Page 32 of A Recipe for Romance

‘Grumps? Is that what you call him? No, we had a really interesting chat. He’s a very original and surprising man.’

‘He’s all of that,’ I agreed.

‘I’m fascinated by the way the early Christian Church in Britain absorbed the pagan rituals and festivals into their calendar and Mr Lyon told me that there will be quite a lot of information about that on display in the museum and in the guidebook.’

‘Yes, there is – I’ve proof-read it. One of the separate pamphlets he’s writing to sell in the museum deals with it too.’

‘Since he’s basically just exhibiting the history of witchcraft, rather than actively preaching paganism and the joys of Wicca, I can’t really see any problem in having the museum at all.

I’ll have to try and persuade Miss Winter to see it that way too, though when I visited her this morning she seemed to be coming round to the idea herself anyway. ’

‘Was she?’ I said, surprised. ‘Perhaps she’s now just more worried about the man who has moved into Badger’s Bolt, Digby Mann-Drake.’

‘Yes, she told me all about him, and so did your grandfather. I’d already heard of him in London and known one or two people who’ve fallen for all that black magic posturing and the secret rites stuff at his place in Devon – though actually, it’s just burned down.’

‘Burned down?’

‘That’s what your grandfather told me. According to him, the villagers burned it to the ground because he was corrupting the local youth, but I expect it was really only an electrical fault or something like that.’

‘Oh, so that’s why Mann-Drake told Felix he would be spending a lot more time here than he’d first expected…’ I mused. ‘Badger’s Bolt was supposed to be just a weekend cottage.’

‘He’s still got his house in London, so far as I know,’ Raffy said. ‘But I agree with Miss Winter and your grandfather that his influence is not one that we want in Sticklepond, even if we discount his alleged occult powers.’

He raised an eyebrow quizzically at me, presumably wondering on which side of the magical fence I fell these days, but I wasn’t about to try to explain my ambivalent feelings on the subject.

‘Clearly we will all have to join forces to combat him, not fight among ourselves, Chloe.’

‘I can’t see that happening any time soon,’ I said shortly, ‘and we seem to have strayed an awful long way from the subject of why you wanted to talk to me.’

‘That’s easy enough to answer: I was puzzled by why you seemed so angry and bitter at seeing me again,’ he said, to my complete astonishment.

‘You were puzzled by it?’

‘Of course!’ He opened his blue-green eyes wide. ‘Because if anything, it should have been the other way round! You were the one who broke things off and moved back here to live with an old boyfriend, after all.’

‘I did what ?’ I gasped.

‘Come on, Chloe!’ His eyes took on a sudden stormier hue. ‘When I hotfooted it back to the university to find you at the start of the new term, your ex-roommate told me all about it.’

‘ Rachel told you that I’d gone back to an old boyfriend?’ I repeated incredulously.

‘Yes.’ He got up and walked over to the fire, where he stood gazing down into the flames, his back to me. ‘It’s strange, but even then I couldn’t believe you’d do that to me, until she showed me part of a letter you’d sent her and there it was in your own handwriting.’

‘Saw what?’ I asked numbly. ‘What did it say?’

‘Oh, I remember every word! You said you weren’t coming back, because once you’d met up again with your old boyfriend, you realised you loved him and couldn’t bear to leave him again. His name was—’

He broke off and turned suddenly to look at me, his eyes widening.

‘Jake,’ I finished quietly. ‘My baby half-brother – that’s who I couldn’t bear to leave.’

I felt tears welling up in my eyes and slowly spilling, but I didn’t brush them away, just sat and looked at him.

‘Oh God,’ he said quietly, ‘Poppy told me you’d brought him up and I never made the connection. So, you mean there was no other man?’

‘No, there was just Jake. I realised as soon as I got home how much he’d missed me and that I couldn’t bear to leave him again.’ I looked at Raffy, trying to find a way of explaining the situation so he would understand.

‘My mother neglected him – she was forever off with a new lover – but I had the mad idea that perhaps if I wasn’t around to take over whenever she wanted me to, if I went away to university, she’d be forced into being a proper mother.

But it didn’t work out like that, because the second I set out for home at the end of that first term, she dumped Jake with Zillah and took off. ’

‘But couldn’t Zillah look after him?’

‘No, Zillah loved him but she isn’t good with babies – she’d forget him for hours and then when she remembered, feed him all the wrong things and drop fag ash over him.

Besides, I felt really guilty that I’d hardly given Jake a thought once I’d met you, and he’d needed me.

I explained everything in the letter I sent you, but you obviously didn’t read it. ’

His head had been bent over his clasped hands, his long black hair hiding his face, but now he looked up quickly. ‘I didn’t get any letter!’

‘It was enclosed with the one to Rachel. She was supposed to give it to you when you turned up…And I was quite sure you would turn up,’ I added painfully.

‘I did, the very first chance I got. But Rachel never gave me the letter and she only showed me that bit of the one you sent her, to go with her story.’

‘So you just believed all her lies?’

‘I – well, it was in your writing,’ he said defensively, ‘and she was very convincing.’

‘So convincing that you never stopped to think if that was the sort of cruel thing I would do? Or tried to find out if it was the truth?’

My tears had dried and for a moment I felt filled with white-hot rage: for Raffy’s credulity and stupidity, for Rachel’s duplicity and callousness, and for all the lost years of my teens and twenties, which I’d devoted to Jake.

