Figgy Pudding

1 large grated carrot

Juice and grated zest of 2 large lemons

2 tbsp molasses

4 large eggs, beaten

225 ml/1 cup Guinness or milk

4 tbsp rum or brandy

Combine the chopped almonds, figs, raisins, currants, sultanas, mixed peel and cherries. Add the sifted flour, spices, sugar, suet and breadcrumbs and mix thoroughly. Add the grated apple, carrot, lemon juice and zest and molasses and mix again. Stir in the beaten eggs, followed by the Guinness (or milk) and rum (or brandy). Spoon into two buttered casseroles (2½ pint capacity each) and cover with a double layer of waxed paper. Leave overnight to mature. Cover the casseroles with a double layer of foil, pleated down the centre and tied securely with string. Steam for 8 hours, checking regularly to see that the pan hasn’t boiled dry. Remove and set aside to cool. Cover with fresh waxed paper and foil, then store somewhere cool and dark, ideally for 4 to 6 weeks. When ready to be eaten, steam the puddings for an additional 3 hours before turning out into serving dishes. Warm a ladleful of brandy, set alight and pour over the puddings.

PROLOGUE (#u01b37f68-6c72-5296-acb6-9c26e82f8091)

‘MMM… well, I suppose he’s all right,’ Christabel announced as she looked critically at her less than one-week-old cousin as he lay contentedly in his mother’s arms.

In four weeks’ time it would be Christmas and Heaven and Jon would be going up to the Scottish Borders to spend the Christmas season in their home there, but right now they were still in London where Jon was enjoying showing off his newborn son to his sister, her two daughters and their doting stepfather.

‘What I don’t understand, though,’ young Christabel continued seriously, ‘is why you’ve called him Figgy.’

Over the dark downy head of Charles Christopher Hugo, nicknamed ‘Figgy’, Heaven grinned at her husband.

‘Well, it’s a long story,’ she began ‘and let’s just say that figgy pudding is a very special Christmas treat and “Figgy” here—’

‘I think you’d better stop there,’ Jon warned her ruefully, but his niece, picking up on the very interesting adult messages passing between her uncle and her new aunt, decided she wanted to hear more.

She had just reached the age where adult secrets, adult conversations were beginning to make her curious.

‘Tell me,’ she demanded imperiously. ‘I like stories…’

Heaven laughed into Jon’s eyes. In his mother’s arms Figgy continued to sleep despite his father’s attempts to make him wake up.

‘Well,’ Heaven began importantly, ‘just as figgy pudding is a pudding with a difference, so too is this a story with a difference, and it all began like this…’

CHAPTER ONE (#u01b37f68-6c72-5296-acb6-9c26e82f8091)

‘YOU’RE really going to go ahead and do it, then—take the job, despite… everything?’

Looking up from the pudding mixture she was stirring, Heaven Matthews grimaced at her best friend and nodded emphatically, confirming, ‘Yep, Janet, I’m really going to go ahead and do it.’

‘Well, I can understand why,’ Janet Viners acknowledged. ‘Anyone would, and after the way Harold Lewis treated you—after what he did to you—he certainly deserves to receive a taste of his own medicine!’

‘Oh, he will,’ Heaven said fervently, the stern look on her small, heart-shaped, vivacious face not really masking the pain Janet knew she was still suffering from the traumatic events which had so catastrophically affected her life. ‘He quite definitely will,’ Heaven averred, adding quietly, ‘Revenge, so they say, is a dish best eaten cold. We shall see. In this instance the proof of the pudding will quite definitely be in the eating—his eating, not mine. He always was a greedy pig, and not just for food.’

The smile which had brought into prominence the pretty dimples on either side of her generously curved mouth had faded again and as she watched her Janet reflected sadly on how much the last months had sapped her friend’s normal joie de vivre and how rarely she had heard the infectious happy laughter that had always been such a wonderful part of Heaven’s personality. The fact that she was the kind of person—woman—who was loved and valued by all those who knew her only made what had happened to her seem all the more unbelievable, all the more unpalatable—if Janet was to follow Heaven’s humorous habit of using food metaphors and clichés in a tongue-in-cheek fashion to illustrate her conversation and to underline and emphasise her passionate love of good food.

Not that you would ever know it from her enviably slender figure, Janet acknowledged wistfully as she contrasted her own much plumper frame with Heaven’s delicate sylph-like figure.

Even when they had been at school together Heaven had been determined that one day when she was grown up she was going to be famous for her cooking.

