The Magic of Christmas

by Trisha Ashley

  Being Nick, he didn’t rush to comfort me, but instead said bracingly, ‘Time to move on, for both of us. And since I’m going to be around a whole lot more from now on, if you want any help with anything, you only have to ask.’

  ‘Thank you, that’s very kind. But I do most of the work here myself and, as I said, I’ve scaled things down. In fact, Jasper’s put the details of the big greenhouse up on the Freecycle website to see if anyone will dismantle it and take it away, and I’ve put an advert in the parish magazine about the quail. I’m selling that enormous TV of Tom’s, too.’

  ‘Didn’t you throw the TV controller into Tom’s grave?’

  ‘Yes, but Jasper had one of those universal ones all the time, so he could watch the History Channel on the big screen when Tom was away.’

  I took another sip of ginger beer and reached for the biscuit tin. ‘At least I got rid of the goats years ago, when they learned how to climb trees.’

  He gave me a scathing look. ‘Goats can’t climb trees, Lizzy!’

  ‘You obviously don’t know much about goats. And you wouldn’t believe how strong they are! If a goat sets its mind on going somewhere, there’s not a lot you can do to stop it. Anyway, I never did get used to goat-flavoured milk and yoghurt and I thought the cheese tasted like brown soap.’

  ‘What are you going to do with Tom’s business?’

  ‘That’s already sorted,’ I said, taking a crunchy bite of Choconut Consolation. ‘The day after the funeral two of Tom’s friends, Jimbo and Freddie — do you remember them? — came and made me an offer for everything, and I accepted it. I could have got much more, but I wanted to … well, I wanted to just get rid of it all! They got a really good deal, but the funny thing is that they assumed Tom’s van was included, only I’d already swapped it with Dave Naylor for that Land Rover in the yard, so they had to go and buy it back!’

  ‘Really, Lizzy, you should have left all that to me. I’d have got you a good price for everything!’ he said, not seeming at all amused.

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ I said tartly as a few faint, plangent notes wafted across the courtyard and through the open kitchen door.

  ‘What the hell’s that?’ he demanded, startled. ‘It seems to be coming from the workshop!’

  ‘It’s just the Mummers of Invention, Nick. I let them carry on using the workshop to practise in. I wasn’t using it.’

  He gazed blankly at me. ‘But Ophelia Locke is—’

  ‘Pregnant with Tom’s child? Chances are it isn’t his, but I think she was more sinned against than sinning because she’s so very easy and persuadable. Gullible, even. I’ve just been up to her cottage to take her some spare fruit and veg to build her up a bit, but if I’d known she was coming down here tonight she could have taken it back with her.’

  ‘You’re crackers!’

  This didn’t seem to be the moment to tell him she was also one of the members of ARG who’d been targeting my cottage and the estate. Anyway, she’d said she’d stopped now and I expect Caz would make sure she did.

  ‘Strangely enough, I suspect Ophelia’s half in love with Caz, only she doesn’t want to admit it,’ I said, following that train of thought.

  ‘Is she? Well, they do say that opposites attract! Maybe we could have made a go of it all those years ago, if you hadn’t suddenly decided to marry Tom on the rebound after we split up.’

  ‘I did not marry Tom on the rebound. We fell in love months afterwards!’ I said hotly. ‘And we only split up because you decided to go off on a world recipe-finding mission for a year, don’t forget.’

  ‘You should have understood — and waited. I wrote to you.’

  ‘No you didn’t, you only sent me recipes on postcards!’

  ‘That’s the same thing.’

  His eyes, the purple-grey of wet Welsh slate, were baffled.

  ‘Well, whatever,’ I said. ‘It’s pointless having post-mortems at this stage, isn’t it? We married other people and moved on.’

  There was a tap on the door and a shadow darkened the threshold. ‘Hello!’ called a deep and attractive male voice. ‘Mrs Pharamond?’

  The man, who was tall with curling blond hair and a ruggedly attractive face, stopped halfway through the door. ‘Oh, sorry if I’m disturbing you,’ he said, with a charmingly apologetic smile. ‘I’m Ritch, you know — Ritch Rainford?’

