A Leap of Faith

by Trisha Ashley

  It’s really quite extraordinary: an Aladdin’s cave of the mundane.

  There’s no need to go further afield unless you mind paying slightly more than the big supermarkets, or object to being given a verbal third degree by the proprietor, Llyn.

  When I emerged I was carrying a tin of white emulsion, brushes and sundry edibles to keep me going, including six free-range eggs in a thin brown paper bag, which I clutched precariously to my chest.

  This necessitated my backing out of the swing doors, and when I turned round I found myself unexpectedly nose-to-T-shirt with a customer about to come in. There was an ominous scrunch and something cold and glutinous came between us.

  I fell back and gawped at him, and you can understand why: he was much taller than I – six foot six, at a guess – no Schwarzenegger, but broad in the shoulder and chest, slim-hipped and long-legged. He had a mane of white-gold curly hair, a cleft chin, and light, almost colourless eyes, like crystal. If Lucifer in Paradise Lost had looked half as beautiful, you would have expected all the other angels to defect to his side en masse: come on down, the price is right.

  Yes, he was more like Dragonslayer than Dragonslayer – it was scary – but I was not about to be unnerved merely because my characters were escaping from my novels and destroying my groceries. Thank goodness I hadn’t dropped the rum.

  ‘Sorry,’ I snapped brusquely, ‘but you should have seen me coming. I think you’ve broken all my eggs.’

  There was no reply, so I looked up (and up) to see him staring at me through narrowed eyes, which were turning a sort of angry leaden colour – very odd. I was beginning to wish I hadn’t invented him, or had made him a little blond wimp instead.

  From that grainy old photo Lili sent me I’d assumed he was just the usual blue-eyed blond. Anyone who knew him and read the book would recognize him . . . so I could only hope he didn’t read fantasy.

  I gave him a glance of acute dislike and he looked taken aback.

  ‘Aren’t you the woman who tried to drown me in mud yesterday, and – what’s the matter?’ he added, in a curious voice, and I snapped out of my appalled trance and stepped back.

  ‘Nothing. I’m perfectly all right, which is more than I can say for my eggs. Sorry about the T-shirt, but you should look where you’re going.’

  The bag still dripped in a disagreeably viscous way on to my bare feet, but there might be survivors.

  ‘I’m sorry my T-shirt presumed to cross your path,’ he said sarcastically.

  ‘Can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs!’ chortled the plumber cheerily, edging past our little tableau.

  I eyed him with disfavour and said severely: ‘I’ll see you next Wednesday!’

  His smile vanished and he scuttled into the shop.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to let me into the shop too? Unless you’d prefer to toss some other noxious substance over me first?’ suggested Dragonslayer nastily.

  No, not Dragonslayer – merely a potter, and an irate one at that. But all I’d done was splash mud and eggs over him, and a man who spends his days making mud pies shouldn’t quibble at that.

  For a moment I contemplated explaining the muddy road incident, but the sight of him towering over me, muscular arms crossed over his besmirched chest and frowning, just irritated the hell out of me.

  ‘You seem to have covered yourself in clay already,’ I pointed out, for he was liberally decorated in grey splashes from head to foot, including a diagonal stripe across one side of his nose.

  And since his T-shirt had a Turner painting on the front that was also blown-egg coloured, you couldn’t really see the stains I might have added.

  But instead of saying so in my usual fashion, I found myself moving around him as though he was contagious and making off.

  Towering over her weakened form Dragonslayer stared angrily down at Nala, his arms folded across his broad chest . . .

  Was it too late to change him into the villain and redeem Raarg?

  I needed a hero.

  ‘Why,’ I enquired of Miranda after our first Sunday car boot sale in the company of Llyn Smith, owner of the village shop, ‘does Llyn have two l’s and pronounce her name like a Welsh swearword, when she’s a Brummie? And why on earth did she call her children Rhubarb and Aphid?’

  ‘Astrid and Rhiannon,’ murmured Miranda absently, flicking through an ancient and tattered recipe book, one of several she’d purchased earlier. Then she looked up, smiling happily. There was a smudge of mud on her forehead and her fingers were grubby.

