TRISHA ASHLEY
Wish Upon A Star

This book is dedicated to all my wonderful readers – my stars to steer by.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue: 2001, The Return of the Native

Chapter 1: A Star is Born

Chapter 2: The Night Watch

Chapter 3: Lardy Cake

Chapter 4: Christmas Pudding

Chapter 5: Falling Star

Chapter 6: Hasty Pudding

Jago

Chapter 7: The Cult of Perfection

Chapter 8: The Happy Macaroon

Jago

Chapter 9: The Blue Dog

Jago

Chapter 10: Sweet Perfection

Aimee

Chapter 11: Flaky

Chapter 12: Fruitful

Jago

Chapter 13: Sad Cake

Chapter 14: Stella’s Stars

Chapter 15: What the Dickens?

Jago

Chapter 16: Puffball

Chapter 17: Honeyed

Jago

Chapter 18: Pinker’s End

Chapter 19: Gone, but Not Forgotten

Chapter 20: The Proof of the Pudding

Jago

Chapter 21: Is There Honey Still for Tea?

Jago

Chapter 22: Princess Possibilities

Chapter 23: Mincemeat Mess

Jago

Chapter 24: Tart

Aimee

Chapter 25: Horse Feathers

Chapter 26: Jumbled

Aimee

Chapter 27: Nearer, My God, to Thee

Chapter 28: Taking Stock

Chapter 29: Nesting

Chapter 30: Plagued

Chapter 31: Cooking Up a Storm

Chapter 32: A Random Lot

Chapter 33: Up the Pole

Aimee

Chapter 34: Babes in the Wood

Chapter 35: Fêted

Aimee

Chapter 36: Surprise Package

Chapter 37: Nuts

Chapter 38: On the Edge

Jago

Chapter 39: To Infinity and Beyond

Jago

Chapter 40: Flying Pigs

Jago

Chapter 41: Boston Beans

Jago

Chapter 42: Piece of Cake

Chapter 43: Celestial Bliss

Recipes, Wish Upon a Star, Trisha Ashley

Acknowledgements

Read on for an exclusive extract of Trisha’s next novel Every Woman for Herself

About the Author

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue: 2001, The Return of the Native

It was early evening in the village of Sticklepond and the bar of the Falling Star was almost empty, apart from a couple of locals who’d dropped in on their way home from work, and the shoe salesman in the corner who had booked a room for the night and was now studying racing form in the paper as if his life depended on it.

As Florrie Snowball slapped a hot, limp, microwaved sausage roll and a pint of Middlemoss Brown Ale in front of Pete Ormerod, who farmed up by the edge of the Winter’s End estate, she said, ‘I hear there’s an Almond moved back into the village.’

‘That’s right,’ he agreed, poking the middle of the sausage roll with the end of a gnarled finger as if unsure what might pop out. ‘News gets around fast.’

‘Someone saw her – there’s no mistaking an Almond, and anyway, we’ve seen Martha come and go over the years, right up till her mother died, haven’t we? Not that she didn’t keep herself to herself, just like her parents did.’

‘They had cause enough, didn’t they?’

‘I’m not one to think the sins of the fathers should be visited on the children, poor innocent mites, and only us old ones remember the whole story now,’ Florrie snapped. ‘And anyway, Martha’s parents were no more than cousins, so it wasn’t really anything to do with them.’

‘They still felt the shame, though,’ Pete Ormerod said heavily, ‘and went off to Australia with the rest of the family, even if they were back within the year.’

‘Well, you did all right out of it, didn’t you?’ she pointed out tartly. ‘Buying Badger’s Bolt farm gave you twice as much land and they were in such a hurry to get away, I bet you paid less than it was worth.’

‘It was enough to buy them a sheep holding in Australia and that’s what they wanted – though the sheep were what Jacob couldn’t abide. But there was never a better cattle man than Jacob Almond and I was more than glad to give him his old job and cottage back.’

‘I always thought the whole clan of them upping sticks and emigrating was a bit of an over-reaction myself,’ Florrie said. ‘Came of them being Strange Baptists from that chapel that was over in Ormskirk, I expect. The young ones these days’d think nothing of what happened – they see worse on the soaps every night. So now Martha’s back living in the very same cottage she grew up in, it’s surely time to forgive and forget.’

‘Not exactly the same cottage,’ Pete said through a mouthful of sausage roll, ‘the last people who had it built a big garden room at the back with a bedroom over it and tarted the place up no end.’

‘Well, you should know, you were the one who sold it off to them in the first place. And it’s just as well it’s been done up, because it was no more than a hovel before, and after being married to that London doctor Martha must be used to something different – and come to think of it, she’s not an Almond now, she’s Martha Weston.’

‘She’ll always be an Almond as far as some of us are concerned, there’s no getting away from it,’ Pete said, shaking his head, and seeing he was set in that conviction she said no more, though she did severely admonish him for having the bad manners to talk with his mouth full, before leaving him to the rest of his sausage roll and pint.

It had been sheer serendipity that the house where she was born should have come up for sale just as Martha Weston had started her search for a new home. Now, unpacking books in the almost unrecognisable cottage, she neither knew nor cared whether the locals were talking about her or not – she was just glad to be back where she felt she belonged.

Although she didn’t know all the ins and outs of it, Martha was well aware that one of her relatives had somehow blotted his copybook and been expunged from the family records in the dim and distant past (‘Never mention Uncle Esau to your father,’ her mother had always said), an event that had precipitated the entire Almond clan taking flight like a flock of startled birds.

She barely remembered Australia, except that it had been hot and smelled of sheep, but her parents had been even more insular on their return and she became a solitary child, happy in her own company, who could often be seen sketching in the countryside.

She’d gone to grammar school in Merchester and then, after being taken up and encouraged by Ottie Winter from the big house (who was even then getting a name for her sculptures), went off to art school in London.

Marrying a doctor and staying there hadn’t been any part of her plans, but love plays tricks on us all. Still, as soon as his death released her, she had flown like a homing pigeon back to the village where she was born.

She belonged in Sticklepond, but since both nature and nurture had made her solitary she often walked in the gloom of the evening when few were about and did most of her shopping in the nearest town instead of the village.

But strangely and without her being aware of doing it, whenever her way took her past the war memorial on the green, she would avert her eyes and quicken her step, just as her mother had always done.

Chapter 1: A Star is Born

While the consultant was explaining the complexities of my baby’s heart condition to me in a hushed, confidential tone, I stared fixedly at his yellow and red-spotted bow tie, half expecting it suddenly to spin round like a joke one: that’s how spaced-out with fear, anaesthetic and shock I was after my emergency Caesarean.

I don’t know why he bothered to lower his voice anyway, since I’d been shunted off into a room of my own … or maybe that should be a store cupboard of my own, because it was a tiny slice of space with one high window and a wall lined with boxes of equipment. They were probably as surplus to requirements as I seemed to be, now that my baby was sustained by the resources of the intensive care baby unit instead of my own.

‘Can I see her?’ I interrupted.

Ma, whose ample frame was squeezed into a tubular metal chair on the other side of the bed, with her elbow resting on a pile of cardboard cartons, said, ‘She can’t come up here, Cally, when she’s in an incubator attached to all those bleeping things, and you certainly aren’t up to going down there yet. But she’s perfect – hands like tiny pale pink starfish.’

‘You said she was so blue she looked like a Smurf,’ I said accusingly, tears welling.

‘I thought you were still asleep when I was talking to that nurse, and anyway, it was just a glance in passing right after she was born. She looks pink now.’

‘She was a little blue at first, but now she’s stabilised and a relatively healthy colour,’ the consultant said soothingly. ‘You will be taken down in a wheelchair to see her as soon as you are recovered enough.’

‘She is going to be all right, isn’t she?’ I pleaded. ‘Only there was an angel hanging around when I woke up and I thought it might have come for her.’

‘That was a nun,’ Ma said. ‘She had a white habit on and flapped past the trolley when you were being wheeled out of theatre. Thought she looked more like an albatross, myself.’

‘Why would a nun be on a maternity ward?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know, but it’s a damned sight more likely than an angel.’

I focused on the consultant again and he looked back at me and frowned. ‘Your baby’s heart problems should really have been picked up on a scan …’ He paused and then added with false brightness, ‘Still, there is one good thing.’

‘There is?’ Ma asked incredulously.

‘Yes, the majority of female babies with similar malformations also have Turner’s syndrome, which can lead to other side effects, but your baby doesn’t.’

‘Thank heaven for small mercies, then,’ my mother said drily, without removing the jade cigarette holder that was clenched between her teeth. Having tired of repeating to hospital staff that she’d no intention of lighting up inside the premises, she’d removed the pink Sobranie from it and placed it carefully in a silver case in her vast red Radley handbag. The consultant eyed the empty holder in much the same way I’d been looking at his bow tie, and then his gaze moved to the colourful splashes of oil paint on the legs of her black slacks and across her tunic where her bosom tended to rest on her palette while she painted. She looked like a walking embodiment of Jackson Pollock’s Dark Period – if he’d had one.

Still, it was a measure of her love that she’d rushed down on the first train once my friend Celia had called her, despite her oft-repeated statement that she never wanted to set foot in London again.

‘Never mind Pollock: this is my dark period,’ I muttered.

‘I think our Cally’s a bit delirious,’ she said, laying one small, cool, plump hand on my forehead. ‘Though she often talks daft.’

‘I’m not – and I understand about Stella needing an operation right away. Will she be all right afterwards?’

‘She certainly won’t survive if we don’t operate,’ the consultant said evasively, still in that low, confidential voice. ‘She’s not quite full term and of course there are always risks involved in operating on such small babies. But you do understand that her long-term outlook is at present obscure, don’t you? She will definitely need more treatment later, possibly including further operations.’

‘There seems no option but to agree to this operation,’ Ma said, shifting the jade holder to one side of her mouth. ‘It will give her a fighting chance, at least.’

He nodded, though he didn’t look as if he’d have placed any money on it.

But I clung to that idea, for of course the advances of modern medical science would ensure that my baby would make a full recovery and live a normal life. She’d be one of the lucky ones: my Stella, my little star.

Having been fathoms deep in a bottomless ocean of anaesthesia when Stella came into the world, I worried that I might find it difficult to bond with her. But the moment I set eyes on my baby I was consumed by a blinding flash of such instant besottedness that I could spend an hour or more just marvelling over the perfect convolutions of her tiny ears, or the minute crescents of her fingernails, like those fragile pale pink shells I used to pick up on Southport beach.

Celia, the friend who had so luckily been staying with me when I was rushed into hospital, was equally enthralled and enchanted, but Ma, who is not the type to dote on babies, only said the poor mite looked like a skinned rabbit. Then, this obviously having triggered a thought train in her head, she went out and bought Stella a white plush rabbit that was bigger than she was.

When we got the hospital chaplain to christen Stella, Ma suggested we have the rabbit as a godparent, after Celia, though I think she was joking … But there it was in the photographs, along with the special cake iced with the baby’s name that I’d sent Celia out to buy. If all had gone to plan, of course, I would have made it myself at a later date. For me, important occasions must always be accompanied by cake, since it earned me a living as a cookery writer, as well as being my comfort food of choice.

‘Go to Gilligan’s Celebration Cakes off Marylebone High,’ I told her. ‘If it has to be shop-bought, they’re the best and they’ll ice her name on it while you wait.’

‘Oh, yes, I remember you going there to research an article on traditional wedding cakes for Good Housekeeping and bringing me a chunk of fruitcake back,’ Celia agreed. ‘And you said one of the staff was dead sexy and looked just like Johnny Depp.’

‘Did I? Oh, yes, but Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow,’ I said, a sudden flash of recollection bringing up the undeniably attractive image of a thin, dark, mobile face with high cheekbones and a pair of strangely luminous light brown eyes meeting mine across a work table, while the heady scent of dried fruit and spices mingled with the sweet smell of sugar.

‘That seems like another life,’ I sighed. ‘It happened to a different person.’

Chapter 2: The Night Watch

During the long night watches after Stella’s first operation, as the lights flashed on the machinery and the hospital hummed faintly along to the tired buzzing in my head, there were way too many hours in which to think.

Her arrival had instantly turned my life upside down, so that everything I’d once thought important had run right to the bottom of my hourglass of priorities. My hard-fought-for career as a cookery writer, for instance, which paid the mortgage on the shoebox-sized basement flat within walking distance of Primrose Hill, where I lived with my little white dog, Toto.

Toto was a Battersea Dogs and Cats Home stray and looked like a cross between a whippet and a Skye terrier, if you can imagine that: all bristly white coat, with a terrier head but slender body and long legs. Ma and Celia were both staying on at my flat and looking after him, as well as taking it in turns to come into the hospital, though Ma spent most of her visits drawing a series of starfish-like little hands and winged creatures that appeared to be some kind of nun/angel/albatross hybrid. Her paintings are already very Chagall-with-knobs-on, so I could barely imagine the turn they would take when she got back home again.

Toto was an excellent judge of character and although he adored Celia and Ma, he’d never taken to my ex-fiancé, Adam, a tall and charismatic marine biologist who’d proposed to me after a whirlwind romance. In retrospect, I only wished I’d trusted my dog’s instincts more than my own.

Adam had swept me off my feet and we’d planned to get married in the lovely ancient church of All Angels in the village of Sticklepond, where Ma now lived … the minute he got back from the eighteen-month contract in Antarctica that he’d already signed up for, that was.

I’d suggested he cancel it, but he’d explained that he’d always dreamed of going there and needed to get it out of his system before he settled down.

‘It’ll be cutting it fine for starting a family by then, though,’ I’d said. ‘I don’t want to leave it too late, or it might not happen at all.’

‘Mmm,’ he’d agreed, with much less enthusiasm than he’d shown while talking about the Antarctic; but by then I’d discovered his acute phobia about hospitals and illness of any kind, and put it down as some general squeamishness to do with that.

Still, I’d been convinced he’d be bored out of his skull stuck in the Antarctic for eighteen months with a lot of other boffins, examining the local frozen seafood. But no, it turned out that there was a whole community there, with everyone from cooks to dentists laid on, which I supposed made sense when most of the year you couldn’t fly in or out.

They made their own entertainments too, and going by the pictures on Facebook of Adam messing about on Ski-Doos and in the snow with his new friends, he’d found a few ways to occupy his spare time.

Of course, we’d constantly emailed and chatted via Facebook, and sometimes he could call me, though not the other way round. But as time passed he seemed to become less and less interested in anything outside the base … I suppose that’s a bit like hospital, where your real world shrinks to your immediate surroundings and everything else seems remote and unimportant.

I expected that would change once he came home, even if I did feel nervous about our reunion. And there was a sticky moment at the airport, when he looked like an unshaven stranger as he came through into the arrivals hall. But when he spotted me and smiled there was that instant feeling of connection, just like the first time we’d met, and I ran straight into his arms. He’d kissed me, then said, looking genuinely startled, that he’d forgotten how pretty I was!

We went back to my flat and that evening everything was all right between us – in fact, it was more than all right. He was tired and abstracted, not helped by a call from a colleague, though what could be that urgent about Antarctic pond life I couldn’t imagine at the time. His end of the conversation was a bit terse.

I should have smelled a rat right then, because next morning it was like Jekyll and Hyde revisited: right after breakfast he suddenly announced he’d already signed up for another eighteen months in Antarctica and, moreover, he’d met someone else up there and she was going back in April, too.

Of course I was devastated and furious. I told him to get out of my flat and my life and he’d packed up his stuff and left within the hour, with my parting shot that I hoped they both fell down an Antarctic crevasse on their next tour of duty ringing in his ears.

Toto, gleefully grasping that the hated interloper was out of favour, managed to sink his teeth into Adam’s ankle at the last minute, which would give him something to remember us by till all the little puncture wounds healed up again.

It was only much later that I realised that Adam had left me a much longer-lasting and life-changing memento.

Once Stella was out of immediate danger, Celia needed to get back to her husband, four rescue greyhounds and six cats in Southport, who were all pining for her.

I would also pine for her, though she’d promised to return when Stella was finally allowed home.

Ma was staying on for a few more days, though I was sure she was dying to head straight back up north, too. In fact, I was surprised she’d stayed as long as she had.

When I was growing up in Hampstead I’d thought she’d seemed happy enough, though she was always fairly reclusive and preoccupied with her work, of course, but she sold up and moved back with alacrity to the Lancashire village where she was born after Dad died.

