Chocolate Wishes. Trisha Ashley

was trying to decipher the rest, which was written in some form of ancient Spanish, having specialised in dead and buried languages at Oxford. One of the letters I’d just typed up was to the archivist in Spain who had found the original document among some collection of papers he was cataloguing, though like Grumps his principal interest was in ley lines.

      Since I’d just created a whole new batch of Wishes I had enough to keep me going for a while, so I packed and labelled that day’s orders ready to post later with Grumps’ mail.

      All the time I was working I was thinking about the Old Smithy and the little cottage that I would have to myself once Jake had gone off to college, and especially what I could grow in the walled garden. Certainly a greater variety of herbs and, if there was room for a bigger greenhouse for over-wintering them, I’d have lots more varieties of scented geraniums. Pelargoniums were my newest passion. There were so many kinds I hadn’t got yet…even one that was supposed to smell like chocolate!

      And I would have tubs of hyacinths and those small, frilly Tête-à-tête daffodils in early spring, lavender and roses, nasturtiums, snapdragons and hollyhocks…My mind ran riot with horticultural possibilities.

      But I still couldn’t imagine Grumps running a museum, even a witchcraft one! He wasn’t in any way gregarious, besides being over eighty and very set in his habits, so I expected Zillah would end up collecting the entrance money and issuing tickets. But since she used to operate the Tarot-reading booth on a Lancashire seaside pier with Granny, I imagined she’d take to it like a duck to water, especially since, unlike Grumps, she was hugely inquisitive about people.

      Maybe she’d do Tarot readings on the side, and make herself a little nest egg?

      Jake came home briefly to eat and change, before going out to an eighteenth birthday party. Zillah had given me some goulash, having made gallons, so that’s what we had, together with crusty bread. I didn’t mention Tabitha’s tail to Jake, because I hoped perhaps it hadn’t quite gone into the stew pot. The goulash tasted OK, anyway.

      We followed it up with blackberry crumble, out of the freezer, with ice cream and then, while Jake filled any remaining interior spaces with about half a pound of crumbly Lancashire cheese (he is a bottomless pit as far as food is concerned), I broke the news of our imminent move to Sticklepond.

      He stopped shovelling food in and stared at me through a lot of thick, blue-black hair. When it isn’t dyed, it’s the same dark brown as mine and our colouring is quite similar, apart from his brown eyes. Mine are the typical Lyon grey.

      Jake’s father was an Italian waiter Mum met on holiday, while mine was Chas Wilde, the former manager of the Pan’s People-type dance troupe she performed in during the late sixties and early seventies, along with her friends Mags (Felix’s mother) and Janey (Poppy’s). Mum told me herself she only had me as an insurance policy after Wilde’s Women disbanded, since Chas was married and so paid up without a murmur to keep her 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