The Magic of Christmas. Trisha Ashley

gave me a strange look, but assured me that Tom had broken his neck in a very final manner. Then she offered me yet another cup of tea, which I didn’t want, and took me home again, sitting beside me in the back seat while the adolescent did the driving. He feasted on his fingernails at every red light and I don’t know why, but it suddenly reminded me of the stewed apple with little sharp crescents of core snippings that they used to give us at school for pudding.

      The policewoman whiled away the journey by telling me that they thought the car (my car, which was now a write-off) had been at the bottom of the quarry for a few hours before it was found, and he must have died instantly, but I expect they say that every time. There would have to be a post-mortem examination, and probably an inquest. I think she said there would be an inquest. I wasn’t taking it all in, because of course it wasn’t real.

      When we got to Perseverance Cottage, she asked if there was someone who could stay with me.

      ‘Oh, yes – I’ll phone the family right now,’ I assured her, suddenly desperate to get rid of her. ‘Thank you for … for – well, thank you, Officer. I’ll be fine.’

      She looked a bit dubious, but drove off leaving me to it, and I thankfully closed the front door and leaned against it: that seemed solid enough. So did the cold quarry tiles beneath my feet when I kicked my sandals off …

      It began slowly to dawn on me that this really was happening and Tom was actually dead! In which case, I could only be glad that Jasper was at his dig, since I’m sure he would have insisted on coming with me to identify Tom, though actually his face had looked peaceful enough, if vaguely surprised by the turn of events. I felt a sudden pang of guilt, remembering how glad I had been that it was Tom who had died and not Jasper.

      But now I’d have to break the news to him about his father … and to Unks and Mimi and Tom’s mother out in Argentina …

      Stiffening my trembling legs I tottered into the sitting room and dialled the Hall, getting Uncle Roly.

      I don’t think I was the mistress of either tact or coherence by this stage, but he took the news well, if quietly, and offered to phone Tom’s mother and stepfather in Argentina himself, which was a huge relief. Then he said he would also try and contact Nick, still off touring the eateries of the rural North-West.

      ‘And Jasper?’ he asked. ‘I take it he is at the dig, and doesn’t know?’

      ‘Yes, and I think I’ll just wait for him to come home before I tell him,’ I decided, for why rush to give him the bad news? ‘Anyway, Tom was driving my car – his van broke down – so I haven’t got any transport.’

      When I phoned Annie she was out and the message I left was probably unintelligible.

      Roly thoughtfully called in later in the Daimler to say Joe Gumball was driving him over to the dig to collect Jasper and he could break the news to him on the way home, if I wanted.

      ‘Oh, Unks, you are kind!’ I said, gratefully. ‘But it must be just as hard for you. You don’t have to do it.’

      ‘My dear, having lived through the war, I’m inured to breaking bad news.’

      I offered him some of the damson gin I’d been drinking to try to dispel that feeling of being underwater with my eardrums straining, but which had just seemed to make everything more unbelievably bizarre, and said anxiously, ‘I can’t believe Tom isn’t going to walk back in through that door at any moment, the way he always turned up after he’d been missing for a few days.’

      He patted my hand. ‘There, there, my dear. Leave everything to me. I’ll be back with Jasper in no time.’

      Mimi phoned me up just after he’d left, but halfway through offering me her condolences in a graciously formal manner, she completely lost the thread and said she was too busy to talk to me just now. Then she put the phone down.

      But at least her call had jarred me into remembering to feed the poultry. It was a bit late, but when I called, ‘Myrtle, Myrtle, Myrtle – Honey, Honey, Honey!’ they all came running.

      Round the side of the big greenhouse I came unexpectedly nose to bare (except for the camouflage paint) chest of Caz Naylor, who indicated with a nod of his head and a raised eyebrow that he would like to know what was happening.

      ‘Tom’s driven off the quarry road,’ I said. ‘In my car.’

      ‘Dead?’

      ‘So they say.’

      ‘Car?’

      ‘That’s a write-off, too.’

      He grunted non-committally, then handed me a small blue plastic basket containing one slightly decayed mushroom. ‘Poison,’ he said, prodding it with a slightly grimy finger.

      ‘I know,’ I began, recognising it, but he turned and flitted off back through the shadows until he’d completely vanished into the woods.

      That was the longest conversation I’d had with him for ages … and what was the significance of the poisonous fungi in a punnet that looked suspiciously like the one Polly Darke had brought me full of field mushrooms … was that only yesterday? Perhaps she’d inadvertently picked a poisonous one? After my previous experience of Polly’s way with foodstuffs, I should have been more cautious in accepting them anyway!

      Or perhaps Caz had simply taken to giving brief nature lessons in his spare time.

      Jasper was very quiet and pale when he came in, and though we shared a long hug, said he’d like to be alone for a bit and vanished up to his room. I thought it best to leave him to talk in his own time.

      He did reappear when Annie arrived and seemed pretty composed by then, though he being the quiet stoical type it’s hard to tell, even for me.

      I thought I was quite composed too, but as soon as Annie walked through the door I burst into tears, as though her arrival was some kind of absolute proof that it really wasn’t all a ghastly nightmare. I left a full set of grubby fingerprints up the back of her lavender Liberty cotton shirt.

      She hugged Jasper too, something which he would normally go out of his way to avoid, even though he is fond of her. Then we all just sat around in a fuzzy cloud of disbelief and damson gin.

      It was the sheer unreality: Tom had gone missing so many times, it was hard to believe he wouldn’t just walk through that door at any minute with the TV remote control in his hand (he secreted it away somewhere in his workshop when away), and sit watching endless films on Sky, which he’d had installed soon after he got the giant TV.

      He’d always been supremely selfish. Even the Tom I fell in love with, charming though he’d been, really only thought about himself for at least ninety-five per cent of the time, which is why he always did exactly what he wanted and apologised afterwards.

      ‘Yes, I know,’ Annie agreed when I shared this gem with her, together with the rest of the bottle of gin, after Jasper had gone up to bed (or at least, back up to the Batcave). ‘But when he was around he seemed to cast a spell of charm, so people didn’t realise it until later. Or if they did, they didn’t mind, because they thought he wasn’t doing it intentionally to hurt anyone, it was just how he was.’

      The gin might not have been such a good idea after all, for my past life seemed to take on a darkly ominous pattern. ‘Why?’ I demanded. ‘What have I done to deserve this? Why do I have to lose everyone? I know I didn’t love Tom any more, but I didn’t want any harm to come to him either!’

      ‘We all have to die,’ Annie pointed out soothingly, passing me the plate of ginger parkin she’d found in the fridge while looking for something to blot up the alcohol. I must have sliced and buttered it earlier, on automatic pilot.

      ‘Yes, but why don’t my loved ones die naturally of old age? Look at my parents! OK, Daddy was a diplomat, but of all the British Consulates in all the world, why did they have to be sent to that one? And having got there, why did they have to immediately sit in the