‘Ma’ is not some cute contraction of ‘Mum’, but a relic of her early attempts to get me to call her by her Christian name, Martha. She was never much like any of my school friends’ mothers, delegating most of her maternal responsibilities to a series of foreign au pairs, but I’d never doubted that in her way she loved me. And Anna, the final and most beloved of the au pairs, a tall, blonde, Swedish domestic goddess, had instilled my love of cooking and baking, so it worked out brilliantly for me.

I emailed Anna the news about Stella and received a warm, reassuring reply straight away: she’d always had the power to make me feel comforted, an effect that has also rubbed off onto the cakes she taught me to make.

I decided that for Stella’s first birthday I would make her a prinsesstårta, that most splendid of Swedish celebration cakes.

‘You are going to tell Adam about Stella at some point soon, aren’t you?’ Celia asked, just before she finally set off home.

‘No! Why should I, after he accused me of getting pregnant on purpose when I told him she was on the way and then suggested I get an abortion?’

‘I know he didn’t want the baby, but now she’s arrived he might feel differently,’ she suggested. Having an incredibly generous heart she was always looking for the best in everyone, even my absent ex-fiancé, Adam Scott – or ‘Scott of the Antarctic’, as Ma generally referred to him.

‘I don’t think so. Anyway, he’s changed his email address and I couldn’t phone him in Antarctica even if I wanted to, which I don’t.’

‘Facebook?’

‘I’ve blocked him.’

‘I still think he ought to know,’ she said stubbornly. ‘He has a responsibility to support you, too.’

‘I don’t want his support and I’m sure he still wouldn’t be interested – even less so in a baby with health problems, because he’s got that phobia about illness and hospitals, remember?’

‘Oh, yes, I’d forgotten about that. So perhaps you’re right, but if he hears about the baby from anyone, he may contact you when he comes back to the UK.’

‘I doubt it, and it wouldn’t be till October of next year, when Stella—’

I broke off, swallowing hard, and she said quickly, ‘Stella will be walking and saying her first words by then, you’ll see. The operation went well, didn’t it?’

‘Yes, but they made it plain they couldn’t fix everything in one go and would have to wait and see how her condition developed. She seems to be making progress.’

‘The body has great powers of self-healing,’ Celia said firmly.

I clung to that thought after she’d gone back to Southport: once I finally got her home, Stella and I would take the future one step at a time, savouring each moment like a special gift.

Chapter 3: Lardy Cake

Long before Stella’s due date I’d stockpiled articles for my two regular publication slots: the ‘Tea & Cake’ page in Sweet Home magazine, which are quick, easy recipes, and my Sunday newspaper supplement one, ‘The Cake Diaries’, which have more complicated recipes along with some quirky background history, or stories about where I first came across a particular cake, thrown into the mix.

I usually work months in advance for magazines anyway, filing my Christmas articles in summer and my summer articles in winter, but this time I had almost a year’s worth in reserve. This foresight proved to be a very good idea, given the distractions and alarms of Stella’s first weeks, because the pieces all came out just as if nothing was going on in my life but baking and eating cakes.

Of course, I’d missed out on all the extra articles and assignments that would normally have come my way during this time, which usually put a bit of icing on the gingerbread of life. Once Stella was home, I knew I needed to get back into the groove as quickly as possible, even though this wasn’t going to be easy with a brain occupied entirely with worried thoughts wrapped in a thick fuzzy blanket of hope.

I hadn’t even lost any baby-weight, either – in fact, due to lack of activity and comfort eating, I’d put more on – so when I inadvertently caught sight of my stolid, stodgy pale nakedness in the bedroom mirror soon after Stella finally came home, I thought I looked just like a lardy cake.

Oh, lardy me!

I sat down on the bed and wept, and once I’d started I found I couldn’t stop for ages, which I expect was all the hormones still whizzing about in my system. But at least it was cathartic. It finally shook me out of the zombie trance and set me back onto the researching, experimental baking and writing track again, even if I did tend to shoehorn most of it into the times when Stella was asleep.

I’d kept on the expensive dog walker I’d had to hire for poor Toto while I was spending so much time at the hospital, and she took him out in the mornings. Eventually, when Stella was well enough, the three of us would head for Primrose Hill every afternoon for a bit of fresh air. (It’s as about as fresh at the top of the hill as you will find in London.) Toto, thank goodness, had taken to the baby immediately and didn’t seem in the least jealous, so slowly we all settled into the new regime.

And – waste not, want not – at least the lardy cake revelation inspired a new ‘Cake Diaries’ recipe.

Lardy Cake is a wonderfully stodgy, bready cake that originates from Wiltshire. It’s made with yeast and dried fruit – plus, of course, lots of lard, but I thought I would try to devise a slightly different version, replacing some of the lard with butter and adding a little spice …

Stella’s first three years were as up and down as a ride on the Big Dipper at Southport fun-fair, and while I struggled to persuade my changeling fairy child to eat and put on weight, I went from a curvy size twelve/fourteen to a Rubensesque sixteen/eighteen. This is what happens when your comfort food of choice is cake, and the nature of your work means the oven wafts the sweet smell of temptation at you every day.

The proof of the pudding was in the eating and I was that pudding.

I said so to Celia, who had come down to stay with me so she could do some early Christmas shopping, pop into the Sweet Home office (she did their ‘Crafty Celia Pull Out and Make’ section – if you could stick it, knit it, or stuff it, Celia was your woman) and, most crucially, support me through the next meeting with Stella’s hospital consultant, when he would outline her care plan for the next year.

‘The extra weight suits you, though,’ Celia assured me, ‘because you’re quite tall and still in perfect proportion, while I’ve never had a waist to start with and now gravity’s pulled me into the shape of a squishy pear. Just as well that Will likes pears,’ she added, grinning.

That was a bit consoling, but I’d have to accept that I was now never going to be an airy confection of spun sugar, only a solid Madeira sponge. My smart clothes had been packed away for so long I feared the creases were permanent and I was living in jeans, trainers and sloppy T-shirts. I’d also given up any attempt to straighten my curly fair hair, or cover the freckles across the bridge of my nose with makeup. In fact, I’d entirely resigned myself to looking wholesome, it just didn’t feel that important any more … though I might still grind cake in the face of the next person to remark brightly that I looked like a young Hayley Mills, because I’d Googled her films and no, I didn’t.

What would I have done without Celia? Other friends had slipped away since I had Stella, but she had remained constant since the day I first moved out of the family home and we shared both a flat and the struggle to make a living. She met her husband, Will, when Sweet Home commissioned an article about his driftwood sculptures and we happened to be in the offices when he came in to ask about getting a regular column. Love at first sight. Will is so nice, he almost deserves her.

‘What does Stella want for Christmas – or need I ask?’ she said now. ‘More of those Sylvanian Families?’

‘Yes. I’m afraid the addiction might be permanent, and it’s all my fault,’ I said ruefully. I’d been too old really for the little fuzzy animal toys when they first came out, but I’d loved them anyway and, over the years, added a few more to my collection. Now Stella, at three, had taken them over and I’d bought her even more.

‘I know she’s scarily bright, but isn’t she a bit young for them?’

‘Perhaps, but she’s never put things in her mouth, apart from her thumb, and she plays quietly with them for hours. She wants a house for the mouse family to live in next, but there are a few other things that I know she’d like. There’s a Father Christmas mouse too, with a little tree and parcels – that looked fun.’

‘You can show me on the internet, and I’ll order something. You’re coming up to Sticklepond to stay with Martha for Christmas, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, and bringing all the ingredients for festive fun with us, as usual, because Ma wouldn’t bother otherwise. I do love going up there and I know that Ma, for all her reclusive ways, loves Stella.’

‘We all love Stella, she’s bright and delightful – she read her Meg and Mog book to me last night,’ Celia said. ‘And then she said if she knew a witch she would get her to do a spell to make her heart better.’

‘I only wish I knew one. She’s so tiny for nearly three and a half and she gets tired so easily that we still have to take the buggy everywhere. She doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive and any slight infection is dangerous …’ I sighed. ‘Well, we’ll see what the treatment plan they’ve drawn up for her at the hospital for next year is.’

‘They did say she might need another operation, didn’t they? Perhaps it will be the final one, so she can live a normal life,’ Celia said optimistically.

But there didn’t seem to be an ongoing treatment plan – or not one leading in a positive direction. I was shocked when the consultant told me there was nothing more they could do and gave me to understand that Stella’s long-term outlook was poor and she was likely to go slowly downhill as her condition increasingly put a strain on her body, until finally she succumbed to some infection.

‘Of course, we would like her to gain weight so that she has the reserves to fight infections, but then again, as she grows, that will also put a strain on her organs …’ he explained.

‘When I asked him if they couldn’t operate again, he said no, because no one in the UK was doing the kind of complex surgery she needed,’ I reminded Celia later, back in the flat, when Stella had gone for a nap and we were talking it all over. I was still shell-shocked and tearful, but Celia suddenly seized on what I’d just said.

‘So he did! But maybe that means they are doing it in another country, like America? I saw a newspaper article about a child who’d gone to America for life-saving surgery, though it cost thousands and thousands of pounds, so they’d had to do a lot of fundraising to pay for it.’

I stared at her blankly. ‘But – wouldn’t the consultant have mentioned it, if there was anyone else capable of helping Stella?’

‘Not necessarily, I don’t think, if it was another country. Come on, it’s worth a go – Google search.’

And that’s how we found Dr Rufford Beems’ experimental programme over in Boston, and a fresh spring of hope.

We emailed the hospital in Boston straight away and after that things just seemed to snowball, so by the time Stella and I finally set out for Christmas with Ma in Sticklepond, I’d had Stella’s medical information sent over to Boston, a very kind and detailed response from the surgeon, and a reluctant agreement from my consultant that it was currently Stella’s only option, other than settling for palliative care.

‘Dr Beems says it would be best to do the operation before Stella’s fifth birthday, but the sooner the better,’ I told Celia when I called her to give her the latest update. ‘I’ll need as much time as possible to raise the money, though, because it’s going to be phenomenally expensive.’

‘Nothing is too expensive if it can cure her,’ Celia said. ‘We can do it.’

‘The surgeon is going to waive his own fees, since it’s still experimental surgery … and when he says experimental, my heart goes cold,’ I confessed.

‘Yes, but his success rate is already excellent and the alternative isn’t to be thought of,’ she pointed out. ‘It’s the best option. So now we need to work out a fundraising plan over Christmas. I’ll bring Will across and we’ll put our heads together.’

‘I … am doing the right thing?’ I asked her.

‘You’re doing the only possible thing,’ she assured me, but it suddenly felt as if Stella and I were drowning and someone had thrown us a lifebelt: I wasn’t quite sure how I could get my arms through it without letting go of her, but I’d have to give it my best shot.

Chapter 4: Christmas Pudding

I drove Stella up to Sticklepond a few days before Christmas with a boot full of hidden presents, the cake, turkey, mince pies and pudding – in fact, most of the ingredients we’d need for the festive season. Left to her own devices, I’m very sure Ma wouldn’t treat the day any differently from the rest of the year, but she went along with it all.

As usual, I had the emergency numbers for Ormskirk Hospital and Alder Hey (the big children’s hospital in Liverpool) just in case – but I hoped we wouldn’t need them, because I was determined that this was going to be the best Christmas yet.

‘Toto has very sharp elbows,’ Stella said from her child seat in the back, as the dog adjusted himself into a sort of meagre fur lap rug. ‘Did you remember to bring his presents, Mummy?’

‘Yes, they’re in the boot.’

‘Will Father Christmas remember we’re staying with Grandma?’

‘I’m sure he will: he knows everything by magic.’

‘Like God,’ she agreed sagely. ‘Hal says God knows everything.’

Hal is under-gardener at Winter’s End, the historic house just outside Sticklepond, and lives in a cottage on the edge of the estate, across the lane from Ma. A taciturn man with a bold roman nose and a surprising head of soft silvery-grey curls under his flat tweed cap, he’s been moonlighting as Ma’s gardener ever since she moved up there, and they seemed to have become increasingly friendly …

‘I like Hal,’ she added. ‘He makes me sweet milky tea in a special blue cup when he brews up in his shed and last time we came he showed me a dead mole he found in the woods.’

‘That was kind of him,’ I said. Hal had created a cosy den in the old shed next to Ma’s studio in the garden, with a little Primus stove where he brewed up endless enamel pots of sweet tea for them both. Just like Dad, Hal seemed to wander in and out of the studio, or sit reading the paper in the corner, without appearing to bother Ma in the least.

Despite looking so morose he was really a very nice man – and what’s more, he’d slowly brought Ma out of herself a little bit, to the point where, as well as the library, she went with him to the monthly Gardening Club, and the occasional game of darts at the Green Man with the other Winter’s End gardeners.

Ottie Winter occasionally visited her too, because over the years her early patronage and help had turned into friendship. I’d often met her at our house in Hampstead, and Ma had taken me to one or two exhibitions of her sculptures, which are bold and figurative … sort of. You could say the same about Ma’s paintings.

Her only other regular visitor seemed to be Raffy Sinclair, the Sticklepond vicar, despite her not being a churchgoer.

‘Are we nearly there yet? I wish we lived in Sticklepond. It’s much more fun than home,’ Stella said from the back seat.

‘Do you?’ I asked, startled and glancing at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘Wouldn’t you miss Primrose Hill and the zoo?’

‘No,’ she said firmly.

Sometimes it was hard to remember that she was only three and a half going on a hundred … But I was just grateful we’d left the tricky subject of God behind and were not again pursuing the question of where people went when they were dead like we had the previous week, after I’d had to tell her that she wouldn’t be seeing one of her little friends from hospital again …

While I chatted to Stella as we trundled north up the motorway, part of my mind was occupied with how I was to raise the astronomical amount of money it would take to get her to America and to pay for the operation. It seemed near impossible – but how different her life would be if I pulled it off and the operation was a complete success … which it surely must be. If only she stayed well enough, till then …

But if she didn’t, if things took a turn for the worst and the need for the operation became urgent – which, please God, they wouldn’t – then I had a contingency plan to raise the money quickly, one that I’d need Ma’s agreement to. It would be a big ask and even though I’d already declined her generous offer to mortgage the cottage to pay for the operation, I wasn’t quite sure how she’d react to it.

Will had already started the process of setting up a fundraising website, Stella’s Stars, having had experience of doing something similar with his and Celia’s greyhound fostering one. It proved to be quite a complicated affair: I’d never have managed it on my own. He’d promised it would be up and running by the New Year, though.

Turning off the motorway as the short winter’s day grew towards dusk, I clicked on the Bing Crosby White Christmas CD that was Stella’s surprise favourite and resolutely turned my mind to having a merry little Christmas with a bright yuletide and jingle bells all the way.

Ma’s house was a long, low building made of slightly crumbly local sandstone, once a tied cottage on the Almonds’ farm, Badger’s Bolt. From what I’d gleaned, Ma had a fairly solitary childhood there, with parents who didn’t mix much with the local people. But it sounded like the Almonds had always been clannish before they emigrated after the war, so I suppose when Ma’s parents came back, they would feel isolated. Ma didn’t like to talk about the Almonds much, but that could be because, apart from her father, she didn’t really remember them.

I do dimly recall visiting Grandma Almond: a small, plump, silver-haired woman, who only ever seemed to have a real conversation with her hens. The cottage had still belonged to old Mr Ormerod, the farmer who’d bought up the Almonds’ land and buildings, so it was a very different place now from how it was originally. A few years before, he’d sold off the buildings he didn’t need, including this cottage, and the new owners extended upwards and out at the back, giving Ma an upstairs master bedroom with ensuite over the light airy garden room, as well as a garage at the side.

The big barn nearby has been converted into a smart house, but the old Almond farmhouse at the top of the lane was currently uninhabited and for sale, since there had been some trouble with the last owner a year or two back and it had lain empty ever since.

Stella and I had the two small downstairs bedrooms just off the old sitting room and next to the family bathroom, and Toto and Moses, Ma’s cat, fight it out for the rag rug in front of the wood-burning stove in the kitchen.

Ma seemed mildly pleased to see us, but it was just as I thought: she hadn’t remembered to get a tree, or find the decorations, and was even hazy on which day of the week Christmas Day fell. But we quickly settled in and next morning I decided to leave Stella with Ma after breakfast while I went into Ormskirk to do a huge supermarket shop for basics: anything else I needed I intended to buy in the village, which has a good range of shops now.

I would take Toto with me, since he was always happy to go anywhere in the car and it took him and Moses the cat two or three days of wary circling and jostling before they settled down happily together, so time apart was good.

