Chocolate Wishes

Rituals completed, I went to wake Jake up, which took quite some effort since, at eighteen, he could sleep for Britain. I made sure he ate something before he set off for sixth form college, dressed all in black, from dyed hair to big, metal-studded boots, a cheery sight for his teachers on a Monday morning.

When he’d gone – with a cheeky ‘Goodbye, Mum!’ just to wind me up – I checked my emails for incoming Chocolate Wishes orders and printed them out, before going through to the main part of the house to see what Grumps was up to. Our flat was over the garages, so the door led onto the upper landing, and was rarely shut, unless Jake was playing loud music.

In the kitchen Zillah was sitting at the table over the remnants of her breakfast, drinking loose-leaf Yorkshire tea and smoking a thin, lumpy, roll-up cigarette. As usual, she was dressed in a bunchy skirt, two layers of cardigans with the bottom one worn back to front, a huge flowered pinny over the whole ensemble and her hair tied up in a clashing scarf, turban-fashion. Grumps says she was bitten by Carmen Miranda in her youth and after I Googled the name, I suspect he is right. Today’s dangly red earrings made her look as if she had hooked a pair of cherries over each ear, so the fruit motif was definitely there.

She looked up – small, dark, with skin not so much wrinkled as folded around her black, bird-bright eyes – and smiled, revealing several glinting gold teeth. ‘Read your tea leaves?’ she offered hospitably.

‘No, thanks, Zillah, not just now. I’m running late, it took me ages to get Jake up and on his way. But I’ve brought you another jar of my chocolate and ginger spread, because yesterday you said you’d almost run out.’

‘Extra sweet?’

‘Extra sweet,’ I agreed, putting the jar down on the table.

It’s really just a ganache of grated cacao and boiled double cream, with a little finely chopped preserved ginger added for zing. It doesn’t keep long, though the way Zillah lards it onto her toast means it doesn’t have to.

Zillah turned up on the doorstep the day after Granny died. She’d read the news in the cards and come to burn her cousin’s caravan – metaphorically speaking, anyway, because she’d had to make do with burning Granny’s clothes and personal possessions on the garden bonfire instead.

Grumps seemed unsurprised by Zillah’s sudden appearance, as if he’d been expecting her, which maybe he had, and his purported magical skills aren’t a complete figment of his imagination. She’d never given any suggestion of remaining with us permanently, yet here she still was several years later, cooking, cleaning and caring for us, in her slapdash way.

She handed me the fresh cup of tea she’d just poured out, put two Jammie Dodger biscuits on the saucer and said, ‘Take this in to the Wizard of Oz then, will you, love?’

‘Grumps is up to something, isn’t he?’ I asked, accepting the cup, because although he is taciturn and secretive at the best of times, I could still tell. I only hoped he wasn’t about to try some great summoning ceremony with his coven, because on past form all they were likely to call up was double pneumonia.

Zillah tapped the side of her nose with the fingers holding her cigarette and a thin snake of ash fell into her empty cup. I hoped it wouldn’t muddle her future.

In the study Grumps was indeed sitting at his desk over a grimoire open at a particularly juicy spell, which he was probably considering trying out when the weather improved. (The coven practised their rites in an oak grove, skyclad, and none of them was getting any younger.)

His long, silver hair was parted in the middle and a circlet held it off a face notable for a pair of piercing grey eyes and a hawk-like nose. His midnight-blue velvet robe was rubbed on the elbows, so that he bore more resemblance to a down-at-heel John Dee than a Gandalf, but it was a look that went down well with the readers of the beyond Dennis Wheatley novels he wrote as Gregory Warlock. Sales had been in the doldrums for many years, apart from a small band of devotees, but they were suddenly having a renewed vogue and his entire backlist was about to be reprinted in their original, very lurid covers.

