The Chocolate Collection. Trisha Ashley

up here more than an hour earlier than our usual time?’ I demanded when David had gone. He’d seemed disgruntled, as though I had arranged for my friends to arrive, even though it must have been plain that I was as surprised as he was.

      ‘Felix phoned me up and suggested it: we were a bit worried you might fall for him all over again,’ Poppy confessed, ‘so we thought we would come and see.’

      ‘Yes, and it looks as though we were right. He was holding your hand when we came in,’ Felix said pointedly.

      ‘He wasn’t, it was only a casual gesture. He’d just asked me to help him look for a country house, because he wants a woman’s viewpoint.’

      ‘You’re not really going to take up with him again, are you?’ Poppy asked anxiously. ‘Only we never thought he was right for you the first time round.’

      ‘No, and actually I was quite glad when you came in, because although it was lovely to see him again, we seemed to have even less in common than we had before, and I was getting bored. I expect he has some other candidate in mind for the country house and really does just want a bit of feminine viewpoint when he’s looking round them.’

      ‘I think you’re naïve, and it’s a ploy to get back together with you again,’ Felix insisted.

      ‘You’re daft. I’m sure neither of us is interested in starting the romance up again.’

      ‘Is that a coffee cup?’ asked Poppy, tactfully changing the subject. ‘Since when did the Star start serving hot drinks?’

      ‘Just today. They’ve got a machine behind the counter, but Mrs Snowball is the only one who knows how to use it so far. I’m not sure she’s entirely got the hang of it, though, because although mine was fine, David said his was horrible.’

      When I got back home, Jake was in the garden practising with the firesticks that Grumps had paid for. The effect in the darkness was very pretty and he seemed quite expert, so I hoped he wouldn’t set himself, or anything else, alight.

      David rang me while I was watching (we had exchanged mobile numbers) to say that he was sorry he’d had to rush off earlier, but he was feeling quite peculiar, and was positive it was the coffee he’d had at the pub.

      ‘I’m sure it can’t have been because I feel fine, and Poppy and Felix had some later too. What sort of peculiar?’ I asked curiously, but he wouldn’t say.

      I’d noticed that Mrs Snowball didn’t sprinkle anything onto our coffees, so I suspected that whatever ingredient she’d added to David’s had been at Grumps’ instigation. But I’m sure it can’t have been harmful, just something discouraging.

       Chapter Fifteen: Welcome Gifts

      Poppy turned up the following Thursday just as I was pouring hot cream onto grated chocolate to make truffles – one part cream to two parts grated chocolate.

      She was still wearing jodhpurs and a quilted gilet, but must have been to a Parish Council meeting, since she had changed her usual T-shirt for a fairly disastrous spotted blouse in mustard with a bow at the neck.

      ‘Oh good,’ I said, ‘I need an extra pair of hands. I’m dividing this mixture in half and I need you to keep stirring the other bowl until I tell you to stop.’

      She took the spoon and obediently started to stir. ‘This smells lovely! What are you making?’

      ‘Truffles. I thought I might try combining two of my favourite flavours, vanilla and cinnamon, and see what happened. Yours will just have natural vanilla flavouring and I’ll roll them in powdered cinnamon, but I’ll add both ingredients to my batch and dust with powdered chocolate.’

      When they were blended I transferred them to two labelled plastic boxes ready to be put in the fridge to firm up. ‘There we are, I can finish those off later. Now come on, we’ll have a cup of coffee and you can tell me all the latest Parish Council gossip. I can see you’re dying to!’

      She followed me into the kitchen and said, ‘Well, it was Mr Merryman’s last meeting, because he hands over to the new vicar officially on Monday morning. Miss Winter thanked him and we gave him a present – a loving cup in that blue pottery they sell to the tourists up at Winter’s End. But we still don’t know who the new vicar is!’

      ‘What, still?’ I handed her a mug and we went into the sitting room.

      ‘No, apparently he’s been in America on business and he’s only flying back on Sunday and then coming straight down to Sticklepond. But the exciting thing is that he’s invited the whole Parish Council round for drinks that evening! Salford Minchin delivered the invitation to Miss Winter, but the signature was as unreadable as the bishop’s, and he just shoved it through the letterbox and cycled off before she could question him.’

      ‘Didn’t you tell me he communicated in grunts anyway?’

      ‘He does seem pretty monosyllabic, especially with women,’ she agreed. ‘Given his history, I suppose that isn’t surprising. Miss Winter has been calling up the bishop, trying to find out who the vicar is, but his secretary keeps telling her he is unavailable, so now she suspects that he’s appointed someone so disreputable he daren’t tell her the name!’

      ‘He can’t be that bad, or they wouldn’t have ordained him in the first place. And any vicar is better than none, surely?’

      ‘Yes, that’s what I said to the others. Anyway, we’ve decided to take buffet food to the vicarage on Sunday and make it a bit of a welcoming party. Effie Yatton said Maria Minchin’s idea of a canapé was cold cheese on toast cut into triangles, and since the new vicar is a bachelor, he probably wouldn’t have thought of food.’

      ‘Is he? At least you know that much about him.’

      ‘That’s about all we do know – except that he must be well off, of course, to afford all the renovations going on up at the vicarage. Filthy rich.’

      Her denim-blue eyes were bright and her cheeks flushed. She seemed amazingly excited just because the Parish Council were going to throw a welcoming party for a jaded, ageing, ex-pop star and still-nameless vicar…though actually, I was starting to feel a bit left out of things and would have liked to have gone too!

      ‘What are you taking as your contribution?’

      ‘A cake – and I can’t imagine why on earth I offered to make one, when it’s the thing I’m truly hopeless at!’

      ‘You could hardly turn up at a party with a Yorkshire pudding,’ I pointed out, since those are her speciality.

      ‘No, that’s true, though there’s going to be a pretty weird mix of food anyway. Hebe Winter said she was going to get her cook to make a tray of sushi, because she thought that was the sort of thing the vicar would be used to eating. Her great-niece, Sophy Winter’s daughter, spent several months in Japan and she’s shown her how to make them. Otherwise it will be sausage rolls, crisps, nuts and olives – and my disastrous cake.’

      ‘It’s not going to be a disaster. I have a whole, fresh, uncut fruitcake in the tin right at this moment that you can take. You know Jake loves them, so I’m forever baking them, two at a time.’

      ‘Oh, thank you, Chloe!’ she said, her face lighting up. ‘Though isn’t it a bit like cheating?’

      ‘Not any more than Miss Winter telling her cook to make sushi! But if we ice it now, you will have had a hand in it, won’t you?’

      ‘I suppose I will,’ she agreed, brightening.

      So we covered it with marzipan and roll-out fondant, then added a snow-covered church from my biscuit tin of cake-decorating odds and ends. Poppy was all for adding the stagecoach and horses that originally made up the