‘No. And now you know how I feel when Ben goes off to London without me.’
‘It’s not the same. You’ve never been in love with Ben, just loved him with blind, dogged devotion.’
‘Not blind. You can’t live with someone for that many years and not be aware of their failings. But he’s such a brilliant artist, a genius, that I’ve had to be the one to make allowances.’
‘I don’t see why having any kind of talent should entitle you to get away with behaving badly,’ she said, ‘or selfishly. Though, actually, it usually does seem to have that effect. Noah—Noah Sephton, the photographer I was telling you about—goes through girlfriends faster than a hot knife through butter. He says he’s a romantic and believes in true love, but he never puts his money where his mouth is.’
‘Has he never been married?’
‘Joe said he was, briefly, when he was very young, but she died of leukaemia, so I expect it was all a bit Love Story and put him off marrying again.’
‘That’s terribly sad!’ Tears came to my eyes as they usually did when I heard something touching. ‘It’s probably blighted the poor man’s life.’
‘No, I don’t think so. The loveliest girls seem to fall for him and it all looks really promising, but by the time they start to hint that they’re getting serious ideas he’s ready to move on.’
I thought about that. ‘Perhaps it’s because no one is going to measure up to his dead wife? I mean, if they were really young and not married long, the rosy glow wouldn’t have worn off and, looking back, she will always seem perfect, won’t she?’
‘Or perhaps whatever he says about love, he just prefers casual sex with no commitment?’ Libby suggested.
‘That makes him sound horrible—shallow and self-gratifying.’
‘Well, actually he’s not, he’s really warm and nice.’
‘I suppose he’s good-looking?’
She considered. ‘You might not pick him out in a crowd straight away, but once you did, you’d wonder how you missed him. He’s about six foot and slim, not exactly handsome, but he’s got lovely, light grey eyes and long, long black eyelashes…His smile’s sort of quirky and goes up at one side too…and his hair’s almost black and goes curly if it gets damp.’
‘You sound half in love with him yourself!’ I said, dismayed at this apparent lack of loyalty to Tim.
‘Not me! You know I’m a hard-headed, marriage-or-nothing kind of girl!’
‘Maybe, but you moved in with Tim the day after you met him,’ I pointed out.
‘Yes, well, that’s different. And he proposed to me before I moved in, don’t forget.’
‘Come on, you were so love struck you would have done it anyway.’
‘Maybe, but so was Tim, so it doesn’t matter.’ She smiled happily. ‘Oh, Josie, it’s such bliss! I only hope Pia does come to the wedding and realises how nice he is, then she’ll soon get over her huff and we can be one happy family.’
I thought this was more than optimistic. ‘You can see her point, Libby. She adored Joe, he was a father to her in every sense. And I think girls often get on better with their fathers than their mothers, until they get older. You were fine until she was thirteen or fourteen, and then she started seeing you as competition.’
‘She was lovely when she was little,’ she agreed. ‘Then—bam!—in kicked the hormones and she turned into a sulky monster in a permanent strop.’
‘She’ll turn back into a human being again any minute now,’ I assured her. ‘And if she surfaces in London, Maria Cazzini will make her come to the wedding.’ Maria, the formidable matriarch of the family, had married the cousin who now ran the family restaurant business. A thought struck me. ‘You have invited your mother and sister, haven’t you?’
‘Tim said I had to,’ Libby said unenthusiastically. ‘I’ve told Daisy she’ll have to keep Ma off the sauce the whole day. I’m trusting her, but I’ll have a hire car on standby to whisk them away if she goes off-piste. I’ve booked them into a Travelodge, where I expect they’re used to getting all types, including drunken mothers of the bride.’
‘But I thought she’d joined AA and gone teetotal?’
‘That’s what she says, but Daisy reckons she’s just got more cunning about where she hides it.’
‘It was very kind of Daisy to move her down there and look after her.’
Libby gave me a scathing look. ‘It was Joe’s idea. He bought them the house and paid the bills. Now I send money every month and that’s another drain on my income, but at least I know Mum is eating properly and living respectably, because Daisy has control over everything.’
