The Chocolate Collection. Trisha Ashley

was the only shade of natural food colour I had in the cupboard.

      When we’d finished she helped me to clean up the kitchen, over which icing sugar had drifted like snow, then said, ‘I’d like to buy some Chocolate Wishes to take too. Twelve should do it, even including the Minchins.’

      ‘Is that a good idea? Hebe Winter might not be pleased if she finds out where they came from.’

      ‘I don’t see why not. She said she didn’t mind a chocolate shop, it was only the museum she objected to. Besides, I wanted the angel-shaped Wishes and I can’t see why she should object to those. I mean, angels are good things, right? That one we saw looked quite stern, but I wasn’t frightened of her.’

      Poppy used to say that about the maths teacher at school, who petrified her. But I hadn’t thought our angel was scary, she just looked as if her mind was on other, deeper, things.

      ‘The Lucifer-type fallen angel element aren’t so good, Poppy. Don’t you remember when we did Paradise Lost?’

      ‘Oh, I always rather liked Lucifer. He was just a bit too ambitious.’

      I gazed at her, speechless. After a lifetime of being friends, she can sometimes still surprise me.

      ‘But yours are all good angels and the messages inside say only helpful or comforting things, Chloe. So I thought they would be appropriate and different. Fun. I bet the new vicar won’t have seen anything like them before.’

      ‘No, probably not,’ I agreed, and would have given them to her except she insisted on paying. They were a new batch, one I had said the latest version of the chocolate charm over – Mayan specials. I can’t really see where the Mayans and guardian angels meet, but I expect they had something similar, even if they did seem to be a violent lot (the Mayans, not the angels).

      ‘Hebe Winter is hoping the new vicar is a much stronger character than poor Mr Merryman, because Laurence Yatton has been surfing the internet and found out all kinds of unsavoury things about the Mr Mann-Drake who is buying Badger’s Bolt!’

      ‘Well, we already knew that from the stuff Jake printed out for Grumps, didn’t we?’ I pointed out. ‘Did you see the photograph of him wearing a sort of druid robe, all hollow-cheeked and cadaverous? But perhaps he’s just a very peculiar old man with more money than sense, who likes dressing up and holding rather off parties.’

      ‘Perhaps,’ she agreed doubtfully, then looked at the cuckoo clock and got up. ‘Look at the time! I must go – and thanks for the cake, Chloe!’

      ‘I’ll save you a couple of the new truffles to try too,’ I promised.

      When she’d gone, clutching a cake tin, I removed the chilled truffle mixtures from the fridge and rolled teaspoonfuls into little balls between my palms, coating one batch in cocoa powder and the other in the cinnamon. I tasted one of each before putting them back in the fridge and they were equally delicious!

      Unfortunately, Jake thought so too, and I had to forcibly remove the last couple from him later so I could save them for Poppy – though, of course, I could always make some more…

      As a thank you for helping with the cake, Poppy rang early next day and invited me out for a hack, which she does sometimes anyway, when not fully booked up. I originally learned to ride on Poppy’s first pony and I enjoyed it, even if I never got bitten by pony-mania as badly as she did.

      This time it was just the two of us, with Poppy riding her beloved Honeybun and me on an elderly grey called Frosty. It was a brisk, cold, sunny March day, so it certainly blew the cobwebs away, and we were just coming back along the bridle path through part of the Winter’s End estate when we came across Hebe Winter, standing in silent contemplation among a patch of wild garlic.

      She looked as if she’d been there for some time – perhaps a decade or two. And I’m not saying she was having an out-of-body experience, but there were no lights on and nobody was home for several long minutes when Poppy stopped to introduce me. Then life slid into her wide, blank eyes as though someone had pushed a slide into a projector: spooky.

      ‘Miss Winter, this is my best friend, Chloe Lyon. You remember I told you about her? She makes chocolates.’

      Restored to herself, Miss Winter’s searchlight-bright blue gaze rested on me in a way that would probably have totally disconcerted me, had I not had a grandfather like Grumps.

      ‘Gregory Lyon’s granddaughter? We have already met, I think – briefly.’

      ‘Hello, Miss Winter,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Isn’t it a lovely day for March?’

      ‘I expected nothing less,’ she stated, then turned on her heel and strode off, the greenish tweed of her cape blending with the shrubbery. I’d have liked to have known what she had in the cloth-covered basket over her arm, because it was moving.

      Back at the stables, while Poppy was still fussing over Honeybun, her mum, Janey, cornered me in the tack-room.

      Though you wouldn’t think it, she was a lot closer to sixty than fifty, like Mags and my missing mother, Lou, and slim and attractive in a haggard sort of way. She was wearing buff-coloured, skin-tight breeches and a checked shirt unbuttoned to just south of decent. Her hair is golden, rather than sandy like Poppy’s, and although her eyebrows and lashes might once have been pale, she kept them tinted dark brown. I wished Poppy would, because it would take away that permanently startled look.

      And it was Poppy she wanted to talk about, which made me feel a bit uncomfortable because since she’s my best friend I felt I couldn’t really discuss her, even with her mother. So mostly I just listened while Janey chain-smoked in an edgy sort of way, and told me how she wished Poppy could find a decent man.

      ‘She’s the marrying-and-settling-down-with-a-family kind, but she’s never going to find someone if she doesn’t bother more about clothes and makeup, or listen to any of my advice, is she?’

      ‘She’s been going on quite a few dates lately, through the dating column in The Times,’ I said defensively, though two hardly counts as a lot.

      Janey shrugged. ‘If she has, I bet she’s never been out twice with the same man. They don’t ask her again, do they?’

      ‘One of them did, but it turned out he was interested in the wrong sort of outdoor pursuits. Still, you have to get out there and look, if you want a partner, don’t you?’

      ‘I’m not convinced that the sort of man she needs puts adverts in newspapers,’ Janey said, flicking ash about in a way you really shouldn’t do in riding stables. I only hoped their insurance was fully up to date and entirely comprehensive.

      ‘Perhaps not, but it’s going to work out OK: I’ve read the Angel cards and Zillah read both the Tarot and the leaves for her the other day, and they all say that she’ll find love closer, and sooner, than she thinks.’

      Janey looked at me through a haze of smoke. ‘Then I only hope it isn’t one of my ex-boyfriends, because I don’t think any of them are her type.’

      ‘I’m sure it won’t be. Poppy couldn’t possibly go out with a man that you had gone out with. She would find it really weird.’ And since most of the eligible men in the neighbourhood were Janey’s cast-offs, it materially had to lessen her chances of ever finding someone.

      ‘Would she?’ She gazed at me rather blankly. ‘I don’t know why it is, Chloe, but I feel sort of guilty that she hasn’t found anyone. I mean, I’ve always been nice when she’s brought a boyfriend home in the past, haven’t I?’

      Too nice, that had been the problem! Twice when she was younger Poppy had found some pleasant and innocuous boy who seemed to be on the same wavelength, but they always completely lost interest once they came within Janey’s orbit.

      ‘I don’t think I’ve been a terribly good mother, on the whole,’ Janey confessed, viciously grinding the cigarette stub out under one booted heel.