The Chocolate Collection. Trisha Ashley
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like photographs of Grumps when younger) was inside the pentagram, while a really nasty demonic beast was testing the boundaries and trying to get in.
In fact, the scene was so realistic that I started to wonder if Grumps…But no, surely not? He just has a fertile imagination, that’s all, as evidenced by his constant hints that some mysterious rival was loosing the slings and arrows of outrageous magic at him, which was probably, as Zillah said, ‘all my eye and Betty Martin’ (though don’t ask me who Betty Martin is, I have no idea).
But I made a mental note that once we had moved to the Old Smithy I would take care to avoid entering the museum area when the coven was meeting. Maybe I could make a little sign for Grumps to hang on the connecting door between the cottage and the barn:
DO NOT DISTURB: IN FOR A SPELL
I’m a fast touch-typist so it didn’t take long to input everything. Then I printed the manuscript out ready to take it across in the morning when I collected the next lot.
I sort of fell into being Grumps’ PA when I returned after that disastrous first term at university. It gave me something to occupy my mind with, while looking after Jake and waiting for Mum to come back from her latest fling, other than worrying about my future and what would happen when Raffy finally got my letter telling him everything…
I wrenched my mind back from the brink of yet another pointless trip down Memory Lane and reflected that I seemed to have managed pretty well without a Significant Other for the last few years. Among my blessings I had good friends (OK, only two, Felix and Poppy, but it’s quality not quantity of friendship that counts) and a social life, though that mainly involved meeting up with them at the Falling Star in Sticklepond.
I didn’t think I’d made a bad job of bringing Jake up either, considering his lively disposition: the police never pressed charges, even when he painted the Arbuthnot statue in front of the Town Hall blue. (Luckily there was a downpour soon afterwards and the emulsion was not quite dry, so most of it washed off.)
And the saying ‘Who needs men when you’ve got chocolate?’ was literally true in my case, since discovering a passion for it and then building up my successful Chocolate Wishes business had certainly put the icing back on the slightly jaded cupcake of life.
Little did the purchasers of my expensive chocolates know that they were whipped up practically on the kitchen table in the kitchen end of our living room. I made the chocolate shells in big batches and often spent the evenings sitting putting in the Wishes and sealing the two halves together with melted tempered chocolate (because if you don’t use tempered chocolate, you get a white line round the join). I had the TV for company if Jake was out with his friends, or shut into his room, doing whatever teenage boys do – and whatever that is, it’s probably much better that their big sisters don’t know anything about it.
The flat – and probably me, too – always smelled deliciously of chocolate. Maybe that’s why Felix, who has a sweet tooth, had started to look at me in a new, slightly appraising light…unless I was imagining it? I didn’t think I was, though, unfortunately. I first noticed it about the time Grumps gave me that allegedly Mayan chocolate charm to say over the melting pot and the business took off like a rocket, though as I said, I’m sure the two events had nothing to do with each other: it was simply all my hard work paying off.
I had only part of the charm anyway. Grumps was trying to decipher the rest, which was written in some form of ancient Spanish, having specialised in dead and buried languages at Oxford. One of the letters I’d just typed up was to the archivist in Spain who had found the original document among some collection of papers he was cataloguing, though like Grumps his principal interest was in ley lines.
Since I’d just created a whole new batch of Wishes I had enough to keep me going for a while, so I packed and labelled that day’s orders ready to post later with Grumps’ mail.
All the time I was working I was thinking about the Old Smithy and the little cottage that I would have to myself once Jake had gone off to college, and especially what I could grow in the walled garden. Certainly a greater variety of herbs and, if there was room for a bigger greenhouse for over-wintering them, I’d have lots more varieties of scented geraniums. Pelargoniums were my newest passion. There were so many kinds I hadn’t got yet…even one that was supposed to smell like chocolate!
And I would have tubs of hyacinths and those small, frilly Tête-à-tête daffodils in early spring, lavender and roses, nasturtiums, snapdragons and hollyhocks…My mind ran riot with horticultural possibilities.
But I still couldn’t imagine Grumps running a museum, even a witchcraft one! He wasn’t in any way gregarious, besides being over eighty and very set in his habits, so I expected Zillah would end up collecting the entrance money and issuing tickets. But since she used to operate the Tarot-reading booth on a Lancashire seaside pier with Granny, I imagined she’d take to it like a duck to water, especially since, unlike Grumps, she was hugely inquisitive about people.
Maybe she’d do Tarot readings on the side, and make herself a little nest egg?
Jake came home briefly to eat and change, before going out to an eighteenth birthday party. Zillah had given me some goulash, having made gallons, so that’s what we had, together with crusty bread. I didn’t mention Tabitha’s tail to Jake, because I hoped perhaps it hadn’t quite gone into the stew pot. The goulash tasted OK, anyway.
We followed it up with blackberry crumble, out of the freezer, with ice cream and then, while Jake filled any remaining interior spaces with about half a pound of crumbly Lancashire cheese (he is a bottomless pit as far as food is concerned), I broke the news of our imminent move to Sticklepond.
He stopped shovelling food in and stared at me through a lot of thick, blue-black hair. When it isn’t dyed, it’s the same dark brown as mine and our colouring is quite similar, apart from his brown eyes. Mine are the typical Lyon grey.
Jake’s father was an Italian waiter Mum met on holiday, while mine was Chas Wilde, the former manager of the Pan’s People-type dance troupe she performed in during the late sixties and early seventies, along with her friends Mags (Felix’s mother) and Janey (Poppy’s). Mum told me herself she only had me as an insurance policy after Wilde’s Women disbanded, since Chas was married and so paid up without a murmur to keep her from letting the cat – or the baby – out of the bag.
But none of the three of them was much good in the motherhood stakes, which is probably why Felix, Poppy and I have such close bonds of friendship: we’ve always looked out for each other.
Jake resumed chewing, swallowed, then said, ‘Grumps showed me the house agent’s leaflet and asked me what I thought of the Old Smithy ages ago. I didn’t think he was going to buy it, though. I just thought he was interested because it’s at the junction of two important ley lines.’
‘Yes, that does seem to have been his driving motivation,’ I admitted, ‘but also he’s had a very good offer for this house, much more than it’s worth. Did you know that he intends reopening the Old Smithy as a museum, too?’ And I told him about Grumps’ plans.
‘So, you and me are to move into the little cottage, then? How do I get to college from Sticklepond – can I borrow your car?’
‘No way! But Grumps says you can use the Saab.’
‘Even better. I look stupid in your baby Fiat.’
‘I’m going to try and get the Old Smithy key tomorrow and have a look, but it has two bedrooms and there’s a bathroom, though I don’t think any of it is terribly modern. One room downstairs was extended into a shop front for Aimee Frinton’s doll’s hospital.’
‘For what?’
‘One of the Frinton sisters mended dolls and teddy bears. There used to be a lot of doll’s hospitals, before mass-produced cheap toys took over. Grumps thinks it would be perfect for making Chocolate Wishes and I could even sell them directly to the public, if I wanted to.’
‘You’ll be practically round the