In the long silence that followed I could hear my heart thumping. ‘Chas? Are you still there?’
‘Yes, I’m here. Look, Chloe, the thought that you might not be mine had crossed my mind from time to time – you look nothing like me, for a start. But as I said, I made a mistake and so it was right that I should pay for it. Anyway, I’ve grown fond of you – you feel like my daughter.’
‘And I’m fond of you too – which makes it all the harder not knowing for sure what the truth is!’
‘Well, we could find out with a DNA test, if it matters to you?’ he suggested. ‘I could organise that.’
‘Would you? It would be something to know one way or another. And if you aren’t, then I’ll have to assume it’s this other man, though I suppose she could have been lying to him too!’
‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we? And we’ll hope the test is positive. I’ll see about it and I expect you’ll have to send a swab or a hair sample or something off to a lab in the post. I’ll let you know.’
‘Thank you, Chas, and for being so understanding too. I thought you might be really angry.’
‘With Lou, perhaps, but never with you, Chloe,’ he said kindly.
I so hoped he was my father!
I was feeling a bit edgy after that, so later, when Jake’s phone suddenly played a snatch of Mortal Ruin’s ‘Darker Past Midnight’ I immediately insisted he change the ringtone to something else. I wasn’t terribly tactful about it either, so he was miffed and we had a bit of an argument. Then he slammed off up to bed in a sulk.
I suppose it did seem totally unreasonable. It would have been so much easier if I could have told him why.
Chapter Sixteen
Dead as My Love
In the morning I apologised to Jake.
‘That’s OK. I suppose because you hear it everywhere, it just got on your nerves,’ he said handsomely. ‘I’ve changed it to something else now.’
‘Thanks, Jake. That song just seems to be haunting me. It was even playing on the phone when I was put on hold the other day,’ I explained. ‘By the way, Chas is calling in sometime before too long – he rang last night.’
Jake knew the situation (or what we thought was the situation!) so he evinced no surprise at this, and went off in Grumps’ car to collect Kat. They planned to spend the morning listening to some friends rehearsing their band. If the DNA test proved Chas wasn’t my father, it would be time enough to tell him then…
When I went to Grumps’ study to collect the latest chapter or two of Satan’s Child, which had recently galloped off in an unexpected direction just when I had thought it was about to come to an end, he was removing the wrapping from a rectangular cardboard box.
‘Morning, Grumps,’ I said, putting down his cup of tea with the two biscuits balanced on the saucer – after a brief flirtation with Garibaldis we were back to the Jammie Dodgers again, I saw. ‘Have you been buying things at auction, or has someone sent you a present?’
‘Neither. Nor do I get the feeling that this contains anything good.’ He lifted the lid, took a brief look inside, and then slammed it down again as though something evil might escape.
He looked rather pale. ‘As I thought!’
‘What’s the matter, Grumps? Is it nasty?’
‘A warning – unwelcome, if not entirely unexpected. Mann-Drake has evidently arrived in the village, for Zillah found this on the doorstep addressed to me early this morning.’ He looked up at me seriously. ‘Until I have taken steps to protect us all, should he contrive to introduce himself to you, have nothing to do with him. Certainly do not invite him across your threshold – and warn Jake. I will speak to Zillah myself.’
‘He might not tell me his name,’ I pointed out, starting to feel as if I had suddenly stepped straight into the world of one of Grumps’ novels and wondering if he himself could tell the difference between reality and imagination. ‘What does he look like?’
‘Perfectly ordinary and harmless, though he has a voice that could charm the birds off the trees. In recent pictures from the internet he looks not much different from the last time I saw him, though he was dressed up in some ridiculous outfit, like a conjuror.’
‘Yes, Jake showed me those – eerily lit from below, and with a sort of cowl shadowing his face!’ I agreed, thinking that Grumps himself always seemed entirely unaware of his own eccentricities of dress, though of course he never looked ridiculous, just odd.