  As my eyes met his incredibly blue ones, it struck me that Annie’s description of his charms had been wildly understated. A force field could not have held me faster at that moment and I fear I might even have been drooling — but then, he did make me think of slabs of golden-brown Honeycomb Crunch …

  His gaze released mine and he looked enquiringly at Nick, who was sitting there with his arms crossed like a terribly gloomy wooden Indian.

  ‘You’re not interrupting anything,’ I said, managing to get my voice back. ‘This is my late husband’s cousin, Nick Pharamond.’

  ‘Hi,’ Ritch said in a friendly manner, but the two men seemed to me to be eyeing each other in a very sizing-up-for-battle way. It reminded me of a film I once saw of bull elephants fighting, probably a territorial thing. They were both big, fit men, so I wouldn’t know which one to put my money on.

  ‘I just wanted to say how kind it was of you to let the group continue practising in the workshop, Mrs Pharamond, and to let you know I’ll be up here jamming with them sometimes. So if you see a stranger around the place, it’s me.’

  ‘Do call me Lizzy,’ I said. ‘And actually, I’ll be the stranger round at your place tonight, if you still want Posh Pet-sitters to come, because I’m Annie’s assistant and I’ll be seeing to Flo.’

  He gave me another warm — very warm — smile, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners, and I could see what Annie meant, because there was just something about his expression that made you feel hot under the collar (or the smock, in her case).

  ‘Great, I can see she’ll be in good hands. Well, better get back to the gang, I suppose. Not my sort of music, really, but it’s good to keep my hand in!’

  Another one-hundred-and-fifty-watt smile and he was gone. I sighed involuntarily, watching his retreating, lithe figure until it vanished into the workshop. Ophelia might think he was old, but I bet that was before she saw him in the flesh.

  ‘Well, you do seem to be managing everything very well without my help,’ Nick said, abruptly getting up and banging his head on the ceiling light, which swayed alarmingly. ‘Bloody hell!’

  ‘Jasper’s started doing that too, now he’s over six foot. I must shorten the chain, or something. Thanks for coming though, Nick. Jasper will be sorry to have missed you.’

  ‘He’s at the dig?’

  ‘Yes, and then his friend was going to pick him up and they were going over to talk to the owner of the student house his friend’s brother rents with a couple of others. Jasper’s taking that dog that Annie dumped on us, and thinks he can sweet-talk the landlady into letting him keep it in the house, even though it’s supposed to be no pets. He’ll be home late. But it’s probably just as well, because I need to read through my new book tonight — if I can bring myself to concentrate on it for long enough to spot any mistakes!’

  He gestured at the dog-eared heap at the end of the table. ‘Is that what all this stuff is? Yet another glorious Perseverance Chronicle?’

  ‘Yes, and possibly the last. I’m not sure I’ll be able to finish the next, because I’m only managing to write about a paragraph most days instead of four pages. And I tried to go through the manuscript earlier, but my brain got stuck and I read the same page over and over,’ I said despairingly. ‘My agent will kill me if it isn’t in the post tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll read it for you,’ he offered, to my surprise.

  ‘What — you?’

  ‘Why not? I’m literate and I’ve nothing in particular to do for the rest of the day. It’s not that big a manuscript, so it won’t take me long. I’ll red-pen any mistakes and drop it back later.’


  It was amazingly kind of Nick, but perhaps he just wanted to do something to help, so I pushed it all into a manila folder and handed it to him thankfully. ‘That is such a weight off my mind! I’ll be out around seven to see to Mr Rainford’s dog, but you know where the key is if I’m out, don’t you?’

  ‘Raspberries,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I left you a message earlier. Do you have any?’

  ‘Oh yes, there’s a September-fruiting bush behind the greenhouse, but there aren’t an awful lot of them. I put them aside for you in the small barn.’

  ‘That’s OK. I bought some supermarket ones too, just in case, though they don’t have the same flavour. I can mix them together.’

  ‘What are you making?’

  ‘A variation on liquorice ice cream, with a raspberry coulis.’

  I looked at him doubtfully, but he seemed to be serious. Then he stunned me by stooping and swiftly kissing me on the mouth, which he absolutely never does, and left with my manuscript under his arm.

