The Chocolate Collection. Trisha Ashley

in his handkerchief to remind him?’ Poppy suggested. ‘He should certainly have retired years ago, but I expect it slipped the bishop’s mind.’

      ‘On purpose, because it was probably more convenient to forget about him and Sticklepond altogether, while he could,’ Felix agreed. ‘The new vicar must be stinking rich, because there’s a positive army of workmen all over the vicarage.’

      ‘And he must be kind,’ Poppy said, ‘because he’s having the Minchins’ flat repaired and redecorated first.’

      ‘But you still have no idea who he is?’ I asked her, because the mystery was finally starting to pique my curiosity.

      ‘No, the bishop hasn’t replied to any of Hebe’s letters and when she rang his secretary, she said he’d gone on holiday.’

      ‘I think he’s just avoiding her,’ Felix said, with his attractively lopsided grin. ‘There must be something odd about the new vicar that the bishop doesn’t want her to find out, until it’s too late.’

      ‘Well, whatever it is, I expect she’ll beat him into shape, just like she has with Mr Merryman, don’t you, Felix?’ Poppy asked.

      ‘Probably, and I feel sorry for the poor man already. Since she cornered him after his first service to make her views clear about the happy-clappy guitar-playing stuff, she’s got poor Merryman so cowed that she only has to say, “That’s the way we have always done things in Sticklepond,” and he shuts up, even if he’s proposing something totally innocuous, like taking the Sunday school children on a nature ramble round the churchyard, instead of colouring in pictures from the Bible in the vestry.’

      ‘But it’s Effie who runs the Sunday school, and she thought it was way too chilly for that kind of thing,’ Poppy pointed out fair-mindedly. ‘And if the new vicar is someone famous, like Cliff Richard, Miss Winter won’t really be able to browbeat him, will she? I mean, I don’t suppose he’s used to being told what to do.’

      ‘Poppy,’ I said patiently, ‘it isn’t going to be Cliff Richard, so don’t get your hopes up! Believe me, it’ll be some sixties one-hit-wonder pop star that no one remembers.’

      Jake, having for once in his life followed my advice, had become friendly with the girl he liked at college to the point where he now picked her up in Grumps’ car every day and brought her home again.

      She lived on the other side of Sticklepond in a converted barn, just next to the start of the track to Badger’s Bolt. I thought this might not turn out to be the most salubrious of addresses, if Mr Drake was who we suspected he was.

      Her parents phoned me up before they would let Jake drive her anywhere, and I had to assure them that not only was he a very careful driver (which he is, really, it’s just me fussing), but also that Grumps’ ancient Saab was incapable of breaking any speed limits, except downhill with the wind behind it.

      Presumably at that point they had not yet set eyes on Goth Boy, or heard all the gossip about Jake’s grandfather and the museum, because they gave their permission.

      Anyway, Jake now seemed much happier, so far as I could tell through all that black hair, though I wished his taste in music would lighten up a bit. And he’d brought the girl back on the way home twice, so I could have the honour of making her real hot chocolate. Her name is Katherine, though she told me she is always called Kat, and seemed like a nice girl, so far as I could tell – she chatted away, though unfortunately very quietly and without moving her lips, so I had no idea what she was saying. I just smiled and nodded a lot.

      We were by then all unpacked and more or less settled, and Chocolate Wishes was fully functioning again, which was more than could be said for the little village post office when I tried to send off my first lot of orders. I expect they will get used to it, though, and surely they want lots of business?

      My pots of geraniums lined every deep windowsill, their fragrant leaves scenting the air and making the cottage feel like home, and now I could at last make a start on the garden. Felix helpfully blasted the slime off the herringbone brick paths with his power hose, revealing the lovely colours, and then insisted on helping me put up the little greenhouse, though I only really let him pass me the tools and prop things. When I could afford a proper, bigger greenhouse, I decided, I would get it delivered and erected without telling him first!

      I started to clear out any obvious weeds and pruned everything that would take it, but for the rest I’d have to wait and see what came up in spring. One of the half-moon-shaped beds seemed pretty empty, apart from a climbing rose and a quince up the back wall, so I’ll make it a herb garden, dividing it up like the spokes of a wheel and using as edging some of the small stack of old bricks I found under a hummock of ivy in the corner.

      Another bed was earmarked for my baby Brown Turkey fig tree and I hoped the plum tree in the middle – if it was a plum – would burst into leaf and fruit eventually. It was all very exciting – to me, at any rate! And all the exercise was good for me too, because I had to go and soak the aches away in the bath afterwards, lying like a slightly strange Ophelia among a scattering of dried attar of roses-scented geranium leaves.

      The nicest thing about living in Sticklepond was that Poppy could drop in much more often, after meetings or whenever she had to call into the village for anything, and Felix sometimes locked up his shop and walked round for a cup of coffee or chocolate and a chat in the afternoon.

      By now I’d started popping into Marked Pages on the way back from the post office every morning. Felix had installed a comfortable leather sofa and coffee machine in the front room – I even found Grumps in there one day. The lure of a bookshop practically on his doorstep must simply have been too much for him.

      Then there was the Falling Star – it was much easier to meet my friends there now than when I had to drive all the way from Merchester, and back again afterwards.

      My life was not exactly a social whirl all of a sudden, but it was very companionable and much more fun.

      Poppy had been a bit inclined to be gloomy about birthdays ever since she turned thirty and saw the signpost pointing in the direction of forty, so I made her a special iced fruitcake decorated with a plastic horse the same shade of conker brown as Honeybun, her beloved steed, and took it up to Stirrups as soon as I’d sorted out the Wishes orders that morning.

      I’d got her to shuffle the Angel cards last time she visited, so I could do her one of my special, big chocolate Fortune Angels with a personalised reading inside it, which I gave her as my present.

      That and the cake cheered her up no end, especially since the fortune was an extremely encouraging one, all about new persons coming into her life and doors opening, though that’s never a good portent when it comes up for me.

      But at least my bad news was broken gently through the Angel cards (unless I succumbed and got Zillah to read the Tarot or leaves), and while they might still infer that I was doomed, they also assured me that they meant doomed in a good way and I wasn’t to worry about a thing.

      Janey had given Poppy a lipstick in the same vibrant red that she used herself, screwed up in a striped paper bag that smelled of Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls, so I think she may have forgotten it was Poppy’s birthday until our cards had arrived that morning, and a spare lipstick was all she had by her. Poppy hardly ever bothers with makeup at all, but had put some on to show willing, though it was definitely wearing her and not the other way around.

      ‘Give the lipstick a miss this evening,’ I said, because we were to meet up with Felix at the Falling Star for more celebrations, ‘unless you wear a lot more makeup with it.’

      ‘I don’t really think it’s me, do you? Anyway, makeup is wasted on the horses – they don’t care what I look like!’

      ‘Well, we do,’ I said, because I was always trying to persuade her to have her light-coloured eyelashes dyed and at least wear a bit of tinted moisturiser, since even if she did spend most of the day with her four-legged friends, there was no reason why she shouldn’t look pretty while doing it.