Chocolate Wishes (14 page)

I’d have to work on it.

That evening Chas Wilde phoned up again, this time to say he would be in the north soon and would like to pop in for a quick visit.

‘It’s ages since I’ve seen you, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘How are you settling into your new home?’

‘Oh, I love it,’ I said abstractedly, then on a sudden impulse took the plunge and added, ‘and I’m glad you rang, because there’s something I want to talk to you about.’

‘That sounds ominous!’ he replied cautiously.

‘No, not really, though it is difficult. You see, when I was packing up to move, I found some of Mum’s old letters.’

He sighed. ‘I think I can guess what you want to talk about, then, and it’s long overdue, after all. You want to know how your mother and I…came together?’

‘Not exactly. Knowing Mum, I can imagine. I also know she got pregnant with me on purpose, as a sort of insurance policy after Wilde’s Women disbanded, because she told me so.’

‘She would. But I did a wrong thing in a weak moment and I had to pay for it, though I never grudged one penny I gave her to support you, Chloe,’ he said sincerely.

‘I know that,’ I answered, because Chas is a kind, decent man, weak moment or not. ‘But the thing is, I’ve discovered that she also told
another
man that he was my father too, so you might have spent eighteen years paying out for a child that wasn’t your own!’

In the long silence that followed I could hear my heart thumping. ‘Chas? Are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m here. Look, Chloe, the thought that you might not be mine
had
crossed my mind from time to time – you look nothing like me, for a start. But as I said, I made a mistake and so it was right that I should pay for it. Anyway, I’ve grown fond of you – you
feel
like my daughter.’

‘And I’m fond of you too – which makes it all the harder not knowing for sure what the truth is!’

‘Well, we
could
find out with a DNA test, if it matters to you?’ he suggested. ‘I could organise that.’

‘Would you? It would be something to know one way or another. And if you aren’t, then I’ll have to assume it’s this other man, though I suppose she could have been lying to him too!’

‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we? And we’ll hope the test is positive. I’ll see about it and I expect you’ll have to send a swab or a hair sample or something off to a lab in the post. I’ll let you know.’

‘Thank you, Chas,
and
for being so understanding too. I thought you might be really angry.’

‘With Lou, perhaps, but never with you, Chloe,’ he said kindly.

I
so
hoped he was my father!

I was feeling a bit edgy after that, so later, when Jake’s phone suddenly played a snatch of Mortal Ruin’s ‘Darker Past Midnight’ I immediately insisted he change the ringtone to something else. I wasn’t terribly tactful about it either, so he was miffed and we had a bit of an argument. Then he slammed off up to bed in a sulk.

I suppose it did seem totally unreasonable. It would have been so much easier if I could have told him
why
.

In the morning I apologised to Jake.

‘That’s OK. I suppose because you hear it everywhere, it just got on your nerves,’ he said handsomely. ‘I’ve changed it to something else now.’

‘Thanks, Jake. That song just seems to be haunting me. It was even playing on the phone when I was put on hold the other day,’ I explained. ‘By the way, Chas is calling in sometime before too long – he rang last night.’

Jake knew the situation (or what we thought was the situation!) so he evinced no surprise at this, and went off in Grumps’ car to collect Kat. They planned to spend the morning listening to some friends rehearsing their band. If the DNA test proved Chas wasn’t my father, it would be time enough to tell him then…

When I went to Grumps’ study to collect the latest chapter or two of
Satan’s Child
, which had recently galloped off in an unexpected direction just when I had thought it was about to come to an end, he was removing the wrapping from a rectangular cardboard box.

‘Morning, Grumps,’ I said, putting down his cup of tea with the two biscuits balanced on the saucer – after a brief flirtation with Garibaldis we were back to the Jammie Dodgers again, I saw. ‘Have you been buying things at auction, or has someone sent you a present?’

‘Neither. Nor do I get the feeling that this contains anything good.’ He lifted the lid, took a brief look inside, and then slammed it down again as though something evil might escape.

He looked rather pale. ‘As I thought!’

‘What’s the matter, Grumps? Is it nasty?’

‘A warning – unwelcome, if not entirely unexpected. Mann-Drake has evidently arrived in the village, for Zillah found this on the doorstep addressed to me early this morning.’ He looked up at me seriously. ‘Until I have taken steps to protect us all, should he contrive to introduce himself to you, have nothing to do with him. Certainly do not invite him across your threshold – and warn Jake. I will speak to Zillah myself.’

‘He might not tell me his name,’ I pointed out, starting to feel as if I had suddenly stepped straight into the world of one of Grumps’ novels and wondering if he himself could tell the difference between reality and imagination. ‘What does he look like?’

‘Perfectly ordinary and harmless, though he has a voice that could charm the birds off the trees. In recent pictures from the internet he looks not much different from the last time I saw him, though he was dressed up in some ridiculous outfit, like a conjuror.’

