Page 44 of A Recipe for Romance

Zillah had stuck my birthday candles (way too many) into the top of a lemon cheese Pavlova, a recipe culled from one of her favourite magazines.

It was…interesting, shall we say, but I appreciated the effort and thanked both her and Grumps for their presents too.

I was wearing the little gold cocoa bean at the neck of my new black pleated chiffon tunic top and it went nicely with the low-slung chain belt around my hips.

My new, big leather bag was gold too – maybe I should have married a man with the Midas touch?

Poppy was feeling really self-conscious about her new image and so she called for me after dinner so we could go to the Falling Star together.

Jake, who was just about to go up to Kat’s house, where he was staying the night, looked gobsmacked when he saw her.

Mine can’t have been such an amazing transformation, since none of the family had commented on my changed appearance, except to hope I had enjoyed my day.

When Poppy and I walked into the snug, Felix was standing at the bar. He looked up with his usual welcoming smile, then his jaw dropped and his eyes practically came out on stalks – and it wasn’t me he was looking at but Poppy, all pink, blonde and delectably feminine.

‘ Poppy? ’ he gasped.

She blushed. ‘Hello, Felix. I’ve had a makeover – we both have.’

‘I can see that,’ he said slowly, still gazing at her. I don’t think he’d looked properly at me once and I was so amused by this, that at first I didn’t even notice that Raffy was sitting in our usual window seat.

Then Felix, recovering his wits with an obvious effort, asked him what he wanted to drink, then said to me slightly challengingly, ‘I invited Raffy. That’s OK now, isn’t it?’

Before I could answer, Raffy was on his feet. ‘Actually, no, I’m not stopping, thanks. I didn’t want to butt in on your celebration, Chloe, only Felix mentioned that it was your birthday and I wanted to wish you many happy returns and give you this.’

‘This’ was a small, rectangular parcel and it’s hard to tell someone to go away when they’ve just handed you a present…

especially when they’re standing looking down at you with grave, hopeful eyes, a bit like a large dog who knows he’s done something wrong, is not entirely sure what, but hopes to be forgiven anyway.

‘No, do stay,’ I said resignedly. ‘We’re going to have a blind chocolate tasting session in a bit. You can be an extra guinea pig. But you shouldn’t have bought me a present – you’ve already given me that lovely angel.’

‘ Which lovely angel?’ Poppy asked, as we sat down around the table.

I coloured slightly. ‘I forgot to tell you: Raffy gave me a carved wooden angel the other day, for my collection.’

‘Yes, you did forget to tell me that – how lovely,’ she agreed, looking at me strangely. ‘You should have seen the disgusting flowers David sent her, Raffy!’

‘They weren’t disgusting, just weird,’ I said.

‘I’d rather have had a pot of geraniums. Oh, and David has gone to have dinner at Badger’s Bolt tonight with some of his friends, and he invited me to go too!

I told him what Mann-Drake was like, but he didn’t believe me.

He’s met him at the Green Man a few times, I think. ’

‘I wouldn’t have thought he was the type for that sort of stuff,’ Poppy said, but she was clearly distracted by the way Felix kept turning round from the bar to stare at her.

She giggled: ‘Did you see Felix’s face when we came in? I thought he was going to have a seizure.’

‘When you came in, you mean. He barely spared me a glance.’

‘You both look extra lovely tonight,’ Raffy said, amused.

‘We should do, we’ve spent practically the whole day having our hair done, and our faces retreaded, and bought new clothes,’ Poppy explained. ‘I didn’t think I’d enjoy it, but actually, it was great fun.’

Felix came back from the bar and distributed drinks.

‘Orange juice?’ I said to Raffy.

‘It’s not that I’m a recovered alcoholic or anything, just, I think I mentioned, that I suddenly decided I didn’t much like alcohol, except beer. It only took me half a lifetime to realise – and now I’ve even given up beer, for Lent.’

Then I saw what Felix had got for me and Poppy. ‘Why on earth Babycham?’

‘Closest thing to champagne they’d got,’ he explained.

‘I like Babycham,’ Poppy said, and smiled at him.

He blinked, still staring at her in a puzzled sort of way. ‘I just can’t get over how different you look. It’s as though I’ve never really seen you before!’

She went pink and I said, ‘You’re embarrassing her. Give over.’

‘You’re both even more dazzlingly beautiful than before,’ Raffy said gravely. ‘I wish I’d worn my sunglasses.’

Poppy laughed and said, ‘I don’t think I was ever beautiful, but Chloe always looks pretty, even when she’s not trying.’

‘So she does,’ he agreed.

‘Now you’re embarrassing me ,’ I protested.