  My lips tingled. I supposed we were kissing cousins, if only by marriage … but I wouldn’t have described that as an affectionate peck on the cheek! Also, since he was the sort of man who gets a five o’clock shadow five minutes after he’d shaved, I got a free exfoliation into the bargain.

  Staring after his car as he drove off (and it was very nearly pressed duck for dinner), I realised what I hadn’t admitted to myself before: that in recent years I’d really, really missed our invigorating exchanges of opinion. Every life, especially one so literally down to earth as mine, needs just a little vinegar in the mix.

  But Ritch Rainford, now — he was more of a sweet treat …

  Going back in, I slightly loosened all the caps on the ginger beer bottles, just in case, then looked out the Honeycomb Crunch recipe. It is much the same as cinder toffee, really — sugar, white vinegar, water and bicarbonate of soda, only with added butter and golden syrup. It’s the mixture of bicarb and vinegar that makes them go all bubbly.

  I added that thought to the current chapter of the next Chronicle, before the inspiration bubbles went flat again.

  Chapter 14: Slightly Curdled

  After making Honeycomb Crunch, it occurred to me that if you crumbled it up, it would make a wonderful topping for home-made vanilla ice cream. You could wrap a chunk in a plastic bag and hit it with a rolling pin — that would do the trick.

  The Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes

  Jasper phoned to tell me his new landlady had agreed that Ginny could take up residence in the rented house with him and his friends at the end of the month, so that was sorted. I would have preferred him to live in a student hall of residence for the first year, but the whole point of your children going away to university is so they can live their lives, not yours, so I would just have to go along with his decision.

  The thought of my little boy exposed to all the big city temptations of drugs, unprotected sex and being knifed in the street … well, I had to swallow hard before I could say brightly, ‘Oh good, I’m so glad, darling. That will be great, living with your friends and having Ginny with you. What time will you be back tonight?’

  ‘Chris’s mum is going to drop me off, probably about eleven. She doesn’t like him driving late at night — she’s nearly as bad as you are for fussing.’

  ‘Jasper, I don’t fuss! How can you say I fuss?’ I demanded indignantly. But then, despite my best intentions, asked, after a moment’s pause, ‘What are you doing tonight?’

  ‘Sex, drugs, tattooing our arms with old syringes off the street, that kind of thing,’ he said good-naturedly.

  ‘Jasper!’

  ‘Watching DVDs, making popcorn, drinking beer,’ he amended.

  ‘I’m going into the village in a minute, to pet-sit an actor’s dog — Ritch Rainford. He used to be some kind of pop star in the eighties.’

  ‘Never heard of him,’ he said, unimpressed. Had it been a bosomy model from one of the boys’ magazines I expected he would have been much keener, but the only creature with artificially inflated breasts in the Mosses is Polly Darke, and I knew he classed her with the pensioners.

  How can silicone be sexy? Isn’t it peculiar that many men find artificial breasts just as much of a turn-on as real ones? Another one of life’s strange mysteries to ponder when you are examining your marrows.

  I ate a generous portion of my own version of Lancashire hotpot — good and peppery, with rich gravy and a shortcrust topping — and read the rest of the latest issue of the Mosses Messenger, before going out.

  According to ‘The Verger’s Village Round-up’, Caz Naylor had ‘kindly volunteered to resolve the goose situation in Middlemoss, because children and the elderly were being terrorised, and the mess they left was proving a danger to life and limb. Caz has therefore now caught and rehomed them to somewhere more suitable, a solution we know will be acceptable to all interested parties.’

  There was also a notice that rehearsals for the Mystery Play would be starting in the village hall on the fourteenth, Tuesdays (generally acts 1–9) and Thursdays (acts 10–22). Luckily, we’ve filled the vacancies for Moses and Lazarus without any trouble, and Miss Pym, who is a dab hand with papier-mâché after a lifetime spent teaching infants, is making a new Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery commandment tablet.

  I set off for the old vicarage just before seven, since it’s only a short walk, but first I changed into a pair of decent, clean jeans and a pale green T-shirt with pretty old buttons sewn in a border all round the neck, an idea I got from one of Annie’s magazines. I sewed them onto my best Indian leather toe-post sandals too, though they kept getting ripped off.