It was some years since I’d seen Libby’s mother, but even semi-reformed, she was still likely to add a lively touch to the wedding proceedings, not to mention raking up the past in the minds of those villagers who were still finding it hard to accept that any daughter of Gloria Martin could possibly marry a Rowland-Knowles, so I could quite understand why Libby was reluctant to invite her. But Tim was right—it had to be done!
I emailed Pia and that night she phoned me. It was such a relief to hear her voice, even if she was in a strop.
‘How can Mum get married so soon?’ she demanded. ‘She can’t have loved Dad at all. It’s indecent!’
‘But she did love Joe very much, Pia, really she did. And it’s more than a year now. She and Tim just fell in love at first sight, that’s all.’
‘She’s too old to fall in love,’ she stated disgustedly.
‘Oh, I don’t think you’re ever too old, darling. And Tim is lovely—quiet and kind. You’ll like him, honestly.’
‘She doesn’t care if I’m there or not. She probably doesn’t want me coming along and making three.’
‘There you’re quite wrong. She does worry about you, and Tim is really looking forward to meeting you. He hopes you’ll make your home at Blessings with them.’
‘Blessings?’
‘That’s the name of his house. It’s Elizabethan, and Libby’s currently designing your bedroom in one of the original chambers, so if you don’t want to find yourself in a flowery bower, with the gilded rococo bed with cherubs she is talking about shipping over from Italy, you ought to get down here and tell her so.’
‘Cherubs?’ she said, horrified. Then she collected herself and said tersely, ‘It doesn’t matter: I’m not coming.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘Pisa, with Gina. But she says they’re coming here for their honeymoon, so I’ll have to clear out to London then.’
‘Look, do come just for the wedding, Pia,’ I cajoled. ‘Some of the Cazzinis are—your aunt Maria, for one.’
‘Aunt Maria’s coming?’
‘Yes, she’s already sent an enormous Gaggia coffee machine as a present, so I think you can take it that she approves! I’m sure she’ll be disappointed in you if you don’t come—and your mum will be deeply, deeply hurt.’
There was a small silence. ‘I might come up from London with Aunt Maria, just for the wedding,’ she conceded sulkily.
‘I think that would be a very kind and generous thing to do,’ I said encouragingly. ‘And perhaps you could ring your mother and tell her? She’d love to hear from you and—’
‘No!’ she said explosively and slammed down the phone, her volatile and passionate Italian side clearly getting the better of her good manners. But I was sure Maria Cazzini would manage to persuade her at least to turn up on the day and be polite. I hoped so, because otherwise Libby would be devastated and it would ruin her big day.
I rang her straight away and gave her an edited version of what Pia had said, because I knew it would be a huge relief to Libby just to know she was safe and well. Whether Pia turned up for the wedding would all depend on Maria Cazzini’s persuasive skills.
At dinner last night (Spanish omelette followed by a blackberry version of Eton mess), I said to Ben that he seemed to have an awful lot of calls on his mobile lately, and was everything all right?
I
could tell something had been on his mind since he’d come back from London, even after he told me about Mary being pregnant, but I thought perhaps it had to do with his parents. He tends not to mention them to me; they’re a thorny subject.
He took a deep drink of elderberry wine and said, Actually, darling, there is something worrying me and I haven’t known how to tell you. In fact, I thought it would just sort of…well, fizzle out on its own.’
That was typical of Ben. He’d let problems slide in the hope they’d either simply go away or I would sort them out for him, by which time they had generally escalated.
I leaned my elbows on the table and said encouragingly, ‘So, what is it?’
‘You’ll probably think this sounds silly, but I’m being…well, stalked.’
‘Stalked?’
‘Pestered—followed—rung up and harassed. By this woman who has been buying my work—you know, the patroness?’
I nodded.
‘Now she seems to want to acquire me too. She must have a mental problem, because in her head she’s convinced that we’re already having some kind of relationship. It’s getting a bit embarrassing.’ He looked at me appealingly ‘I’ve tried distancing myself, but it’s very awkward.’
