The Chocolate Collection. Trisha Ashley

once her phone was in working order.

      ‘Did you call so Honeybun could communicate with me?’ I asked. ‘Only I’m melting couverture and I’ll have to turn the temperature down and tip a bit more in, shortly.’

      The chocolate spends over an hour being heated and stirred before the next stage, when you put more of the couverture chocolate drops into the Bath to cool it down, and once started on the process I don’t stop, short of a power cut.

      ‘No, of course not, it was because Raffy Sinclair’s just been here and I thought you’d like to know.’

      ‘What, he’s been to Stirrups?’

      ‘Yes, he caught us just as we were having our elevenses. He said he intended visiting every house in the parish over the next few weeks to introduce himself, starting with Mr Lees and the members of the Parish Council. He’d seen Effie Yatton already and after us it would be Felix.’

      ‘That seems pretty keen – he’s only just arrived.’

      ‘He certainly is keen. He’s already had a meeting with the Parochial Church Council and he’s started saying morning and evening prayers in the church every day too, which is more than poor old Mr Harris managed. He said anyone who wanted to join him would be welcome.’

      ‘But doesn’t Mr Lees practise the organ in the afternoons?’

      ‘Yes, but he’s usually finished and gone for his tea by then, though he sometimes plays it late at night when he calls in to lock up the church on his way home from the pub. People complain about it, but being blind he says day and night are all one to him, and takes no notice.’

      ‘Yes, I’ve heard him playing once or twice faintly, when the wind has been in the right direction and my bedroom window open. But I thought he was deaf and dumb as well as blind, the Pinball Wizard of the mighty Wurlitzer?’

      ‘Oh, no, he can hear perfectly well, and talk if he wants to – he just doesn’t usually want to. He must have talked to Raffy, though, because they’re going to the Falling Star for a drink together tonight.’

      ‘What? Raffy can’t invade our pub!’ I protested indignantly.

      ‘They’ll go in the back bar and I don’t suppose he’ll make a habit of it, he’s just being friendly.’ She paused, then added, apologetically, ‘He is warm and friendly, you know, Chloe, though I found it a bit hard talking to him, knowing he treated you so badly. I think he noticed there was something wrong.’

      I could imagine: Poppy’s thoughts and feelings scud across her expressive face like clouds across the sky.

      ‘As soon as Mum went to make him some fresh tea, he told me he’d bumped into someone he knew at university the previous day, Chloe Lyon, and Mr Merryman had told him you were a friend of mine! He said it had been quite a surprise to find you were living in Sticklepond.’

      ‘I bet it was!’

      ‘That’s what I said, and then I think he realised you’d told me all about him, because he said it seemed to have given you a bit of a shock when you ran into him in the High Street, but he assumed that you’d long ago forgiven and forgotten and moved on with your life, just as he had.’

      ‘What does he mean, just as he had?’ I demanded indignantly. ‘I was the wronged one – and I was doing just fine with the moving-on bit until he chose to turn up on my doorstep.’

      ‘Yes, but of course at that point he was assuming you were married, because he’d seen you that morning with Jake and thought he was your son.’

      ‘But why on earth should he—’ I began, then remembered. ‘Oh, yes, I think Jake did call me Mum when he was leaving, the way he does when he’s trying to wind me up.’

      ‘I told him you weren’t married and that Jake was your half-brother, and you’d practically brought him up singlehanded. He looked really surprised.’

      ‘There, that just goes to prove he never even looked at the letter I sent him after I got back from university, or he would have known all about Jake! And now I suppose he thinks I’ve been pining for him all this time and that’s why I’ve never married.’

      ‘Oh, no, I’m sure he doesn’t, Chloe! I explained that you’d spent the last few years building up a really successful chocolate business and he’d actually eaten one of your Wishes at his welcome party.’

      ‘I wish it had choked him!’

      ‘You don’t really think that, it’s just his arrival’s temporarily stirred up all the hurt feelings again, that’s all. But I’m positive he’s an entirely different man from the one who let you down, a nice man.’

      ‘Can leopards really change their spots?’

      ‘Yes,’ Poppy said simply. ‘Even the blackest sinner can repent. And he must have done, or they wouldn’t have let him enter the Church, would they?’

      ‘I suppose not,’ I agreed reluctantly, only half believing in this metamorphosis from rock god to man of God. ‘Did he say anything else interesting?’

      ‘No, there wasn’t time, because Mum came back with the fresh tea and a plate of Bourbon biscuits and started flirting with him, which was hideously embarrassing. And she told him she was going to start attending church services, though I shouldn’t think she ever has, apart from the occasional wedding.’

      ‘She won’t be the first. He’ll have every woman in the parish drooling over him, just wait and see.’

      She giggled. ‘Except Hebe Winter! He’s going out to Winter’s End in the morning and then he said he thought he might visit your grandfather in the afternoon, since she’d made such a big thing of it and he was quite interested in the concept of the museum, anyway.’

      ‘Visiting Grumps might not be the wisest move he’s ever made,’ I said. ‘I have a feeling Zillah has told Grumps everything she knows about Raffy Sinclair. Look, I’ll have to go and see to the chocolate now – I’ll talk to you later.’

      It was late afternoon by the time I’d finished making Wishes and cleaned the workshop up again.

      I felt tired and drained, but I went through into the museum because I’d promised to help Grumps check the proofs for the guidebook. It was just a short brochure, but he was now thinking of using the same firm in Merchester to privately print his definitive guide to the history of magic, an old project he was suddenly keen to resurrect, and which had so far been rejected by every publisher he’d sent it to, even the one who published his book on ley lines.

      He had the proofs spread out on the desk and they didn’t take long to go through. Then, just as we finished, Zillah appeared with Clive Snowball, who was carrying an old cardboard wine box.

      ‘Clive’s got something for you,’ she said, with one of her gold-glinting smiles. She seemed to be on surprisingly friendly terms with the publican.

      ‘Mother sent these,’ he said, dumping the box onto the desk in front of us, then added, without showing any sign of curiosity about the strange objects that surrounded him, ‘I’ll be off then. There’s a delivery due at the Star.’

      ‘I’ll see you later at the tea dance club then, will I?’ asked Zillah.

      ‘No, I’ll pick you up and drive you, love: you don’t want to be walking the length of the village in those pretty silver sandals of yours, not in winter.’

      I won’t say that Zillah simpered, precisely, but there was more than a hint of sashay in her walk as she went off to let Clive out again.

      Grumps didn’t seem to have taken in any of this exchange but had folded back the lid of the box and was engaged in unpacking thick, greenish, old bottles, the sort that have a glass marble stopper hinged to the neck on a strong wire.

      They each seemed to have several objects inside them, but when