‘Yes, Jake showed me those – eerily lit from below, and with a sort of cowl shadowing his face!’ I agreed, thinking that Grumps himself always seemed entirely unaware of his
own eccentricities of dress, though of course
he
never looked ridiculous, just odd.

He gestured to the box. ‘He would have used the powerful conjunction of the ley lines at the Old Smithy for dark purposes, and this shows me the depth of enmity he feels towards me, because I managed to purchase the Old Smithy while he was incapacitated with severe appendicitis. I found it disappointing that it was
not
fatal…’

‘Grumps!’ I exclaimed, staring at him. ‘You didn’t have anything to do with his illness, did you?’ Then I realised what I had just said and added, ‘No, of course you didn’t! What
am
I thinking of?’

‘Ill-wishing can lead to the opposite outcome to that desired, or rebound upon one’s head; though it seems to me that to wish something bad upon another person, when your heart is pure and unselfish in its intentions, should not cause such an unfortunate result,’ he said ambiguously. ‘It is a very grey area.’

‘Right…’ I said. Not that I agreed, it was just that I knew how pointless it would be to get into an argument with him on the subject.

‘We must protect ourselves while I consider my strategy, my dear Chloe. Florrie Snowball can help me there, for luckily her one great skill is the very thing we need now.’

‘You mean Mrs Snowball from the Falling Star?’

He nodded, so it looks as though I was right in suspecting her of being another of his coven, along with the Frinton sisters. I wondered if there were any more in Sticklepond, whom I didn’t yet know about.

‘Do you know how the Falling Star got its name, Chloe?’

‘Yes, of course. The rock in the middle of the courtyard is supposed to be a meteorite. It’s got a brass plaque on it that
says so, and that it mustn’t be moved because that would be unlucky. But it can’t have actually
fallen
there, because then the pub would be sitting in a huge crater, wouldn’t it?’

‘The sign means that it must never be moved from where it came to
rest
,’ he said, which was another of the kind of statements he was prone to make that could be interpreted in more ways than one. Really, sometimes his conversation was enough to make you feel dizzy.

‘It’s really inconvenient where it is now, because it’s right in the middle of the courtyard and cars are always getting scraped against it. I expect stagecoaches did too.’

‘It’s on one of the ley lines, the last landmark of significance before the conjunction here at the Smithy – and there may be three, for I am currently researching the possibility of an even more ancient one.’

‘Oh, right. How exciting for you, Grumps!’ I said, though I was still puzzling over where Mrs Snowball’s speciality came in. Unless he’d heard about the coffee machine, of course, and thought large amounts of caffeine might sharpen our wits?

‘If you could leave me now, Chloe – I must burn this,’ he indicated the box, ‘and then perform one or two rites to negate its power. You might put some more wood on the fire before you go.’

‘OK,’ I agreed, because although I was naturally curious about what was in the box, I wasn’t curious enough to actually want to
see
it.

Anyway, this whole enmity thing between Grumps and Mr Mann-Drake was really just two old men playing an advanced real-life game of Dungeons and Dragons, wasn’t it? Or that’s what the logical part of my mind said, anyway!

On the night of the new vicar’s welcome party I was at home in the sitting room, cutting the thin, almost transparent printed sheets of Wishes into small strips and feeling like Billy No-mates, even though it didn’t sound like the most exciting event ever. Jake was at Kat’s place (doing college work, allegedly) and the telly was absolute rubbish.

In the end, I put the
Bride and Prejudice
DVD on for the hundredth time just for the bright colours, cheery music and Bollywood dancing. I know all the words to the songs, so I could sing along while I was working.

I’d expected Poppy to ring me by mid-evening, but when she didn’t I assumed either the party was going on much later than she’d expected, or the new vicar had been a bit of a damp squib in the ex-pop star department.

I suspected the latter. But since we were meeting up at the Falling Star after dinner on Monday night anyway, I supposed she and Felix would regale me with all the details then.

Next morning I woke even earlier than usual and decided to walk up to the Spar to get a newspaper and stretch my legs, before attempting to prise Jake out of bed in time for college, though actually he wasn’t quite so bad now he picked Kat up on the way.

It was unlikely that there would be many people around at that hour, so I didn’t bother with makeup and just put a jacket on over my working outfit of jeans and a T-shirt, with a blue and white spotty cardigan for warmth, all lightly smeared and fragranced with chocolate – glamour personified. I was closing the door before I remembered I hadn’t even brushed my hair, but I didn’t bother going back.

The air was cold and damp and the sky was paling into
a reluctant and jaundiced dawn. There was no one about in Angel Lane, though I could hear the steady pestle-and-mortar sound of Mrs Snowball donkey-stoning the flags in front of the Falling Star.

