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