He gestured to the box. ‘He would have used the powerful conjunction of the ley lines at the Old Smithy for dark purposes, and this shows me the depth of enmity he feels towards me, because I managed to purchase the Old Smithy while he was incapacitated with severe appendicitis. I found it disappointing that it was not fatal…’
‘Grumps!’ I exclaimed, staring at him. ‘You didn’t have anything to do with his illness, did you?’ Then I realised what I had just said and added, ‘No, of course you didn’t! What am I thinking of?’
‘Ill-wishing can lead to the opposite outcome to that desired, or rebound upon one’s head; though it seems to me that to wish something bad upon another person, when your heart is pure and unselfish in its intentions, should not cause such an unfortunate result,’ he said ambiguously. ‘It is a very grey area.’
‘Right…’ I said. Not that I agreed, it was just that I knew how pointless it would be to get into an argument with him on the subject.
‘We must protect ourselves while I consider my strategy, my dear Chloe. Florrie Snowball can help me there, for luckily her one great skill is the very thing we need now.’
‘You mean Mrs Snowball from the Falling Star?’
He nodded, so it looks as though I was right in suspecting her of being another of his coven, along with the Frinton sisters. I wondered if there were any more in Sticklepond, whom I didn’t yet know about.
‘Do you know how the Falling Star got its name, Chloe?’
‘Yes, of course. The rock in the middle of the courtyard is supposed to be a meteorite. It’s got a brass plaque on it that says so, and that it mustn’t be moved because that would be unlucky. But it can’t have actually fallen there, because then the pub would be sitting in a huge crater, wouldn’t it?’
‘The sign means that it must never be moved from where it came to rest,’ he said, which was another of the kind of statements he was prone to make that could be interpreted in more ways than one. Really, sometimes his conversation was enough to make you feel dizzy.
‘It’s really inconvenient where it is now, because it’s right in the middle of the courtyard and cars are always getting scraped against it. I expect stagecoaches did too.’
‘It’s on one of the ley lines, the last landmark of significance before the conjunction here at the Smithy – and there may be three, for I am currently researching the possibility of an even more ancient one.’
‘Oh, right. How exciting for you, Grumps!’ I said, though I was still puzzling over where Mrs Snowball’s speciality came in. Unless he’d heard about the coffee machine, of course, and thought large amounts of caffeine might sharpen our wits?
‘If you could leave me now, Chloe – I must burn this,’ he indicated the box, ‘and then perform one or two rites to negate its power. You might put some more wood on the fire before you go.’
‘OK,’ I agreed, because although I was naturally curious about what was in the box, I wasn’t curious enough to actually want to see it.
Anyway, this whole enmity thing between Grumps and Mr Mann-Drake was really just two old men playing an advanced real-life game of Dungeons and Dragons, wasn’t it? Or that’s what the logical part of my mind said, anyway!
On the night of the new vicar’s welcome party I was at home in the sitting room, cutting the thin, almost transparent printed sheets of Wishes into small strips and feeling like Billy No-mates, even though it didn’t sound like the most exciting event ever. Jake was at Kat’s place (doing college work, allegedly) and the telly was absolute rubbi
sh.
In the end, I put the Bride and Prejudice DVD on for the hundredth time just for the bright colours, cheery music and Bollywood dancing. I know all the words to the songs, so I could sing along while I was working.
I’d expected Poppy to ring me by mid-evening, but when she didn’t I assumed either the party was going on much later than she’d expected, or the new vicar had been a bit of a damp squib in the ex-pop star department.
I suspected the latter. But since we were meeting up at the Falling Star after dinner on Monday night anyway, I supposed she and Felix would regale me with all the details then.
Next morning I woke even earlier than usual and decided to walk up to the Spar to get a newspaper and stretch my legs, before attempting to prise Jake out of bed in time for college, though actually he wasn’t quite so bad now he picked Kat up on the way.
It was unlikely that there would be many people around at that hour, so I didn’t bother with makeup and just put a jacket on over my working outfit of jeans and a T-shirt, with a blue and white spotty cardigan for warmth, all lightly smeared and fragranced with chocolate – glamour personified. I was closing the door before I remembered I hadn’t even brushed my hair, but I didn’t bother going back.
