Then he smiled at me, kissed my cheek and said, ‘You’re kinder and more generous than I deserve – and I know you didn’t really mean it about us seeing less of each other, it was just because I was being stupid with Mel. But now—’
I heard the door to the museum open behind me and then Raffy called tentatively, ‘Chloe, are you there? Your grandfather wants to know—’
He broke off on seeing David, and the two men eyed each other. Feeling glad of the interruption, I said, ‘Have you met? David Billinge, Raffy Sinclair, our new vicar. Now, if you’ll excuse me, David, I promised to help Grumps in the museum this afternoon.’
‘Yes, of course, and – we’re friends again, aren’t we?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ I said, ushering him out and closing the door with a sigh of relief.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Raffy apologised, then added darkly, ‘and I wish it was as easy for you to forgive me.’
‘I have forgiven you – I told you so,’ I insisted, but he was so deep in his guilt trip that I could see he still didn’t believe me and thought I was just being kind. ‘Did Grumps send you to fetch me? And what are you doing here? Poppy said vicars are run off their feet at this time of year!’
‘We are, but your grandfather felt a sudden urgent need to discuss an aspect of the pagan/Christian significance of Easter, though I can’t stay much longer.’
‘Had any luck with the donkey for the Palm Sunday procession?’ I asked as we joined Grumps in the museum, and Raffy grinned suddenly, more like his old self.
‘Apparently the donkey isn’t compulsory. I hope you’ll all come and join in the procession. I’m going to say special prayers over the plague pit.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ Grumps said, and I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not. I never am.
Raffy didn’t stay much longer but it was clear that I was going to have to take some positive action to show him that I really do forgive him, I’m not just saying it, or he’s going to be wallowing in guilt for ever.
So after dinner, while Jake was upstairs in his room playing music too loud and allegedly doing coursework with Kat, I got out the two halves of the large angel I’d made with the leftover chocolate from the taste test, the one with the added va-va-voom.
I wrote a message on a slip of paper, put it inside and stuck the angel together with a little melted chocolate. It wasn’t tempered, but then, I didn’t expect the angel to stay in one piece long enough to start showing a white line round the join.
Then I called up the stairs to Jake and Kat that I was going out and not to do anything they shouldn’t. (Why did I keep saying these pointless things?) I wasn’t sure that they heard over the music, but they were unlikely to miss me anyway. I put on my coat and set off for the vicarage.
I intended leaving my angel of peace, in its special gold box, on Raffy’s doorstep. Ringing the front doorbell and running away seemed like the best plan, then he could digest both the chocolate and the message on his own.
Chapter Thirty-two
Delivering Angels
I went the front way to the vicarage, so I could check that there was no sign of Raffy before I nipped up the drive and left the angel in the porch.
Unfortunately Maria Minchin must have spotted me, because she bounced out of the front door just as I’d put down the box and rung the bell, ready to dash away. She’s a big woman and it didn’t reassure me that she was brandishing a rolling pin. I had to remind myself that it was her brother who had murdered someone, not her.
‘Just as I thought!’ she declared. ‘What is it this time? A cake? Goulash? Sausage rolls? Anyone would think I’d starved the last vicar, but let me tell you, he died of old age and not my cooking!’
‘No, it’s not…I haven’t…’ I stammered, taken aback by this onslaught.
And then Raffy’s deep voice, behind her, said, ‘What is it, Maria?’
‘Another damned fast-food delivery and I’ll not have it in my kitchen!’ She pushed past him and then the door to the kitchen wing closed with a reverberating slam.
‘Chloe?’ Raffy said, surprised to find me on his doorstep. Then his eyes dropped to the gold box at his feet.
‘It’s something for you, and I was just going to leave it when Maria got the wrong idea.’
‘So I heard.’ He picked up the box. ‘Is it chocolate?’
‘Yes. You gave me an angel, so I thought I’d return the compliment and I happened to have a large one already moulded, so…’ I shrugged, and would have turned away except he reached out a long arm and more or less dragged me in, shutting the door behind us.
