‘Where from? I thought you’d given up on internet dating sites and decided the private marriage bureaus were too expensive.’
‘Who with?’ Felix demanded, in bossy big-brother mode.
‘Just a man I met through The Times lonely hearts ads,’ she said casually. ‘We’ve talked for hours on the phone and now we’re meeting up.’
‘Where?’ I asked, distracted from my own problems. ‘I hope you’re being sensible and it’s somewhere very public, with other people about?’
‘Yes, you have no idea what kind of man he really is,’ agreed Felix. ‘People can say anything.’
‘I do know. I told you, we’ve talked for hours and we have so much in common. And it’s OK, because we’re meeting in Sticklepond, at the Green Man.’
‘Do you know what he looks like?’ I asked.
‘Yes, he’s medium height and a bit like Tom Cruise.’
‘If he looked like Tom Cruise he wouldn’t need to meet women through the lonely hearts ads,’ Felix said suspiciously.
‘He’s probably exaggerating a bit, but I expect he’s very nice really,’ I said quickly, seeing Poppy’s face fall. ‘Did you tell him what you look like?’
‘I said I was fair and blue-eyed and an outdoors type and he thought that sounded perfect, because he was very energetic and loved outdoor pursuits.’
‘That does it,’ Felix announced. ‘I’m coming too!’
‘No, you’re not. Three’s a crowd and I don’t need a chaperone!’
‘I didn’t mean exactly with you, Poppy, just in the pub to see how it goes. But don’t go off anywhere with him. I’ll have my car, but I might lose you.’
‘Oh, honestly, Felix!’ she said, but actually I was glad to see him focusing on Poppy instead of me. I can take care of myself, but Poppy is distinctly soft-centred.
Then suddenly, quite out of nowhere, I had a blinding flash of illumination – Felix had all the characteristics Poppy had recently listed to me as being what she wanted in a man! He was single, kind, honest, not a sex maniac or a weird obsessive, and attractive.
And if Felix really yearns to settle down to a comfortable family life before it’s too late, then he’s barking up the wrong tree as far as I am concerned, but he and Poppy would be perfect for each other. Except that she only sees him in a brotherly light, of course, and Felix thinks of Poppy as a mate, only the wrong kind.
We’ve all three of us been unlucky in love and, by some strange coincidence, we had our worst moments at more or less the same time, though in different ways. While I was having my heart torn to shreds by Raffy at university, Poppy was away getting her riding instructor’s certificates and falling heavily (in an unrequited, Villette kind of way) for one of the married staff and Felix’s marriage was thrashing about in its death throes.
I suppose in our separate ways, we’d all got an education, just not the kind we’d hoped for.
By the time we’d got together again we were ready to slip back into our old, comfortable companionship without any need for extensive emotional post mortems, mainly, I suspect, because all three of us were harbouring one or two secrets we didn’t, for once, want to share.
I certainly was. And the longer I went without telling anyone, the harder it became to confide even in Poppy, to whom the whole of my life, up to the point I left for university, had been an open book.
Chapter Seven
Brief Encounters
Although my discoveries about my mother had upset me deeply, there wasn’t really any time to sit about brooding or to work out what, if anything, to do about it.
I still had lots of packing to do, including bubble-wrapping my extensive collection of ornamental angels, many of them given to me as gifts. I was also trying to make a large enough stock of Chocolate Wishes to tide me over until I could start up production again in the cottage, so the Bath was chugging away pretty well non-stop as it heated and stirred the couverture, and trays of chocolate-coated angel and heart moulds covered every surface, hardening before I could put in the Wish and seal them up.
It would be wonderful when I had a separate workshop, because chocolate making had taken over the flat!
Meanwhile, not even imminent house-moving could stop Grumps’ steady output of one or two chapters of novel per day, or his incessant correspondence: cranks of the world, unite! I told him again this morning that email would be easier and quicker, and I could show him how to do it in no time, but he said the devil was in the machine and it could stay there.