Ma and Stella were going to go up to the studio and, since it was a Sunday, I was sure Hal would also be about to keep an eye on her. Stella, though, saw things differently and promised to look after Grandma while I was out.

‘I’ll tell her off if she puts her paintbrush in her mouth,’ she assured me. ‘And Grandma, you shouldn’t smoke.’

‘I’m down to two Sobranies a day now, so have a heart, love,’ Ma said, guiltily laying down the jade holder she had removed from her mouth for long enough to eat her breakfast and which she’d been about to replace. It seemed to be a comfort thing, a bit like the thumb-sucking Stella still resorted to in times of stress. Today’s Sobranie was the same green as the holder.

Stella made a tut-tutting noise and shook her head, so that all her white-blond curls danced.

‘You leave Grandma alone,’ I told her. ‘I’m sure she doesn’t breathe the smoke in.’

Ma looked even guiltier, and Stella unconvinced, but I left them to it and went to brave the pre-Christmas shops: with only a few days to go a kind of feeding frenzy was taking place in the aisles and a near-fight erupted over the last family-sized deluxe Christmas pudding.

There was no sign of anyone at the cottage when I got back so I put away all the shopping in Ma’s almost empty fridge, freezer and cupboards – though she was big on packets of coffee, Laphroaig whisky, Plymouth gin and frozen microwave dinners – and then went up to the studio, where I found Stella and Ma painting at adjacent easels. Hal was sitting in an old wooden chair reading the Sunday paper, which in her painting Ma had origamied into a newsprint winged creature trying to escape from his hands.

Stella’s painting seemed to be an angel of a more traditional sort. ‘Look, Mummy – this is a dead person’s angel from the graveyard. Me and Grandma went there to draw and there are lots more.’

‘I hope you fastened your coat up, because there’s a cold wind out,’ I said, admiring the picture.

‘They went in the car and she was wrapped up warm. They were only out half an hour or so,’ Hal assured me. ‘They both had a hot cup of tea when they came back, too, and a couple of garibaldi biscuits.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ I said gratefully. It was certainly warm enough in the studio, where an electric stove in the corner radiated fake flames and heat.

I went off to get lunch ready, but Toto jumped onto Hal’s knee, so I left him there. He’d probably be immortalised in oils too, winged or otherwise.

Stella’s health usually seemed better in Sticklepond and, as always on our visits, we soon settled into a pleasant routine. I pushed Stella in her buggy to the village most days, sometimes with Toto when he would deign to come with us, since he always ungratefully attached himself to Ma. We would do a little shopping and feed the ducks on the pond by the village green, or go on a longer walk up towards the Winter’s End estate and back round the right of way used only by locals.

It was all very familiar from previous visits, though it had changed a lot in the last few years since the discovery at Winter’s End of a manuscript purporting to have been written by Shakespeare. The village had flourished and turned into a thriving tourist destination and now there was an almost cosmopolitan hum about the place. Several long-empty shop fronts had suddenly sported new signs and opened their doors for business.

I’d been visiting the village for so long that many of the inhabitants were also familiar and it suddenly occurred to me that Sticklepond now felt more like home than London ever did, what with everyone so friendly when I was out and about with Stella.

Ma might keep to herself, but of course she knew who everyone in the village was, and they knew who she was before she married. And I couldn’t hide who I was even if I wanted to, because just like Ma I have inherited the typical Almond looks: very fair curling hair and slightly wide-apart clear blue eyes, with a tiny gap between my front teeth.

Occasionally some elderly villager would look at me closely and then tell me I was an Almond and, when I told them yes, my mother was Martha Almond before she married, he would nod and walk away; but though I knew that my distant cousin Esau had blotted his copybook, no one ever told me how, and my mild curiosity remained unsatisfied.

Stella still needed a long nap every afternoon, she got tired so easily, but once awake again we had a lovely time preparing for Christmas: sticking together paper-chain garlands, setting up the Nativity crib, decorating a quick chocolate Yule log, and baking star-shaped spiced biscuits, which we threaded with red ribbon and hung on the modest Christmas tree we’d carried home from the Spar in the village, partly wedged down the side of the buggy.

Later, I wrote up the Yule log for my ‘Tea & Cake’ page.

To whip up a quick and easy Yule log, cut out the fiddly task of making your own Swiss roll and instead buy a large one – the brown kind with a white creamy filling looks best. Cover with a thick coat of chocolate butter cream, roughly spread with a knife to give the effect of bark. Decorate with a robin and some holly, or whatever takes your fancy and keep in the fridge until you need it.

While we were back in the Spar buying the hundreds and thousands and little edible silver balls to decorate the trifle with, Stella told the friendly middle-aged shop assistant that we’d just been to visit the angels in the graveyard again (which was unfortunately becoming a habit, though at least it didn’t seem to be a morbid interest). The assistant asked if we’d been into the church to see the Nativity scene, which was apparently well worth viewing.

Stella remembered this later, and badgered Ma into agreeing to go and see it with us next morning. I hoped Stella wouldn’t be disappointed, because I was expecting no more from the Nativity than the usual dustily thatched crib and battered plaster or plastic figures, but they turned out to be the most beautifully carved wooden ones. Stella was enthralled by every tiny detail.

‘The Winter family brought them from Oberammagau before the war. It’s where they have that there Passion Play,’ said a voice behind us, and when I turned round I saw a small, wrinkled, lively-looking woman regarding us with sparrow-bright eyes full of curiosity.

‘This is Florrie Snowball, who has the Falling Star at the other end of the village,’ Ma introduced us. ‘She was at school with your grandfather.’

‘Oh, yes, I’ve seen you about,’ I said, ‘but I didn’t know who you were.’

‘And I’ve seen you – and I’d have recognised you for an Almond, with that hair and those eyes, even if I hadn’t already known you were Martha’s girl.’

‘Yes, everyone says that.’

Her eyes rested on Stella who, ignoring us, was still rapt with enchantment by the Nativity. ‘And your little girl, too – the Almond blood is clear in her veins.’

‘Well, we’re not trying to hide that we’re related to the Almonds,’ Ma said slightly snappishly.

‘And why should you?’ Florrie demanded. ‘I said to that old fool Pete Ormerod that what’s past is past and it’s only us ancient relics that remember what happened. And in any case, it was nowt to do with you, was it?’

Ma looked at her. ‘I suppose you’re right and no one cares much about the old stories now.’

‘You should come to the pub,’ she invited me. ‘We have a coffee machine what makes any kind you fancy, and my son, Clive, will show the little ’un the meteorite.’

‘The meteorite?’ I repeated.

‘That’s how the pub got its name,’ Ma said.

‘What’s a meatyright?’ Stella put in suddenly, having finally torn her gaze away from the Nativity scene.

‘It’s a big rock that fell out of the heavens,’ Florrie explained.

‘God threw a rock at you?’ Stella gasped, impressed. ‘You must have been really naughty.’

Florrie gave a wheezy laugh. ‘Not me, lovey – this was last century … or maybe the one before that. But there it sits in the courtyard now, right in the way, but bad luck to move it.’

‘I’d like to see it,’ breathed Stella, and I had to promise to take her next day.

‘Good. I’ll make you a charm, poppet, too,’ Florrie promised obscurely.

On the way home, I asked Ma what old stories Florrie knew about the Almonds. ‘Is this Granddad’s cousin Esau that you never want to talk about? Did he do something very bad?’

‘Nothing that matters now,’ she said, and wouldn’t be drawn. I’m not sure if she even knew exactly what it was.

‘And what did Florrie mean when she said she was going to make a charm for Stella?’

‘Rumour has it that she’s a witch, one of Gregory Lyon’s coven that has the witchcraft museum opposite the Falling Star.’

‘Really? How do you know?’

She shrugged her plump shoulders. ‘Hal tells me stuff, and anyway, there’s always been a history of witchcraft in the village. Ottie says the Winter family are distantly related to the Nutters, and her sister, Hebe, dabbles in the dark arts, though really I think she’s more of a herbalist.’

‘The Nutters?’ I repeated.

‘A famous witch family, further north. Didn’t you read the information boards at Winter’s End when you visited?’

‘No, mostly we were in the gardens, but maybe I should.’

‘Well, you’ll have to wait till it reopens for the season at Easter, if you can come up then.’

‘That would be lovely,’ I agreed, then ventured tentatively, ‘I … don’t suppose Esau’s disgrace was anything to do with witchcraft …?’

Ma gave a derisory snort. ‘Don’t be daft! Strange Baptists, the lot of them.’

Chapter 5: Falling Star

Stella gave me no rest until I took her down to the Falling Star next morning where Mollie, the barmaid, asked me to sign her copy of the last Sweet Home magazine at the top of my ‘Tea & Cake’ page where, as always in this edition, there was a variation of my Christmas tree biscuits: ‘Crisp ginger and spice biscuits are quick to make and you can hang them on the Christmas tree or have them as a festive treat with coffee …’

Then Clive, who was Florrie’s middle-aged son and the landlord, took us outside and proudly showed off a rather unimpressive grey rock sitting squarely and inconveniently in the middle of the small courtyard that was now a car park.

I took a picture on my phone of Stella poised on top of it, looking a bit like a well-wrapped-up fairy about to take flight, and then we went into the snug out of the icy breeze, where Florrie expertly produced a cup of cappuccino for me from a large, hissing, stainless-steel monster of a machine, and then a hot chocolate for Stella.

I still couldn’t quite believe that she was a witch, but when she put a little leather bracelet on Stella’s wrist and told me to let her wear it night and day, it didn’t seem quite so far-fetched. It was a bit lumpy, which she explained by saying that normally she put her charms in a little pouch, to be hung around the neck.

‘But that’s not safe with childer, so I’ve bound it into the bracelet instead.’

I noticed her use of the old Lancashire word ‘childer’ for children, something I remembered from my grandmother, whose speech patterns had also been peppered with ‘thees’ and ‘thous’, though that might have had something to do with the Strange Baptist religious sect the Almonds used to belong to.

‘Is it magic?’ Stella asked seriously, fingering the leather band and, when Mrs Snowball nodded, she looked pleased.

‘It’ll help get the roses back in your cheeks and a bit of flesh on your bones, so the wind doesn’t blow you away,’ she said.

It seemed kindly meant, so I thanked her, but later Stella threw a typical three-year-old’s tantrum when I took it off before she had her bath, even though I put it right back on again afterwards.

The next afternoon I left Ma minding Stella while I went for a rummage round the Sticklepond shops. Chloe Lyon’s was my first port of call. I bought a box of Chocolate Wishes for Christmas Day, which were a sort of chocolate fortune cookie, and a little milk chocolate angel lolly for Stella’s stocking. Chloe made all the chocolates herself and the smell had lured me in a few times before, so she recognised me. She was the vicar’s wife, too, which was odd, seeing as her grandfather was Gregory Lyon, who ran the next-door witchcraft museum and Ma said was a self-confessed pagan.

While she was putting my purchases in a glazed paper carrier bag, she absently handed me a pack of cards to hold. Then she took them back and laid them out on the counter. ‘These are angel cards. Pretty, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, lovely,’ I agreed, admiring the pictures on the backs.

She smiled, turned some of them face up, then shuffled them back together and lifted down a large chocolate angel from the shelf, which she insisted was a special present just for myself, refusing any payment. It was extremely kind of her because her chocolate is very expensive, so I thanked her and said I would save it for a special treat on Christmas Day.

I popped in and out of the village shops, buying Stella the latest Slipper Monkey children’s book in Cinderella’s Slippers, the wedding shoe shop, since the owner, Tansy Poole, is the author and keeps a rack of them next to the till. I didn’t dare even to glance at the gorgeous shoes, since spending money on myself for something so impractical was totally unthinkable when I had Stella’s fund to think of.

I crossed the road and bought Ma the latest Susan Hill crime novel from Felix Hemmings in the Marked Pages bookshop, and had a nice chat with him about my cookbooks. I hadn’t realised before quite what a literary hotbed the village was, but apparently Ivo Hawksley, Tansy’s husband, writes crime novels, Gregory Lyon at the Witchcraft Museum writes supernatural thrillers and even Seth Greenwood from Winter’s End has had published a gardening tome called The Artful Knot.

When I got back to the cottage and went up to the studio I found that Ottie had visited in my absence. She divided her time between her house in Cornwall and Winter’s End, where she lived in the converted coach house, but of course she came back for Christmas. There was always a huge party up there for all the staff, family and friends, and I knew Ma had been invited a few times, but wouldn’t go.

I was sorry to have missed Ottie (as a little girl, I had attempted to call her Auntie Ottie, but it had been too much of a mouthful), who had always been kind and prone to arrive with unexpected presents.

Stella was fast asleep on the battered old chaise longue, with a fistful of pheasant feathers from the collection she kept in the studio loosely splayed around her, but woke as soon as she heard my voice.

She was still pretty sleepy, though, and after lunch went willingly off for her nap just before Will and Celia arrived for our fundraising session.

Will had put the finishing touches to the Stella’s Stars website and it was about to go online, which was exciting.

‘The fundraising will really get going then,’ Celia said.

‘I only hope you’re right, because it’s such a lot of money to raise quite quickly. I mean, Dr Beems wants to do the operation before she’s five, so the latest date she’d have it would be spring of the year after next … and he did warn me that if her condition suddenly deteriorated, it might have to be much sooner.’

‘We’ll hope it won’t; that’s just the worst-case scenario,’ Celia assured me.

‘I know, but I’ve had some sleepless nights thinking about what I’d do if it came to it and I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way I could raise the money in time would be by selling the flat.’

‘Sell the flat?’ echoed Celia. ‘But you still have a mortgage on it, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but because Dad gave me a good deposit and I bought it just before prices went through the roof, I’d make a huge profit,’ I said optimistically.

‘But then you’d still have to rent somewhere for you and Stella to live,’ Will pointed out, ‘and that’s likely to cost more than your current mortgage payments.’

‘Well, that’s the thing – we’d have to move up here and live with Ma for a while.’

‘I think that would be a bit hard after having your own place – and would Martha think it was a good idea?’ asked Celia. ‘I know she loves to have you visit, but that’s a bit different from your being here all the time.’

‘I don’t know, but I think she’d do it because she loves Stella – they seem very alike in some ways. And it would be only until Stella had had the operation and recovered, then I’d move back to London and pick up my career again.’

We talked through lots of fundraising ideas and drafted a standard email that we could send out to everyone we could think of who might help, with a link to the website. ‘And everyone in your address book,’ Celia suggested, ‘even if you haven’t heard from them in years. If you give people a positive way of helping, I’m sure they’ll do it.’

‘Yes, everyone loves to support a good cause, especially where a child is involved,’ Will agreed.

‘I’ll organise a couple of events too. My knitting circle can have a sponsored knitathon, perhaps, and in the spring we could have a Crafty Celia garden party. I’m having lots of ideas,’ Celia said enthusiastically. ‘Will could put one of his sculptures in if we had a selling exhibition, too.’

He nodded, ‘Good idea. And maybe Martha can get some fundraising going in the village?’

‘She isn’t really tuned in to village life,’ I told him. ‘She’s been to one or two sessions of the Musical Appreciation Society and she goes to the monthly Gardening Club, and to the library, but that’s about it. She did suggest mortgaging this house and giving me the money, but I wouldn’t let her: she isn’t that well off.’

We tossed ideas around a little more, while eating warm mince pies, then Ma came down from the studio and Stella woke up, so we all had an expedition to the gatehouse at Winter’s End to buy bunches of the mistletoe they grow there, a local tradition.

Later, I asked Ma the important question.

‘I mean, I really hope that Stella stays well and it won’t come to it, but I wanted to ask you now, just in case …’

‘I see what you mean,’ she said, ‘but I hadn’t thought of that possibility.’

‘Well, do, but don’t answer me now, have a think about it, because I know you like your own space and so it would be a big ask.’

‘It’s not so much that, but I think you’d find it very difficult getting back on the property ladder in London when you moved back.’

‘I know – impossible, in fact; we’d have to rent. But at least Stella would be well again …’

‘Let me sleep on it,’ Ma said.

Ma wasn’t much of a churchgoer, except to admire the architecture, monuments and windows, but she’d attended every Midnight Carol Service at All Angels since moving back to the village. I think it was the music: her tastes were very eclectic and she often said that Mr Lees, who was the organist there, had to be heard to be believed.

And actually, I had heard him, because he often played the organ at the strangest times, and a fugue distantly haunting you in the dead of night when the wind was in the right direction certainly got the hairs standing up on the back of your neck.