‘Yes, it must be! The poor thing,’ I added charitably, because I could see how easy it would be to fall for Ben and, if you were inclined to mix reality and fantasy, dream up a whole relationship in your head.
‘The Egremont Gallery must have given her my number, because she keeps phoning me up. I’m just afraid she might call the house too, and she’s so unhinged she sees you as the usurper, darling, so goodness knows what she might say.’
‘Do you know, there have been a lot of calls lately where the phone’s been put down the moment the caller heard my voice,’ I said. ‘Do you think that might have been her?’
‘Possibly.’ He leaned back, looking relieved. ‘I’m really glad I’ve told you about it now, Josie!’
‘Yes, but shouldn’t we tell the police or something? I’ve read of cases where stalkers can get quite nasty—even dangerous.’
‘No, I don’t think so. I’m sure she isn’t the violent type. And, after all, she’s not going to turn up here—it’s too far away—and in London I avoid her as much as possible. Let’s wait and see,’ he suggested.
He was probably right. For all we knew she made a habit of imagining herself in love with personable men and would soon lose interest in Ben and be off after someone new. And since after getting that off his chest he reverted back to being the good-natured, easy-going Ben I was used to, I felt much, much happier.
On Halloween I had a whole tray of small toffee apples to offer any young ghoul who turned up on my doorstep—and quite a lot did, attracted to my pumpkin lantern like moths to a flame.
I’d dipped the tops of the apples in dark chocolate and they were really yummy. Ben, who has a sweet tooth, ate three before the first trick-or-treater rang the bell, and there were only just enough to go round.
Since the Country at Heart article I had had an increasing number of enquiries about wedding cakes, though luckily once I made it clear that I only delivered locally, most of them lost interest. But not all. I was having to harden my heart and only take the ones I really wanted to do, because I didn’t want to spend all my time making weird and wonderful wedding cakes!
At the moment, Libby’s Pisa Tower cake was taxing my skills to the limit…
Chapter Eight
Snap Happy
Round here, on Guy Fawkes Night, we still tend to carve turnip heads to put our candles in, rather than pumpkins. The smell of hot turnip, the exciting tang of gunpowder in the air and the taste of hard, home-made, splintery treacle toffee—those are the things I associate with 5th November.
Sometimes we go over to the bonfire at Middlemoss, a few miles away, where they have the strange tradition of burning an effigy of Oliver Cromwell instead of Guy Fawkes…
‘Cakes and Ale’
Libby finally left for her shopping trip to London early next day, which, considering her wedding day was now less than three weeks away, was pushing it a bit. I was not even going to think about what monstrous bridesmaid’s creation she might bring back for me…
Later that morning I was standing at the sink washing up the equipment I’d just used to make parsnip wine, when I glanced out at the tranquil Green and spotted Aggie, the escapologist hen, wandering up the road. Without stopping to take off my red rubber gloves, I shot out of the front door.
A large, maroon car was sweeping up towards me and the unaware hen, who was ambling along in its path in an aimless, hesitating sort of way.
‘Aggie!’ I yelled, and, without thinking, leaped forward into the road to make a grab for her. Behind me, the car slammed on its brakes with a squeal, but Aggie, squawking loudly, shot off across the grass, with me in hot pursuit.
Luckily, all the titbits I’d given her made her too fat to keep up any kind of pace, so I soon scooped her up and tucked her under my arm. She gave in instantly, and made amiable clucking noises.
The driver of the old Jaguar that had so narrowly missed us was now standing next to it: a tall, slender man with short, ruffled black hair and an olive complexion that contrasted startlingly with his light grey eyes. As we approached, he had the cheek to whip a camera up and click away with it!
I was already cross and this didn’t improve my temper, so I marched up to him and let rip: ‘Are you mad, driving so fast in a village? You could have killed Aggie—in fact, you could have killed both of us!’
‘Ooo-er!’ agreed Aggie, softly.
‘I wasn’t actually driving fast,’ he said, with a hint of amusement in those grey eyes that made me feel even crosser. ‘In fact, I was crawling—and I’d seen the hen. I just wasn’t expecting a madwoman in red rubber gloves to hurtle out right after her.’