Grumps is one of those annoying people who need very little sleep, so that by the time I pop in to see him in the mornings, he usually has achieved quite a heap of handwritten manuscript. There are often lots of letters too, because he corresponds with equally nutty people all over the globe, and since his handwriting is appalling I take everything away and type it up on my computer.

When I was younger there was a time when I thought Grumps was a complete charlatan. You can imagine what it was like growing up in a small town like Merchester, with a relative who both looked and proclaimed himself with every utterance to be totally, barking mad. For example, his eccentric clothing, the ghastly novels and his definitive book on the magical significance of ley lines. (Leys are straight lines that link landmarks and sites of historical and magical importance.) Add to all that the rumours of secret and risqué rites in remote woodland, and you will begin to see my point.

Yet as I grew older I came to realise that he believed completely in what and who he was and then it ceased to bother me any more: if he wasn’t embarrassed by it, then neither was I.

Now I picked my way towards the desk through a sea of unfurled maps that covered the carpet, each crisscrossed with red and blue lines showing both established and possible new ley lines. The crackling noise as I inadvertently trod on one drew Grumps’ attention to my presence.

‘Ah, Chloe – I believe I have found the solution to my financial problems,’ he announced in his plummy, public-school-educated voice, looking distinctly pleased with himself. He is distantly related to lots of terribly grand people, none of whom has spoken to him since he chose his bride from a fortune-telling booth at the end of a Lancashire pier, at a time when one simply didn’t do that kind of thing.

‘Oh, good,’ I said encouragingly, putting his tea down on the one empty spot among the clutter on his desk.

‘Yes, it came to me and I acted upon it, once the clouds of confusion sent by Another to conceal it from my knowledge were suddenly dispelled.’

Grumps has a private income, but he’d settled Mum’s huge debts six years before, after her last, permanent, vanishing trick. Besides, his investments weren’t paying out in the way they used to and even the recent four-book contract his agent had secured wouldn’t be enough to cover the bills and still enable him to purchase rare books and artefacts in the manner he seemed to think was his birthright. Even now his desk was littered with auction catalogues sporting bright Post-it notes marking things that interested him.

‘Great,’ I said cautiously, because Grumps’ good ideas, like his spells, have a marked tendency to backfire or fizzle to nothing. ‘Did Zillah read the cards for you and spot something nice?’

‘She did, and foresaw change.’

‘She always does. You’d think we lived in a sort of psychic whirlpool.’

‘Well, change there certainly will be, because I am selling the house and we are moving to Sticklepond.’

I’d started gathering up the loose sheets of paper inscribed in a sloping hand, which were the latest chapter of Satan’s Child. Now I stopped and stared at him. ‘We’re moving? But how can that help?’ Then the penny dropped. ‘Oh, I see. You mean you and Zillah are downsizing to a small cottage? That’s a good idea, because now that sales of Chocolate Wishes have taken off in a big way through the internet, I can easily afford to make a home for Jake on my own.’

‘No, no,’ he said impatiently, ‘I am not downsizing – the opposite, in fact – and there will be room for us all. An estate agent recently approached me with an advantageous offer for this house from someone who has taken a fancy to it, just at the very moment when I happened upon an advertisement for the Old Smithy in Sticklepond, which a friend had sent me, and which had somehow got mixed up among some other papers. It became apparent to me that this was a sign, and I therefore moved quickly.’

He pushed the grimoire aside and handed me a leaflet that had been underneath. It pictured a low, barn-like building, set longways onto the road, with a small ancient cottage at one side and a larger Victorian house at the other, like mismatched bookends.

‘It’s Miss Frinton’s Doll Museum!’ I said, recognising it instantly, because it’s not only just up the road from Marked Pages, the second-hand bookshop run by my friend Felix, but almost opposite the pub where I meet up with him and Poppy two or three times a week.