I’d never been to the services with her, because taking Stella out in the freezing cold night hadn’t seemed like a good idea, so that evening Ma went off with Hal, who called for her. While she fetched her voluminous black cape, which made her look like a smaller and more rotund version of the woman in that Scottish Widows advertisement, I asked Hal why he didn’t fly out to New Zealand and spend Christmas with his daughter and her family and he said he wouldn’t go in an aeroplane ever again for love nor money, but he’d be off up to his sister’s in Scotland for Hogmanay instead.

‘I couldn’t miss the Winter’s End Christmas party,’ he added. ‘I’m the Lord of Misrule and we have a grand time.’

‘I don’t know about Lord of Misrule, but you’re an old fool, getting dressed up and prancing about at your time of life,’ Ma said, reappearing.

‘There’s nowt about my time of life to stop me prancing, and anyway, you never come to the party so you don’t know what goes on.’

‘I’ve heard things, though.’

‘I’d love to go, and Ottie invited us, but it would be a bit much for Stella,’ I said.

Stella was already overexcited by the thought of Father Christmas arriving during the night and it had taken me ages to get her settled down that evening. Still, finally she’d gone to sleep and later I’d tiptoed in and hung her stocking on the bedpost, then arranged the presents beneath the little pine tree, before eating the gingerbread and carrot left out for the great man and his trusty reindeer.

Ma had already put her presents under the tree, roughly wrapped in brown paper and tied up with green garden twine, so they looked strangely trendy.

When she came back from the service she looked cold and the tip of her nose was scarlet. Once she’d divested herself of her woolly cape, I handed her a warm mince pie and a glass of Laphroaig, her favourite whisky.

‘How was the service?’

‘Very good – all the old favourite carols and hymns, sung to the right tunes, although Mr Lees played us out with “Nearer, My God, to Thee”, which was a slightly odd choice. It was worth going, just for that.’

She put her feet up on a red Moroccan leather pouffe, sipped her whisky and said, ‘Well, our Cally, I had a good think about things while Raffy was doing his sermon, all about the Nativity. And, of course, there’s always room at this inn.’

‘You mean … we can come and stay, if I have to sell the flat?’

‘Of course you can, you daft lump. I was hardly going to turn you down, was I?’

I got up and went to give her a hug. ‘If it happens, I promise we’ll keep out of your hair as much as we can, and then as soon as Stella’s well again, leave you in peace.’

‘You can have too much peace,’ she said surprisingly.

Ma’s reply was not unexpected but it was a weight off my mind.

Of course, part of me still hoped for a miracle to happen before the operation became necessary – or at least that some new treatment would become available over here. But logically, I knew that it was unlikely that the cavalry would come riding to my rescue over the brow of the hill, and the most I could hope for was that Stella’s condition didn’t worsen over the coming year.

Since she was born I’d learned to live in the present, but nothing could stop me dreaming of a future.

Chapter 6: Hasty Pudding

After a magical Christmas, when Stella seemed to be eating well and growing stronger, as she always did in Sticklepond, it had been quite a shock when she became ill with breathing difficulties and a rocketing temperature right after we got home, and was rushed into hospital.

What would be a minor sniffle cured by a dose of Calpol in a normal child became a near-miss with pneumonia for Stella, and though luckily they quickly got her stabilised and her temperature down, it was a week before she could come home, clingy, pale and exhausted by the least exertion.

It was another setback but – more than that – I’d seen the writing on the wall. Even before the consultant suggested contacting Dr Rufford Beems in Boston about bringing forward the date of the operation, I’d told Ma I was putting the flat on the market.

The operation had been booked for the coming autumn. All I had to do was raise a vast amount of money, and keep my darling child from catching any more infections between now and October, when we were to leave …

To say I was stressed out was an understatement, and after comfort-eating four microwave-in-a-mug chocolate cakes in quick succession, when it got to the fifth I started thinking of ways to jazz them up a bit and came up with Black Forest gateau variation.

I sent the recipe off to Sweet Home magazine with some others I’d stockpiled, and the editor liked it so much she slipped it into the April edition (which of course, as is the way with magazines, came out in March) instead of a raisin roll one.

In the same April issue, Celia was showing the readers how to create friendship bracelets from old buttons, and Will had an article about making found-object pictures using an old frame he found in a skip, bits of driftwood, sea-washed fragments of glass, and shells.

A lot of the stuff you find these days washed up on beaches after high tide you wouldn’t want to stick in a picture, but Celia and Will never seem to notice anything ugly, only what is good and beautiful.

You know, before we met him, when Will had only just started sending articles about his driftwood sculptures into the magazine, we used to jokingly call him Wooden Willie. But once we’d met him we liked him so much we never did again.

When Celia went to live in Southport with him I really missed her, so at least once the flat’s sold and we’ve moved in with Ma I’ll be living near her and I can file my Sweet Home articles from Lancashire like they do. Stella always seemed both happier and healthier in Sticklepond, too.

I was pretty sure Ma was dreading it even more than I was, so it was with mixed feelings that I picked up the phone on the same brisk March day that the Sweet Home magazine came out, to tell her I’d had offers on the flat at full asking price – luckily two people had wanted it – and accepted the one who could complete quickest.

‘I’m flabbergasted you’ve sold it so fast,’ she said. ‘Fancy someone paying all that money for a space no bigger than a shoebox, and down a hole, too.’

Ma had never been a big fan of basement living … and come to think of it, neither had Toto, since we only had the little paved area at the front for him to go out into, the garden belonging to the flat above.

‘It’s still not going to be quite enough,’ I said. ‘The expenses for the trip seem to go up all the time – lots of things I hadn’t thought of before, like finding insurance and paying for somewhere Stella can convalesce before coming home.’

‘What about those people at the magazine – weren’t they supposed to be doing some fundraising?’

‘Yes, and they raised quite a bit, but now they’ve moved on to the next Big Cause,’ I said. ‘Celia and Will are planning some fundraising events, and there’s been a steady trickle of small donations into the Stella’s Stars website – that had quite a boost when the evening paper did a story about us – but once we’re in Sticklepond I’ll have to come up with a few new ideas for the rest.’

‘And when do you think that might be?’ she asked.

‘Well, that’s the thing: it’s a cash buyer who just wants a pied-à-terre in London, so it should all go through very quickly.’

‘Well, I don’t know, he must have more money than sense,’ she said, slapping down the flat vowels like so many wet fish onto a marble slab.

She sounded more Lancashire every time I spoke to her. Despite her cottage being on the outskirts of the village, and her reclusive streak, when she moved there she’d slipped straight back into the fabric of Sticklepond like a hand into a glove.

‘Ma, I can’t help thinking it’s a major imposition,’ I confessed. ‘And I feel so guilty, because you’ve made everything just how you like it and are enjoying your life up there.’

‘Well, you’re not going to put the dampers on that, are you? We all get on fine when you and Stella come up to stay, and the studio is separate so you won’t affect my work. And if I want a bit of peace, I’ve got my garden room at the back of the house to escape into.’

This was true: and when we stayed she often vanished in there in the evenings, where she read old crime novels or watched endless battered and slightly fuzzy Agatha Christie videos.

But it was very much my mother’s house and besides, both of us were used to having our own space. I would so miss my little flat …

‘Oh, well,’ I sighed, ‘at least you know it won’t be for ever.’

‘True. I expect when Stella’s had her operation and is well again, you’ll want to move back to London and pick up your career. But I won’t be putting you out on the street, however long it takes.’

‘Yes …’ I paused. ‘Ma, we do seem to have a lot more possessions than I thought we did, once I started tidying up the flat to show buyers around. Perhaps when we move up I could rent a storage unit somewhere nearby.’

‘There can’t be that much in such a little flat.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ I told her.

‘My car can live outside then, and we’ll store some of your things in the garage. It’s dry in there and we can cover it all up with dustsheets.’

‘That’s true: it must be the only carpeted garage in Lancashire … and possibly the country.’

‘Don’t mock my garage,’ she said severely. ‘I happened to have the old carpet when I had the sitting room one replaced and it seemed like a good idea.’

‘I’ll buy your car one of those waterproof covers,’ I promised, because I knew she loved her little black Polo hatchback.

‘It’s only a car, love – you save every penny for Stella’s fund. I got the librarian to show me the Stella’s Stars webpage when I was down there earlier. She wanted me to sign up for the Silver Surfers First Wave course, so I could check it myself, but I told her there was nothing else on the internet I wanted to look at.’

My mother is not much past sixty and her short mop of curling hair isn’t silver, but hennaed a red so vibrant that she practically fluoresces in the dark, but I suppose they have to call the course something. This was the first sign of interest in computers that she’d ever shown.

‘I can show you anything you wanted to look at on the internet anyway – and we could do with having broadband put into the cottage quickly.’

‘Could we?’ she asked vaguely. ‘I’ll leave that to you. When do you think you and Stella will be moving up here?’

‘The end of April, I should think, if all goes well. They said Ormskirk Hospital could carry on giving Stella her regular check-ups, though if there are any problems she might be referred to Alder Hey.’

‘We’ll hope there aren’t any problems then, and soon she’ll be on that plane to Boston for the operation,’ Ma said stoutly.

‘If I can raise about another twenty thousand pounds, or so.’

‘That’s a drop in the ocean, compared to the amount you’ve already raised from selling the flat. I could take out a loan against the cottage for that much, if we need to.’

‘You know I won’t let you do anything like that,’ I said firmly. ‘One of us needs to have her own home and be financially secure.’

She had a good widow’s pension from Dad, but income was falling along with everything else. Still, her paintings sold modestly well and her retro exhibition a couple of years ago had been a sell-out.

‘We’ll see how the fundraising goes, but one way or the other we’ll get Stella to America and then she’ll be as right as rain, you’ll see. After that, I expect you’ll be fretting to get back to your career full time. I know how important it is to you.’

‘Actually, none of that seems important any more,’ I confessed. ‘I mean, I love making cakes and writing about baking, but I don’t miss all the urgent deadlines for the freelance articles.’

‘Priorities change a bit when you’ve a child to consider, especially a poorly one. Nature seems to have preprogrammed we mothers to put our offspring first – or most of us. Even me,’ she added, ‘to the extent where I knew I’d be rubbish at the maternal stuff, so I made sure you always had someone motherly looking after you.’

‘Moses is going to be disgusted when Toto moves in permanently,’ I said.

We’d been out for a Boxing Day walk two years previously when we’d fished a picnic basket out of the river at the edge of the Lido field and found the black kitten inside. Toto had made it abundantly clear then that he’d thought we should just toss it back. His opinion didn’t seem to be much changed since.

‘They’ll shake down together: we all will,’ Ma said, though with more hope than conviction in her voice.

Jago

Before the staff syndicate at Gilligan’s Celebration Cakes struck lucky on the lottery, Jago Tremayne and his friend David had been happy enough working there.

Besides the traditional iced wedding cakes that Gilligan’s were most famous for, both men had developed a speciality of their own. David created tall cones of beautifully coloured macaroons, which were in high demand for all kinds of events, while Jago was an expert in making the perfect croquembouche: the fabulous French wedding cake made from an airy pyramid of patisserie-cream-filled and caramel-dipped choux pastries, a skill he’d learned during a year spent working in Paris.

The lottery win opened new possibilities, because although the winnings were not enormous once their jackpot had been shared between twelve of them, it was still enough for Jago and David to start up a new business of their own, if they wanted to.

And they certainly did. David, like his fiancée, Sarah, came from West Lancashire and they yearned to move back nearer to their families; while Jago, who no longer had a fiancée and whose parents had taken early retirement and gone to live near his brother in New Zealand, was equally desperate for a fresh new start outside London.

Jago intended setting up a specialist croquembouche wedding cake business and at first thought of moving to Cornwall (where his ancestors came from) … until David persuaded him that there was a big opening up north and he ought at least to consider the idea.

‘You’d probably do really well in one of the wealthy areas, like Knutsford or Wilmslow in Cheshire,’ he suggested.

‘Then why aren’t you buying a shop there?’ Jago asked drily.

But he knew the answer, for when he and his friend were searching for suitable properties on the internet, David had fallen in love with an old bakery in Ormskirk, even though he realised starting up a specialist shop in a small Lancashire market town would be quite a gamble.

Jago hadn’t yet found his ideal property. Unlike David, he didn’t want a shop; since his orders would mainly come from the internet and magazine adverts, he just needed a large kitchen/preparation area. So he offered to move up with David and help him get started, while continuing his own search and, perhaps, testing the waters with his cakes.

He suspected that business in David’s shop would be slow to pick up, but he was proved quite wrong, for when the doors of the Happy Macaroon opened for the first time, they were practically trampled to death in the stampede.

David said it was probably due to the free macaroons on offer to the first twenty customers – but then, he’d been born and raised not so far away and knew how much Lancashire folk loved a bargain.

There was also a lot of interest in the model macaroon party cones and croquembouche they put on display in the window, which looked realistic enough to make the mouth water, and the two patissiers both soon got their first orders.

But the macaroons themselves were to be David’s bread and butter, and their enticing rows of many colours proved irresistible to the local population, even though they were quite expensive. Every purchase, from a single macaroon to a dozen, went into a distinctive silver card box, a sweet treat that would probably never make it all the way home.

Certainly the many students who came into the shop tended to stand outside and eat them then and there, but David and Jago considered that a kind of free advertising.

They soon began to bake a tray of gingerbread pigs every day, too, which were more to children’s taste (and less expensive) than the macaroons that lured their parents into the shop.

In his free time, Jago stepped up the search for a place of his own: he liked working with David, but once his fiancée, Sarah, gave up her job and moved into the flat above the shop as they planned, three would definitely be a crowd. He was fond of them both, but when your heart had been broken, it was a little hard to be around two people as much in love as David and Sarah were …

Of course, he’d always known that his ex, Aimee, was out of his league, and he had been amazed when she’d said she would marry him. But in retrospect, Sarah (who was a hairstylist in a smart Mayfair salon and seemed to know everything about everyone) had probably been right when she’d said Aimee had only grabbed him because Daddy had just put his little princess’s nose right out of joint by getting engaged to his very young PA.

‘I mean, you’re a good-looking bloke, Jago, don’t get me wrong,’ Sarah had said kindly but bluntly, ‘but she organises events for her seriously rich friends, while you earn peanuts making cakes and only met her because you were delivering one to a party venue.’

‘We don’t have a lot in common,’ he’d agreed, ‘but she loves me and wants to settle down.’

‘Well, it’s time enough; she must be years older than you.’

‘Oh, no – she’s younger,’ he’d protested. ‘Only thirty-two.’

‘Is that what she told you?’ Sarah had asked pityingly. ‘In her dreams!’

But, blinded by Aimee’s beauty and charm, he’d been as mesmerised as if she’d hypnotised him … which in a way she had. In fact, she must have done, because although he was a quiet man who hated parties, he seemed to be out every night. And being introduced to her friends as a chef was embarrassing, since he was a baker, or a cake maker, or a patissier – but definitely not a chef.

When Aimee had run off after a man she’d secretly been having a fling with, just before the wedding, Jago’s heart and his already low self-esteem had taken a knock, but he was horrified to find there was also a tinge of relief that he wouldn’t have to live her lifestyle any more. He was exhausted, partying late and then getting up early for work.

Still, he’d loved her, and he’d certainly never run the risk of seeing her with someone else if he lived up in the north, because the Cotswolds were about the limit of civilisation as far as Aimee was concerned, unless she was organising a country house party in Scotland.

So he looked for a suitable property in Knutsford and Wilmslow, where David had first suggested, but they were very expensive … and anyway, he’d begun to fall in love with the area around Ormskirk, with its lush farmland and friendly people, and the long golden beach of Southport only a short drive away. And he wasn’t that far from his original search area. After all, croquembouches didn’t travel huge distances, perhaps four hours maximum, but that was still a good range.

A little more research showed that no one else was supplying them locally and, making his mind up, he switched his search to the villages surrounding Ormskirk.

Chapter 7: The Cult of Perfection

Stella was excited by the move to Sticklepond, and Celia looked after her and Toto while I was in the final throes of the packing, so they were spared the worst.

But I was so exhausted that it took me a couple of days to bounce back, before I resumed getting up with the larks. I’m an early morning person, as you’ve probably gathered, and I enjoy baking away to the sound of the radio while everyone else is still asleep … except Toto, of course, who was usually hanging around my feet hoping for fallen scraps as soon as he’d been out into the garden.

In London my view of the sky had been limited to the small patch above the paved area, but here I could hardly wait to see the first light coming up behind the copse of trees at the back of the house, while the village below us still slept in darkness.