Then he added that that had given him an idea, and started scribbling away, my presence forgotten, so I tiptoed off and left him to it, though I don’t suppose he would have noticed if I’d blown a trumpet in his ear and then slammed the door.
‘So, how did it go?’ I asked Poppy when she called round on the morning after her date. ‘Did he turn up?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t realise it was him for ages. We were both sitting separately in the pub for half an hour, each thinking the other one wasn’t coming. Felix was in another corner, hiding behind a newspaper like a spy. He kept peering over the top of it.’ She gave her irrepressible giggle. ‘In fact, it was like a singles night for the severely shy!’
‘I thought your date told you he looked like Tom Cruise? He should have been easy to spot.’
‘Actually, he looked more like a spinning top. He had a small head but a huge stomach and little legs.’
‘I don’t think Tom Cruise is very tall, is he?’
‘No, but at least he’s good-looking! This one had a face that could stop clocks.’
‘That bad?’ I said sympathetically.
‘Worse! I mean, I’ve no objection to homely, but Cruise Missile was gargoyle ugly! But eventually, when no one else turned up, the penny dropped that it must be him, because he was constantly watching the door as if he was waiting for someone.’
‘Cruise Missile? Is that what he called himself in the ad?’ I asked incredulously. ‘You didn’t tell us that bit!’
‘It didn’t seem important,’ she said simply. ‘Just a name to grab the attention.’
‘It seems to have hooked you, all right. What did you call yourself?’
‘Riding Mistress.’
‘Riding Mistress?’ I looked at her and she gazed innocently back at me. Considering what her mother is like, I can’t believe how naïve she can be sometimes, but she has a very literal mind, which must account for it.
‘Well, that’s what I am, isn’t it?’
‘Ye-es…’ I said slowly, ‘but – well, never mind. What did you do next, sneak out of the back door under some pretext and leg it?’
‘No, I went over and asked him if he was waiting for Riding Mistress, and he was, only I could see he was really disappointed in me too.’
‘I don’t see why,’ I said loyally, though it’s true that Poppy’s idea of making an effort to dude herself up a bit was usually confined to applying rose-tinted lip salve and running a comb through her slightly frizzy, damp-sand-coloured hair, usually the comb she has just used on Honeybun’s tail.
‘He told me straight out why he was disappointed: it was because he’d thought I would be wearing riding breeches and carrying a whip!’
‘Oh dear, one of those.’
‘He certainly was. We hadn’t been talking more than five minutes – and he didn’t even offer to buy me a drink – when he said he’d been a very bad pony and why didn’t we go back to my place so I could school him. I was a bit gobsmacked.’
‘I take it you didn’t oblige? How did you get away?’
‘I caught Felix’s eye and mouthed, “Help!”’
‘The gallant knight to the rescue – good old Felix!’
‘Not immediately: he got up and slipped out of the back door and I thought for a minute he’d abandoned me, though of course I really knew he wouldn’t. I panicked a bit and I was just stalling Cruise Missile by telling him my mother was at home mucking out, when Felix came in again through the front door, marched right
up and said, “There you are, Poppy! The children are crying for you – please come home with me, darling. I’m so sorry we argued!”’
‘I think he’s been reading Victorian melodramas again,’ I said. ‘So then…?’
‘I got up and smiled at Cruise Missile and said I was sorry, it had all been a mistake, and then we left and went back to Felix’s shop. It was horrible at the time, but after a bit it all seemed sort of funny and it was a pity to waste a night off, so we went to see a film in Southport. We did try phoning to see if you wanted to come with us, but there was no reply.’
‘Yes, the phone rang,’ I remembered, ‘but I was at a tricky bit with a big angel for a personalised card reading, so I couldn’t answer, and then I forgot about it. I’ve swung into major production. The whole place smells like a chocolate factory.’
‘It always does,’ Poppy said simply. ‘I like it.’
It was no surprise that Felix phoned to give me his version not ten minutes after Poppy left, and it was similar, except that he insisted Poppy’s would-be date was sinister and creepy.