  ‘Llyn’s b-been here five years, and she’s so d-determined to fit in that she goes to extremes.’

  ‘Like the Technicolor handwoven Welsh tweeds?’

  ‘Worse – in high tourist season she wears full traditional costume with the red cape and b-big b-black hat. She’s taking Welsh language classes, too. She might have gone a b-bit over the top b-but she means well.’

  ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions,’ I said. ‘Still, I have to hand it to her, she’s got a good eye for a bargain.’ Llyn’s estate car, which I was following, carried a Welsh dresser strapped to its roof rack that would set an antique dealer swooning.

  Car boot sales may prove to be addictive, for as well as purchasing useful things like curtain poles, I seem also to have acquired what can only be described as junk, like a peacock basket chair and a camel saddle stool slightly leaking its stuffing.

  Miranda had bought lots of weird old kitchen utensils as well as the cookbooks, and the back of the Volvo car was pretty laden, what with all that plus Spike, who was lying on a crocheted afghan disseminating odour of smelly old dog.

  ‘It’s b-been such fun today,’ she sighed happily. ‘And tomorrow there may b-be some flower orders to d-do, though I’m sure there would be lots more if we put one or two little adverts in the right places.’

  ‘If you put one or two adverts,’ I said. ‘It’s your business now.’

  ‘If I got more orders I’d have to find a b-bigger workspace quickly,’ she mused. ‘I wonder how much renting one of the studios at the craft centre costs. Though I’d only use it in the mornings, of course.’

  ‘Why don’t we go and have a look one day?’ I suggested. ‘I haven’t been there yet.’

  ‘All right. D-did you know that Lili Ford Jakes is chasing one of the craftsmen from the centre in the most b-blatant way? He’s the most handsome man I’ve ever seen, and it’s odd but he reminds me of D-Dragonslayer, that d-dishy new man in your last novel—’

  ‘I’ve already bumped into him,’ I interrupted hastily. ‘He’s really nothing like him – and Dragonslayer isn’t dishy.’

  But if Miranda recognized the description . . .?

  With a sigh, I explained the coincidence, only hoping I wouldn’t one day have to do the same to an irate potter.

  That afternoon I saw Miranda in the village chatting to a small bearded man who rather pointedly turned and made off long before I got there. I guessed it was Gilbert Ace before she told me.

  I hoped he soon recovered from his pique over my buying the cottage, for the Gower is too small to go on avoiding people all the time. I suspected he and Miranda of being a bit soft on each other. Gil sounded malleable and even more persuadable than Miranda, so I thought they might do each other good if I got rid of Chris, though I’d need to discover what happened to Disappearing Dorinda first.

  In fact I ought to be getting on with it, because it might be the bad-tempered potter instead, and I’m quite fond of Lili – or fond enough not to wish her to vanish permanently.

  For some reason I seemed to be avoiding little white vans.

  I wondered what Nye is short for . . .

  Chapter 9

  Chris Cross

  Dear ‘teenage fan’,

  Go wash your mind out with (cold) soapy water.

  And no, the photograph on the back of my books isn’t recent, it was taken years ago. I am now a wizened old crone.

  Sappho Jones

&nb
sp; After only a couple of weeks in Bedd, life had begun to drift into a comfortable pattern. It’s very seductive, this settling down business.

  Every morning I woke early, had two hours of Dark Destinies: Deathless Delights, went for a walk – often along the cliffs at Rhossili – then worked on the book again.

  Miranda let herself into the cottage at some point in the morning to sort out any Fantasy Flowers orders, posting the result en route to The Hacienda for an afternoon of recipe devising. Mu was already doing extra illustrations for the new edition of The Stuffed Student, which she said she’d bring with her when she came down.

  My early chapters of Dark Destinies: Deathless Delights had already been deciphered and printed out by the amazing Violet, who was now reading all the Vengeane books from the start to get a feel for my style.

  Quite often I had lunch at the pub, which saved my having to cook anything later, and maybe Lili would turn up, or Miranda would come with me, although she was very critical of the cooking. The only lunch Lili seemed to eat was the olive in her dry martini, but I thought her slightly haggard appearance was due to the lack of progress she was making with her potter.