‘It was, though of course not for some time – it has lain empty. I knew it was for sale prior to this, of course, I just hadn’t realised its significance.’ He indicated the larger house with a bony finger adorned with a substantial and oddly designed silver ring. ‘This is the main residence, where the Misses Frinton lived. There would be abundant room for my library and for Zillah to have her own sitting room, as she has here. The front room of the small cottage at the other end of the building was the doll’s hospital – and I thought it would be ideal for your chocolate business, with enough room for you and Jake to live behind it, although it needs a little updating.’

‘When estate agents say that, it usually means it’s semi-derelict.’ I wished there were photographs of the interior of the cottage as well as the house in the leaflet.

‘Not derelict, just neglected. It used to be rented out, so there is a kitchen extension with a bathroom over it and two bedrooms. It is larger than your current accommodation.’

‘It could hardly be smaller,’ I said, though of course without Mum we had more space, especially since I’d packed up all her belongings and stacked the boxes in Grumps’ attic on the first anniversary of her disappearance. But since Chocolate Wishes had taken off, I really needed a separate workshop.

‘The cottage also has a walled garden behind it,’ he added slyly, because he knew I longed for a garden of my own. Here we just had a gravelled courtyard and although I did grow lots of things in tubs and pots and in my tiny greenhouse, including herbs both for cooking and for Grumps’ rites, salad vegetables, strawberries and a small fig tree, there were limitations…especially for my cherished and constantly growing collection of scented geraniums, currently over-wintering on every available windowledge in the flat.

I was sold.

‘The cottage is linked to the main house via the Smithy Barn, the former doll museum, and my intention is to open a museum of my own there,’ Grumps explained, ‘one dedicated to the study of witchcraft and paganism. I will be able to display my collection and increase my income, thus killing two birds with one stone.’

‘Well, goodness knows, you have enough artefacts to stock ten museums, Grumps!’ I exclaimed. ‘But you surely wouldn’t run it yourself? I can’t see you selling tickets to a stream of visitors!’

‘I fail to see why not,’ he said testily. ‘I will open only in the afternoons, from two till four, and can have my desk in one corner and let visitors roam freely, while I get on with my work. Zillah has said she will also take a hand.’

‘But if you don’t keep an eye on the visitors, half your collection will vanish!’

‘Oh, I think not: I will put up placards pointing out that any thieves will be cursed. In fact, I might have it printed on the back of the tickets.’

‘That should go down well,’ I said drily.

‘It will serve: they will ignore the warning at their peril. I shall have signed copies of my books for sale too, of course, both fiction and non-fiction.’

After my first surprise, the idea began to grow on me. ‘Do you know, I think you might be right and it would be quite a money-spinner, because since that Shakespeare connection was discovered at Winter’s End, hordes of tourists come to Sticklepond. At least one café and a couple of gift shops have opened in the village lately, and passing trade at Felix’s bookshop is much better. There’s a strong witchcraft history in the area too.’

‘Precisely! And besides,’ he added as a clincher, ‘the Old Smithy is on the junction of two important ley lines; that was what was so cunningly obscured from my vision by the malevolence of Another. There may even be a third – I am working on it.’

‘I expect the conjunction of the ley lines was a major selling point the estate agents managed to miss,’ I said, ignoring the second mention of a mysterious and malevolent opponent, which was probably just a figment of his imagination.

He gave me a severe look over the top of his half-moon glasses. ‘Its unique position imbues it with magical energy, my dear Chloe, and since the museum area is large, my coven may meet there with no diminution of power. Rheumatism has affected one or two of them,’ he added more prosaically, ‘and they have suggested we move to an indoor venue.’

‘Yes, I can see that the museum would be ideal, provided you put up good, thick curtains,’ I agreed absently, still turning over the whole idea of the move in my mind. ‘What about Jake, though? He has to be able to get to sixth form college and he isn’t going to want to move away from his friends, is he?’

Though now I came to think of it, a fresh start in a new village might be a good idea for my horribly lively brother. He’s outgrown his childish pranks, but will still forever be ‘that imp of Satan’ to those inhabitants of Merchester who’ve been his victims.