The air was cold and damp and the sky was paling into a reluctant and jaundiced dawn. There was no one about in Angel Lane, though I could hear the steady pestle-and-mortar sound of Mrs Snowball donkey-stoning the flags in front of the Falling Star.
I looked back at her over my shoulder as I turned the corner into the High Street and she grinned and waved a pink, rubber-gloved hand at me. I returned the wave while walking backwards, thinking that it would be a miracle if I had that much energy when I was the wrong side of ninety, not to mention the flexibility to be able to get down onto a kneeling mat and back up again. She must be one of the livelier members of Grumps’ coven…
Mrs Snowball’s smile suddenly vanished and she pointed behind me, gesticulating wildly. I whipped round, afraid I was about to collide with a lamp-post, but I wasn’t – the threat was much, much worse. For there, almost upon me, was a tall, dark figure from my past, the open wings of his long black leather coat flying back with each stride, so that he seemed to swoop down on me like a huge bird of prey.
By his side trotted a small, jaunty white dog, so incongruous that it made me desperately hope that this was all just a really bad dream – until I realised that if it was, then the frantic thumping of my heart would have woken me up by now. There was a loud rushing noise in my ears that sounded like my guardian angel, either arriving or departing – and I sincerely hoped it was the former, because I needed her.
He came to a jarring halt way too close for comfort and stared incredulously down at me as though I were the ghost of some half-remembered and not entirely delightful past.
‘Chloe?’
For a second or two I was caught and drowning in those startled, turquoise eyes, in which swirled a hard-to-decipher mixture of emotions among which, bewilderingly, anger seemed to dominate. Then the light in them died and he took a step backwards, breaking the spell.
‘It is you,’ he said coolly. ‘I thought I’d conjured you up from thin air.’
Released, both my wits and the power of speech returned to me with a rush and I didn’t need the white clerical collar around his throat, or even the silver crosses that dangled from the rings in his ears, glinting among the long, black curls, to tell me what he was doing here, however unlikely it seemed.
‘Yes, it’s me – but I’m not the Chloe Lyon you once knew, Raffy Sinclair!’ I said and then added, with a powerful uprush of bitterness and loathing, ‘And of all the parishes in all the country, why did you have to pick this one?’
‘I didn’t – it was chosen for me,’ he said, and those oh-so-familiar winged black eyebrows twitched together in a puzzled frown. By now he was probably wondering why I hadn’t thrown myself at him with cries of joy, as I’m sure any of his other ex-girlfriends would have done. ‘I had no idea you would be here, but I can’t see why you are upset about it when I—’
But I didn’t even wait for him to finish his sentence, instead turning to flee back round the corner into the chocolate-scented sanctuary of my cottage, where I leaned against the door, panting, as though he might attempt to burst in at any moment.
Jake, looking mildly surprised, was standing in the doorway between the sitting room and my workshop, a half-eaten piece of toast in one hand. ‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing – I just ran into the new vicar, that’s all!’ I said slightly hysterically, my voice wobbling. ‘It was a bit of a surprise.’ And that was the understatement of the year.
‘Why, is it someone famous after all?’ He went to peer out of the shop window. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d have gone all weak-kneed and groupie over—’ He abruptly broke off, then exclaimed, like an awed twelve-year old, ‘Oh, wow, is that him in the long black coat?’
‘He’s still there?’
‘Well, he was standing looking at the house, but now he’s walking past. He looks familiar.’
‘It’s Raffy Sinclair from Mortal Ruin – the band that did the “Darker Past Midnight” song you had on your phone.’
‘Raffy Sinclair? He’s the new vicar? Cool!’
‘No, it isn’t cool and he’s the last man in the world I would have expected to get ordained, let alone turn up here,’ I snapped, and he gave me a puzzled look.
‘I suppose it is weird. I mean, he and his band were pretty wild, in their time, weren’t they? But I don’t suppose it’s going to affect us in any way, so what are you getting your knickers in a twist about?’
