Wish Upon a Star

‘We’ve just closed the shop, so I’ve emailed you the madeleine recipe I mentioned.’

‘Oh, great – thanks,’ I said gratefully. ‘Funnily enough, I was just doing a bit of research into them.’

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you?’

‘No, not at all. My mother’s working in her studio and Stella’s still asleep, so I thought I’d make a start. She was so tired she only managed to take one bite out of the gingerbread pig, but she’s still holding it.’

‘It’s strange how many children love gingerbread,’ he commented, then added, ‘I just got my third wedding croquembouche order.’

‘Oh, well done!’

‘They want it to be flanked by two of David’s white and pink macaroon pyramids too, so expense no object.’

‘I can imagine how good that would look at a wedding reception. You know, I think your croquembouche business is going to be a huge success.’

‘I hope you’re right, but maybe it will because, David’s has taken off so well, and macaroons are another expensive luxury.’

‘People are prepared to pay for a special cake for a wedding,’ I assured him. Then I added tentatively, ‘Are you all right? Only you sound a bit … I don’t know – stressed?’

‘Knocked for six, more like,’ he confessed ruefully. ‘Aimee, my ex, just rang me at the bakery. Things didn’t work out with the other bloke and she’s back. In fact, she’s been home for a while and my friends knew and didn’t tell me.’

‘I suppose they were just trying to protect you,’ I suggested.

‘So they said, but they needn’t have bothered because she only wanted to say sorry and to be friends.’

‘Right,’ I said, though I thought I detected a hint of uncertainty in his voice. ‘Well, that’ll be lovely then, won’t it?’ I added, with a brisk cheerfulness I didn’t feel, because my heart had suddenly sunk like an undercooked sponge at the possibility that he might be snatched back to London by the horrible-sounding but glamorous Aimee when I’d only just got to know him.

When Stella was in bed that night, and Ma off in the garden room watching old Agatha Christie films, I made some madeleines to Jago’s genuine French recipe, which were delicious, and then started to write the articles.

The ‘Tea & Cake’ one was quick and easy.

Here’s a simple recipe for madeleines, those wonderful little buttery French biscuits, usually baked in deep shell-shaped moulds. Perfect with coffee at elevenses, but a lovely treat at any time …

But the other one took time, and I finally finished around midnight, when even Toto and Moses had gone to bed, both in the same basket. They seemed to have buried the hatchet and while I’d been typing at the kitchen table I’d seen Moses give Toto a very thorough washing, especially around the ears.

I’m not sure that Toto exactly appreciated it, going by the long-suffering expression on his furry face, but it’s surprising what you’ll put up with from your friends.

The house had long been silent except for the clicking of my fingers on the keyboard and the ticking of the clock, and although I offered to let Toto into the garden, he didn’t even bother opening both eyes. Mind you, I caught him crawling through the cat flap earlier in the day, so if he has cracked that, then he can let himself in and out whenever he wants to.

I looked in on Stella on my way to bed and she was fast asleep, hugging Bun. His plush is a bit worn and I’d sewn my mobile phone number onto the sole of one foot, after we once left him behind on a park bench and had to dash back to find him, luckily still there.

Stella looked angelic, a sleeping cherub, dimly illuminated by the faint light from her nightlight, which was one of those porcelain ones like a toadstool with a little mouse family inside. She had added one or two of her fuzzy toy mice to the scenario too, I noticed.

I looked down at her, so small and delicate that she reminded me of those old stories of fairy children exchanged with ordinary ones at birth – but if she had been, they weren’t having her back.

The next day Hal popped round to stretch a canvas for Ma. It seemed like a very un-gardener-like thing to be doing.

‘Hal spends a lot of time here, doesn’t he?’ I said tentatively to Ma later.

‘I suppose he does, but it’s evenings and weekends, mostly. Some of the Winter’s End gardeners work Saturdays overtime, especially when the place is open to the public, but Hal says he’d rather take things a bit easier at his time of life.’

‘What about his family?’

‘He’s a widower and his daughter married a New Zealander, so he’s only seen the grandchildren twice in eight years, when they came over here. He won’t fly, he’s scared. I’ve told him he should go on one of these courses to get over it.’

‘That’s a coincidence: Jago’s parents moved to New Zealand when they took early retirement – his older brother lives there. He didn’t say a lot about them, though. It’s a small world.’