That morning’s skies were streaked with pink, blueberry and silver, like a very special Eton mess. I wondered if I could devise a blueberry Sticklepond mess …

But that would have to be another day, for this one was to be devoted to macaroons and I wanted to get two articles out of it – a simple recipe for Sweet Home, and a longer piece all about this new macaroon shop that Ma had told me about, for my ‘Tea & Cake’ page. I’d already made a start on that one.

Since moving up to rural West Lancashire I’ve heard tell of a magical macaroon shop in a nearby market town, though it seems a bit of a mythical beast to find so far from London. I’ll let you know when I have investigated further, but meanwhile, here’s my own very good macaroon recipe.

Ma had gladly relinquished the kitchen to me, since she’d rarely done more than microwave a ready meal or slap a sandwich together in there herself, and already it had taken on a new and familiar persona, being now full of my mixers, bowls, implements, cookbooks and notebooks, with a laptop area in the pine breakfast nook in the corner.

I made plain macaroons and then some chocolate ones, which were delicious, and then typed some notes into the laptop. I was trying to build up an even bigger hoard of articles than I had before Stella was born, seeing I’d be occupied with other things in autumn and winter … and I still couldn’t quite believe that we were committed to flying across the ocean for a risky operation. My fear that she would fall ill before then was almost as extreme as my fear of the operation itself – even thinking about it made me eat four macaroons straight off, one after the other.

The magazine and newspaper were fine about my filing my articles from Lancashire (or they would be, once broadband had been installed in the cottage next week), and would send a photographer round as necessary, when they couldn’t use illustrations from stock. Actually, I prefer it when they use pictures of my baking, because I get loads of despairing mail from readers saying the things they make never look perfect, like in the cookery books, but they can see that most of mine don’t look like those either. Food needs to look good enough to eat, but it doesn’t need to win a beauty competition. I hate this cult of ‘food presentation’ where someone fiddles around with the food, adding a scoop of this and a dribble of that, and mauling it about, or the magazine hires a food stylist, which is a bit like airbrushing a naturally beautiful fashion model, setting an unattainable standard because it isn’t real.

Not me: I’d so much rather have a chunk of crumbling apple pie with a dollop of cream, or a delicious fruit fairy cake with slightly singed edges.

It’s probably just as well for my figure that I now have someone else to help me eat all my baking, though not so good for Ma’s. Not that Ma cares about her figure: she says she was born to be a dumpling and why fight nature?

Stella wandered into the kitchen in her pyjamas just as I was arranging a pyramid of chocolate macaroons on a plate, her silken hair in a tangle and dragging Bun, the large plush rabbit that Ma had bought her when she was born, by one ear. She looked at the cakes and removed her thumb from her mouth long enough to say, sleepily, ‘Awesome.’

‘I think I’ve been letting you watch too much TV while I’ve been unpacking and sorting out,’ I said ruefully.

Stella seemed no worse for the move now we’d settled in. We went to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool later in the week, where she was checked over thoroughly, though she was to be monitored regularly by Ormskirk Hospital, which was nearer, and only referred back in future for any problems … which I sincerely hoped there wouldn’t be.

The vicar, Raffy Sinclair, came to call one afternoon – he often visited Ma, but this time he came specially to see me.

I’d never met him to speak to before, though I’d seen him about sometimes. He was a tall, handsome man, an ex-rock star who moved to the village a couple of years ago and married Chloe Lyon. When I went to her chocolate shop to buy the chocolate angel lolly for Stella’s Christmas stocking she’d said they had a little girl too, called Grace, though I think she is much younger than Stella. (And that big chocolate angel she gave me before Christmas had a most inspiring message inside, telling me not to fear the future. As I ate the delicious chocolate, I felt I was ingesting hope with it.)

Stella was having her afternoon nap when the vicar arrived so we were able to have a good talk. He knew about her problems, of course, because Ma had told him.

‘Martha says you’ve sold your flat and moved in here, in an effort to raise enough money to take your little girl to America for a life-saving operation,’ he said, when I’d made coffee and fetched in a plate of macaroons (I was still experimenting with flavours).

‘Yes,’ I said, and told him all about the operation and Stella’s medical condition – I really opened up and poured it all out, but he was the kindest man.

‘I still need about another twenty thousand pounds, I think, because all kinds of extra expenses keep cropping up. Someone advised me to take a qualified nurse on the plane there with me, for instance. And insurance – well, that’s difficult too.’

‘How long have you got to raise the money?’

‘The surgeon in Boston has pencilled her in for the start of November so we need to be there by the end of October. I ought to start booking the plane tickets and the hotel and so on … I’ve just waited to see how far off the target I was after selling the flat. My best friend, Celia, and her husband, Will, have been a huge help, setting up the Stella’s Stars fundraising site, which is getting lots of small donations, too.’

‘I’m sure you’ll make it – and I and the rest of Sticklepond will help you,’ he promised.

‘That’s kind of you, but I’m really a stranger here. I mean, we’ve only visited before, we aren’t really part of the community …’

‘Oh, that won’t matter,’ he said, and assured me that the villagers would all unite to support a good cause.

Ma, who’d wandered in at that moment still holding a fully loaded paintbrush, taken a macaroon and begun to leave again without seeming to notice the vicar, stopped and focused at that.

‘They may not for this one, because my family were never well liked in the village: I told you,’ she said to Raffy, taking the jade cigarette holder from her mouth and gesturing with it. A half-smoked red Sobranie dropped out of the end and Toto, who’d followed her in, sniffed at it before making friendly overtures to Raffy. I’d have warned him about getting white dog hairs on his black jeans if he hadn’t already got a liberal sprinkling there from his own little white dog, which I’d seen him out with sometimes.

‘I’ve heard the odd rumour about the Almonds,’ he admitted, ‘but it was something that happened so long ago that I think only the most elderly parishioners know the details. But when it comes to helping a child, I can’t see any of them thinking twice about it.’

‘Why exactly aren’t the Almonds well liked? You’ve never actually told me,’ I said, emboldened to press Ma by the presence of the vicar.

She straightened with the Sobranie in her hand, shoved it back in the holder, and then shrugged her plump shoulders. ‘It’s as the vicar says, an old story, and I don’t know all the details. Let’s let sleeping dogs lie.’

‘The important thing is to raise the money,’ Raffy agreed, ‘and we’ll soon do that – so trust in the Lord and make all the bookings. There’s nothing the village likes so much as uniting to fight for a good cause – only look how we saw off those property developers in the village itself, and then managed to have planning permission for turning the Hemlock Mill site into a retail park overturned.’

‘True,’ Ma said, and then she suddenly seemed to become aware of the loaded brush in her hand and, without another word, went out again.

‘I wish she’d put a coat on, because that wind is cold, even if it is May,’ I said, watching her through the window as she started back up the garden towards the studio. Then Hal suddenly loomed up next to her from behind a clump of Fatsia japonica, draped his tweedy, shapeless jacket over her shoulders, and they turned and went up the steps together.

‘Hmm … I don’t think I’ve ever seen Hal smile before,’ Raffy said thoughtfully. ‘He usually looks like Indiana Jones on a bad day, crossed with just a hint of the Grim Reaper.’

‘They do seem to be good friends,’ I said noncommittally, ‘and he’s here quite a bit … though weekends and evenings, mostly. Perhaps today is his half-day from the Hall.’

‘I don’t think it is, actually,’ Raffy said, ‘but with the estate coming right up to his cottage on the other side of the lane, I expect he just popped back for something.’

He smiled at me. ‘Chloe said she’d had a nice chat with you before Christmas in the shop. She loves your “Cake Diaries” in the newspaper and says that you also write about cake in a magazine – I don’t know where you find the time,’ he said, taking another macaroon.

‘To be honest, sometimes I’m not too sure myself,’ I confessed. ‘Things have been slightly easier as Stella’s got older and stabilised, though she’s prone to infections and then we have to get her treatment straight away. Each bout seems to sap what energy she has …’

‘Yes, I don’t suppose she has a lot of resistance to things and it must be a huge worry to you.’

‘It is, and I really don’t want any more complications till we leave for Boston. She needs to put a little weight on before the surgery too. You’d think with all the cakes around she’d quickly do that anyway, but she’s the pickiest eater in the world.’

‘Unlike me,’ he said, ruefully eyeing the macaroon plate, now almost empty.

I asked suddenly, ‘You do think I’m doing the right thing, don’t you? Only the operation is experimental and although Dr Beems has been very successful with it, there are no guarantees …’

‘Of course you are. You’ve had to make the decision with your head, not your heart, because logically there’s no other course of action you can take, is there? If she doesn’t have it, you’ve been told that she doesn’t have a long-term future, it’s as simple as that.’

I felt better for hearing him spell it out. Then Stella woke up sounding a little fractious and I fetched her in to meet Raffy. She seemed to like the look of him – and who wouldn’t?

‘I nearly forgot,’ he said, digging out a Cellophane-wrapped chocolate figure from his pocket. ‘Chloe sent you a gift. Are you allowed chocolate now, before tea?’

‘I don’t see why not,’ I said, ‘it’s very good chocolate.’

‘An angel,’ breathed Stella raptly, taking it.

‘Stella’s very into angels at the moment,’ I told Raffy. ‘I think it’s Ma’s fault for pointing out all the angels in the graveyard.’

‘And the funny little men with horns and tails in the window,’ Stella said.

‘Oh, yes, the Heaven and Hell window is great,’ he agreed.

‘Grandma paints angels in her pictures,’ Stella confided. ‘Flying ones with bird faces. Moses and Toto are flying round in her new one and Hal is holding on to the angel’s leg to stop it flying right off.’

‘I’d like to see that!’

‘I thought I saw an angel when I was having Stella,’ I told him, ‘and though Ma said it was a nun going by in a white habit, it seems to have stuck in her head. The oddest things do.’

‘You saw an angel? I must tell Chloe,’ he said, interested. ‘We’re both great believers in guardian angels. Get her to tell you about the time she saw one when she was a little girl.’

Stella announced that she was going to show the chocolate angel to her Sylvanian Families and vanished off back into her bedroom.

‘Transylvanian?’ Raffy asked, looking mildly surprised.

‘No, Sylvanian. They’re collectable toys, little fuzzy animals.’

‘Oh, right.’ He passed on an invite from Chloe to take Stella to her Mother and Toddler group, which met on Monday mornings up at the old vicarage.

‘If she’s well enough, it would be nice to go and meet other local mothers and children,’ I said, ‘though so far I’ve tended to avoid that kind of thing in case coughs and colds are going round.’

‘I’ll ask Chloe to warn you if there are,’ he promised. ‘But if not, I should give it a try and if Stella finds it too tiring, you needn’t stay long.’

‘You’re right, and it would get us out of Ma’s way for a bit too … Though actually, she doesn’t seem to mind Stella hanging around her, because in many ways they’re kindred spirits. Ma’s already said that she’d much prefer to keep an eye on Stella while I go into Ormskirk on Saturdays and do the big weekly supermarket shop than do it herself.’

‘Let me think about fundraising for the rest of the money, and I’ll get back to you with some ideas as soon as I can,’ Raffy said, getting up and shrugging into a long black leather coat. ‘We need an organised push to raise it quickly, but it will come,’ he assured me, and with a smile left me feeling hopeful, comforted and cheered.

When I got back after seeing him out, the last two macaroons had vanished from the plate and Toto and Moses were lying innocently before the stove.

‘You have crumbs in your whiskers,’ I told them coldly, before going to see what Stella was up to.

Chapter 8: The Happy Macaroon

On Thursday morning it was Stella’s first check-up at Ormskirk Hospital and although she is amazingly stoical about these things, I could gauge how stressed she was by the rate of the thumb-sucking.

But actually, when we got there it was not too bad. She was seen very quickly by a friendly consultant who was already up to speed on her condition and the projected operation in America.

She was quite pleased with Stella, but said she’d like to see her gain more weight – and so would I, though of course not too much, since that would also add strain to her heart and other organs … it’s a fine balance.

Afterwards, since Thursday was a market day, I drove into town and parked, so we could have a walk around. It was an ancient market and very good, though the part selling fruit, eggs, cheese and foodstuffs had vanished a few years back, which was a pity.

Ormskirk now had a huge and increasing student population, since the university on the edge seemed to be expanding like a mushroom every night, but it did give the place a new buzz.

I knew Stella was tired, but she still insisted on getting out of her buggy as soon as we’d got to the top of the hill from the car park. Ma had given her some money to buy a treat with, which I suspect was going to become a habit, and she’d also asked us to get her a new tube of yellow ochre oil paint from the art shop up a side street, so we went and did that first. Stella spent most of her money in there on a new watercolour paint box and a Hello Kitty pencil case, which reminded her of the mummy cat from one of her toy families.

After that we had a look in the bookshop and I was pleased to see they had both my cookbooks, though I didn’t tell them who I was since, as usual, I looked like a bagwoman down on her luck and I didn’t think they’d believe me. Then Stella climbed back into her buggy and we went to find the macaroon shop.

It was called the Happy Macaroon, according to the smart deep red and gold signboard and about fifteen different colours of macaroons were on display in the window, laid out in trays like so many rows of giant gaming counters. It looked upmarket and expensive, like a smart London shop in one of the arcades where I’d occasionally pressed my nose to the glass and stared at the culinary perfection within. I did much the same now: if Ma hadn’t already told me about the place, I’d have thought I was imagining it.

On one side of the window was a large cone with pink and white macaroons stuck all over it, the sort of thing I’ve seen before at parties. On the other, to my amazement, was a tall pyramid of caramel-dipped choux buns, the wonderful French wedding cake called the croquembouche or pièce montée. Of course, like the macaroon pyramid, it was a model, but they were both very realistic.

‘Cakes,’ Stella said, admiring the macaroons.

‘They’re special macaroon biscuits really, darling, like the ones I made the other day.’

‘I didn’t like those,’ she said, my own little food critic. ‘These look prettier.’

She had a point: the colours were certainly a lot brighter. ‘See that big pyramid of buns?’ I said, pointing to the croquembouche. ‘It’s a French wedding cake.’

‘And there are gingerbread piggies.’

‘No, I don’t think there are—’ I began, then broke off, following the line of her pointing finger, and found she was quite right, there was a tray of gingerbread pigs at one side of the window, with raisin eyes and curly iced tails.

Then something made me look up and my eyes met and locked with those of a man standing behind the window display. My first thought was that he looked like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, since he had the same angular sort of face and he’d tied a black scarf pirate-style over his hair, presumably instead of one of those little white hats bakers usually wear. The second thought was that his eyes were of a very unusual soft, light caramel brown, fringed with long black lashes … and impossible to remove my gaze from …

Then suddenly we both smiled simultaneously and the trance was broken.

Stella had clambered out of her pushchair and now tugged at my hand and asked if she could have a gingerbread pig and when I looked up again a moment later, he’d vanished.

‘Of course you can, darling,’ I told her, so pleased she’d shown an interest in something to eat that I would happily have bought her a hundred gingerbread pigs … and anyway, I wanted to ask the pirate baker a few questions to add to my ‘Cake Diaries’ article.

He was standing behind the counter as if waiting for us, his smile warm. ‘Hello,’ he said, his voice as caramel as his eyes. ‘Has our window display lured you in?’

‘We were admiring the croquembouche,’ I told him. ‘Or at least, I was. I’m afraid Stella only had eyes for the gingerbread pigs.’

‘Piggies with raisin eyes and curly-wurly tails,’ agreed Stella.

‘It’s not everyone who recognises a croquembouche; they’re still a bit of a novelty, especially up here,’ the man said.

‘I’m a cookery writer, specialising in cake – I have a page in Sweet Home magazine and a Sunday supplement,’ I explained. ‘I love cake.’

‘Mummy made me a pink princess cake for my birthday,’ Stella piped up.

Jago’s interpretation of this as some kind of Barbie princess cake was written clear across his expressive face, but instantly dispelled when I said, ‘It was a Swedish prinsesstårta – you know, those domed sponge and confectioner’s cream cakes, with a marzipan covering? It’s my party piece.’

‘Wow! Now it’s my turn to be impressed.’

‘Oh, I’m sure they’re nowhere near as fiddly as the croquembouche, just time-consuming. Yours needs real skill, not only to make the choux buns, but to put it all together.’

As I spoke to him I was increasingly sure that we’d met before, for there was something very familiar about him. He was in his mid-thirties like me, I guessed, with a light olive skin and treacle-dark hair showing under the black bandanna.

‘We’ve met before, haven’t we?’ he asked, obviously feeling the same way. ‘Didn’t you come to Gilligan’s Celebration Cakes, when I worked there?’