Some months ago when Janet had reminded her of that childhood dream Heaven had given her a bitter smile and said painfully, ‘Well, I was nearly right, wasn’t I? Only instead of becoming famous what I’ve become is infamous… infamous, notorious and unemployable…’ And her strikingly beautiful dark blue eyes had filled with painful tears which, true to character, she had dashed impatiently away. The last thing that Heaven was was the kind of person who wallowed in self-pity, despite the fact that right now she had every reason to feel sorry for herself, Janet acknowledged, reflecting on the events of the last eighteen months.

A promising career totally ruined, her life turned upside down by the media interest the whole affair had created, and as if that wasn’t bad enough poor Heaven had also had to live with the fact that no matter how often she protested her innocence there would always be those who were going to disbelieve her.

‘Who’s going to want to employ me as a private cook now?’ she had demanded bitterly some months earlier, when Janet had called round to find her friend busily trying to compose an ad for the classified pages of certain magazines.

‘Even if my name wasn’t recognised then sooner or later my face would be. I doubt there’s a hostess in London who hasn’t heard about the cook who tried to steal her employer’s husband.’

‘Are you really sure you’re doing the right thing?’ Janet tried now to counsel her friend gently. Perhaps because Heaven was so petite, too naively inclined to believe the best of everyone and she herself was so much taller, so much more wary, despite the fact that they were both the same age—twenty-three—Janet had always been inclined to be protective of Heaven.

They were standing in the kitchen of a pretty Georgian town house in Chelsea. Heaven’s father had inherited it from his great-aunt who had in turn inherited it from her parents, so there was a good deal of family history attached to it. Too much for the house to be sold, and since there was no way that Heaven’s parents were going to uproot themselves from the comfortable Shropshire village to which they had retired her father had suggested that Heaven should live there rent-free until she could restore some sort of order to her shattered life.

‘After all,’ Janet continued, ‘you’re starting to build up quite a nice little business for yourself and—’

‘Selling puddings through the classified ads and at country fairs,’ Heaven interrupted her in self-contempt. ‘Janet, I’m a trained cordon bleu cook. Making home puddings…’

‘It’s a living,’ Janet reminded her gently.

‘It’s an existence,’ Heaven corrected her. ‘If Dad wasn’t allowing me to live here rent-free…’

‘Have you thought of looking for work abroad, somewhere…?’

‘Where no one knows me?’ Heaven supplied for her, shaking her head. ‘Perhaps I should, but I haven’t. This is where I want to work, Janet. Here… London… my home… the place where I should be able to work, where I would be able to work if it wasn’t for that rat Harold.’ Angry tears filled her eyes. Determinedly she blinked them away. ‘I was just beginning to make a proper name for myself. I would have made a name for myself if that creep hadn’t gone and destroyed everything I’d worked for and…’

Heaven put the mixing bowl to one side and gave Janet a woeful look as she pushed her fingers into her already tousled dark curly hair.

‘I’m sorry to be such a wet lettuce, Jan, but you know…’

‘Yes, I know,’ Janet agreed sympathetically.

‘I just wish that Lloyd was earning enough for us to be able to employ you,’ she added with a grin. ‘He keeps complaining that he’s getting sick of microwave cooking. I think, of course, he’s using that as an excuse for getting me to go to his parents’ for Christmas. Not that I mind. I get on really well with his family. Have you made any plans yet? After all, it’s only next week…’

Heaven shook her head.

‘Mum and Dad have offered to pay for me to fly out to Adelaide with them. They’re off to spend Christmas and all of January with Hugh.’

Hugh, as Janet knew, was Heaven’s married brother who lived in Australia with his wife and children.

‘Why don’t you go with them?’ Janet urged her. ‘Who knows? You might even find you like it so much that you decide to stay there.’

‘Shipped off to Australia, like the family black sheep?’ Heaven countered painfully. ‘No… that isn’t what I want, Jan, even if the days are long gone when someone in disgrace was sent away from home. I feel that if I run away now people will think I’m running because I’m guilty, because I was to blame for the break-up of Harold’s marriage, because all those things he said…’ She stopped and gulped in a steadying breath.

‘I was not having an affair with him,’ she told her friend fiercely. ‘And even if he hadn’t been the completely loathsome and reptilian thing that he is I still wouldn’t have been tempted… not with another woman’s man. That just isn’t me, Jan… Mind you, some of it was my own fault,’ Heaven admitted with what Janet privately considered was far too much generosity; she had her own opinion of Harold Lewis and it wasn’t good—creep was far too kind a description of him, so far as she was concerned.

‘I should have guessed what lay ahead when he pretended he didn’t have enough cash to reimburse my travelling expenses when I went for the initial interview, but I was still green then and the job seemed such a good one. Residential, with summers with the family in Provence and the opportunity not just to cook for him and his wife and the two girls and do all their private entertaining, but also to cook for his business lunches and dinners as well…’

‘I do understand how you must feel,’ Janet consoled her. Heaven gave her a small smile.