The Chocolate Collection. Trisha Ashley

a very bad pony and why didn’t we go back to my place so I could school him. I was a bit gobsmacked.’

      ‘I take it you didn’t oblige? How did you get away?’

      ‘I caught Felix’s eye and mouthed, “Help!”’

      ‘The gallant knight to the rescue – good old Felix!’

      ‘Not immediately: he got up and slipped out of the back door and I thought for a minute he’d abandoned me, though of course I really knew he wouldn’t. I panicked a bit and I was just stalling Cruise Missile by telling him my mother was at home mucking out, when Felix came in again through the front door, marched right up and said, “There you are, Poppy! The children are crying for you – please come home with me, darling. I’m so sorry we argued!”’

      ‘I think he’s been reading Victorian melodramas again,’ I said. ‘So then…?’

      ‘I got up and smiled at Cruise Missile and said I was sorry, it had all been a mistake, and then we left and went back to Felix’s shop. It was horrible at the time, but after a bit it all seemed sort of funny and it was a pity to waste a night off, so we went to see a film in Southport. We did try phoning to see if you wanted to come with us, but there was no reply.’

      ‘Yes, the phone rang,’ I remembered, ‘but I was at a tricky bit with a big angel for a personalised card reading, so I couldn’t answer, and then I forgot about it. I’ve swung into major production. The whole place smells like a chocolate factory.’

      ‘It always does,’ Poppy said simply. ‘I like it.’

      It was no surprise that Felix phoned to give me his version not ten minutes after Poppy left, and it was similar, except that he insisted Poppy’s would-be date was sinister and creepy.

      ‘In all fairness, I think Poppy unintentionally sent out all the wrong signals. He sounded to me more sad and insignificant than anything,’ I said.

      ‘Dangerously weird,’ he insisted. ‘I can’t imagine how, growing up with a mother like Janey, she manages to stay so…’ He paused, racking his brains to describe the puzzle that was Poppy, the Maria von Trapp (bar the singing) of Sticklepond.

      ‘Sweet and innocent?’ I suggested. ‘That’s just what I thought.’

      ‘I’d say trusting and credulous. I’ve told her to stop answering that kind of advert.’

      ‘Did she agree?’

      ‘No, she said just because there was one rotten apple, it didn’t mean the whole barrel had gone squishy. You’ll have to make her see sense.’

      ‘But she gets lonely, Felix, and I can’t always go out with her, I’m too busy with the business and trying to keep track of what Jake is up to.’

      ‘Jake’s legally an adult now, you don’t have to do that.’

      ‘He might be legally adult, but he’s still my little brother and part-boy, part-man. I want to make sure he stays on the right track until he goes to university. Then I’ll have done my best and it’ll be out of my hands.’

      ‘Yes, and then you will be free to get what you really want out of life.’

      ‘I seem to already have most of it, though I’m so looking forward to a bit of freedom too – being alone and doing my own thing,’ I said brightly. ‘I expect I’ll be spending all my spare time in that lovely little walled garden after I’ve moved. I can hardly wait.’

      ‘Hmm,’ he said, sounding discouraged, which was my intention.

      I tried a bit more manoeuvring: ‘At the moment things are so frantic, getting ready for a move at such short notice, that I wouldn’t have time to keep an eye on what Poppy’s up to anyway, even if I wanted to.’

      ‘Someone needs to, because what she’s doing really could be dangerous.’ He sighed long-sufferingly. ‘I suppose I will have to.’

      I made encouraging noises, even though I’m not entirely sure that Poppy will appreciate continually being shadowed by Felix on dates with potential suitors. But if they are all as dreadful as the first one, which seems quite likely, she may start to see what’s under her nose in a new light. They both might.

      I reminded him, as I already had with Poppy, that I was not telling Jake anything at all about what I’d discovered in the attic. Mum’s behaviour had damaged him enough, he didn’t need to know that she only had him in order to try to extort money. I wished I didn’t know that that’s why she’d had me, but I’d cope – I always had.

      Apart from packing his own belongings up, Jake has been pretty useless the last few days, glooming about like a slightly Goth Lord Byron (but without the limp).

      When I asked him at breakfast one morning whether he was upset about the move, he said tersely: ‘No. It’s a girl.’

      I looked at him in surprise. ‘I didn’t know you had a girlfriend at the moment, Jake. You kept that quiet.’

      ‘I haven’t got one, that’s the trouble.’

      ‘You mean, you fancy someone, but she won’t go out with you?’

      He sighed heavily. ‘She doesn’t even know I exist! She’s new – her parents just moved to the area – and she seems only to want to work all the time. If she isn’t in class, she’s in the library.’

      I wished Jake would be a bit more like that! ‘She sounds nice,’ I said kindly. ‘What terrible timing having to move college just before your exams, though. That’s probably why she’s concentrating on her studies.’

      ‘She’s dead set on going to Oxford too,’ he said, even more gloomily.

      ‘Are you doing the same subjects?’

      ‘Yes, that’s why I see her all the time. Only she doesn’t seem to see me.’

      I didn’t really know how she could miss him – tall, brown-eyed, handsome, and all in black from dyed hair to big boots – but I saw an opportunity for some sneaky advice. Nagging him to revise always had the opposite effect, but revising to impress a girl could have a valuable knock-on effect…

      ‘You’ve got things in common then, Jake, and that’s a really good start. If I were you, I’d hang out in the library at the same time she does – ask her if you can check something in one of the books she’s using, that kind of thing. Show her you’re serious about your studies too.’

      He gave me a suspicious look, but reluctantly conceded I might have something.

      I cleaned and mended the pretty shell mirror, then covered it in bubble wrap and put it in the ottoman in the attic, together with a few more breakable things, like our box of Christmas decorations and a particularly pretty, but very fragile, spun-glass angel ornament.

      While I was up there I noticed that Jake must have already transferred some of his more dubious treasures to the cabin trunk, because it now had a large padlock affixed to the hasp and, when I tried lifting the end, it weighed a ton. I only hoped the removal men could still get it down the narrow and steep attic stairs.

      Jake did seem a little more cheerful since we’d had the conversation about the girl he liked at college, so perhaps my advice about how to get to know her was paying off? I hoped it paid off in better exam grades, too.

      Chas phoned me up that evening, which took me by surprise, even though he does do that from time to time. And I suppose I must have sounded a bit odd, because he asked me if everything was all right.

      I wasn’t ready to discuss what was on my mind yet, so I just told him I was tired, and all about the imminent house move.

      He was kind and interested as usual, so that I found myself wishing again that he would turn out to be my father after all, though it would be even better to have one who didn’t make furtive phone calls from his mobile only