Chocolate Wishes. Trisha Ashley

knew she wasn’t going to get any money out of it, I suppose there was no point in lying about who the father was,’ Poppy agreed. ‘So at least you don’t have to worry about Jake’s paternity, only your own.’

      ‘Mags and Janey both seem to have been in on Lou’s original scam and it’s clear that Mags at least thought it was all highly amusing,’ Felix said, looking up from reading one of the brief notes in his mother’s scrawled handwriting. ‘Especially about Chas, since he’d never shown any sign of being anything other than a happily married man until he let Lou seduce him.’

      ‘Well, he could have said no,’ Poppy said fair-mindedly. ‘And so could the other man.’

      ‘They could have, but they didn’t,’ Felix said. ‘Lou knew what she was doing and she put it about a bit. In fact, all three of our mothers seem to have, though at least yours settled down after a few wild years and got married, Poppy.’

      ‘That was just a timely combination of desperately missing horses and falling for Dad. Once he’d gone, she started trying to work her way through the male members of the Middlemoss Drag Hunt.’

      ‘Quite literally,’ I said and Poppy giggled.

      ‘I suppose so! Still, at least she hasn’t brought any of them home since that time I caught her in a loose box with one of the whippers-in when I was thirteen. And on the whole, she’s not really been bad as a mum.’

      ‘She certainly turned out the best of the bunch from that point of view,’ Felix agreed, ‘though that isn’t saying much. Chloe’s is a bolter with a blackmailing habit, while my unrespected parent dumped me on my grandparents the minute I was born and is still playing the field in her fifties, while nominally living with a smarmy git half her age.’

      ‘At least she’s around, Felix,’ I pointed out, because Mags got lucky with a legacy from an elderly lover and opened the Hot Rocks nightclub in Southport a few years ago. The said smarmy git is the manager. ‘If she hadn’t had a business to run, she might have decided to vanish with Mum.’

      I’d never believed Mags’ version of events about the night Mum disappeared. Lou and Mags had always been thick as thieves, whereas Janey had tended to go off and do her own thing after the Wilde’s Women years were over, though they all remained friends and sometimes hung out together at Hot Rocks.

      ‘God knows what Lou is up to all this time, or where she is, though I suspect Mags could give me a hint if she wanted to, Felix,’ I said.

      When she’d switched from taking all those holidays to Jamaica on her own and started visiting Goa instead, I’d wondered if that was a clue to Mum having skipped the Caribbean.

      He looked uncomfortable. ‘I have asked her and she swears she has no idea.’

      ‘Yes, that’s what she told me, but I don’t believe her.’

      ‘And I asked Mum if Mags had told her anything and she said she hadn’t,’ Poppy said, ‘though that means nothing when they’ve always lied and covered up for each other.’

      She indicated the stuff on the table, which Felix was now neatly repacking into the box. ‘What are you going to do about this, if anything?’

      ‘I don’t know, I’ll have to think about it. It’s been a shock finding out my father might not be Chas. But there’s no point in telling any of it to Jake, because it would only upset him and anyway, it looks like she was telling the truth about who his father was, at least. She even gave him a holiday snap of them both together, though it isn’t terribly clear.’

      ‘He must have been nice, because Jake is,’ Poppy said loyally. She’d always adored Jake, who had never played tricks on her (apart from mild ones, like whoopee cushions and plastic flies in her coffee) and called her Auntie Pops.

      ‘I’m certainly not going to do anything hasty. Even if I wanted to, I have too much on at the moment, trying to keep my business running while sorting and packing and getting ready for the move. I’m dismantling my greenhouse tomorrow.’

      ‘I could come and help,’ offered Felix.

      ‘No, that’s OK, Felix,’ I said quickly, since he is pretty useless as a handyman, besides being the kiss of death to anything breakable, being all elbows and feet. ‘It won’t take me long. It was dead easy to put up and I still have the instructions.’

      ‘Really, Chloe, we make a good team,’ he insisted. ‘We’d get it done twice as fast.’

      ‘Really, Felix, we don’t – especially where panes of glass are concerned.’

      He looked slightly hurt, so I added, ‘But I’ll definitely need your help on moving day.’

      I felt in need of another drink, so went to the bar to get a round in.

      When I got back, Poppy suddenly announced, ‘I’ve got a date for tomorrow night!’

      ‘Where from? I thought you’d given up on internet dating sites and decided the private marriage bureaus were too expensive.’

      ‘Who with?’ Felix demanded, in bossy big-brother mode.

      ‘Just a man I met through The Times lonely hearts ads,’ she said casually. ‘We’ve talked for hours on the phone and now we’re meeting up.’

      ‘Where?’ I asked, distracted from my own problems. ‘I hope you’re being sensible and it’s somewhere very public, with other people about?’

      ‘Yes, you have no idea what kind of man he really is,’ agreed Felix. ‘People can say anything.’

      ‘I do know. I told you, we’ve talked for hours and we have so much in common. And it’s OK, because we’re meeting in Sticklepond, at the Green Man.’

      ‘Do you know what he looks like?’ I asked.

      ‘Yes, he’s medium height and a bit like Tom Cruise.’

      ‘If he looked like Tom Cruise he wouldn’t need to meet women through the lonely hearts ads,’ Felix said suspiciously.

      ‘He’s probably exaggerating a bit, but I expect he’s very nice really,’ I said quickly, seeing Poppy’s face fall. ‘Did you tell him what you look like?’

      ‘I said I was fair and blue-eyed and an outdoors type and he thought that sounded perfect, because he was very energetic and loved outdoor pursuits.’

      ‘That does it,’ Felix announced. ‘I’m coming too!’

      ‘No, you’re not. Three’s a crowd and I don’t need a chaperone!’

      ‘I didn’t mean exactly with you, Poppy, just in the pub to see how it goes. But don’t go off anywhere with him. I’ll have my car, but I might lose you.’

      ‘Oh, honestly, Felix!’ she said, but actually I was glad to see him focusing on Poppy instead of me. I can take care of myself, but Poppy is distinctly soft-centred.

      Then suddenly, quite out of nowhere, I had a blinding flash of illumination – Felix had all the characteristics Poppy had recently listed to me as being what she wanted in a man! He was single, kind, honest, not a sex maniac or a weird obsessive, and attractive.

      And if Felix really yearns to settle down to a comfortable family life before it’s too late, then he’s barking up the wrong tree as far as I am concerned, but he and Poppy would be perfect for each other. Except that she only sees him in a brotherly light, of course, and Felix thinks of Poppy as a mate, only the wrong kind.

      We’ve all three of us been unlucky in love and, by some strange coincidence, we had our worst moments at more or less the same time, though in different ways. While I was having my heart torn to shreds by Raffy at university, Poppy was away getting her riding instructor’s certificates and falling heavily (in an unrequited, Villette kind of way) for one of the married staff and Felix’s marriage was thrashing about in its death