I looked back at her over my shoulder as I turned the corner into the High Street and she grinned and waved a pink, rubber-gloved hand at me. I returned the wave while walking backwards, thinking that it would be a miracle if
I
had that much energy when I was the wrong side of ninety, not to mention the flexibility to be able to get down onto a kneeling mat
and
back up again. She must be one of the livelier members of Grumps’ coven…

Mrs Snowball’s smile suddenly vanished and she pointed behind me, gesticulating wildly. I whipped round, afraid I was about to collide with a lamp-post, but I wasn’t – the threat was much, much worse. For there, almost upon me, was a tall, dark figure from my past, the open wings of his long black leather coat flying back with each stride, so that he seemed to swoop down on me like a huge bird of prey.

By his side trotted a small, jaunty white dog, so incongruous that it made me desperately hope that this was all just a really bad dream – until I realised that if it was, then the frantic thumping of my heart would have woken me up by now. There was a loud rushing noise in my ears that sounded like my guardian angel, either arriving or departing – and I sincerely hoped it was the former, because I needed her.

He came to a jarring halt way too close for comfort and stared incredulously down at me as though I were the ghost of some half-remembered and not entirely delightful past.

‘Chloe?’

For a second or two I was caught and drowning in those
startled, turquoise eyes, in which swirled a hard-to-decipher mixture of emotions among which, bewilderingly, anger seemed to dominate. Then the light in them died and he took a step backwards, breaking the spell.

‘It
is
you,’ he said coolly. ‘I thought I’d conjured you up from thin air.’

Released, both my wits and the power of speech returned to me with a rush and I didn’t need the white clerical collar around his throat, or even the silver crosses that dangled from the rings in his ears, glinting among the long, black curls, to tell me what he was doing here, however unlikely it seemed.

‘Yes, it’s me – but I’m not the Chloe Lyon
you
once knew, Raffy Sinclair!’ I said and then added, with a powerful uprush of bitterness and loathing, ‘And of all the parishes in all the country, why did you have to pick
this
one?’

‘I didn’t – it was chosen for me,’ he said, and those oh-so-familiar winged black eyebrows twitched together in a puzzled frown. By now he was probably wondering why I hadn’t thrown myself at him with cries of joy, as I’m sure any of his other ex-girlfriends would have done. ‘I had no idea you would be here, but I can’t see why
you
are upset about it when I—’

But I didn’t even wait for him to finish his sentence, instead turning to flee back round the corner into the chocolate-scented sanctuary of my cottage, where I leaned against the door, panting, as though he might attempt to burst in at any moment.

Jake, looking mildly surprised, was standing in the doorway between the sitting room and my workshop, a half-eaten piece of toast in one hand. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing – I just ran into the new vicar, that’s all!’ I said
slightly hysterically, my voice wobbling. ‘It was a bit of a surprise.’ And
that
was the understatement of the year.

‘Why, is it someone famous after all?’ He went to peer out of the shop window. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d have gone all weak-kneed and groupie over—’ He abruptly broke off, then exclaimed, like an awed twelve-year old, ‘Oh,
wow
, is that him in the long black coat?’

‘He’s still there?’

‘Well, he was standing looking at the house, but now he’s walking past. He looks familiar.’

‘It’s Raffy Sinclair from Mortal Ruin – the band that did the “Darker Past Midnight” song you had on your phone.’

‘Raffy Sinclair?
He’s
the new vicar? Cool!’

‘No, it
isn’t
cool and he’s the last man in the world I would have expected to get ordained, let alone turn up here,’ I snapped, and he gave me a puzzled look.

‘I suppose it
is
weird. I mean, he and his band were pretty wild, in their time, weren’t they? But I don’t suppose it’s going to affect us in any way, so what are you getting your knickers in a twist about?’

‘I am
not
getting my knickers in a twist!’ I yelled, then managing with a huge effort to pull myself together, added more calmly, ‘But of course, you’re right, it won’t affect us.’

‘I’d like to know where he got that coat from,’ Jake said enviously, then inelegantly stuffed the rest of the slice of toast into his mouth at once. He looked like a Goth hamster.

Now I was starting to recover my equilibrium and return to surrogate-mother mode, I was amazed that he’d got up without being told a second time and also made himself something other than his usual breakfast. But then, I suppose a constant diet of Pop-Tarts palls after a while, as even Raffy Sinclair seemed to have found out.

‘I’ve got to go. Kat wants to be in college early this morning,’ Jake said, picking up his bag and coat. That explained everything.

‘Drive carefully, won’t you?’ I said, fussing as usual as I stood on the doorstep watching him open the Saab door, which he’d left parked by the kerb the previous night.

‘Get a life, Mum!’ he called out in his usual cheeky way and then roared off as though he’d made a pit stop in a Ferrari.

I was just thinking that fussing over Jake was stupid, since it had completely the opposite effect to the one intended, when a movement in the shadows of the gateway almost opposite caught my eye: Raffy was standing there, the little dog wrapped inside his coat, but now he turned and walked off without a backward glance.

If he’d been waiting to see if I would come out again, so he could speak to me, then he’d thought better of it.

Just as well: we might have had a lot to say to each other once upon a time, but now it was all
way
too late.