  ‘All that wet clay is so sexy, somehow,’ she confided one day soon after my second encounter with her intended prey. ‘I don’t know why, unless it’s the slippery moistness? And why is he so resistant to my charms? I mean, with his last girlfriend turning out to be gay, you’d think he’d be grateful for someone totally heterosexual showing an interest in him.’

  ‘What do you mean, his last girlfriend was gay?’

  ‘It’s true, Sappho. Remember I told you about when I first saw him at the craft show, arguing with his ex-girlfriend? Well, apparently they’d been together since art college, only she prefers living in London and he didn’t, so it sort of dwindled down to weekends and so on. But then she moved in with a female friend and ditched Nye.’

  ‘That doesn’t make her a lesbian, though, Lili,’ I said patiently.

  ‘No, but listen: while I was in Greece she came down here and had a flaming row with Nye, and the upshot was she went straight back to London. So when I heard about it, I wondered if she was trying to get him back, so I thought I’d go and see her on the pretext of being interested in the hand knitting. I meant to tell her to stop jerking him around if she didn’t really want him, so he was free for someone else. But when I found the house she was just coming out, and she and this other woman had a goodbye smooch on the doorstep.’

  ‘You mean a real smooch sort of smooch, not just an affectionate hug and kiss between friends?’

  ‘A real one. But the interesting thing is that although his ex-girlfriend is small, dark and skinny, she either had a healthy tapeworm, or a bun in the oven.’

  ‘Is it Nye’s, do you think? Perhaps that was what she wanted to talk to him about.’

  ‘I asked him, and he said definitely not, but he isn’t very forthcoming on the subject of the old girlfriend – Eloise, her name is. In fact, he’s gone into a complete bad-tempered gloom – unless he’s always like that.’

  ‘Perhaps he still loved her, so when she dumped him, it came as a big shock?’

  ‘I suppose so, but at least now I know why he’s gloomy, so it gives me a handle on things – I’m being all friendly and supportive and applying balm to his soul and I’m willing to apply it to any other bits he wants, too. I’ll sneak up on him eventually – provided the police don’t arrest him.’

  ‘They’re not likely to, are they?’ I asked.

  ‘He does seem to have been the last person to see Dorinda Ace – you do know about the missing Dorinda, don’t you? Nye lives in one of half a dozen decaying Victorian chalets in a field called Preece’s Plot. Dorinda’s a councillor, and they’d just given permission for redevelopment of the site. Nye had a real ding-dong row with her about it, and she hasn’t been seen since. The police had him in for questioning, but they’re more interested in Dorinda’s husband, Gil, who’s this quite cute but drippy little man – but so was Crippen. Reading between the lines, he was Miranda’s childhood sweetheart. Isn’t Miranda huge? Greenpeace should campaign to protect her with the other whales.’

  ‘We don’t all want to be lollipop women with big heads and emaciated bodies,’ I retorted unkindly, when I could get a word in, though Lili is not that skinny; she does have a figure. ‘Your potter seems to have a bad temper. Don’t you think you ought to be careful, in case he did something to her?’

  ‘He says she just drove off in high dudgeon after the row, though you couldn’t blame anyone for doing her in, because she sounded a horribly bossy, overbearing sort of woman – a history lecturer and an authority on ancient burials on the Gower. Too dreary for words. Maybe it was the henpecked house-husband?’

  ‘Or perhaps she just took herself off. Miranda said they never found her car,’ I suggested.

  Lili lost interest in Dorinda. ‘It’s time Nye cheered up and found himself a new girlfriend – me. It’s getting very frustrating, though at least because of him I bought my cottage in the trendiest place of the moment, before prices absolutely went through the roof.’

  ‘I’ve . . . bumped into your potter once or twice,’ I confessed cautiously.

  She grinned rather maliciously. ‘I know. As soon as he described this madwoman who tried to drown him in mud and eggs, I told him you were an eccentric who wrote fantasy novels. He sort of assumed Sappho was your pen name, and you were writing gay fiction, so I didn’t disillusion him, because I don’t want him getting too interested in you.’

