Chocolate Wishes

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.’

‘She’s probably right. It sounds like something you would just buy for vanity, like a fancy numberplate.’ I folded the top of the box down and taped it shut, then wrote ‘Angels – sitting room’ on top with a big, black marker pen. ‘Let’s have some coffee, and then you can tell me why you’re clutching a copy of The Times.’

‘I’ve marked some men in the lonely hearts column and after that last disaster I want to know what you think before I contact them. You might be able to tell better than me if they sound weird.’

They all sounded weird to me, or desperate. But then Poppy is also getting slightly desperate (though she is not at all weird), since she would love to marry and have children before it is too late.

I’d resigned myself to having neither, unless you counted mothering Jake, who hadn’t so much fulfilled my maternal yearnings as made them wither on the vine.

Chapter Eight Good Libations (#ulink_bbe4658f-85ea-54ed-a3b1-8f00fd31cc85)

Eventually, just as even the heroic patience of Grumps’ buyers was wearing thin, the day of our removal to the Old Smithy dawned clear and bright.

The day before, Poppy had brought her big horsebox over, and we’d taken all my pots and tubs and the dismantled greenhouse across to the Old Smithy and put them in the walled courtyard. The pots of scented geraniums had to line all the windowsills, since it was too cold to put them outside yet.

When we’d done that, Poppy showed me the house-warming present she and Felix had bought me between them: fixed to the wall next to my new front door was a painted oval sign, decorated with red geranium flowers, which read, ‘Angel Cottage’.

‘Angel Cottage, 1 Angel Lane’ sounded wonderfully soft and downy and safe, a home I could nestle into, like a cygnet under its mother’s wing. But I wasn’t sure what Grumps would make of it – angels on one side, pagans on the other! Still, there was a good chance he would never even notice.

You know, Sticklepond was a very Angel sort of place, what with Angel Lane and the old church of All Angels, the graveyard of which seemed full of marble ones. Felix told me a nearby stonemason specialised in them, and I often admired them over the wall.

And now there was my Angel Cottage too. It had been immaculately cleaned by Dolly Mops and was now repainted a soft, warm cream throughout, with one deep, old-rose, purply-pink wall in the little living room, to match the old tiles around the hearth.

The only exception to the colour scheme was the dark purple wall in Jake’s room, of course, which actually didn’t look quite as bad as I’d thought it would, even after I had hung his retro red, black and purple curtains.

Poppy helped me to hang the rest of the curtains before she had to dash back to Stirrups. She’d spent so much time in the previous two weeks helping me to scour the local junk and charity shops for furniture and furnishings that Janey was starting to complain, even though she was quite capable of going off on a bender herself at a moment’s notice. (A bit like Mum, though at least Janey’s disappearances lasted only a few days and she always came back.)

But we had done as much as we could anyway and by the next day this would be my new home – and maybe a whole fresh new chapter in my life too, as a contentedly single and successful businesswoman.

The team of removal men swung into action at dawn next morning. They had already spent days packing up the house, with Zillah and Grumps increasingly marooned in the kitchen and study respectively, among the packing cases.

Jake and I were all ready to go, we just had to strip our beds and pack up the last few things, like the kettle and coffee mugs. Then the contents of our flat were loaded into a small van and whisked away to Sticklepond, while the rest of the men were only just starting to fill a huge pantechnicon with Grumps’ worldly goods (and otherworldly ones), as though they were doing some challenging kind of three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.

Felix and Jake were to direct unloading operations at the cottage, so Jake drove Zillah over in my Fiat, with Tabitha complaining bitterly in a basket on the back seat.

When I rang his mobile later to see how they were getting on, he said he and Felix had just screwed our bed frames together (I made a note to check those out before sleeping on them) and put the mattresses back on, and Zillah had already got the Aga going in her new kitchen and was dispensing stewed tea and biscuits.

‘And she put butter on Tabitha’s feet before she let her out!’

‘I think that’s supposed to make cats come back to the new house, though goodness knows why,’ I said. ‘Tell me when the phone landline starts working, won’t you? And I hope we can get broadband quickly, because I don’t want to have to conduct my business from the library or an internet café.’

‘OK, though Felix has broadband and I’m sure he would let you use his computer…and here comes my stuff, so I’ll have to go,’ he said, then rang off. I expected he would spend hours rearranging his new bedroom, ignoring the rest of the cottage, but at least Felix was there to make sure all the boxes and furniture went into the rooms they were labelled for.

Back at the old house, Grumps had written solidly in his study while it was emptied around him, so that his tall, Gothic chair and matching desk were the last things to go into the van – and therefore would be the first items out at the other end, meaning there would be very little disruption to his work. Clearly, there was method in his madness.

Finally, I drove him to Sticklepond in the Saab, wrapped in a midnight-blue velvet cloak against the chill and with a sort of embroidered fez over his long, silver hair. I dropped him off at the door, then turned round and went right back to take a last look alone around the old house and say my goodbyes. It was just something I felt I needed to do, before I could move on.

All the rooms echoed hollowly under my feet and looked strangely forlorn, especially the kitchen without Zillah’s bright cushions, throws and curtains. I wandered through the house, remembering mainly the happy things, like Granny and the strangely pagan-crossed-with-Christian version of Christmas we celebrated every year, Jake’s face as a small child, unwrapping presents (the one from Mum I always bought for her, because she never had any idea what he really wanted) and the night Poppy and I saw the angel…

I tried not to let memories of the bad times seep in, the moments of heartbreak and despair, but it was still all a bit poignant. It was more than time to move on and, I wondered, maybe I could leave the past behind me, like an outgrown shell and slip into a more expansive future?

In fact, a fresh start in a new place was just what we all needed – the Angel cards this morning had more or less told me so. I was sure Zillah had got her last reading wrong and the only visitors from my past likely to bother me were the ghosts I had just laid to rest.

I placed a big glazed pot of tulips on the kitchen windowsill, with a note welcoming the new owners to their home. Then I left, dropping the keys off with Conrad on the way to Sticklepond.

In our cottage Jake was still upstairs, which was much as I had expected, but Felix had lit a fire in the sitting room and was unpacking kitchen stuff into the wrong drawers and cupboards, though it was a kind thought, as was his having plugged in the little freezer and fridge the moment they were brought in.

‘I thought I’d make a start,’ he explained, ‘but I’ll have to go in a minute. I’ve got someone coming for a complete set of leather-bound Dickens and I’m hoping to offload some Thackeray onto them too. Is there anything else you’d like me to help you with, first?’

‘No, you’ve done wonders, Felix, I’m really grateful. And I love the house sign that you and Poppy gave me!’ I said warmly, giving him a hug. ‘I’m going to make our beds up now and then everything else can wait until tomorrow.’

After he’d gone, I found a new little bookcase with a slanting top that fitted neatly under the steep staircase, with a card from Felix saying it was especially for my Georgette Heyer collection. He was so kind! In fact, he would make someone a wonderful husband, preferably Poppy. It certainly wasn’t going to be me, and any other woman would undoubtedly resent his close friendship with us, so Poppy was the only possible candidate, when I came to think about it.