Wish Upon a Star. Trisha Ashley

I’d be exploding out of my clothes like the Incredible Hulk.’

      ‘I think I already am,’ I said ruefully.

      ‘Oh, I don’t know, you look about the same as when you got here,’ she assured me. ‘I expect those long walks in the afternoons with the buggy and Toto are keeping it down a bit.’

      ‘Yes, that’s true, I must be getting fitter even if not thinner, because apart from Primrose Hill, which is more of a grassy bump than anything, there weren’t really that many nearby open spaces to tempt you to have long walks in London. Stella says she misses the zoo, but that’s all. It’s a pity the little one at Southport closed down.’

      Chloe hadn’t rung me to warn of any pestilential disease laying the local children low, so mid-morning Stella and I went to the Mother and Toddler group at the old vicarage for the first time, and I felt a bit nervous, not really knowing anyone.

      It was held in the drawing room, which was vast enough to hold most of the footage of Ma’s cottage, and had lots of toys for the little ones to play with scattered over its acreage.

      There were nine or ten other mothers there and the children ranged in age from tiny babies upwards. Stella was the oldest, but she was by no means the biggest. In fact, she looked worryingly fragile next to some of those sturdy, rosy-cheeked toddlers …

      Chloe introduced me to everyone, though of course I knew several of them slightly already from my shopping expeditions into the village, like Poppy, who was married to Felix Hemmings, proprietor of Marked Pages, and Tansy Poole from Cinderella’s Slippers, and many others by sight. They all made me very welcome, anyway, though I immediately forgot several of their names. I don’t think the warmth of the welcome was entirely due to the three cake boxes I’d put down on the coffee table …

      ‘I’ve already told everyone about Stella’s Stars and the fundraising,’ Chloe said. ‘We’ve decided to think up some ways to raise money.’

      ‘That would be wonderful,’ I said gratefully.

      ‘I know Raffy’s got some ideas, too,’ she said. ‘He’s going to come and see you again soon to discuss them, so perhaps we’d better see what he suggests first and then fit our fundraising around it?’

      ‘Or we could just have a jumble sale in the village hall; that’s always good,’ someone suggested, and they all seemed keen on that idea. Poppy, who was also a member of the parish council, said she would find out what day the hall was free in June, to give everyone time to get their jumble together.

      That was a great start, but I hoped Chloe was right about Raffy having come up with a plan, because time seemed to be galloping by and I still had so much money to raise.

      ‘Cally’s kindly brought us some Eccles cakes she’s made, to have with our coffee,’ Chloe announced.

      ‘Yes, I’m writing an article on the differences between the traditional Eccles cake, Chorley cakes and Sad cakes for my next “Cake Diaries”,’ I explained, ‘and I thought perhaps you could tell me which you prefer?’

      ‘Oooh, lovely, a taste test,’ said a tall, attractive dark girl who I think was called Zoë … or maybe her friend was called Zoë and she was called Rachel? It was one way or the other.

      ‘I did mention that Cally is a well-known cookery writer, didn’t I? She writes the “Tea & Cake” page in Sweet Home magazine, and “The Cake Diaries” for a Sunday supplement,’ Chloe said, and several of them said they got the magazine, even if they hadn’t seen my pieces in the Sunday paper.

      A tall, grim and alarmingly Mrs Danvers figure in a black apron brought in a tray of coffee to have with my cakes, and left without saying anything, her rat-trap mouth firmly shut, though I heard Chloe thank her and call her Maria, so she must be some kind of housekeeper.

      Once everyone was munching on Eccles cakes the conversation turned to nice local places to visit with children and they told me about the new nature reserve that had been created on the site of a former mill, and how the Victorian mill manager’s house was being turned into a museum.

      ‘Oh, yes, the vicar mentioned that when he was telling me about how everyone in the village always came together to fight for a good cause,’ I recalled.

      ‘They were going to build a retail park on the site, but we were all against that, so in the end it was sold to a charity, Force for Nature. Luckily there was a huge anonymous donation, so already they’ve put up an eco-friendly wooden café and information centre and boardwalks around the site,’ Poppy said.

      ‘Now they’re starting to convert the mill owner’s house to how it would have been in Victorian times,’ Chloe put in. ‘There’s a courtyard with some outbuildings at the back, where I think they might have a couple of craft workshops eventually, or something like that.’

      ‘I’ll have to take Stella out there; it sounds lovely,’ I said.

      ‘We have an annual teddy bears’ picnic, and we’ve decided to have that there this year,’ the tall, dark girl said, then nudged her friend. ‘Rachel, Betty Boo’s put an entire Duplo figure in her mouth.’

      ‘She’s got a mouth like a letterbox, that child,’ Rachel said with a long-suffering sigh, going over and casually hooking it out again. ‘She doesn’t get it from me.’

      Betty Boo roared loudly for five minutes, then stopped suddenly and crawled off towards something else. I hoped it was larger than the plastic figure.

      Stella tired after a bit and came and sat quietly on my lap, thumb in mouth, so I carried her home, glad I’d taken the car because of carrying the cake boxes. They were now much lighter, containing only the odd crumb.

      ‘Did you enjoy that?’ I asked her.

      She nodded. ‘I liked all the toys, especially the pink castle. Could I have one of those, Mummy?’

      ‘Do you want a Barbie doll to go with it?’ I asked cautiously, because she’d never shown any interest in dolls to date, and I’d hoped if she was going to start, it wouldn’t be with something so strangely mutant-looking and unnatural, so it was a relief when she shook her head so the fine silvery-gold curls danced.

      ‘No, I want it for all my families,’ she explained.

      ‘It’s pretty big, so you could certainly fit them all in. Do you want it more than that tree house we saw?’ I asked. ‘Or the camper van?’

      She pondered. ‘Not more …’ she said finally. ‘The same.’

      ‘You could ask Santa if he’d bring you one, when we get a bit nearer to Christmas,’ I suggested. ‘I expect he’ll feel you deserve a big present after we’ve been to America to get you made better, so you never know.’

      I emailed Jago when I got home and told him the verdict on the cakes: Eccles cake was definitely favourite, Chorley cake was all right, but Sad cake was a bit more shortcakey, so that fingers of it would go well for elevenses with a cup of coffee. That could be my next recipe on the ‘Tea & Cake’ agenda – more crossover of my two different regular columns.

      He emailed back and said maybe biscuits like garibaldi would make a good follow-up article, because it was only one step from an Eccles cake to a garibaldi really, when you thought about it.

      That was a great idea! It’s so wonderful having someone on the same wavelength that I can bounce baking ideas off, because it’s clearly going to spark all kinds of useful things.

      Celia came over on the Wednesday for another fundraising discussion, though without Will, since he had to deliver one of his larger sculptures, a group of driftwood birds on a sea-smoothed log, to a customer.

      Stella was in her room with the door open so I could see her playing on the carpet with her fuzzy ginger cat family and I could just hear the murmur of her voice as she talked to them, too. She looked up long enough to wave at Celia, before vanishing back into her game.