Trisha Ashley 3 Book Bundle

Now I could see that Poppy and Felix were made for each other, I only wondered why I hadn’t spotted it before. The only problem was making the two of them look at each other with fresh eyes…

I’d have to work on it.

That evening Chas Wilde phoned up again, this time to say he would be in the north soon and would like to pop in for a quick visit.

‘It’s ages since I’ve seen you, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘How are you settling into your new home?’

‘Oh, I love it,’ I said abstractedly, then on a sudden impulse took the plunge and added, ‘and I’m glad you rang, because there’s something I want to talk to you about.’

‘That sounds ominous!’ he replied cautiously.

‘No, not really, though it is difficult. You see, when I was packing up to move, I found some of Mum’s old letters.’

He sighed. ‘I think I can guess what you want to talk about, then, and it’s long overdue, after all. You want to know how your mother and I…came together?’

‘Not exactly. Knowing Mum, I can imagine. I also know she got pregnant with me on purpose, as a sort of insurance policy after Wilde’s Women disbanded, because she told me so.’

‘She would. But I did a wrong thing in a weak moment and I had to pay for it, though I never grudged one penny I gave her to support you, Chloe,’ he said sincerely.

‘I know that,’ I answered, because Chas is a kind, decent man, weak moment or not. ‘But the thing is, I’ve discovered that she also told another man that he was my father too, so you might have spent eighteen years paying out for a child that wasn’t your own!’

In the long silence that followed I could hear my heart thumping. ‘Chas? Are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m here. Look, Chloe, the thought that you might not be mine had crossed my mind from time to time – you look nothing like me, for a start. But as I said, I made a mistake and so it was right that I should pay for it. Anyway, I’ve grown fond of you – you feel like my daughter.’

‘And I’m fond of you too – which makes it all the harder not knowing for sure what the truth is!’

‘Well, we could find out with a DNA test, if it matters to you?’ he suggested. ‘I could organise that.’

‘Would you? It would be something to know one way or another. And if you aren’t, then I’ll have to assume it’s this other man, though I suppose she could have been lying to him too!’

‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we? And we’ll hope the test is positive. I’ll see about it and I expect you’ll have to send a swab or a hair sample or something off to a lab in the post. I’ll let you know.’

‘Thank you, Chas, and for being so understanding too. I thought you might be really angry.’

‘With Lou, perhaps, but never with you, Chloe,’ he said kindly.

I so hoped he was my father!

I was feeling a bit edgy after that, so later, when Jake’s phone suddenly played a snatch of Mortal Ruin’s ‘Darker Past Midnight’ I immediately insisted he change the ringtone to something else. I wasn’t terribly tactful about it either, so he was miffed and we had a bit of an argument. Then he slammed off up to bed in a sulk.

I suppose it did seem totally unreasonable. It would have been so much easier if I could have told him why.

Chapter Sixteen Dead as My Love (#ulink_e80cfdec-8027-58a9-9a2b-fa87852a8848)

In the morning I apologised to Jake.

‘That’s OK. I suppose because you hear it everywhere, it just got on your nerves,’ he said handsomely. ‘I’ve changed it to something else now.’

‘Thanks, Jake. That song just seems to be haunting me. It was even playing on the phone when I was put on hold the other day,’ I explained. ‘By the way, Chas is calling in sometime before too long – he rang last night.’

Jake knew the situation (or what we thought was the situation!) so he evinced no surprise at this, and went off in Grumps’ car to collect Kat. They planned to spend the morning listening to some friends rehearsing their band. If the DNA test proved Chas wasn’t my father, it would be time enough to tell him then…

When I went to Grumps’ study to collect the latest chapter or two of Satan’s Child, which had recently galloped off in an unexpected direction just when I had thought it was about to come to an end, he was removing the wrapping from a rectangular cardboard box.