‘I am not getting my knickers in a twist!’ I yelled, then managing with a huge effort to pull myself together, added more calmly, ‘But of course, you’re right, it won’t affect us.’
‘I’d like to know where he got that coat from,’ Jake said enviously, then inelegantly stuffed the rest of the slice of toast into his mouth at once. He looked like a Goth hamster.
Now I was starting to recover my equilibrium and return to surrogate-mother mode, I was amazed that he’d got up without being told a second time and also made himself something other than his usual breakfast. But then, I suppose a constant diet of Pop-Tarts palls after a while, as even Raffy Sinclair seemed to have found out.
‘I’ve got to go. Kat wants to be in college early this morning,’ Jake said, picking up his bag and coat. That explained everything.
‘Drive carefully, won’t you?’ I said, fussing as usual as I stood on the doorstep watching him open the Saab door, which he’d left parked by the kerb the previous night.
‘Get a life, Mum!’ he called out in his usual cheeky way and then roared off as though he’d made a pit stop in a Ferrari.
I was just thinking that fussing over Jake was stupid, since it had completely the opposite effect to the one intended, when a movement in the shadows of the gateway almost opposite caught my eye: Raffy was standing there, the little dog wrapped inside his coat, but now he turned and walked off without a backward glance.
If he’d been waiting to see if I would come out again, so he could speak to me, then he’d thought better of it.
Just as well: we might have had a lot to say to each other once upon a time, but now it was all way too late.
Chapter Seventeen
Written on the Cards
‘Why on earth didn’t you call me last night and warn me who the new vicar was, Poppy?’ I demanded, when I finally got someone to answer the telephone up at Stirrups. As usual, her mobile had either gone flat, been trodden on by a horse, or not been switched on at all.
‘Sorry, Chloe. I was going to, as soon as I had a minute, only I’ve been up half the night.’ I could hear her stifling a yawn. ‘When I got home after the party I could hear one of the ponies banging about in his stall with colic, so I had to get the vet out. Mum wanted me to lie in this morning, but I couldn’t leave her to do all the work alone.’
‘
But, Poppy, the new vicar is Raffy Sinclair.’
‘Yes, isn’t it exciting?’ she agreed enthusiastically. ‘Though actually, I didn’t think you were a huge fan of his, because you’ve never mentioned him and—’
‘Poppy,’ I interrupted, ‘I came face to face with him in the High Street less than an hour ago and it was such a huge shock that my heart is still racing.’
‘Oh, I know and I don’t blame you, because he’s terribly handsome, isn’t he? His eyes are almost turquoise, like the sea in that Jamaican holiday brochure you got when your mum went missing – quite stunning! And he’s really, really nice when you talk to him too, so even if all those stories about him and the rest of his band are true, I’m sure he’s put all that behind him now that he’s found God.’
‘Poppy, it wasn’t just a shock, it was a nightmare! Raffy Sinclair—’ I began, but she had the bit between her teeth now and was galloping off.
‘I expect you felt as stunned as we all did when he walked into the room last night. But I’m sure we’ll all soon get used to seeing him around the parish. We’ll have to, won’t we, since he’s the vicar?’ She giggled. ‘It’s going to be such fun!’
‘Poppy, stop gabbling for a minute and listen! Raffy Sinclair is the man I met at university – you remember, the boyfriend who went off and left me when his band was offered a recording contract, and didn’t come back? The one I never, ever, heard from again – unless you count reading about his debauched exploits in the newspapers.’
There was a gasp. ‘That was Raffy Sinclair? I had no idea! If only you’d told me his name instead of clamming up about it, I would have warned you and – oh, Chloe, he seemed so nice too!’ she exclaimed, distressed.
But of course Poppy had been away at the crucial time and when she eventually returned I’d lost any desire to share more than the barest details, even with my oldest friend. Only Zillah knew the full extent of what I went through then and I hadn’t told even her the name of the man who’d broken my heart.
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