‘In all fairness, I think Poppy unintentionally sent out all the wrong signals. He sounded to me more sad and insignificant than anything,’ I said.
‘Dangerously weird,’ he insisted. ‘I can’t imagine how, growing up with a mother like Janey, she manages to stay so…’ He paused, racking his brains to describe the puzzle that was Poppy, the Maria von Trapp (bar the singing) of Sticklepond.
‘Sweet and innocent?’ I suggested. ‘That’s just what I thought.’
‘I’d say trusting and credulous. I’ve told her to stop answering that kind of advert.’
‘Did she agree?’
‘No, she said just because there was one rotten apple, it didn’t mean the whole barrel had gone squishy. You’ll have to make her see sense.’
‘But she gets lonely, Felix, and I can’t always go out with her, I’m too busy with the business and trying to keep track of what Jake is up to.’
‘Jake’s legally an adult now, you don’t have to do that.’
‘He might be legally adult, but he’s still my little brother and part-boy, part-man. I want to make sure he stays on the right track until he goes to university. Then I’ll have done my best and it’ll be out of my hands.’
‘Yes, and then you will be free to get what you really want out of life.’
‘I seem to already have most of it, though I’m so looking forward to a bit of freedom too – being alone and doing my own thing,’ I said brightly. ‘I expect I’ll be spending all my spare time in that lovely little walled garden after I’ve moved. I can hardly wait.’
‘Hmm,’ he said, sounding discouraged, which was my intention.
I tried a bit more manoeuvring: ‘At the moment things are so frantic, getting ready for a move at such short notice, that I wouldn’t have time to keep an eye on what Poppy’s up to anyway, even if I wanted to.’
‘Someone needs to, because what she’s doing really could be dangerous.’ He sighed long-sufferingly. ‘I suppose I will have to.’
I made encouraging noises, even though I’m not entirely sure that Poppy will appreciate continually being shadowed by Felix on dates with potential suitors. But if they are all as dreadful as the first one, which seems quite likely, she may start to see what’s under her nose in a new light. They both might.
I reminded him, as I already had with Poppy, that I was not telling Jake anything at all about what I’d discovered in the attic. Mum’s behaviour had damaged him enough, he didn’t need to know that she only had him in order to try to extort money. I wished I didn’t know that that’s why she’d had me, but I’d cope – I always had.
Apart from packing his own belongings up, Jake has been pretty useless the last few days, glooming about like a slightly Goth Lord Byron (but without the limp).
When I asked him at breakfast one morning whether he was upset about the move, he said tersely: ‘No. It’s a girl.’
I looked at him in surprise. ‘I didn’t know you had a girlfriend at the moment, Jake. You kept that quiet.’
‘I haven’t got one, that’s the trouble.’
‘You mean, you fancy someone, but she won’t go out with you?’
He sighed heavily. ‘She doesn’t even know I exist! She’s new – her parents just moved to the area – and she seems only to want to work all the time. If she isn’t in class, she’s in the library.’
I wished Jake would be a bit more like that! ‘She sounds nice,’ I said kindly. ‘What terrible timing having to move college just before your exams, though. That’s probably why she’s concentrating on her studies.’
‘She’s dead set on going to Oxford too,’ he said, even more gloomily.
‘Are you doing the same subjects?’
‘Yes, that’s why I see her all the time. Only she doesn’t seem to see me.’
I didn’t really know how she could miss him – tall, brown-eyed, handsome, and all in black from dyed hair to big boots – but I saw an opportunity for some sneaky advice. Nagging him to revise always had the opposite effect, but revising to impress a girl could have a valuable knock-on effect…
‘You’ve got things in common then, Jake, and that’s a really good start. If I were you, I’d hang out in the library at the same time she does – ask her if you can check something in one of the books she’s using, that kind of thing. Show her you’re serious about your studies too.’
He gave me a suspicious look, but reluctantly conceded I might have something.