Aggie made another throaty crooning noise and he lifted his camera—an old-fashioned one, I noticed, not a new digital job—and clicked the shutter.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’
‘Sorry—habit. Do you mind?’ He had a very charming, apologetic smile that titled upwards at one corner, but I wasn’t at all beguiled.
‘Yes, I do mind!’
‘Once a photographer…’ he drawled, looking at me assessingly with half-closed eyes. ‘And you do make rather a unique picture, standing holding that hen.’
I became conscious that my hair was blowing out in the wind like a banner, my feet were bare and frozen, and my red rubber gloves did little to add to an ensemble that consisted of a rather pulled green fleece over torn dungarees. ‘Maybe, but you should ask permission first!’
‘Sorry, it really was just impulse. Actually, I’m looking for a house called Blessings, if I have the name right. It sounds a bit unlikely.’
‘Blessings?’
‘Yes. You’ve heard of it?’
‘You’re practically next to it. It’s that Elizabethan pile over there. Are you…I mean, do you know Tim Rowland-Knowles?’
He looked that type—sort of minor public school, comfortably off and assured.
‘Not yet. But an old friend, Libby Cazzini, says she’s going to marry him, so, since I was passing nearby, I thought I’d pop in on my way back to London.’
‘You’re an old friend of Libby s?’ I gazed at him like the halfwit he patently thought me, while my brain digested a couple of things. ‘Oh…then would you be that photographer she told me about—Jonah somebody?’
‘Noah. Noah Sephton.’
‘I knew it was biblical. And you’re out of luck, because Libby’s actually on her way to London, to buy her wedding dress. Maybe you’ll catch up with her down there, though she’ll be a bit pushed for time since she’s coming back tomorrow.’
He smiled again, rather attractively. And I suppose you wouldn’t be the mad friend who chose to stay in Neatslake when she could have lived in London, by any chance? I can’t remember your name at all, biblical o
r otherwise.’
‘Josie—Josie Gray,’ I said, wondering what on earth Libby had said about me. ‘Does she talk about me?’
‘All the time.’ He offered a long, slim hand and, hampered by the hen, I shook it awkwardly. Then he turned to survey the Green and the church behind it, with its strange, rather squat tower and said, ‘Well, it’s a pretty enough spot, but I always thought she’d had a dodgy start in life here and never wanted to come back again.’
‘So did I, but she always loved Blessings and now she loves Tim Rowland-Knowles too, so that’s the reason she’s coming back.’
I wondered if, perhaps, he had become more than just a friend since Libby’s husband had died (I knew her too well to think she would play around while she was still married); but he didn’t look upset or even slightly jealous, just interested.
‘So it’s really love, purest love?’
‘Definitely. Tim’s such a sweet man,’ I assured him. ‘They fell for each other the minute they met…or met again, because we’d played tennis with him when we were teenagers. I didn’t think he would remember us, because he’s a few years older and we were just tedious, giggly fifteen-year-olds at the time, but he says he does.’
‘Oh, well,’ he shrugged, ‘it seemed a bit sudden, but she’s old enough to know what she’s doing. Maybe I’ll see her in London, as you say. I’ll give her a ring. Should have done before I called in, only I was so near. And I did meet you, after all. I expect I’ll see you at their wedding?’
‘I suppose—’ I stopped, for the Jaguar’s passenger door had swung open and a girl with tousled blonde hair and the longest legs I’d ever seen got out. Even dishevelled, without makeup and in Ugg boots and a crumpled denim miniskirt, she looked beautiful. She just had to be a model, she had that ‘look at me!’ air about her.
‘Are you going to be much longer, darling?’ she asked Noah, ignoring me. ‘I’m freezing.’
‘Get back in the car then,’ he said shortly.
Behind her, Ben suddenly appeared in the cottage doorway, tall, tousled and chunky, a smear of ochre paint up one cheekbone. As always, I felt my face break spontaneously into a smile and my heart melt.
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