‘No, you don’t,’ he said, examining me curiously in the hall light. He was not looking particularly vicarish tonight, since he was wearing jeans and a plain sweatshirt…In fact, he looked much more like the old, once-familiar Raffy, from dishevelled dark curls to bare feet in heelless Moroccan leather slippers, which was quite disconcerting.
He drew me through another door into a small, warm room at the back of the house, which seemed to be a combination of den, library and music room. A guitar leaned against a bookshelf and there was a piano in one alcove with a heap of handwritten music cast down on top of it.
‘Take your coat off,’ he said absently, opening the gold box and looking down at the dark chocolate angel inside.
‘It’s a peace offering,’ I said, but I didn’t take my coat off since I wasn’t stopping.
‘But why? I’m the one who needs to make peace, not you.’
‘Yes, well, when you’ve quite finished enjoying the little self-flagellation trip you’re on, you might like to read the message inside,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
‘No, wait!’ he said as I turned to go. ‘Look, I’m sorry—’
‘So you keep saying!’
He ran both hands through his hair distractedly, pushing it back off his face.
‘Look, please, Chloe, sit down while I read my message: all right?’
‘I suppose so.’ I took my coat off and sat reluctantly right on the edge of the sofa, which was low and squishy, with a kelim cover.
‘It seems a pity to break this lovely angel,’ Raffy said, but he did, then read the message inside aloud, his face inscrutable.
‘“Get over yourself, you prat! We were both young and stupid and it didn’t help that Rachel was a lying cow. We’re two entirely different people now, so let’s see if we can manage to be friends – OK?”’
He looked up and his long, mobile mouth twitched at the corners. ‘That’s not exactly poetic, but I think I’ve got the message,’ he said and then came to sit down next to me.
‘Before we bury the subject for ever, can I just say that I always meant to go back for you? I truly loved you,’ he said. ‘I should have believed in you, whatever Rachel said.’
‘And I should have believed in you too. But I did want the baby, despite everything.’
‘Oh, darling!’ he said softly, pulling me into a warm, wordless hug, and I cried into his shoulder for ages, while he held me. I suppose I’d bottled that particular grief up for so many years, it was bound to come out sooner or later.
After a bit, feeling better, I sat up and mopped my face. ‘I think we need to eat the angel, now,’ I said, reaching for the box. ‘It will make us both feel much better.’
I have a strong belief in the therapeutic power of good chocolate.
‘Will it?’ he said doubtfully, but he still ate the piece I passed to him and then another. We munched in a cathartic and companionable silence.
‘You make great chocolate,’ he said after a while. ‘I’ve been trying to get up the nerve to ask you to make some for me, for ages.’
‘You want some Chocolate Wishes?’
‘Not exactly Wishes. Poppy told me you made Easter eggs for Jake when he was little, with messages inside.’
‘Yes, it gave me the idea for the Chocolate Wishes in the first place.’
‘Wasn’t celebrating Easter a bit anti-pagan?’
‘I never said I was a pagan – I’m nothing at all, though having never been christened and Grumps being a warlock, I’m probably barred from the Church for ever.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so.’
‘Anyway, there’s nothing much Christian about chocolate eggs, is there? Especially if you listen to Grumps!’
‘Yes, he did rather rub my nose in the whole Saxon goddess of fertility stuff this afternoon, though it was just a coincidence that the Christian Easter fell at the same time of year as the Eostre festival. But about Easter eggs…’
‘Oh, I don’t make them now Jake’s grown up, or only a few big ones filled with truffles for my nearest and dearest. It makes a change from hearts and angels.’
‘Yes, this angel obsession of yours seems a bit out of keeping with your upbringing, somehow, Chloe.’
‘Actually, if you read Grumps’ history of paganism, they do sort of tie in together. Anyway, I’ve got a guardian angel, so I know they exist.’
That confession sort of slipped out and surprised me: it wasn’t the sort of thing I usually talked about, because people would think I was as mad as a box of frogs.
