumed he understood that whenever my mother was away, Jake would stay with us after we were married, for the first few years at least. But as Zillah often says, men don’t understand anything unless it is spelled out for them in very plain language.

  ‘Jake could live with your grandfather and his housekeeper,’ David had suggested when Jake was twelve and my mother had performed her latest vanishing trick.

  I let the ‘housekeeper’ bit go, since although Zillah certainly wasn’t that, her role in our lives defied definition. ‘Hardly, David! Social Services aren’t going to take kindly to a twelve-year-old living with a warlock, are they?’

  ‘Now, Chloe, don’t exaggerate, when you know that’s just a nom de plume he adopts for his books. He may be a little eccentric, but the whole persona…’ He smiled indulgently, his teeth very white against his tanned, handsome face. ‘It’s a publicity thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it’s how he is. I keep telling you.’

  ‘You’ll be saying your mother is a witch next, Chloe, and has simply flown off on her broomstick.’

  ‘Oh, no, she never showed any inclinations that way and although Jake is interested in witchcraft, luckily it’s only from a historical point of view. It’s just a pity Granny isn’t still around to help me bring him up, but he isn’t a bad boy really, just lively.’