‘Of course, that’s it. I’ve been racking my brains wondering where I’d seen you before. I did an article about wedding cakes … but I don’t remember seeing the croquembouche.’

‘I think you only wanted to feature the traditional cakes,’ he said. ‘I helped with those as well, but the croquembouche is my speciality. We weren’t introduced, but I’m Jago Tremayne.’

‘That sounds very Cornish?’

‘It is – that’s where my father’s family came from.’

‘I’m Cally – Cally Weston.’

We shook hands across the glass display cabinet and he asked curiously, ‘What’s Cally short for?’

I grinned, because I get that a lot. ‘Nothing. My mother just had a thing about an old TV series called Blake’s 7 and called me after one of the characters. And this is my daughter, Stella.’

‘I’m nearly four and I’m a star,’ Stella told him.

‘You certainly are,’ he agreed.

‘And I want a piggy,’ she added, seeming to feel we’d lost the point of why we were there.

‘Of course.’ Jago lifted out the tray of gingerbread pigs so that Stella could select her own, which was obviously going to involve a lot of deliberation.

‘So … are you visiting the area?’ he asked me. ‘I suppose in your line of work, you need to be London-based.’

‘We did live in London, but we’ve recently moved to live with my mother in Sticklepond, a village a few miles from here. It’s about as far from the bright lights as you can get, so it was quite a surprise to find a specialist shop like this in Ormskirk.’

‘It was my friend’s idea to open it here and I came to help,’ he told me, then added as a slim, fair man appeared from the back room to serve a noisy gaggle of students who’d just come into the shop, ‘that’s David.’

‘Oh – right. I wanted to mention the shop in an article for “The Cake Diaries”, though it probably won’t come out for months – do you think that would be all right? They’ll send a photographer.’

‘I’m sure David will be delighted. All publicity welcome. Look, here’s his business card with his email address on, so you can send him any questions.’

‘Thank you, that’s great,’ I said, pocketing it.

‘I want that pig,’ Stella said, having made her mind up and pointing at the one with the biggest curly icing tail.

‘Please,’ I prompted.

‘Please,’ Stella repeated and Jago put the chosen pig into a little paper bag and gave it to her. She took it straight out again and bit off its nose.

I paid him and he handed me a little silver box with my change. ‘These are a couple of macaroons for your mum to try,’ he explained to Stella. ‘It’s the bait to lure you both back in again.’

‘I don’t think you’ll be able to keep us out anyway,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to come here to the hospital most Thursdays, so this can be our special treat afterwards, can’t it, Stella?’

She nodded, her mouth full of gingerbread.

‘I don’t know why it is, but the head always tastes better than the rest,’ Jago said gravely and Stella nodded again, very seriously.

‘It’s wonderful to see her eating something voluntarily,’ I thought, then realised I’d said it aloud, and Jago was looking sympathetically at me with his soft, light brown eyes.

Of course, I’d often made her gingerbread men, but obviously they didn’t have the magic of the shop-bought pigs.

I drove back to Sticklepond with Stella fast asleep in her seat in the back of the car. In one hand was clutched the limp rear end of the gingerbread pig, saved for Grandma.

It was odd how I’d felt an instant connection with Jago when our eyes met through the shop window, though I supposed that was partly because I’d previously met him, even though I hadn’t remembered at first. And how could I have forgotten those unusual eyes?

He seemed very nice and I think we simply instantly recognised each other as kindred spirits and perhaps were destined to become good friends? That was all I needed from a man these days, all I had the spare time and emotion left over for …

I checked again on my frail sleeping child in the rear-view mirror, turning over in my mind what they’d said to me at the hospital after Stella’s check-up, about the country air soon putting some roses into her cheeks and improving her appetite, searching for any faint crumb of comfort.

When we got home and Stella, revived, had gone to present Grandma with the soggy gingerbread pig’s bottom, I put Toto in the car for five minutes to hoover up the crumbs: dogs have a multitude of uses.

Jago

When Cally and Stella left the shop, Jago had the strange feeling that they’d taken all the May sunshine with them.

He’d liked everything about Cally: her no-nonsense manner, her pretty face with wide-apart harebell-blue eyes, the disarming sprinkle of freckles across her nose and her dishevelled, silky, pale gold curls.

‘Pretty woman,’ David said, since he’d finished serving the customers and there was a temporary lull. Then he added hastily, ‘Not as in the film Pretty Woman, of course. I’m not insinuating she’s a hooker.’

‘I should think not! And she is pretty, though she’s obviously under a lot of strain. I think it must be about the little girl, because she mentioned she would be having regular hospital check-ups and she looks as if a puff of wind would blow her away.’

‘Poor little thing,’ David said kindly, but somewhat absently, arranging a fresh batch of macaroons into neat rows of pink, red and green. Then he looked up curiously at his friend and grinned.

‘You found out a lot in a short space of time.’

‘She’s on the same wavelength as us, that’s all – and anyway, we’ve both seen her before at Gilligan’s, don’t you remember? She’s Cally Weston, a cookery writer, and she was researching an article about traditional wedding cakes.’

‘Really? No, I can’t say I do remember that, but of course I’ve seen her articles,’ he said, though his friend obviously had remembered her. Since this was the first hint of real interest in another woman Jago had shown since his fiancée ran off to Dubai to be with that sports car salesman she’d had a fling with, he thought it was a healthy sign.

‘She wants to write you and the Happy Macaroon up in her “Cake Diaries” page in the Sunday supplement, so I gave her your card so she can email you questions,’ Jago said. ‘The paper will probably send a photographer.’

‘Great, I’m all for free publicity,’ David said enthusiastically. ‘I like her even more!’

Chapter 9: The Blue Dog

I went back into Ormskirk on the Saturday morning to do the big supermarket shop while Ma minded Stella … or perhaps that was the other way round? Anyway, they intended going to the studio to paint and Hal had promised to come over later with an old wasp’s nest as big as a football to show her, so it looked like being a red-letter day.

I only hoped Ma would remember the sandwiches I’d left them for lunch and not just share endless cups of sweet tea and biscuits with Stella. I wanted her to have more energy, but not a permanent sugar high!

Somehow I found my steps taking me past the Happy Macaroon, but this time Jago Tremayne wasn’t looking out of the window, probably because it was so busy in the shop that the queue came right out of the door.

For the first time I noticed a sign for the Blue Dog Café next door to it and went up a steep, narrow flight of stairs into a busy room humming with conversation and the rattle of cutlery. It was obviously very popular and after I’d looked about fruitlessly for a vacant table I was just about to give up and go away again when suddenly I spotted Jago Tremayne sitting at a table in the far corner. He looked up and waved, smiling warmly, and I looked round to see if someone else had followed me up: but no, he was waving at me, so I made my way across.

‘I just spotted you – do please join me,’ he said, nudging out the chair next to his. Then he looked at me diffidently. ‘I mean – you do remember me, don’t you? It’s Jago, from the bakery next door.’

‘Of course I remember you, and it’s very kind of you to let me share your table. I was just about to give up and go away again.’

I sat down and he handed me the menu. ‘It’s all cold food apart from the soup of the day, but they do a great beef sandwich with horseradish sauce.’

‘Sounds good to me – I’ll have that,’ I said, as the waitress came to take my order, ‘and a large Americano with some cold milk.’

I felt guilty spending any money on myself like this, when it might go into Stella’s fund, but Celia had made me promise to be nicer to myself after I told her I’d been taking a flask of coffee out with me everywhere to save money. She said treating myself to coffee and a bun once in a blue moon might mean the difference to my staying sane or completely losing it, so it would be worthwhile in the long run. She was probably right, but it still felt a bit guilt-inducing.

‘Stella not with you today?’ Jago asked.

‘No, I’ve left her at home with my mother and come in to do the big supermarket shop on my own. She tires easily, but she hates sitting in the trolley and I can’t carry her and push it at the same time. Ma would rather keep an eye on her than shop, but she’s an artist, so when she’s wrapped up in her work she tends to be a bit forgetful …’

‘I’m sure Stella will be all right,’ he said reassuringly. ‘She seems like a child who’ll say if she wants anything.’

‘Oh, yes, she can be a real bossy boots – and she was certainly determined to get one of those gingerbread pigs, wasn’t she? And she ate most of it. I offered to make her some, but no, she says yours are special, so I suppose I’d better take one back with me today.’

‘I’ll send you the recipe, if you give me your email address?’ he suggested.

‘I’d love the recipe, but I don’t think even then I can compete with the lure of yours.’

‘I’ve left David in charge of the shop while I have my lunch,’ Jago said. ‘It’s really busy on Saturdays, but his fiancée, Sarah, comes for the weekends to help out. In fact, I tend to feel a bit of a spare part and I’ll feel even more so when Sarah gives up her job and moves into the flat over the shop with us permanently.’

‘I suppose three is a crowd, even if they don’t mean to make you feel left out.’

‘It doesn’t help that I got disengaged about the same time David proposed to Sarah,’ he said, and his thin, handsome face became gloomy. ‘Very disengaged.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said sincerely.

‘Don’t be, because she went off with another man a couple of weeks before the wedding, so it was better she did it then than after we were married.’

‘That’s true, I suppose, though it doesn’t stop it hurting, does it? I was engaged before I had Stella, but my fiancée signed up for a second long contract abroad without telling me and then dumped me for someone else he’d met out there.’

Jago raised his coffee cup. ‘Here’s to a fresh start for both of us, then,’ he said, and smiled at me. His mouth went up a bit at the left corner when he smiled and so did the corner of his eyebrow on that side. I found myself smiling back.

‘So, how did the Happy Macaroon come about?’ I asked. ‘I’ve only just emailed David my questions for the article.’

‘It was literally a stroke of luck. We both worked for Gilligan’s, as you know, and we were in the lottery ticket syndicate when our numbers came up.’

‘Wow!’ I said enviously.

‘It wasn’t millions, nothing like that, but our shares were enough to change our lives, if we wanted them to. Some of the older members of the syndicate just paid off their mortgages and took holidays, or bought new cars, but David and I decided we wanted to get out of London and set up our own businesses.’

‘Great idea.’

‘David found his premises first, so I came up to help him start off and fell in love with the area. Now I’m hoping to find somewhere nearby to run my croquembouche wedding cake business, and the sooner the better. We thought it would take quite a while to get the Happy Macaroon off the ground, but actually business took off like a rocket from the first day.’

‘But what made him choose Ormskirk? When I heard about the shop, it seemed the most unlikely place – yet I can see it’s a huge success.’

‘David comes from Southport and fell for the old bakery after he spotted it on the internet, and luckily there was an empty flat above it, too. What about you,’ he asked tentatively, ‘why did you move up here?’

‘I sold my flat near Primrose Hill and we moved in with my mother because I needed to raise some capital quickly to fund treatment for Stella.’ I took a sip of coffee, which was strong and good. ‘Perhaps you noticed how small and frail she looks for her age?’

He nodded, his eyes soft and sympathetic.

‘It’s because she was born with a heart condition, a serious and complicated one.’

‘Hence the hospital appointments you mentioned? I’m so sorry – it must be an enormous worry to you and she’s such a bright, lovely little girl.’

‘Yes, it is,’ I confessed. ‘The hospital here has taken over monitoring her progress, but they’d really like her to put on some weight before she goes to America in autumn for an operation … It’s very risky, you see, experimental surgery, but without it the consultant in London said that eventually her organs would begin to suffer under the strain of coping.’

I don’t know what came over me, but I found myself describing in detail Stella’s problems and what the consultant said, just as if I’d known Jago for ever. It felt that way.

‘But surely she could have the operation here, on the NHS?’ he demanded. ‘You shouldn’t have to go abroad for it.’

‘They can do so much these days with surgery, but in Stella’s case, they’d reached the end of the road over here. But Celia and I – that’s my best friend – researched on the internet and found a surgeon who’d pioneered the operation she needed in Boston, but he’s the only one who can help. I got the hospital in London to send him all the X-rays and her notes and stuff, and he’s willing to do it, but of course it’ll cost an absolute fortune.’

‘So you sold the flat and moved here? I see …’

‘We thought we’d have longer to raise the money, but Stella was ill back in January and they advised us to move the operation date forward to this autumn, so I put the flat on the market. I’ve put the profit I made into the charitable fund that Celia and her husband, Will, helped me to set up and run, called Stella’s Stars. Donations are coming in all the time, though not big ones – people are so kind, even strangers.’

‘Stella’s Stars? That’s a good name.’

‘She’s my little star,’ I said, feeling better for telling him all about it. ‘Some of the people I know in London have fundraised, but even after selling the flat I’m still around twenty thousand pounds short, even though the surgeon has generously offered to waive his fee for doing the operation. But the operation is booked for the start of November and we need to fly over at the end of October, so I’ll have to find the rest of the money quite quickly somehow.’

I smiled at him ruefully. ‘It looks like we’ve both taken a gamble in moving up here – you and David on the success of your new businesses and me on being able to raise the rest of the money.’

‘Your gamble is much more important than mine … but couldn’t Stella’s father help?’ Jago asked tentatively.

‘Stella’s father is my ex-fiancée that I told you about. He’d left me by the time I found out I was pregnant and he wasn’t remotely interested in being a father when I told him. In fact, he suggested I have an abortion, and when I refused, he cut off all contact with me – changed his email address and everything. He was back in the Antarctic by then, which made him even more uncontactable.’

‘The Antarctic?’

‘Yes, he was working out there as a marine biologist. I don’t know where he went after that. He could still be there, for all I know.’

‘He doesn’t sound much of a loss.’

‘No, I think he probably comes under the heading of “lucky escapes”.’

‘That’s pretty much what David said when my fiancée ran off with someone else,’ he said wryly. ‘Sarah works in a Mayfair hair salon so she’d heard lots of gossip about my ex, Aimee, and she was pretty blunt about telling me what she thought of her. Aimee organised events for her rich friends for a living, and she was beautiful, smart, classy and connected – way out of my league, but I did think she loved me …’

They sounded an unlikely combination: a rich social butterfly and a hard-working baker, even if the said baker was the quietly handsome sort that you might pass in the street, but then turn round and go back to have another look at.

He shook off his fit of abstraction. ‘Well, at least the lottery winnings gave me the chance of an exciting new start somewhere where I’ll never come across Aimee again.’

‘Stella had already turned my life upside down before I moved here. I had this idea that babies just slotted into your life, especially if like me you do most of your work at home. But even if she hadn’t been born with so many health problems, everything would have changed once she’d arrived anyway, I can see that now.’

‘Children do have a way of turning lives upside down,’ Jago agreed. ‘But I’m sure you’ve never regretted having her for an instant.’

‘No, my only regret is that she has to suffer the effects of the heart problems – and even if I manage to raise the money for the operation, there’s no guarantee of success … so I worry about that, too: but it’s her only hope of living a normal life.’

I finished off my very excellent sandwich and Jago ordered two madeleines to go with another cup of coffee, which he said was his treat.

‘They do perfect madeleines. I don’t think I’ve tasted such good ones outside Paris.’

‘I used to make them years ago, but had sort of forgotten about them,’ I said, distracted as usual, even if only temporarily, from Stella’s problems. ‘I still have a madeleine baking tray, though …’

‘I’ll send you my recipe for them, if you like?’ he offered. ‘It’s a genuine French one and usually turns out well. I worked for a year in Paris, that’s where I learned how to make the croquembouches.’

When they came, we dunked our madeleines in the coffee, companionably.

‘Madeleines would be a really good thing to feature in one of my articles,’ I mused. ‘I’m trying to stockpile as many as possible, to leave me free for several months later in the year. I’ve been thinking about doing a feature on proper Eccles cakes for “The Cake Diaries”, too.’

‘It must be difficult constantly coming up with ideas when all the Stella stuff is going on?’

‘It is, but I have to keep them coming and bringing in the money – and anyway, I find baking cakes a sort of a comfort … and eating them too.’

‘Yes, so do I,’ Jago agreed.

‘At least yours hasn’t hit your hips,’ I said wryly. ‘I must have put on stones in the last couple of years.’

‘I think I’m just the type who burns it off. And you don’t look overweight to me, but just right.’

I’m sure that was a kind lie, but even so, I warmed to him even more.

‘So, have you had any more ideas for fundraising the rest of the money you need?’ he asked.

‘Nothing major. The Sticklepond vicar visited us the other day and when I told him about Stella he said he was sure the whole village would get together and help me, and he’d think of how best to organise it and get back to me … and you know,’ I added ruefully, ‘I suddenly seem to have gone from being one of the most buttoned-up women in the world, to one who tells everyone her whole life story on first meeting. I’m so sorry to unload on you, when you just wanted a quiet lunch.’