Felix gave me his birthday gift – a Georgette Heyer novel in the original dust cover – and, since Poppy had given me hers earlier (a bamboo wind chime for my garden that made a lovely soft, musical clunking sound), that just left Raffy’s: a small, framed reproduction of one of those mysterious and magical Dadd paintings.

‘It’s Oberon and Titania, and I don’t know why, but I just thought you’d like it,’ he explained.

‘I do, very much – thank you.’ It was odd that Raffy, who I’d known briefly (if intensely) so many years ago, should instinctively choose something I would love, while David hadn’t had the foggiest idea and had probably phoned a florist and left it to them to choose.

He drained his glass. ‘Good, but as I said before, I didn’t intend stopping, so I’ll leave you to it now and I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening.’

‘No, don’t go – have a chocolate,’ I said, rattling one of the small plastic boxes I’d put on the table, a bit like Poppy does with oats in a bucket when she’s trying to catch Honeybun.

‘Really?’ He paused uncertainly, raising one dark eyebrow.

‘Yes, really. I need another guinea pig for an experiment.’

So he went and bought another round of drinks, ducking his head to avoid the low beams and looking a bit like Gulliver in Lilliput. Through the hatch I caught sight of Zillah in the public bar, and she flapped her hand at me. If she was playing cribbage again, they had better watch out.

When he returned, we got down to the chocolate tasting. ‘Right, I want to know which one of these three kinds of chocolate you like best. I’ve marked A, B, or C on little stickers on the foil, so you can put the wrappers in the preferred order. Right, off you go.’

They started off fairly soberly, but pretty soon Felix and Poppy were feeding each other bits of chocolate and getting distinctly silly, in a way even two Babychams and a couple of pints of best bitter couldn’t account for.

Raffy was taking it seriously, though.

‘You’re not eating any,’ he pointed out.

‘That’s because I know which is which.’

‘But you can’t have made up your mind which you like best, or you wouldn’t be having this test, would you?’

When I opened my mouth to reply he snapped the heart he was holding in two and popped one half into my mouth.

I couldn’t very well spit it out, even if I could hear Janis Joplin in my head helpfully belting out ‘Take Another Little Piece of My Heart’, so I chewed and swallowed.

It was, if I say it myself, chocolate perfection. ‘Which one was that?’

‘B,’ he said softly, his eyes holding mine. ‘My favourite – dark, lovely, fragrant, delicious…’

‘It’s ours too,’ Poppy broke in brightly and, when I checked, all three of them had put their wrappers in the same order.

‘So it’s B, A and then C?’

‘Looks like it,’ said Raffy. ‘Are you going to tell us what the different types of chocolate are now?’

‘Oh, they’re all exactly the same, aren’t they, Chloe?’ Poppy said. ‘The only difference is that she’s said different versions of a Mayan chocolate spell over each pot.’

‘Yes, though I didn’t say anything over one batch – C. I said the whole of it over A, and then added an extra blessing for the last lot, the B batch, which Grumps and his Spanish friend have just finished translating.’

‘Is that really all the difference?’ Raffy asked. ‘That’s…surprising.’

‘To say the least,’ agreed Felix. ‘You must have done something different, or added a little extra ingredient?’

‘I didn’t, I used the same blend and amount of couverture chocolate drops, heated and tempered it at the identical temperatures and for the same length of time. I can’t understand it either.’

I nibbled a bit more from the A and C boxes, absent-mindedly passing the remainder on to Raffy, and agreed that not only was B outstanding in flavour, it also looked glossier than the others and had a crisper snap when I broke it.

‘I find it impossible to believe that an ancient charm could change the taste of your chocolate,’ Raffy said.

‘Oh, but the Chocolate Wishes business only really took off when Chloe started saying it over the melting pot,’ Poppy said, ‘and that was just the first part of it! So obviously the complete thing must make a difference.’

‘I think the Chocolate Wishes taking off was due more to the internet and getting a mention in Country at Heart magazine,’ Felix suggested.

‘Yes, and now I advertise regularly in Country at Heart and Skint Old Northern Woman , I get even more orders.’

‘But they do all taste completely different,’ Raffy said slowly.

‘Yes, and it can’t all be in the mind if you and I didn’t know they were the same chocolate,’ Felix said.

‘That’s right. So we’ve proved magic really works!’ Poppy announced. Her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks now so flushed that I wasn’t sure she should be driving home afterwards.

Felix, I noticed, had his arm resting along the back of her chair…while Raffy was still looking at me with a hint of that dog-waiting-to-be-forgiven expression in his eyes, sort of puzzled and hopeful together.