Chocolate Wishes. Trisha Ashley

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СКАЧАТЬ from letting the cat – or the baby – out of the bag.

      But none of the three of them was much good in the motherhood stakes, which is probably why Felix, Poppy and I have such close bonds of friendship: we’ve always looked out for each other.

      Jake resumed chewing, swallowed, then said, ‘Grumps showed me the house agent’s leaflet and asked me what I thought of the Old Smithy ages ago. I didn’t think he was going to buy it, though. I just thought he was interested because it’s at the junction of two important ley lines.’

      ‘Yes, that does seem to have been his driving motivation,’ I admitted, ‘but also he’s had a very good offer for this house, much more than it’s worth. Did you know that he intends reopening the Old Smithy as a museum, too?’ And I told him about Grumps’ plans.

      ‘So, you and me are to move into the little cottage, then? How do I get to college from Sticklepond – can I borrow your car?’

      ‘No way! But Grumps says you can use the Saab.’

      ‘Even better. I look stupid in your baby Fiat.’

      ‘I’m going to try and get the Old Smithy key tomorrow and have a look, but it has two bedrooms and there’s a bathroom, though I don’t think any of it is terribly modern. One room downstairs was extended into a shop front for Aimee Frinton’s doll’s hospital.’

      ‘For what?’

      ‘One of the Frinton sisters mended dolls and teddy bears. There used to be a lot of doll’s hospitals, before mass-produced cheap toys took over. Grumps thinks it would be perfect for making Chocolate Wishes and I could even sell them directly to the public, if I wanted to.’

      ‘You’ll be practically round the corner from Felix’s shop, too,’ Jake pointed out in a casual manner that didn’t fool me in the least, ‘so you can see a lot more of him.’

      ‘I see quite a lot of him already,’ I said mildly. Having done his best to get rid of potential suitors for years, Jake had recently started to try to push me and Felix together – maybe that’s what gave Felix the idea in the first place? I suspected it was because Jake was about to fly the nest and felt guilty at leaving me alone, but little did he know how much I was looking forward to some me-time!

      Anyway, it was pointless, because I simply couldn’t feel that way about Felix – he was more like family. Wilde’s Women finally folded in the early seventies, when Janey suddenly married and had Poppy and then, as I’ve said, Mum had me for her own dubious reasons. Felix was a few years older, having been Mags’ teenage mistake, so he was always a protective older brother figure to us.

      So, you see, that’s why I loved my friend like a brother, my brother like a son and my mother…not at all. Was it any wonder I’d always had trouble with relationships?

      ‘Poppy’s only a couple of miles out of Sticklepond on the Neatslake road, so I can see a lot more of her too,’ I added pointedly.

      Jake looked at the clock and rose to his feet. ‘I’d better go. Ben’s picking me up in a minute.’

      ‘Well, remember, Jake—’ I began warningly.

      ‘I know, I know,’ he interrupted me good-humouredly, shrugging himself into the long, black leather coat it had taken me ages – and hundreds of Chocolate Wishes – to save up for. ‘No drugs or drinking to excess, and safe sex – I should be so lucky!’

      ‘Jake!’ I exclaimed, but he was gone.

      I felt like every exhausted mother of a teenager, trying to walk the fine line between keeping him safe and coming across as boringly old and uncool.

      And the irony of it was, I wasn’t even a mother.

      I rang Stirrups up later and told Poppy about Grumps buying the Old Smithy.

      ‘But that’s amazing!’ she exclaimed. ‘We were only discussing it at the last Sticklepond Parish Council meeting, because my cousin Conrad told me it had been sold and it was going to reopen as a museum. Didn’t I tell you?’

      ‘Well, you might have done, but I’d forgotten.’ She and Felix are both on the Parish Council so they often tell me what they have been discussing, but it had never seemed either interesting or relevant – until then.

      ‘I can’t think why Con didn’t tell me who was buying it!’ she said.

      ‘Grumps probably swore him to secrecy, you know what he’s like. And why were you discussing it at the meeting? I wouldn’t have thought it would need planning permission, since it’s already been a museum. And the shop in the little cottage shouldn’t either, because that was Aimee Frinton’s doll’s hospital.’

      ‘I don’t suppose either of them will need permission and we weren’t so much discussing it as chatting at the end about how many tourists the Shakespeare manuscript find at Winter’s End brings to the village, which is why we’ve got all the new gift shops and cafés and the Witch Craft Gallery to cater for them. Even Stirrups is doing much better and Marked Pages gets lots more passing trade. So everyone was really pleased the Old Smithy is going to be both a family home and museum again. They hope it will be something suitable, like the doll’s—’

      She broke off abruptly, so I expect she’d tried to put dolls and Grumps into the same mental picture frame and failed dismally to marry the two.

      ‘No, of course it won’t be dolls, will it? Silly me!’

      ‘The only sort of doll Grumps might have in his museum is a poppet.’

      ‘Poppet?’

      ‘An image of someone used in magic.’

      ‘You mean like a voodoo doll? Pins and stuff?’

      ‘Sort of. They can be used for good things as well as bad.’ I paused. ‘So, do you think perhaps a museum of witchcraft and paganism might not be quite what the Parish Council is hoping for?’

      ‘Well…no, not exactly. But I’m sure it will be hugely popular,’ she added hastily, ‘though I don’t quite know how Hebe Winter will take it.’

      ‘You mean that having been the only witch in the village for so long, she might take umbrage when Grumps arrives?’

      Poppy giggled. ‘Chloe, you can’t call her a witch. She goes to church and everything!’

      ‘But Winter witches do, don’t they? In any case, she’s a much whiter witch than poor old Grumps. I’m pretty sure he strays across the line into the grey bits from time to time, though always with the best of intentions.’

      ‘I think your grandfather is scary.’

      ‘You know he’s all bark and not a lot of bite, really.’

      ‘I can’t forget that when I was small he used to look at me as though he would like to turn me into something froglike. The fear has never quite worn off.’

      ‘He doesn’t see any point in babies and children until they’re old enough to hold a sensible conversation,’ I explained. ‘It isn’t that he doesn’t love us, in his own way.’

      ‘Yes, СКАЧАТЬ