  ‘Thank you, Lili, but he was probably only interested in me in a “where does she live so I can go and kill her” way.’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ she said thoughtfully, ‘but anyway, if you’ve got Dave Devlyn on a string, you don’t need Nye.’

  ‘You can have him as well; I don’t want either of them.’

  ‘Simple, then – tell the dishy photographer you’re gay, then point him in my direction.’

  ‘Yes, Lili, but he knows very well that I’m not,’ I said patiently. ‘Besides, I have enough trouble with people assuming I chose the name Sappho because of that connection, and wasn’t just christened with it.’

  ‘Like Nye – and it really did the trick, though actually he seems to have been boringly faithful to his dismal hand-knitted Eloise while they were together – and all he talks about now is his work. It’s unnatural.’

  ‘Maybe he loved her and his ego’s so dented his libido has sunk without trace?’

  ‘Mine certainly will, at this rate,’ she said gloomily. ‘But I know I’m his type – small, dark and slim – I just have to get him to notice me.’

  He’d certainly noticed me, but I didn’t think that’s quite what Lili had in mind.

  I’d never seen a man resist a full-frontal assault by Lili before. Things could get interesting if she stepped up the campaign.

  As the next Chris Cotter-infested weekend approached, Miranda became more and more distracted, and I just hoped all my good work independence-instilling and backbone-infusing wouldn’t be wasted.

  But it wouldn’t really surprise me if she buckled right back down to slave mentality and I had to start all over again on the following Monday.

  On Friday morning she came and did the flower orders so quickly I only knew she’d been by the lingering odour of Old Dog when I got back from my walk.

  She’d left me a note though.

  Have to rush back and start cooking food for usual party tomorrow night, but will be in early tomorrow to do any flower orders. Plastic box in fridge has pilaff for you to try – new recipe for Feeding the Party Animal! I thought you could have it tonight and tell me what you think? Reheating instructions on box.

  Love, Miranda

  So she wasn’t completely buckling down, then? That was a hopeful sign.

  I nearly missed her again on the Saturday morning – she’d crept around so early I was still reclining on the lounger, trying to beat Dragonslayer into submission.
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  Nala seemed to be a trifle nervous of Dragonslayer: I thought it disconcerted her that he was so much bigger and more powerful than herself when she wasn’t used to it, but he needn’t think he was going to get things all his own way.

  ‘Dragonslayer felt the dark shadow of foreboding touch his mind and shivered: what could be coming to threaten him – or those he held dear?’

  When I heard Miranda I popped my head round the conservatory door and said: ‘I loved the pilaff. You should definitely use that one.’

  She jumped, dropping a handful of pinks (‘always lovely’).

  ‘H-hello, Sappho. I hope I d-didn’t d-disturb you? I’m a b-bit early, b-but I have to get b-back to cook Chris’s b-breakfast.’

  ‘Isn’t it a bit tragic that a TV chef can’t cook his own breakfast?’ I asked.

  ‘He got in very late last night, Sappho – and he d-drives d-down. It’s a long way. Anyway, lots of people are coming round tonight and I’ve got to get things ready. I hope you’re going to come too? Lili usually d-does – Chris d-doesn’t really like her, b-but she knows absolutely everyone.’

  ‘She certainly gets about,’ I agreed. ‘And it’s kind of you to ask me, Miranda, but I’m not much of a party animal and Chris doesn’t like me, either!’

  ‘I like you,’ she said stoutly, ‘and Chris will have to get used to your b-being here, won’t he?’

  Or not, as the case may be, I thought. Miranda may have weakened a bit but she was still showing faint signs of independence, which he certainly wouldn’t like and would lay at my door.

  ‘I’ll see how I feel later,’ I said. ‘But Dragonslayer is getting awfully uppity and I may have to sort him out tonight. And it’s time Raarg had a resurgence.’

  Speaking of which, there was still no sign of Dave resurging into my life. Could he have finally given up? How ironic if he had, just when I’d finally settled within his reach!

  In the event my visitor that afternoon was almost as unwelcome as Dave would have been: Cookie Chris turned up unannounced on my doorstep.