‘Have you?’ Raffy said, looking interested rather than amazed. ‘So have I! Mine first appeared to me one night when I was on tour with the band and at a low ebb. He scared the shit out of me.’
‘He did?’
‘Yes, he seems to be male.’
‘Mine’s sort of female…but not scary.’
‘I don’t suppose you’d done anything to be scared about, like I had. His message was to clean my act up, or else. I’d grown out of the rock-and-roll lifestyle bit by then anyway, so I did, but life seemed hollow, somehow – a bit like your Chocolate Wishes, only with no message inside.’
‘You said that was the first time you saw him?’ I asked curiously.
‘Yes, he came back, much later. I’d seen sense and done what he’d told me by then…but the other three band members didn’t. You remember Nick?’
‘The tall, fair one, played the bass guitar?’
‘Yes. He died of a drugs overdose, leaving a young family. And then, the night after his funeral, the angel turned up again and…well, this time it was my Road to Damascus moment. I saw what I needed to do, what I had to give – and then the right path just opened out in front of me: the one leading to ordination.’
‘I bet that was a popular decision with the rest of the band!’
‘You’d be surprised,’ he said soberly. ‘Nick’s death was a real wake-up call, and by then they were all marrying, settling down and having families. Life on the road is disruptive.’
He looked at me, eyes serious. ‘But we’ve gone a long way from what I meant to ask you, which was if you would make me some chocolate eggs with special messages inside them, so I can have an Easter egg hunt in the churchyard early on Easter Sunday morning?’
‘It isn’t long until Easter,’ I objected.
‘I’ll even pay for extra moulds, if you need them.’
‘I’ve got moulds…though I’d need more if you wanted a lot of eggs.’
His turquoise eyes locked with mine. ‘Please, to show you’ve really forgiven me in your heart, will you do this for me?’
‘I suppose I could,’ I conceded. ‘And they had better be milk chocolate because most of the children won’t be used to the dark stuff.’
‘Whatever you think,’ he said, smiling warmly at me.
‘I’ll wrap them in coloured foil, but if it rains they’ll have to go into little cellophane bags and I’d have to charge you extra for those.’
‘Fine. I’ll print out the messages to go inside and bring them over at some point. I’m going to make some Easter rabbit footprints here and there on the flowerbeds that morning too, for the children to find.’
‘Won’t you need a rabbit for that?’
‘Only a rabbit’s foot, and Effie Yatton says I can borrow her lucky kilt pin if I get desperate.’
‘But you might get it dirty!’
‘Yes, I’m hoping to find an alternative. And, Chloe, since you are making the eggs for the hunt, I would love it if you also helped me to hide them too, early on Easter Day.’
‘What, me? I’ve never even been in the churchyard!’
‘Haven’t you? Even just from a historical perspective the church is well worth visiting and the churchyard is like a potted history of the local families, with some very interesting inscriptions.’
‘Yes, Jake said.’
‘There are several lovely angel monuments – you really should see them. And you said yourself that you’re not a believer in anything in particular, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go into the church, is there?’
‘Granny used to go to services occasionally, but I always felt there was too much of Grumps’ influence in me, and if I even went in, then the tower would crumble, or the windows implode, or something.’
He laughed. ‘I don’t think much of your grandfather’s influence has rubbed off on you – and I’m the one things fell on, angels and all.’
I flushed guiltily, even though I didn’t see how Grumps could have pulled any of those incidents off. ‘Zillah went to your first church service, didn’t she? She isn’t in Grumps’ coven, though she used to take flasks of hot tea when they met in the open air, just like Granny did, to thaw them all out afterwards.’
‘Really?’ Raffy looked fascinated.
‘Grumps is a naturist, not up to anything kinky – he just thinks you can get closer to the essential powers skyclad. Granny never minded, though she put her foot down when he wanted to initiate Mum, and later me, into the coven, and I did the same for Jake. Luckily he’s just fascinated and interested in magic from a scholarly viewpoint – he wants to do a history degree.’