‘I’m glad you did.’ He laid his warm hand momentarily over mine on the table and squeezed it. ‘I want to know all about you, because the moment I saw you, I felt as if we’d known each other for ever. We’re obviously on the same wavelength and I hope we’ll become good friends.’

‘I felt much the same,’ I admitted, and our eyes met and held, just like the first time … His wrinkled up around the edges as he smiled.

‘We do have so much in common, don’t we? Broken hearts, a love of cake …’

‘I don’t suppose you also love watching rom com films?’ I asked, laughing.

‘I certainly do! Love Actually is my all-time favourite and I’ve put it on so many times that David has hidden the DVD.’

‘That’s my favourite too … or maybe it’s Pride and Prejudice.’

‘Or Mamma Mia! Oh, and While You Were Sleeping.’

‘Yes! In fact, I like anything with Sandra Bullock in, but that is one of her best.’

We discussed rom coms for a few minutes and then I said, ‘Do you think we were separated at birth, or simply knew each other in a previous existence?’

‘I don’t know, but I’ll settle for knowing you in this one.’

‘Me too, and I certainly need a friend – especially one who understands that Stella’s needs must come first right now, and that I can’t think beyond getting her to the USA for the operation,’ I said directly and honestly, just in case he was thinking about anything in the romantic line. Though actually, given the weight thing and that I’d stopped bothering much with makeup and what I was wearing, I should be so lucky even if he wasn’t clearly still carrying a torch for his beautiful ex.

‘I not only understand that, but I’ll help you,’ he offered. ‘In fact, I’d give you the money if I thought you’d take it, but already I know you well enough to be sure you’d turn me down.’

‘Quite right, I would, because that’s the money you need to buy your own premises, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but I could always rent for a while, or get a small mortgage.’

‘No you couldn’t. But thank you for the offer … And don’t try doing it anonymously through the site, because I’ll guess it’s you,’ I warned him, then paused. ‘The vicar said I should trust in God to provide and go ahead and book the tickets and the hotel and everything, so I’m going to take his advice, even if finding the rest of the money does give me sleepless nights.’

‘The vicar was right,’ he said encouragingly. ‘It is a lot of money to raise in a small amount of time, but it’s not impossible, by any means.’

His mobile rang just then and when he finished the call he said it was David sarcastically asking if he planned on going back to the shop that day.

‘I’ll have to go. He and Sarah want to have their lunch too, and the shop’s still busy.’

We exchanged mobile numbers and email addresses, and then I went back with him to the shop to buy a gingerbread pig for Stella, though he refused to charge me for it. I only hope he isn’t as generous to all his customers or he won’t be making much of a profit …

Driving home from Ormskirk, I thought how amazingly easily I’d opened up like that to a man I’d only just met. But then, we had so much in common and he was so sweet and sympathetic that he’d instantly felt like an old friend. We were comfortable together.

I liked his thin, mobile face and the way it reflected every passing emotion, something he probably wasn’t aware of, his unusual light brown eyes and the way his dark hair, released from the pirate scarf, was just a little too long and trying to curl around his ears …

When I got home Ma and Stella were in the garden – Ma sketching and Stella sitting in her blue plastic clam-shell sandpit, carefully arranging a pattern of bits of sand-washed glass that we’d picked up on Southport beach into an intricate pattern. Toto wagged his tail but didn’t get up from under the lavender bush.

The May sun was quite warm, but there was still a bit of a chilly breeze, so I was glad to see that Stella was wearing her little purple corduroy coat. She must have put it on herself, because only one of the big buttons was fastened and it was in the wrong hole.

Ma’s ample derrière rested on her ancient and ingenious fold-up sketching stool, which incorporated an easel in front, and she had obviously been working for some time, for oil pastel and charcoal sketches of Stella littered the grass around her. Toto and Moses featured in some of them, though I don’t think Moses was feeling very co-operative since I could see the tip of his tail from underneath one sheet of paper, where he must have decided to go to sleep.

‘Mummy!’ Stella exclaimed, and Ma looked up.

‘Had a nice time?’ she asked.

‘Yes, and I’m sorry I was a bit longer than I expected,’ I said guiltily. ‘I did the shopping and got the flake white paint and the linseed oil, and I’ve brought you a vanilla slice from Greggs and a gingerbread pig for Stella from the Happy Macaroon.’

‘Lovely …’ Ma said absently, adding a touch or two to the sketch in front of her.

‘I had a sandwich in a café and shared the table with Jago from the Happy Macaroon – remember I told you about him? He makes croquembouches and we’d met before, when I went to Gilligan’s Celebration Cakes where he used to work.’

Now I was closer I could see that Ma’s current sketch was of Stella, who seemed to have sprouted little white feathered cherub wings, as had Toto, and even Moses the cat, and were all three whirling about among a lot of clouds.

Ma finished edging the bottom of the picture with giant foxglove spikes and started to collect her stuff together. ‘Yes … I remember,’ she said vaguely. ‘I expect it was nice to meet an old friend.’

‘Hardly that, because I only saw him that once very briefly in London, but I got to know him a bit today while we were chatting and he’s such a nice man.’

Stella looked up and asked, ‘Can I have my gingerbread piggy now, Mummy?’

‘Did you eat the little dinosaur sandwiches I left you for lunch?’

She shook her head. ‘We haven’t had lunch, have we, Grandma?’

‘Haven’t we?’ Ma looked surprised, but when I checked the fridge the sandwiches were untouched under their cling film, as were the two little dishes of chocolate mousse.

I went back outside. ‘Come on in, Stella, and eat a sandwich, and then you can have your gingerbread pig. Ma, do you want your sandwiches out here, or are you coming in?’

‘I’ll be in in a minute. I’ll just take everything back up to the studio and fix the charcoal drawings.’

Stella got out of the sandpit and I closed the lid in case Moses took it into his head that it would make a super cat litter tray, and we went in the house holding hands. Ma wandered off up to the studio and I knew she would forget to come back, so I took her lunch up there after we’d had ours, along with the vanilla slice. There was a steaming mug of tea next to her, so Hal must have been around somewhere.

‘I should have got another cake for Hal, shouldn’t I?’ I said. ‘Does he like vanilla slices?’

‘I don’t know. He likes Nice biscuits, garibaldi, gingernuts and fig rolls, though,’ she said, taking a big bite out of a ham sandwich. ‘I’m ravenous,’ she added, sounding surprised.

‘Well, it’s after two. Stella’s eaten a dinosaur sandwich and she started on the gingerbread pig, but got too sleepy, so she’s gone for a nap. I expect she’ll eat the rest when she wakes up. Her appetite really seems to be picking up since we moved here.’

‘There’s magic in the air in Sticklepond,’ Ma said.

Jago

David’s eyebrows had gone up when Jago and Cally walked into the Happy Macaroon together chatting comfortably like old friends, and Jago knew he’d be in for a bit of merciless teasing later, when the shop was quieter.

He was right, too, because David told him he was glad to see his broken heart was on the way to being mended.

‘Don’t be stupid, Cally’s just really nice and we’re interested in similar things, but mostly we’ve been talking about her little girl. She was born with a very serious heart condition and Cally’s trying to raise money to send her to America for an operation in autumn.’

‘Oh, poor little thing,’ Sarah said.

‘She’s set up a charitable website, called Stella’s Stars. I’m going to have a look at it later.’

‘Well, I hope you’re not going to give them all your lottery winnings, Jago,’ David said forthrightly, because he knew his friend’s soft heart. Being bullied at school because of his dyslexia, and being always in the shadow of his older and academically gifted brother, had dented Jago’s self-confidence, so that he always felt for the underdog.

‘She’s already raised the bulk of it by selling her flat in London, so she only needs about another twenty thousand … and I did offer,’ he confessed, ‘but she turned me down, because she knew by then I’d only just won enough to set myself up in my own business. She told me not to try anonymously donating it either, because she’d guess it was me and give it back.’

‘She’s certainly got your measure in a short space of time,’ Sarah said admiringly. ‘I like the sound of her.’

‘Yes, and she’s much more your type than Aimee ever was,’ David agreed. ‘I can’t imagine why she ever agreed to marry you. Unless it’s like Sarah says, that it was just to pay her dad back for getting engaged to his PA.’

‘Oh, once she was the wrong side of forty she probably found good-looking straight single men willing to settle down were thin on the ground. I expect panic had set in by the time Jago proposed and that was part of it too,’ Sarah said airily.

‘I keep telling you, she’s younger than me,’ Jago protested.

‘No way: you only had to look at her knees.’

‘Her knees?’

‘Baggy, saggy knees.’

‘She has the longest legs in the world …’ Jago sighed reminiscently. ‘I can’t say I noticed her knees. And gee, thanks for the confidence boost, by the way.’

Still, it was true that he hadn’t been able to believe his luck when the tall, elegant, beautiful, sophisticated Aimee had accepted his proposal … which actually he would never have had the courage to make if she hadn’t prompted him into it.

‘You’re a good-looking guy, don’t get me wrong,’ Sarah said kindly, ‘but you had absolutely nothing in common.’

‘I know,’ he said humbly.

‘All that late night partying followed by the early starts for work ran you ragged and made your friends worry about you,’ David said.

‘And while we’re speaking of the devil who wore Prada,’ Sarah said, ‘you had a phone call when you were out. She’s back.’

‘Who’s back?’ Jago demanded, startled.

‘Aimee.’

‘Aimee? Aimee’s back in the UK?’

‘Yes, she’s been back a while, but she’s only just tracked you down. I expect she heard about our winnings,’ David said drily.

‘Her new stepmother uses the salon and she told me weeks ago that Aimee was back. She’s pregnant, too, because she didn’t want to have her hair coloured, in case it harmed the baby.’

‘Aimee’s pregnant?’ Jago exclaimed.

‘No, you idiot, it’s her new young stepmother who’s pregnant.’

‘Right …’ He looked at his friends. ‘You both knew all this time she was back and didn’t tell me?’

‘You said you were over her and wanted a fresh new start in a different part of the country,’ Sarah pointed out. ‘Anyway, she’s bad news.’

‘Yes, we didn’t want her messing you around again,’ David said.

‘I think I’m old enough to decide for myself,’ Jago said with dignity. ‘And of course I’m over her … Anyway, I expect she just wants to get back in touch to be friends.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Sarah said acerbically, but Jago wasn’t listening. He’d thought he was over her, and his friends were probably right that breaking up had been a good idea, but still … knowing she was back unsettled him.

‘Did she leave a number? Or did you give her my mobile number?’

‘Neither, because we were a bit busy at the time. You were having an extended lunch, if you recall?’

‘Oh, yes … Did she say anything else?’

‘Something about things not working out with that bloke she chased off after to Dubai, so I expect she’s been dumped and now you’ve won all that money you’re a much more interesting prospect.’

‘You’re such a cynic,’ Jago said. ‘But I can’t believe you didn’t even get her number.’

‘She said she’d ring you again and why the interest? Didn’t you just tell us you were over her?’

‘I am over her,’ Jago insisted, though he suspected that a few embers of his love still smouldered deep in his heart and might just reignite at the sight of her.

In the late afternoon, just as they were clearing up the shop ready to close, the phone in the back room rang and Sarah stuck her head in the door and said it was for Jago.

He went past her into the back room and returned ten minutes later looking sheepish.

David and Sarah exchanged glances.

‘Don’t tell me,’ David said, ‘it was Aimee again. She really doesn’t let the grass grow under her feet, does she? So, what happened to the new life with what’s-his-face in Dubai?’

‘She said she knew it was a mistake almost the minute she got there and Dubai was a tricky place if you weren’t married – and he certainly didn’t want to get married. And she missed me.’

‘Not enough to look for you as soon as she got back,’ Sarah put in.

‘She didn’t know I’d left London and it took her a while to track me down,’ Jago explained.

‘Your post is being forwarded on, and anyone at Gilligan’s could have given her your new mobile number as well as the one for this place,’ David said.

‘Yes, someone at Gilligan’s did give her our number eventually, but they were a bit reluctant.’

‘Considering that after she took off we all ate your wedding cake and commiserated with you, it’s hardly surprising,’ David said drily. ‘And she could have asked Sarah in the salon.’

‘She did come in, but I expect she’d forgotten about me,’ Sarah said mendaciously, crossing the fingers of both hands behind her back.

‘I think she was nervous about contacting me in case I was still mad at her, but it’s like I told you: she just wanted to say she was sorry about what happened and she hoped we could be friends now she was back.’

‘I’ll bet she did,’ Sarah said. ‘I suppose whoever she spoke to at Gilligan’s told her you’d won the lottery?’

‘No, not until I mentioned it, so it was a complete surprise to her – she’d wondered what we were doing up here. I explained about helping you set up the Happy Macaroon and then that I was going to start my own wedding croquembouche business.’

David flipped the closed sign over on the door and lowered the window blind.

‘And how did she take that?’ he asked, turning.

‘She thought it was a great idea and she’d love to meet up with me to hear all about my plans. Only that won’t be for a while, because she can’t leave town at the moment and I haven’t got time to go down there.’

‘Thank heaven for small mercies,’ muttered Sarah, starting to cash up the till.

‘I’m not stupid enough to fall for her twice over,’ Jago said with dignity. But still, it had shaken him to hear her soft, contrite and honeyed voice.

‘Good, because she’s like Julia Roberts in that Runaway Bride film and she’d just keep dumping you for a better option,’ Sarah said frankly.

‘That’s a bit harsh,’ he said, wincing, but her words dispelled a little of the enchantment that Aimee had managed to cast over him again.

‘We’re only saying these things because we’re your friends and we don’t want you to go through the whole thing twice,’ David said.

‘I know.’ Jago sighed, and then smiled wryly. ‘Maybe I’ve watched too many romantic comedy films where it’s all turned out right in the end.’

‘It will turn out right in the end,’ Sarah assured him. ‘Only not with Aimee Calthrop. She belongs in an entirely different kind of film.’

Luckily she didn’t say exactly which kind, but mention of romantic films had made Jago remember his earlier conversation with Cally and gave his thoughts a different direction.

‘You know I was telling you about Cally trying to raise money to take her little girl to America for that life-saving operation? Well, I’ve just had an idea for how we could help …’

Chapter 10: Sweet Perfection

Later, while Stella was still asleep, having gone down for her nap so late, and I was doing a little research on the history of madeleines (I thought I might get a long piece for my ‘Diaries’ page, as well as a quick and easy recipe for ‘Tea & Cake’ out of it), my phone buzzed and it was Jago.

‘We’ve just closed the shop, so I’ve emailed you the madeleine recipe I mentioned.’

‘Oh, great – thanks,’ I said gratefully. ‘Funnily enough, I was just doing a bit of research into them.’

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you?’

‘No, not at all. My mother’s working in her studio and Stella’s still asleep, so I thought I’d make a start. She was so tired she only managed to take one bite out of the gingerbread pig, but she’s still holding it.’

‘It’s strange how many children love gingerbread,’ he commented, then added, ‘I just got my third wedding croquembouche order.’

‘Oh, well done!’

‘They want it to be flanked by two of David’s white and pink macaroon pyramids too, so expense no object.’

‘I can imagine how good that would look at a wedding reception. You know, I think your croquembouche business is going to be a huge success.’

‘I hope you’re right, but maybe it will because, David’s has taken off so well, and macaroons are another expensive luxury.’

‘People are prepared to pay for a special cake for a wedding,’ I assured him. Then I added tentatively, ‘Are you all right? Only you sound a bit … I don’t know – stressed?’

‘Knocked for six, more like,’ he confessed ruefully. ‘Aimee, my ex, just rang me at the bakery. Things didn’t work out with the other bloke and she’s back. In fact, she’s been home for a while and my friends knew and didn’t tell me.’

‘I suppose they were just trying to protect you,’ I suggested.

‘So they said, but they needn’t have bothered because she only wanted to say sorry and to be friends.’

‘Right,’ I said, though I thought I detected a hint of uncertainty in his voice. ‘Well, that’ll be lovely then, won’t it?’ I added, with a brisk cheerfulness I didn’t feel, because my heart had suddenly sunk like an undercooked sponge at the possibility that he might be snatched back to London by the horrible-sounding but glamorous Aimee when I’d only just got to know him.

When Stella was in bed that night, and Ma off in the garden room watching old Agatha Christie films, I made some madeleines to Jago’s genuine French recipe, which were delicious, and then started to write the articles.