‘It is if you fly, as I keep telling Hal.’

‘He keeps your garden this side of total jungle,’ I said.

‘He does that, and I don’t mind him about: he doesn’t fuss me.’

This didn’t sound to me as if there was any big romance going on there, just an odd friendship of opposites. Jago and I, on the other hand, were clearly destined to be friends because we were so very similar … unless Awful Aimee lured him back to London again, of course.

I texted him that the madeleine recipe came out perfectly, and to thank him again, but he replied not to mention it because he always loved to talk cake.

Aimee (#ulink_c31d4fb3-ad65-53df-b6c3-9b1ccfd853cb)

Aimee Calthrop pondered her phone call to Jago, and the surprising comfort it had given her to hear his soft, mellow voice. I could get him back, if I wanted him, she told herself.

In retrospect, it had been such a big mistake to dump a handsome, kind man who adored her … But then, he’d earned peanuts at Gilligan’s and seemed to have no aspirations to do anything other than bake cakes.

Cold feet had set in, which was part of the reason she’d run off to Dubai just before the wedding. But Vann Hamden had seemed a lot less enthusiastic about her arrival when he met her at the airport than he’d been during their brief affair in London, and positively blanched when she tried to kiss him.

They didn’t do that kind of thing in public over there, he’d explained, and immorality was a big no-no, so he was too afraid it would affect his business to step out of line.

Dubai had to be the most boring place on earth: no one seemed interested in having her organise their parties for them and, in any case, she wasn’t part of the fashionable in-crowd there. She couldn’t even shop, because Daddy, who’d liked Jago, had been so cross with her that he’d stopped her allowance. So she spent her days drinking too much (privately; that was also frowned on) and sunbathing none too wisely, between Vann’s visits, and when he said things weren’t working out too well and suggested he buy her a plane ticket home, she accepted the offer.

The whole fiasco was really Daddy’s fault. It was his sudden decision to marry his young PA that had made her nudge Jago into proposing in the first place. And now her place had been taken by a new baby girl for Daddy to dote on just as he’d once doted on her …

He refused to reinstate her allowance, too, saying that since she was in her forties it was time she was earning a proper living, which was another nasty shock, because she’d been totally in denial about her age for so long that she’d forgotten what it really was. So what with that and the realisation that she was never going to oust the two new contenders for her father’s affections (and wallet), she’d plunged into a bit of a panic.

He’d finally relented to the point where he agreed to pay her a reduced allowance for six months while she got on her feet, but her friends and the party crowd had moved on in her absence and now she was struggling to pick up the threads of her old life. She was out of touch … and suddenly starting to feel old.

When someone told her the rumour about the big lottery win at Gilligan’s, she wondered … and even tried pumping that snotty, red-headed fiancée of Jago’s friend David, while she was having her hair done, but got nowhere. Sarah had pretended she had no idea what Aimee was talking about and then insinuated that her hair extensions were giving her a bald spot on the crown, which had to be a foul lie.

She wished she knew just how much he’d won on the lottery … No one at Gilligan’s had been prepared to tell her – in fact, they’d been really reluctant even to give her his new contact details. Maybe that meant it had been squillions? She certainly hoped so!

She tried ringing him again, but still couldn’t get hold of him on his mobile, because he must have been so flustered at hearing her voice that he’d given her the number wrongly. She thought that was a good sign, but it was annoying that the shop number now rang through to voice mail and that friend of his was quite probably wiping her messages as fast as she left them …

Chapter 11: Flaky (#ulink_9e216eca-5816-5ceb-88a4-247315c73672)

On Monday morning I was up so early again that the sky was still a deep blueberry with only the tiniest hint of single cream seeping into the east. The sparse streetlights of Sticklepond glimmered like tired fireflies below me and were answered by the sharp, minute diamond sparkle of a star overhead.

Twinkle, twinkle … I thought of next Christmas and how much I hoped that Stella would be running round, fit and well and excited about Santa’s bumper crop of presents for a special little girl …

That sky made me want to try out blueberry fairy cakes, but apart from the fact I didn’t have any blueberries, I’d got up expressly to have a giant baking session for the new articles, so I got on with that. I’d produced Eccles cakes, Chorley cakes and even a few Sad cakes, before anyone other than Toto and Moses was awake, and I added a recipe to my ‘Cake Diaries’ outline.