Figgy Pudding. PENNY JORDAN

Janet groaned, watching as Heaven moved deftly around the kitchen.

      ‘Right,’ Heaven announced when she had finished. ‘As you know I’ve been advertising in the classified ads as Mrs Tiggywinkle, selling figgy puddings, but saying that I can cater for private functions as well. Well, I got a phone call three days ago from someone who introduced herself to me as Tiffany Simons. She said that she was desperate to find someone to cook a special celebration pre-Christmas dinner for her fiancé who was returning from the States with a couple of important business clients who he wanted her to entertain along with some close friends and business associates. None of the agencies could supply her with a cook so close to Christmas and at such short notice—so she was literally ringing round every number she could find in the hope of getting a cook from somewhere.

      ‘To add to her problems, as well as dropping this dinner on her it transpired that her fiancé had also left her with full responsibility for getting the work completed on a house he was having renovated for them both.

      ‘We arranged to meet to have lunch and discuss every thing. And that was when I knew…’

      ‘When you knew what?’ Janet questioned her.

      ‘When I knew that she—Tiffany—must be engaged to Harold… She was wearing Louisa’s old engagement ring,’ Heaven told her simply. ‘I recognised it straight away. Louisa threw it back at him the day she walked out. Later she told me that she’d never liked it and had always considered it too vulgar. It was a huge brilliant-cut solitaire. Very flashy.’

      ‘Louisa’s engagement ring and now this Tiffany’s wearing it?’ Janet gasped.

      ‘Yes, but I doubt that she knows it was Louisa’s. She’s very young—I feel quite sorry for her. She’s obviously terrified of doing anything to annoy or upset Harold and it’s typical of him that he should have sprung this dinner thing on her—and typical as well that the fee he’s willing to pay the cook he’s told her to hire is nowhere near enough—not for the type of meal he’s ordered her to organise.

      ‘She’s panicking like mad that the guest bedrooms aren’t going to be finished on time. She confided to me that Harold’s refusing to pay the interim payments he promised the designers and suppliers unless they get everything ready ahead of schedule. I don’t know who these people are he’s so keen to impress but they must be pretty important to him…’

      ‘More important than his new fiancée,’ Janet suggested shrewdly.

      ‘Oh, much more important,’ Heaven agreed. ‘I could tell from the way she was talking about him that she hardly knows him at all. There’s some kind of distant business connection between Harold and her father, apparently, and that’s how they met.

      ‘Anyway, once she told me what was happening, I realised that if I took on the job of cooking this dinner for her it would give me the ideal opportunity to get my own back on Harold. He always did have a sweet tooth,’ she added inconsequentially, a wide, cat-like smile curling her mouth as her eyes danced.

      ‘Heaven…’ Janet said uncertainly. ‘You’re not thinking of doing anything too over the top, are you?’

      She was suddenly remembering the scrapes her friend’s irrepressible sense of humour had got them into as schoolgirls and remembering too just how much reason Heaven had to want to punish Harold for the damage he had done to her.

      ‘That depends,’ Heaven answered soberly, but Janet could see that her eyes were still gleaming with amusement.

      ‘On what?’ she asked warily.

      ‘On what one considers to be too over the top,’ Heaven replied promptly, but unsatisfactorily—at least so far as Janet was concerned.

      Janet tried again.

      ‘What I meant was, you’re not planning on doing something illegal…?’

      ‘Illegal?’ Heaven’s eyebrows rose. ‘Certainly not,’ she denied emphatically. ‘What I have in mind is designed quite simply to hurt Harold’s pride, to damage it just as he damaged mine. Poisoning him and ending up in prison for it—if that’s what that anxious mother-hen look in your eyes means you’re worrying about—is the last thing I’d want to do, although…’ A thoughtful far-away look in her eyes made Janet’s anxiety increase. ‘There are certain hallucinogenic mushrooms which I could—’

      ‘No, no, you mustn’t do anything like that,’ Janet intervened quickly.

      ‘No, I mustn’t,’ Heaven agreed, adding with mock primness, ‘It would be quite unethical.

      ‘No, what I’ve got in mind will teach Harold a much more salutary lesson than anything like that…’

      ‘If he doesn’t recognise you and throw you out,’ Janet warned her.

      ‘He won’t recognise me,’ Heaven assured her positively. ‘For a start Tiffany only knows me by my new professional name of Mrs Tiggywinkle and she obviously hadn’t a clue who I was when we met. She was at great pains and rather embarrassed to ask me if I would mind keeping a very low profile—apparently Harold wants his guests to think that she cooked their meal.

      ‘He would, of course, since he’s obviously being too mean to take them out to an expensive restaurant or pay the fees charged by the kind of frantically up-market caterers he’d enjoy boasting about hiring. He’s decided it will give him more kudos to have his victims—sorry, his guests—believe that poor Tiffany has cooked their dinner, so I’m to lie low in the kitchen whilst she serves the meal.

      ‘Knowing Harold as I do, I very much doubt he’ll come anywhere near the kitchen—for a start he’d think he was demeaning himself and no doubt he’ll try his best to get away with delaying paying me for as long as he can—I’ve asked to be paid cash on the night. No, Harold won’t see me to recognise me.

      ‘It won’t matter, not so long as they eat their dinner—and they will.

      ‘Revenge is sweet, so they say, and, as I’ve already told you, Harold has an extremely sweet tooth, so he shall have an extremely generous portion of revenge,’ Heaven told her, giving Janet a kind smile when she saw that she was still looking anxious.

      ‘I wish you weren’t doing this,’ Janet told her.

      ‘I don’t,’ Heaven responded cheerfully. ‘You can’t imagine how much better I’ve felt these last few days knowing that at last Harold is going to get his comeuppance, or rather his just deserts! Do you know, I think I’m going to enjoy Christmas this year after all?’ she added conversationally as the timer on her oven pinged and she went to attend to the puddings she had made earlier.

      ‘All alone here?’ Janet asked her doubtfully. ‘I wish you would change your mind and come with us to Lloyd’s parents’. I know they’d make you welcome.’

      ‘No… I want to be alone… Next year is going to be my year and I want to be ready for it.’

      ‘Those puddings smell marvellous,’ Janet told her.

      ‘Mmm… they do, don’t they?’ Heaven agreed with a small smile that made Janet’s maternal heart beat even more anxiously.

       CHAPTER TWO

      ‘I HOPE you don’t intend to allow him to get away with this.’

      Louisa gave her brother an unhappy look as he put down the letter he had just been reading. She had received it from her ex-husband’s solicitor only that morning and had telephoned Jon straight away to tell him what had happened.

      ‘I don’t want to. If he does insist on refusing to pay the girls’ school fees they’ll have to change school and Belle is already having a few problems following the divorce… but I don’t know what I can do to stop him.’

      ‘My God, when I think…’