I cleaned and mended the pretty shell mirror, then covered it in bubble wrap and put it in the ottoman in the attic, together with a few more breakable things, like our box of Christmas decorations and a particularly pretty, but very fragile, spun-glass angel ornament.
While I was up there I noticed that Jake must have already transferred some of his more dubious treasures to the cabin trunk, because it now had a large padlock affixed to the hasp and, when I tried lifting the end, it weighed a ton. I only hoped the removal men could still get it down the narrow and steep attic stairs.
Jake did seem a little more cheerful since we’d had the conversation about the girl he liked at college, so perhaps my advice about how to get to know her was paying off? I hoped it paid off in better exam grades, too.
Chas phoned me up that evening, which took me by surprise, even though he does do that from time to time. And I suppose I must have sounded a bit odd, because he asked me if everything was all right.
I wasn’t ready to discuss what was on my mind yet, so I just told him I was tired, and all about the imminent house move.
He was kind and interested as usual, so that I found myself wishing again that he would turn out to be my father after all, though it would be even better to have one who didn’t make furtive phone calls from his mobile only when his family weren’t about!
Poppy came over to the flat after the next Parish Council meeting, which seemed to be taking place thick and fast because of all the changes going on in Sticklepond, and told me that the cat still wasn’t out of the bag about Grumps and the Old Smithy.
‘But I’m terrified I’m going to let it slip, and I’m sure Felix and I look really guilty all the time.’
I could just imagine Felix and Poppy avoiding each other’s eyes and looking shifty, though the news would have to come out sooner or later.
‘Luckily they had some other news to distract them, or they might have spotted it,’ she said.
‘Oh?’ I looked up from enfolding the last of my collection of ornamental angels in bubble wrap. ‘Have they finally found out who the ex-pop star vicar is, then?’
‘No, they still don’t know a thing about that, either. It’s just that an old cottage called Badger’s Bolt has been sold, after being on the market for absolutely ages, probably because it has spring water instead of mains and it’s a bit isolated – up a track near the edge of the Winter’s End estate. I only know where it is because we buy hay from Mr Ormerod, who has
the farm next to it.’
‘I can’t see what’s so fascinating about that, Poppy. People buy and sell houses all the time.’
‘Yes, but Badger’s Bolt is important because it comes with the two pieces of land in the village where the tennis club and lido are, and if there’s a new owner then the lease might go up when the current one expires.’
The so-called lido field was a grassy picnic area next to a curve in the river, which had been partly dammed by large boulders to form a large, shallow pool where in summer the local families splashed about.
‘Didn’t you tell me ages ago that they were trying to raise money to buy the tennis club and lido? I’m sure I bought raffle tickets for it.’
‘That’s right, and Effie Yatton’s been organising it, but they haven’t got enough money yet, and now maybe the new owner won’t want to sell. But Conrad said he was a very pleasant elderly man, a Mr Drake, so perhaps he will be happy to keep things as they are,’ she added optimistically.
‘I wouldn’t have thought an elderly man would want an isolated house a long way from any amenities and with a dodgy water supply.’
‘He might not know the water pressure isn’t that good, especially in summer. I don’t suppose Conrad mentioned it.’ She giggled suddenly. ‘Do you remember when Felix moved into his shop and we found that trapdoor in the kitchen floor, under the lino?’
‘Yes, leading to a cellar with a stream running through a stone channel, right in the middle of it, which he knew nothing about. His face was a picture when you told him having cold running water in the house was probably a luxury when the place was built.’
‘It’s a pity there isn’t something like that at Badger’s Bolt. This Mr Drake told Conrad that he’d also bought the title of Lord of the Manor of Sticklepond when it came up for auction, and Hebe Winter thinks that is a sign that he will take a benevolent interest in the village generally.’
‘I would have thought the Winters were Lords of the Manor.’
‘No, some of these old titles don’t seem to go with local families, they get sort of detached and then sometimes they auction a whole load of them off. Miss Winter said she wanted her great-niece to buy it, but since it was just an empty title she thought the money could be better spent on the estate.’
Chocolate Wishes Page 7
