Trisha Ashley 3 Book Bundle. Trisha Ashley

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. When the sun bleached gold streaks into her sandy hair in summer it looked really pretty, and a good hairdresser could keep it like that all the year round.

      Jake had gone to dinner at Kat’s house, so it looked as though her parents had got used to him and this was a seal of approval!

      Felix, Poppy and I pushed the boat out and had a birthday feast of scampi and chips in a basket at the Falling Star, though actually the two of them bickered throughout about her next lonely hearts column date, the following evening.

      It sounded like the scenario would just be a repeat of the last one, with Felix glowering over the top of his newspaper in the pub corner, like a jealous dog over a bone – though I thought maybe I would go with him this time out of sheer curiosity and we could peer over the paper together.

      They made up their quarrel when he gave her her present, which was a tiny oil painting of a horse in the primitive style, and then after that she got tiddly and extremely giggly on gin and tonic.

      We went back to the cottage for hot chocolate, the smell of which got Jake, who had by then returned, down from his room for long enough to wish his Auntie Pops a happy birthday and let her kiss him, in that terribly resigned way teenage boys have. You’d think it was an endurance test. Is there a Duke of Edinburgh’s Award for that?

      The hot chocolate didn’t have a noticeably sobering effect on Poppy so we finally sent her home in a taxi, singing something about a galloping major. Goodness knows where she got that from. Janey would have to drive her down next morning to pick up the Land Rover.

      ‘You know,’ I said to Felix as the tail-lights of the taxi vanished round the bend, ‘if her mum hadn’t decided to work her way through all the eligible young farmers in the area and the local hunt, Poppy might have found Mr Right somewhere among their ranks.’

      ‘I can’t see her as a farmer’s wife, and she doesn’t like hunting, does she?’ he pointed out.

      And it was true that Poppy had taken a sudden aversion to hunting living creatures for pleasure when she was about ten, and didn’t follow the hounds, even when they turned exclusively to drag hunting.

      She was so terribly soft-hearted and I really didn’t want to see that heart bruised or broken by careless hands, like mine was, even if I had successfully cemented it back together with tempered chocolate, so it wasn’t just as good as new, but better than new.

      But I knew she longed for love and marriage and even children, so I would much rather she fell for a decent man like Felix…if he fell for her in return, of course!

       Chapter Twelve Desperate Dates

      It was the evening of Poppy’s Desperate Date and I was going as emergency backup with Felix. It wasn’t just an excuse for an outing, I was curious to see what rabbit she had pulled out of the hat this time.

      I collected Felix from Marked Pages on the way and we were just cutting through the car park of the Green Man, when a familiar voice called out, ‘Chloe!’

      I swung round, startled. ‘David?’

      My ex-fiancé was standing next to a snazzy red sports car, the keys in his hand. He looked just as handsome as ever: age didn’t seem to have withered his beauty and it couldn’t have staled his infinite variety because he never had any. His predictability was one of the things I’d appreciated most about him six years before: a calm harbour after the storm.

      While I was still standing transfixed, he slammed the car door shut and strode over. ‘I knew it was you!’ Looking delighted, he kissed me on both cheeks, then held me away slightly and said, ‘And you look absolutely wonderful!’

      I felt flattered, since I didn’t think I did really. My hair needed cutting and my nose was probably pink from the chilly breeze.

      ‘You look pretty good too,’ I said, finding I was quite happy to see him once I was over that initial surprise. Now he was closer I could see new lines on his face and