Trisha Ashley 3 Book Bundle. Trisha Ashley

Maria Minchin to finish burning his lunch. He showed them round the house too, and I’m ashamed to say that I pumped Jake for all the details he could remember.

      ‘Well, it’s not as huge as I thought it would be from the front, because it’s long rather than deep,’ he said. ‘There’s an enormous drawing room and a dining room at the back with a door onto the terrace, which he’s going to make into a sort of den, I think. He’s turned part of the cloakroom into a mini-kitchen, so he can make a drink or snack without disturbing the Minchins.’

      ‘That might be vital, if Maria Minchin’s cooking is as bad as they say. Go on, what else is there?’

      ‘Only a library in that turrety thing at the end, plus four or five bedrooms upstairs. The workmen have just about finished and the decorators moved in, so his furniture is all piled in the middle of the floors, covered in dustsheets, but he says he hasn’t got enough yet, most of the stuff from his flat in Notting Hill wouldn’t have looked right.’

      ‘So he’s still living in what was the servants’ hall?’

      ‘Yes, but he’ll be able to move into part of the main house by next week and then the Minchins can spread themselves out a bit more. He says their flat is quite cramped. That’s about it, he hadn’t got time to show us the garden, though he talked about it quite a bit.’

      He evidently intended doing most of the gardening himself once the jungle had been tamed, even growing his own fruit and vegetables, which wasn’t quite the rock-and-roll lifestyle Jake had envisaged, though he was still enthusiastic about Raffy Sinclair.

      Everyone was, except me.

      ‘I told him I knew he’d been out with you when you were young,’ Jake confessed. ‘But of course, since it was forever ago, I knew you must have practically forgotten about each other until you met again.’

      ‘Yes, our romance had completely faded into the realms of ancient history,’ I agreed.

      ‘That’s pretty much what Raffy said. Me and Kat are joining the tennis club when it starts up in spring, by the way. The vicarage court should be ready by then.’

      ‘You don’t play tennis!’

      ‘I play squash and there’s no reason why I can’t play tennis too, is there? Kat plays tennis.’

      I supposed there were a lot worse things he could be doing.

      By this time we were late for Sunday lunch, which we have with Grumps and Zillah, but luckily she was running late with the roast duck, petits pois and crunchy roast potatoes.

      There was lemon syllabub afterwards, possibly my most favourite pudding, so I was so stuffed that I could barely drag myself out of the house and into David’s car to go house-hunting afterwards, and certainly couldn’t eat a thing when we stopped for tea.

      It was odd how I never used to notice how much he talked about himself, but now I could see that we didn’t have conversations, it was all monologues! And I didn’t know if he was sizing me up for a possible resumption of our engagement or not, but I took Poppy’s advice when the current monologue veered round to which houses were suitable for raising families in, and reminded him that I had decided never to marry or have children, because I was perfectly happy with my lifestyle.

      He laughed at that as though I’d made a joke, and for one moment I thought he was going to pat me on the head and tell me he knew what I needed better than I did, in which case I would probably have bitten his hand.

      I was starting to realise what a very narrow escape I had had six years ago – what had I been thinking? I would probably have been arrested for murder by now, had the marriage gone ahead.

      Apart from the night following my revelatory conversation with Raffy, when sheer emotional exhaustion overcame me, I had not been sleeping well. Whenever I closed my eyes the past came back to haunt me in inglorious Technicolor. The only good parts were when I imagined what I would do to Rachel if I could lay my hands on her, scenarios generally involving boiling oil and thumbscrews.

      Instead of sleeping I’d spent large portions of the night hours making Chocolate Wishes in the workshop, with the radio on for company. The quiet sound of the melted chocolate being churned about in the Bath was quite soothing, as was the rich scent that filled the air. I’d been making and eating an awful lot of truffles too – my bill for cream was astronomical.

      I’d printed out the updated version of the chocolate charm that Grumps gave me, and could now say the whole of it over the chocolate while I was tempering it. Not that I thought it would have any effect, but I invoked it more from gratitude for the kind thought and sheer force of habit, than anything.

      Jake kept wandering downstairs in the middle of the night to check on me: I was sure he was worried, but he didn’t say anything.

      Meanwhile, I was stockpiling an awful lot of Wishes!

      I hadn’t called at Felix’s shop on my way back from the post office since our little spat, but then on Monday he came to the cottage to see me and tendered a very handsome apology for his lack of understanding, which I accepted, though it was subsequently slightly soured by discovering that I owed it to Raffy. He’d told Felix that he quite understood if I couldn’t yet bear to see him among my friends, but hoped that one day I would change my mind.

      Magnanimous of him. And it had the effect of making me look like the petulant child and him the grown-up!

       Chapter Twenty-three Pax

      Hebe Winter collected Grumps in her white Mini car and took him to the emergency Parish Council meeting. Afterwards Poppy brought him back and dropped him off at the house, before coming through the museum to the cottage. I was just clearing up after a chocolate-making session and had to stop her absently eating the couverture chocolate drops from the open sack, like sweets.

      ‘How did it go?’ I asked, firmly closing the sack up again and putting it away.

      ‘Oh, fine, though Miss Winter, Effie and Laurence were in Elizabethan dress ready for the Re-enactment Society later, and what with that and your grandfather’s strange outfit, it all seemed a bit surreal somehow.’

      ‘You should try living with him and Zillah: my whole life seems surreal. Was the emergency about this right-of-way thing?’

      ‘Yes, though I can’t see why it couldn’t wait until the ordinary meeting on Thursday, because there isn’t a lot we can do about it yet. Miss Winter seems to be calling extra meetings whenever she wants to get something off her chest, lately! But Laurence has found some similar cases on the internet and Miss Winter’s solicitor is going to look into it and report back. And we are awaiting a reply to the letter she sent to Mann-Drake about the lido and tennis courts, but he’s still in London.’

      ‘Mann-Drake has really stirred up a wasps’ nest in Stickle-pond with all his money-making plans,’ I said. ‘The latest move may only affect half a dozen houses, but everyone is wondering what he will do next, and there’s a lot of anger.’

      ‘Yes, Hebe Winter not only looked like Elizabeth the First today, but I thought she was also going to launch into the “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king” speech and then lead us out to battle! She asked your grandfather to give us his opinion of Mann-Drake and it was pretty much the same as Raffy’s, apart from more of an emphasis on his magic powers and how Mann-Drake only wanted to buy a house in the village because of its powerful position on the ley lines.’

      ‘Well, that’s probably true – combined with the chance to make a quick buck or two.’

      ‘Raffy said there were always people attracted to the occult, though magic’s only real power lay in suggestion and superstition,’ Poppy said, ‘and Mann-Drake’s “supernatural powers” were nothing more