Trisha Ashley 3 Book Bundle. Trisha Ashley

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 rest of the Victorian Christmas scene, but I thought that would be over-egging the pudding. Instead she used my set of small metal letter cutters to write ‘Welcome Vicar’ around the edge in left-over icing, tinted a froggy green, which 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,