But I quickly caught myself up on that last thought: I might sometimes have resented Jake’s claims on me, but it didn’t mean I didn’t love him. I’d do it again if I had to.

Raffy sighed. ‘No, I suppose I was so mad I wasn’t thinking straight and anyway, I didn’t see why she would tell me lies.’

‘Because she always fancied you,’ I said. ‘She saw her chance and took it.’

‘But what about you?’ he asked, suddenly rallying. ‘Didn’t you wonder why I never wrote or turned up?’

‘Not after she told me she’d given you my letter and you hadn’t even bothered to read it. And by the way, she said you jumped straight into bed with her, and I don’t expect that bit was a lie?’

He looked shamefaced. ‘No, I got blind drunk in the students’ union bar and then she…consoled me. I regretted it next day. Never went back. Went to hell in a handbasket, in fact,’ he said soberly. ‘What a fool I was!’

‘I still can’t believe you thought I would ask another person to tell you something like that – you must have known I loved you!

And for weeks I kept expecting you to turn up, until I got Rachel’s letter.

And after that the papers were full of all the things you and the rest of Mortal Ruin were up to, so I knew you’d completely forgotten about me. ’

‘But I hadn’t! Lord knows, I tried, but you were forever coming back to haunt me.

’ He sat down again and, leaning forward, took my hands in a warm, firm grasp.

‘It took God to make me see just what effects my actions had on other people, and turn me outwards, instead of in. I found it a hard struggle to truly forgive you in my heart for what I thought you’d done to me, but I always hoped you were happy and it had turned out well for you. ’

‘That’s more than I managed for you, because I never forgave you at all! Whenever one of your damned songs reminded me of you, my thoughts were about ninety per cent cocoa solids.’

‘I’m guessing they were pretty bitter, then?’

‘I think you could say that, with a dash of hot chilli on the side. My opinion of you was that you were a cheap forastero blend and I was probably right!’

‘Thanks,’ he said drily. ‘But I’m truly sorry if things haven’t worked out for you. I always pictured you married and with children when I thought of you and—’

He broke off: perhaps something in my expression warned him not to go there.

‘I nearly got married, but it didn’t work out, and then I had Jake to bring up. I feel I’ve done my bit in the motherhood and relationship stakes, so now I’m concentrating on my business.’

I suddenly realised that he was still holding my hands between his and it felt as if some powerful current was passing between us…until I snatched them away.

‘But Felix mentioned that your ex-fiancé has turned up again, so maybe you won’t always feel that way?’ he suggested.

‘David’s just a friend these days, that’s all,’ I said shortly. ‘Felix gets the daftest ideas.’

‘Right,’ Raffy said, and got up. ‘Look, Chloe, what’s happened, happened, and I can’t change that. But I’m so very sorry and I hope eventually that you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me for unintentionally hurting you so much, just as I forgive you.’

‘ You forgive me ?’ I stared at him.

‘Yes – don’t we both share the blame for not trusting in each other’s love enough to question what Rachel told us?’

‘Some of us are guiltier than others, and I don’t forgive you, Raffy Sinclair!’

For a moment his eyes flashed and I thought he was about to lose his temper, just as the long-vanished Raffy that I once loved would have done.

It might even have cleared the air a bit.

But then he gave a long sigh. ‘I’m sorry you feel like that, but I’ll leave you in peace now and go to the church.

I feel a need to pray for both of us – but even more for Rachel. ’

I felt more inclined to damn Rachel to the fiery pits of hell for what she’d done to me – to us . But then, I wasn’t the one with a freshly minted conscience and a matching set of ethics.

‘I’d concentrate on praying for yourself after visiting my grandfather,’ I advised him. ‘You know what they say: if you sup with the devil, you need a long spoon.’

Outside, David tooted his car horn and I got to my feet, feeling about ninety years old. ‘I’ve got to go; I’m going house-hunting with a friend.’

‘Of course.’

I put a brass screen in front of the fire and unhooked my coat from behind the door, then he followed me out through the workshop and into the lane. There he paused, looking down sombrely at me, and I stared inimically right back up at him.

‘God bless you, Chloe!’ he said, then strode off towards the High Street, past David’s red sports car, without even seeming to notice, his dark head bent and his hands in his pockets.

I got into David’s car feeling as if I’d gone several rounds in the boxing ring, and his peppering me with questions didn’t help, either.

‘Wasn’t that Raffy Sinclair? Mel Christopher told me he was the new vicar and I thought she was joking! You wouldn’t think someone with that kind of lifestyle would suddenly get God, would you?’

‘I know, I was surprised too,’ I said, the understatement of the century. ‘Of course, the band split up years ago, so I expect they’ve all moved on and done something else. He’s been ordained for quite a long time, I think.’

‘But why was he visiting you? You don’t go to church now, do you?’

‘He came to see Grumps, really, and then I expect he thought he might as well call on me. He intends visiting every house in the parish eventually, so at least he can tick me off the list now.’

‘I suppose he’ll be a seven-day wonder and all the women will go gooey over him.’

‘Not me,’ I said flatly and he gave me a sideways smile as we drove out along the Neatslake road, passing the sign to Stirrups.

‘No, I’m sure he isn’t your type in the least.’

‘So, which house are we going to see first?’ I asked, firmly changing the subject. I longed to be on my own, to go over every single nuance of what Raffy had said to me, but until I was, I’d have to try to put a brave face on it.