  When I rigorously brushed all the knots out of my hair it went into a ripply light-brown mass round my head like something Rossetti would have painted, though thankfully sans the sulky Pre-Raphaelite trout-pout.

  The T-shirt brought out the green in my eyes, and my face looked glowingly healthy for a recent widow. I wondered about applying a bit of make-up (I often think about make-up, but rarely bother to do anything about it), but then suddenly thought, what the hell am I doing, getting all duded up to walk Ritch Rainford’s dog? Am I crackers? Do I think Flo is going to give her master my marks out of ten for effort and appearance when he staggers home from his party?

  But it was too late to change, so I set off as I was. As I passed the vicarage bungalow, I wondered how Annie and Gareth were getting on. It seemed very daring of him to invite a single lady to dine with him alone. Well, I assumed they were alone (apart from Trinny), unless he’s invited half the village round for support?

  The old vicarage now sported the new name of Vicar’s End. I unlocked the front door with the key Annie had given me and stepped inside. It was always unlocked when Annie’s father was vicar, so that seemed odd in itself. And somehow, I still expected the cool, tiled hall to smell of lavender, floor polish and beeswax, just like it used to, rather than of some exotic artificial household fragrance mixed with slightly acrid cigarette smoke.

  The old hallstand had been replaced by a glass-topped console table bearing an indecent bronze sculpture and a severely tailored arrangement of decayed-looking black orchids among spiky foliage. I was just touching them to see if they were real (they were), when, with a clatter of claws, Flo hurtled down the hall to meet me, velvet coat rippling and tail thrashing about. Annie had said she would be delighted to see me, even though I was a total stranger, and she was quite right. In fact, had I been a burglar, I expect she would have been equally pleased.

  ‘Good girl, Flo!’ I said, patting her. ‘Good girl!’

  My instructions were to let her into the garden and feed her, then hand her a chewy rawhide bone and shut her in the kitchen on departing. I thought I would feed her first, since she didn’t seem particularly interested in going out.

  What happy, smiley faces white bull terriers have! ‘Come on then, Flo, din-dins,’ I said, and had just started towards the door at the back of
the hall that led into the kitchen, when a deep, instantly recognisable masculine voice from above called out, ‘Tobe, is that you? I’m on my way!’

  He was, too: leaping athletically down the stairs two steps at a time, Ritch Rainford landed in the hall almost at my feet, though an advance wave of expensively intrusive aftershave just beat him to it.

  ‘Yark!’ I squawked inelegantly.

  He looked equally surprised for a moment, then smiled. ‘Sorry, thought you were my lift! Did I startle you, Lizzy?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ I said, swallowing. ‘I thought you’d have been long gone.’ Despite myself I was answering that effulgent smile, drowning dizzily in the depths of his cerulean-blue eyes …

  ‘I’m so glad I wasn’t,’ he said, to which I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  Was he flirting? My flirting abilities were not great, even in my youth, and by now had atrophied to the point of no return. I looked at him doubtfully, but decided it was just his usual manner and got a grip on myself. I even started breathing again: in, out — it was quite easy now I’d remembered how to do it.

  ‘No … well, since you are still here, you won’t need me to see to Flo, will you? You can do it before you go,’ I suggested.

  A horn sounded: ‘No time — that’s Toby. You know Toby Little, plays Rufus Grace in Cotton Common?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not, I haven’t seen it,’ I confessed. ‘I don’t watch much TV. I quite like gardening and cookery programmes, but anything else just doesn’t seem to hold my concentration, probably because it isn’t real. Life’s much more interesting, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’ he said, looking at me curiously. The horn hooted again, impatiently. ‘Look, Lizzy, why don’t I tell Tobe to hang on a couple of minutes while we sort Flo, and then you could come with me, meet some of the cast, come on to the party?’ he suggested.

  ‘What — me? Oh, no, thanks, I couldn’t! Jasper — my son — is coming home later …’ I began, automatically stammering out excuses, though secretly a little bit of me was rather tempted by the idea in a fascinated-by-a-snake kind of way.