‘So am I, and in the way religions sort of weave together – or the good elements do. It’s only man who reinterprets any of the religious teachings to cause harm or misery to others.’
‘Aren’t we suddenly swimming in deep waters?’ I asked.
‘Not really, I’m just trying to prove that there’s no reason why you shouldn’t help me with the Easter egg hunt.’ He gave me a serious look. ‘Unless, of course, you really hate the idea and if so, I’ll stop badgering you.’
‘You aren’t badgering me, but I’m sure some of your myriad new fans among the parishioners would fall over themselves to help.’
‘I think my novelty’s wearing off, though they have all been very kind – too kind, some of them. You saw how Maria feels about all the food people keep giving me. She thinks it’s a reflection on her cooking skills.’
‘How is her cooking?’
‘Fairly dreadful, but it usually falls just this side of edible. I’m wondering if there’s a tactful way of sending her on a cookery course.’
‘Poppy said the congregation is still a lot larger than it used to be with Mr Harris, though nowhere near the crowds you first pulled.’
‘It’ll be down even more when they realise how boring I really am, but not as far as it was before, I hope.’
‘You’d stop attending if every service opened and closed with an organ fugue,’ I said. ‘Poppy told me all about Mr Lee, and sometimes even I can hear him, if the wind is in the right direction.’
He laughed. ‘Oh, he’s great! I told him I thought fugues were fine for when everyone is arriving – providing it isn’t a wedding – but I thought we needed to lighten up when they were on the way out again, and he took it on board. It helped that he used to play the organ at Blackpool Tower ballroom at one time.’
‘I didn’t know that! But Miss Winter will probably go with that, so long as you don’t play the guitar and get people to clap. She nearly had Mr Merryman run out of the village on a hurdle for doing that.’
‘I don’t play the guitar in public, only here, when I’m writing music – I still write songs for other people.’
For I moment I thought bitterly that that had been the story of my life since we parted, l
istening to songs he’d written for other people. Then I caught myself up: no more looking back.
‘If I do the Easter eggs, you have to do something for me,’ I said, picking out the last shards of chocolate from the box and handing him the angel’s feet, while popping a wing tip in my own mouth.
‘What’s that?’
‘Come to the Falling Star with me and Poppy and Felix tomorrow,’ I said.
‘What time do you call this?’ Jake demanded when I went home, striking a pose like an irate Victorian papa and curling an imaginary moustache. ‘I took Kat home ages ago. We ate all the cheese, is that OK?’
‘Yes, I’ll get some more tomorrow. And I was just delivering an angel. To the vicar.’
‘I would have thought he’d already have a monopoly on those,’ he said, but he looked strangely thoughtful.
Chapter Thirty-three
Candy-Coated
That night I lay awake for ages turning over what had happened in my mind, but when I finally fell asleep it was to dream, comfortingly, of angels. I woke up with a strong yearning to see the ones in the churchyard and the stained-glass window – and really, I didn’t see why I shouldn’t. Raffy was quite right!
I mean, just because Grumps had damned himself to the fiery pits of hell, assuming the God crowd had got it right, it didn’t necessarily follow that his entire family was doomed to follow him there, did it?
The cottage was quiet, since Jake had left that morning for the Lake District with Kat’s family, who were keen walkers. I couldn’t exactly imagine Kat and Jake stomping around the lakes in their big boots, but I’d packed him off with lots of unwanted advice and loads of pocket money. Grumps probably had the same idea, but the advice would be different. Jake would be back in time for the museum’s opening.
By mid-afternoon I’d finished making the first batch of chocolate eggs (I’d already ordered extra moulds to be express delivered tomorrow) and both kinds of Wishes.
I was still candy-coated when I pulled on a warm jacket over my work clothes and walked up the High Street to the churchyard, which has a soft buff sandstone wall with flowering plants growing out of the crevices, and a weathered lich-gate.
Chocolate Wishes Page 27