The ‘Tea & Cake’ one was quick and easy.

Here’s a simple recipe for madeleines, those wonderful little buttery French biscuits, usually baked in deep shell-shaped moulds. Perfect with coffee at elevenses, but a lovely treat at any time …

But the other one took time, and I finally finished around midnight, when even Toto and Moses had gone to bed, both in the same basket. They seemed to have buried the hatchet and while I’d been typing at the kitchen table I’d seen Moses give Toto a very thorough washing, especially around the ears.

I’m not sure that Toto exactly appreciated it, going by the long-suffering expression on his furry face, but it’s surprising what you’ll put up with from your friends.

The house had long been silent except for the clicking of my fingers on the keyboard and the ticking of the clock, and although I offered to let Toto into the garden, he didn’t even bother opening both eyes. Mind you, I caught him crawling through the cat flap earlier in the day, so if he has cracked that, then he can let himself in and out whenever he wants to.

I looked in on Stella on my way to bed and she was fast asleep, hugging Bun. His plush is a bit worn and I’d sewn my mobile phone number onto the sole of one foot, after we once left him behind on a park bench and had to dash back to find him, luckily still there.

Stella looked angelic, a sleeping cherub, dimly illuminated by the faint light from her nightlight, which was one of those porcelain ones like a toadstool with a little mouse family inside. She had added one or two of her fuzzy toy mice to the scenario too, I noticed.

I looked down at her, so small and delicate that she reminded me of those old stories of fairy children exchanged with ordinary ones at birth – but if she had been, they weren’t having her back.

The next day Hal popped round to stretch a canvas for Ma. It seemed like a very un-gardener-like thing to be doing.

‘Hal spends a lot of time here, doesn’t he?’ I said tentatively to Ma later.

‘I suppose he does, but it’s evenings and weekends, mostly. Some of the Winter’s End gardeners work Saturdays overtime, especially when the place is open to the public, but Hal says he’d rather take things a bit easier at his time of life.’

‘What about his family?’

‘He’s a widower and his daughter married a New Zealander, so he’s only seen the grandchildren twice in eight years, when they came over here. He won’t fly, he’s scared. I’ve told him he should go on one of these courses to get over it.’

‘That’s a coincidence: Jago’s parents moved to New Zealand when they took early retirement – his older brother lives there. He didn’t say a lot about them, though. It’s a small world.’

‘It is if you fly, as I keep telling Hal.’

‘He keeps your garden this side of total jungle,’ I said.

‘He does that, and I don’t mind him about: he doesn’t fuss me.’

This didn’t sound to me as if there was any big romance going on there, just an odd friendship of opposites. Jago and I, on the other hand, were clearly destined to be friends because we were so very similar … unless Awful Aimee lured him back to London again, of course.

I texted him that the madeleine recipe came out perfectly, and to thank him again, but he replied not to mention it because he always loved to talk cake.

Aimee

Aimee Calthrop pondered her phone call to Jago, and the surprising comfort it had given her to hear his soft, mellow voice. I could get him back, if I wanted him, she told herself.

In retrospect, it had been such a big mistake to dump a handsome, kind man who adored her … But then, he’d earned peanuts at Gilligan’s and seemed to have no aspirations to do anything other than bake cakes.

Cold feet had set in, which was part of the reason she’d run off to Dubai just before the wedding. But Vann Hamden had seemed a lot less enthusiastic about her arrival when he met her at the airport than he’d been during their brief affair in London, and positively blanched when she tried to kiss him.

They didn’t do that kind of thing in public over there, he’d explained, and immorality was a big no-no, so he was too afraid it would affect his business to step out of line.

Dubai had to be the most boring place on earth: no one seemed interested in having her organise their parties for them and, in any case, she wasn’t part of the fashionable in-crowd there. She couldn’t even shop, because Daddy, who’d liked Jago, had been so cross with her that he’d stopped her allowance. So she spent her days drinking too much (privately; that was also frowned on) and sunbathing none too wisely, between Vann’s visits, and when he said things weren’t working out too well and suggested he buy her a plane ticket home, she accepted the offer.

The whole fiasco was really Daddy’s fault. It was his sudden decision to marry his young PA that had made her nudge Jago into proposing in the first place. And now her place had been taken by a new baby girl for Daddy to dote on just as he’d once doted on her …

He refused to reinstate her allowance, too, saying that since she was in her forties it was time she was earning a proper living, which was another nasty shock, because she’d been totally in denial about her age for so long that she’d forgotten what it really was. So what with that and the realisation that she was never going to oust the two new contenders for her father’s affections (and wallet), she’d plunged into a bit of a panic.

He’d finally relented to the point where he agreed to pay her a reduced allowance for six months while she got on her feet, but her friends and the party crowd had moved on in her absence and now she was struggling to pick up the threads of her old life. She was out of touch … and suddenly starting to feel old.

When someone told her the rumour about the big lottery win at Gilligan’s, she wondered … and even tried pumping that snotty, red-headed fiancée of Jago’s friend David, while she was having her hair done, but got nowhere. Sarah had pretended she had no idea what Aimee was talking about and then insinuated that her hair extensions were giving her a bald spot on the crown, which had to be a foul lie.

She wished she knew just how much he’d won on the lottery … No one at Gilligan’s had been prepared to tell her – in fact, they’d been really reluctant even to give her his new contact details. Maybe that meant it had been squillions? She certainly hoped so!

She tried ringing him again, but still couldn’t get hold of him on his mobile, because he must have been so flustered at hearing her voice that he’d given her the number wrongly. She thought that was a good sign, but it was annoying that the shop number now rang through to voice mail and that friend of his was quite probably wiping her messages as fast as she left them …

Chapter 11: Flaky

On Monday morning I was up so early again that the sky was still a deep blueberry with only the tiniest hint of single cream seeping into the east. The sparse streetlights of Sticklepond glimmered like tired fireflies below me and were answered by the sharp, minute diamond sparkle of a star overhead.

Twinkle, twinkle … I thought of next Christmas and how much I hoped that Stella would be running round, fit and well and excited about Santa’s bumper crop of presents for a special little girl …

That sky made me want to try out blueberry fairy cakes, but apart from the fact I didn’t have any blueberries, I’d got up expressly to have a giant baking session for the new articles, so I got on with that. I’d produced Eccles cakes, Chorley cakes and even a few Sad cakes, before anyone other than Toto and Moses was awake, and I added a recipe to my ‘Cake Diaries’ outline.

Although there are several variations on the same theme as Eccles cakes, there’s nothing else quite as delicious as a proper one, made with thin, flaky, crisp pastry and stuffed full of juicy currants. If you’ve never tasted the real thing, follow my recipe and be amazed!

The kitchen air smelled so good it could have been cut up and sold by the slice, and I munched on a warm Eccles cake as I wrote. When Ma came down she said she was becoming accustomed to waking to the smell of baking, because even if I don’t cook first thing, I still pop some kind of loaf into the bread maker the night before and she can smell that.

‘You’re like a sort of culinary Pied Piper, luring me into the kitchen. Just as well I took to elastic-waisted trousers and baggy tops years ago,’ she remarked, deciding to try one of each pastry for breakfast. ‘I’m sure otherwise 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.

She kept an eye on Stella while I went to make coffee and fetch in some Sad cake, which I’d made into bar shapes this time, rather than rounds. ‘See what you think of these.’

‘Are they fattening?’ she asked, picking one up.

‘Yes, very.’

‘Good,’ she said, taking a great bite before unrolling her ideas.

The Crafty Celia circles had taken the fundraising bit between their teeth and were planning all kinds of events. They were all up for a sponsored Knitathon, to start off with, producing as many squares of an afghan blanket as possible in a day.

‘That sounds like a lot of knitting.’

‘It’s going to be crochet really, only “Crochetathon” didn’t really sound right. Afterwards we’ll sew all the squares into blankets and sell them to raise money, too,’ she explained. ‘Then we’ll have a selling exhibition of craftwork in the coach house in summer, maybe combined with a garden party. We could lure people in with the promise of coffee and cakes, with entrance to the exhibition included in the admission charge.’

‘I could make the cakes for that,’ I said. ‘Oh, Celia, you and Will have already done so much more than all the rest of my friends put together.’

‘Will says if you have a fundraising auction, you can have one of his bird sculptures as a lot.’

‘He is so kind. Chloe Lyon said the vicar had some ideas and was coming to see me again to discuss them,’ I said. ‘She’s the vicar’s wife, did I say? It’s very odd, because her grandfather is a self-professed warlock and runs the Museum of Witchcraft.’

‘Really? It seems a rather odd village altogether,’ Celia said. She’d usually come over to visit me when I’d been up here staying with Ma, and so had got to know it a bit.

‘It is – but in a good way. Everyone has been very nice to me, considering how Ma has always kept to herself, though that seems to have been an Almond family habit, so I expect they’re used to it.’

‘From what you’ve told me, the Almonds all sounded a bit Cold Comfort Farm,’ she said frankly.

‘Yes, and I think they had their own version of “something nasty in the woodshed” too, that they didn’t talk about, but no one will tell me what it is. Mind you, it must have been so long ago that not many people know what it was, anyway.’

‘Martha seems to be getting about a bit more than she used to, though, from the sound of it,’ Celia said.

I considered it. ‘She is a bit, though even now she rarely goes into the village for shopping. However, she does like the bookshop, Marked Pages, and she’ll go in the Spar if she’s run out of anything vital, like tea or whisky. You know, I have to buy huge amounts of granulated sugar when I do the supermarket shop, because when Hal is here, he brews up endless mugs of sweet tea for them both.’

‘Is that the gardener you mentioned, who seemed to be here a lot?’

‘Yes, he’s a bit of a fixture now. He’s really the under-gardener up at Winter’s End, so he’s moonlighting when he does Ma’s garden.’

‘Maybe it’s a romance?’

‘Well … he’s not bad-looking, I suppose, in a morose older Indiana Jones sort of way, and he’s pretty fit,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Ma doesn’t seem to mind having him around either. He comes and goes, and hangs out in the new shed she had put up behind the studio … But no, I haven’t really seen any sign of romance, and when I sort of prodded her about him, she said they were just good friends.’

‘Then that’s probably all they are,’ Celia said, and went back to the vital matter of the fundraising. ‘Did you see there have been a few more donations to the site? Nothing big, though.’

‘Apart from you and Will, I don’t think anyone else is fundraising at the moment. Certainly no one we knew in London.’

‘Well, you know what it’s like with that crowd: they’ll be on to the latest trendy charitable cause, preferably something involving a fashion show or a party,’ she said.

‘You were the only real friend I made down there.’

‘And vice versa. Well, except for Will, of course.’

‘He’s not so much a friend as a soul mate.’

She gave a happy sigh. ‘I know, I was so lucky to meet him and I love living in Southport. The Crafty Celia classes in the coach house gallery are going really well, and of course Will has his studio and gallery upstairs and customers can use the outside staircase, so it’s all worked out really well. If I’m not in the coach house I’m in the attic workshops in the house, so there’s always one of us around for the dogs and cats, too.’

‘That Mother and Toddler group I went to on Monday have promised to hold a jumble sale in June.’

‘Oh, yes, you said on the phone – and I want to hear all about this Jago you kept mentioning, too. Jago is a weird name. Very Poldark.’

‘Poldark?’

‘Some novels set in Cornwall I read years ago: I think there was a TV series too.’

‘He is Cornish by descent – his surname’s Tremayne. But his parents are both academics and he was mainly brought up in Oxford.’

‘He sounds really nice – you obviously clicked straight away.’

‘I do feel like I’ve always known him,’ I admitted, ‘but not in a romantic way, just a friendly one, and I’m sure that’s how he sees me, too. I mean, I really haven’t got enough time or spare emotion to invest in a romance until Stella has had her operation and is on the road to recovery.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘Jago was jilted and I’m sure he isn’t over his ex yet: we have that in common too.’

‘Except that you were totally over your ex ages ago,’ she said.

‘Jago’s ex rang him up out of the blue the other day and I think she wants him back. I hope she doesn’t succeed, but it’s quite selfish of me because I love being able to talk cake with him and I’m sure she’d persuade him to go back to London.’

‘Let’s hope she doesn’t manage it, then,’ Celia said, and then we got out the notebooks and discussed plane tickets and Googled budget hotels in Boston. We’d need a room for a few days before Stella went in for her operation, but once she was in hospital, I didn’t suppose I would be anywhere except by her bedside for a lot of the time …

We found one through the hospital’s helpful website eventually, situated nearby, which looked the best option.

‘Ma is going to go with us, which is good, but I feel I’d really like a trained nurse on the plane with us too, just in case …’

‘I’m sure Stella would be fine,’ Celia said. ‘Didn’t your consultant say that if there is no radical decline in her condition by autumn, the journey shouldn’t be a problem?’

‘Yes, but even so …’ I said stubbornly, and then sighed. ‘I suppose it’s out of the question anyway, because it would be extra expense.’

‘Perhaps we’d better just concentrate on raising the twenty thousand for the moment, and see what suggestions the vicar makes,’ she said. ‘If he comes up with some brilliant ones, we can see about finding a nurse to go out with you then. Meanwhile I’ll get Will on to sorting out the flights and hotel reservations because they really need to be booked soon.’

‘I know,’ I said. I’d been putting it off, though I’m not sure why. The operation was booked, after all, and I’d go through hell and high water to get Stella there.

Chapter 12: Fruitful

Chorley cakes look a little like a flat, thin Eccles cake, but are less sweet and simpler to make, basically consisting of a layer of currants spread between two thin rounds of plain shortcrust pastry. Traditionally they were eaten buttered on top and with a slice of Crumbly Lancashire cheese on the side.

Cally Weston: ‘Tea & Cake’

You know, I could be mining this seam for ever, it’s so fruitful (pun intended). It was great being able to bounce ideas off Jago by way of texts, calls and emails, too, but as Thursday approached I found myself looking forward to actually seeing him again.

Stella was, too, and after the hospital check-up, when they were quite pleased with her and said she’d put on a tiny bit more weight, it was a toss-up which of us was the most eager to go to the Happy Macaroon. So we were quite disappointed to find only David in the shop when we arrived, serving a customer.

But then I caught sight of a tray of iced gingerbread stars on the glass counter, with a sign saying that all proceeds from their sale would go to the Stella’s Stars fund, to send a local little girl to America for a life-saving operation!

‘They’re Jago’s idea,’ David explained when his customer had left and Stella had wandered off to the other glass counter to show the gingerbread pigs to the mummy penguin she’d brought with her.

‘A pound each and all the money goes into the Stella’s Stars box here. We’ve already sold over a hundred and they’re going like hot cakes. Or maybe that should be hot biscuits,’ he added with a grin.

‘That’s so amazing of you both,’ I said gratefully, so moved by this act of kindness that tears came to my eyes.

‘Jago’s an amazingly nice guy, with a heart soft as butter. He was really broken up when his fiancée dumped him, though actually, we all thought she was poison anyway,’ he confided. ‘None of his friends want to see him hurt like that again,’ he added, which I took to be a friendly warning.

‘Yes, he told me about his fiancée, and since mine dumped me, too, we have that in common. I hope we’ll become good friends, because that’s all I have time for when my time is so taken up with getting Stella well again.’

‘Right …’ David said thoughtfully. ‘Then I hope your ex isn’t trying to weasel back into your life, because it looks like Aimee’s not letting Jago go that easily.’

‘He did mention she’d been back in contact,’ I said. I’d really have loved to have pumped David for all the details, but I didn’t want to seem nosy … even if I was. And anyway, at that moment Stella spotted Jago coming in from the back room, carrying a tray of green macaroons.

She let out a squeal of delight. ‘Jago!’ she cried, as if she’d known him for ever, and his thin, dark face, which had worn an abstracted and slightly sad look, suddenly lit up in a grin.

‘She practically dragged me in here so she could get a gingerbread pig,’ I told him, even though there hadn’t been any need to drag me. ‘And I can’t thank you enough for raising money with the gingerbread stars. Stella, look – Jago’s selling these stars to raise money to get your heart mended in America.’

Stella looked at them, then up at Jago and nodded. ‘I’m going in a big plane and when I come back, I’ll be all better.’

‘That will be great, won’t it?’ he said encouragingly. ‘And it’ll be exciting going in a plane to America.’

‘Yes, but I have to go into hospital again when I get there,’ Stella said gloomily. Then she perked up. ‘But Mummy says when I get back it’ll be nearly Christmas and Santa might bring me a big pink castle and a riverboat and a tree house and maybe even a hotel!’

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