‘Morning, Grumps,’ I said, putting down his cup of tea with the two biscuits balanced on the saucer – after a brief flirtation with Garibaldis we were back to the Jammie Dodgers again, I saw. ‘Have you been buying things at auction, or has someone sent you a present?’

‘Neither. Nor do I get the feeling that this contains anything good.’ He lifted the lid, took a brief look inside, and then slammed it down again as though something evil might escape.

He looked rather pale. ‘As I thought!’

‘What’s the matter, Grumps? Is it nasty?’

‘A warning – unwelcome, if not entirely unexpected. Mann-Drake has evidently arrived in the village, for Zillah found this on the doorstep addressed to me early this morning.’ He looked up at me seriously. ‘Until I have taken steps to protect us all, should he contrive to introduce himself to you, have nothing to do with him. Certainly do not invite him across your threshold – and warn Jake. I will speak to Zillah myself.’

‘He might not tell me his name,’ I pointed out, starting to feel as if I had suddenly stepped straight into the world of one of Grumps’ novels and wondering if he himself could tell the difference between reality and imagination. ‘What does he look like?’

‘Perfectly ordinary and harmless, though he has a voice that could charm the birds off the trees. In recent pictures from the internet he looks not much different from the last time I saw him, though he was dressed up in some ridiculous outfit, like a conjuror.’

‘Yes, Jake showed me those – eerily lit from below, and with a sort of cowl shadowing his face!’ I agreed, thinking that Grumps himself always seemed entirely unaware of his own eccentricities of dress, though of course he never looked ridiculous, just odd.

He gestured to the box. ‘He would have used the powerful conjunction of the ley lines at the Old Smithy for dark purposes, and this shows me the depth of enmity he feels towards me, because I managed to purchase the Old Smithy while he was incapacitated with severe appendicitis. I found it disappointing that it was not fatal…’

‘Grumps!’ I exclaimed, staring at him. ‘You didn’t have anything to do with his illness, did you?’ Then I realised what I had just said and added, ‘No, of course you didn’t! What am I thinking of?’

‘Ill-wishing can lead to the opposite outcome to that desired, or rebound upon one’s head; though it seems to me that to wish something bad upon another person, when your heart is pure and unselfish in its intentions, should not cause such an unfortunate result,’ he said ambiguously. ‘It is a very grey area.’

‘Right…’ I said. Not that I agreed, it was just that I knew how pointless it would be to get into an argument with him on the subject.

‘We must protect ourselves while I consider my strategy, my dear Chloe. Florrie Snowball can help me there, for luckily her one great skill is the very thing we need now.’

‘You mean Mrs Snowball from the Falling Star?’

He nodded, so it looks as though I was right in suspecting her of being another of his coven, along with the Frinton sisters. I wondered if there were any more in Sticklepond, whom I didn’t yet know about.

‘Do you know how the Falling Star got its name, Chloe?’

‘Yes, of course. The rock in the middle of the courtyard is supposed to be a meteorite. It’s got a brass plaque on it that says so, and that it mustn’t be moved because that would be unlucky. But it can’t have actually fallen there, because then the pub would be sitting in a huge crater, wouldn’t it?’

‘The sign means that it must never be moved from where it came to rest,’ he said, which was another of the kind of statements he was prone to make that could be interpreted in more ways than one. Really, sometimes his conversation was enough to make you feel dizzy.

‘It’s really inconvenient where it is now, because it’s right in the middle of the courtyard and cars are always getting scraped against it. I expect stagecoaches did too.’

‘It’s on one of the ley lines, the last landmark of significance before the conjunction here at the Smithy – and there may be three, for I am currently researching the possibility of an even more ancient one.’

‘Oh, right. How exciting for you, Grumps!’ I said, though I was still puzzling over where Mrs Snowball’s speciality came in. Unless he’d heard about the coffee machine, of course, and thought large amounts of caffeine might sharpen our wits?

‘If you could leave me now, Chloe – I must burn this,’ he indicated the box, ‘and then perform one or two rites to negate its power. You might put some more wood on the fire before you go.’