The Magic of Christmas. Trisha Ashley

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СКАЧАТЬ speculatively on my bruised cheek.

      I hoped he didn’t think Tom had taken to physical violence – or that I would have stayed to be a punchbag if he had! I was just about to disabuse his mind of any suspicions in that quarter when he turned round to survey my domain and remarked suavely: ‘I wouldn’t say the family have come a long way from the heady days of Pharamond’s Butterflake Biscuits, but they have certainly diverged in their interests.’

      Then, before I could point out that he at least was still vaguely in the bakery line, he got back into his car and reversed away in a cloud of dust. A lot of gritted chickens shot out from under it.

      ‘Wasn’t that Uncle Nick?’ Jasper asked, coming out ready for the off.

      ‘Yes, but he couldn’t stay. He had an urgent appointment with breakfast, though he did send you his congratulations on the exam results. Get in. I’ll just wash my hands and we’ll go.’

      ‘Can I drive?’ he asked hopefully. He’d recently passed his test, lessons courtesy of a lucky win on the gees at Haydock by Great-uncle Roly.

      ‘OK. Turn it round while I get ready.’

      He’d left the cottage door open, and one of the hens had made a small deposit on the rag rug.

      Chapter 3: Bittersweet

      We are more than halfway through August, the time of year for eating fruits and salads as they come into season; but all too soon we will be bottling, brewing, jamming and preserving as if our lives depended on it and famine was sure to follow glut. And the minute the Christmas Pudding Circle receive their bulk order of dried fruits, peel, nuts and other ingredients, we will all be making our mincemeat too, for we use a marvellous Delia Smith recipe that keeps for ever.

      The Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes

      All the way to the dig, while the loud music chosen by Jasper drowned out even the possibility of conversation, I wondered whether it could possibly be Leila that Tom had been having an affair with for the last couple of years – or the main one, because I’m sure he still scattered his favours pretty widely.

      Was Nick really hinting that he suspected that, or had I imagined it? But things certainly didn’t sound too friendly between him and Leila, even by their semidetached, sweet-and-sour standards!

      And what would I say to Tom when he returned? While saying nothing would probably be the most sensible option until my plans to leave were in place, I couldn’t let what he’d done pass, even if I didn’t really think he was trying to hurt me physically.

      Maybe I should have left before, even if it did mean disrupting Jasper’s schooling? The situation had certainly been affecting him – he seemed practically to have given up going out with his friends in the evening when Tom was home. Instead, he lurked in his room with the laptop Unks bought him, only suddenly looming silently up between us whenever voices were raised.

      So now was probably the moment to clear the air and tell Tom straight that I was not prepared to put up with his behaviour any more, so I was leaving him. I was convinced this was what he’d been angling for, so he could play the hurt innocent party to everyone and, perhaps, install someone else here in my place …

      I found that a particularly horrid thought, but Perseverance Cottage belonged to his uncle Roly, so obviously if anyone were moving out it would have to be me. And I simply wouldn’t ask Roly to help me, for not only did I not want to disillusion him about Tom, whom he had treated like another grandson, but he’d already been so kind and generous to us all these years by letting us have the cottage rent free.

      I expected I could find new homes for the hens and quail, but finding a new home for me would be the major problem. While the recent influx of newcomers into the area (especially the Cotton Common crowd) might mean that Annie’s Posh Pet-sitters could expand enough to employ me part-time, on the downside, it also meant property rentals had soared out of my reach.

      It was all depressingly difficult! Oh, why couldn’t Tom just vanish into thin air, never to be seen again, like those mysterious disappearances you read about in the newspapers?

      In need of comfort, I stopped off at Annie’s cottage on the way home from dropping Jasper at the dig. It was still early, but she’d already made a chicken casserole and popped it in the slow cooker for later.

      She seemed to have learned a lot more practical stuff than I ever did on that French cookery course we did in London after we left school, where volatile Madame Fresnet screamed at us all day long in French, the language in which we were supposed to learn to cook, thus killing two birds with one stone. At the end of the six months we all emerged with shattered eardrums, shattered French and the ability to whip up tartelettes au fromage at the drop of a whisk.

      Trinity skipped up to greet me, and Susannah, Annie’s deaf white cat, regarded me with self-satisfied disinterest from the top of the Rayburn.

      ‘All right?’ Annie asked anxiously, scrutinising my face.

      ‘Fine. Tom’s not back yet and Jasper’s at the dig – I just dropped him.’

      ‘It’s great he got his first choice university, isn’t it?’ she said, getting down another mug from the rack and pouring me some coffee. ‘Do you want a chocolate croissant? They’re hot from the oven and I don’t think I can eat the last one, I’ve had two already.’

      ‘Your eyes are bigger than your belly,’ I said vulgarly, accepting the plate, and sat down at the kitchen table, keeping my eyes firmly away from Trinny’s pleading dark ones, because the last thing a dog with three legs needs is to be overweight.

      ‘I saw Nick this morning,’ I told her, dunking the croissant into my coffee so the bittersweet dark chocolate began to melt into it. This makes a change, because I usually do it the other way round and dip my food into melted chocolate, especially strawberries. It’s amazing what you can coat in chocolate – and I’m not talking about that revolting body paint, because I prefer to keep the two greatest pleasures life can hold completely and unmessily separate … or at any rate, I did. I think I have forgotten how to do one of them.

      ‘That’s really what I came to tell you about, Annie. He called in early on his way up to the Hall, and he said Tom was in London on Monday.’

      I described my conversation with Nick. ‘Don’t you think that sounds like he suspects Tom and Leila might be having an affair?’

      ‘Oh, no, surely not? Not with his own cousin’s wife?’ she exclaimed, looking horrified. Annie is just too nice for her own good, but I suppose being a vicar’s daughter didn’t exactly help to squash her natural inclination to think the best of everybody if she possibly could.

      ‘I don’t know, but I certainly hope not. I can’t really see him and Leila getting it together, can you? She’s quite scary, in a beady-eyed and elegantly chic way. And I always thought it must be someone local or down in Cornwall, so perhaps Nick has got the wrong end of the stick.’

      ‘I’m sure he must have,’ she agreed, and then her eye fell on the kitchen clock. ‘Look at the time! I promised I’d put in a couple of hours at the RSPCA kennels. The flu’s hit the staff and volunteers hard. There are no pet-sitting jobs that I can’t handle myself this afternoon, but tomorrow will be busier.’

      She looked slightly self-conscious: ‘Ritch Rainford has asked me to go in at lunchtime СКАЧАТЬ