it isn’t. He’s really not that kind of man at all and I’ll be fine. He wants to show me his garden.’
‘But you aren’t interested in gardening,’ I said.
‘I’ll pretend. I don’t think he’s terribly interested in horses either, but he said he’d like to see my Honeybun.’
‘I bet he did,’ muttered Felix darkly and I gave him a sharp dig in the ribs. He was acting like a dog with two bones, neither of which he particularly wanted himself, but liked to have put by in case of sudden famine.
‘OK, you can go, but keep your phone on and I’ll call after about an hour to see if you’re OK,’ he said. ‘We can have a codeword for emergency rescues.’
‘Like “help”?’ I suggested.
‘This is serious, Chloe,’ he said severely.
We adjourned to the Falling Star’s dark, cosy snug, which was more our ambience than the slightly trendier surroundings of the front bar of the Green Man. Established in our usual window seat, Poppy waxed lyrical about her date. Apparently he was a former university lecturer who had taken early retirement, a widower, and he lived not far away, in Crank.
‘That figures,’ said Felix, who was determined to be disagreeable, and then he told her about David’s sudden appearance and described what he said was my spineless agreement to meet him again, despite everything he had done to me in the past.
‘He jilted me, that’s all, and it was pretty mutual in the end, when we couldn’t agree over Jake.’
However, Felix didn’t find an ally in Poppy, because she was on my side. She didn’t see why David and I couldn’t meet casually after all this time if I really wasn’t still attracted to him, and neither could I. In fact, I was quite looking forward to it.
Back home, I passed through the museum, where Grumps was unpacking one of the last boxes and took no notice of me at all, and on into the house.
As I expected, Zillah was in the kitchen, which had already taken on an even more exotically gaudy aspect than our last one. I think the bright red Aga must have gone to her head.
Today she was wearing a red cardigan back to front under a purple one the right way round, with a corsage of orange felt roses pinned to the bosom. She’d added to the effect by wrapping a shawl covered in shrieking pink flowers over the whole ensemble and what looked suspiciously like a checked tea towel wound turban-wise around her head.
It was a gloomy day but the lights were off, since she hated artificial light unless it was essential, not counting the big, flat-screen TV that was constantly on in the corner by an easy chair. When she smiled her teeth flashed white and gold in the light cast by the flickering screen.
‘There you are,’ she said, as though she’d been expecting me – indeed, she had two flowered china cups in front of her and was already pouring tea.
‘Zillah, I’ve just met the person from my past that your Tarot reading warned me about, but it was only David, after all.’
‘David?’
‘My ex-fiancé, remember? You bought a feather fascinator in six colours for the wedding ceremony.’
‘Ah, yes, him.’
‘He was just getting into his car outside the Green Man, so we had a chat. I’m meeting him in the Falling Star early Friday evening.’
She looked up from swirling her teacup round and round, her bright eyes sharp. ‘Is that wise?’
‘Why not? A lot of water’s passed under the bridge since we were engaged to be married, so there’s no reason why we can’t meet as friends, is there?’
‘Hmm,’ said Zillah, removing my now empty cup and scrutinising the tea leaves at the bottom. ‘If you remember, I said that more than one person from your past might reappear and affect the course of your life,’ she reminded me.
‘Might – so maybe not. And anyway, people from my past can only affect me if I let them, can’t they?’
‘You’ve already agreed to let one of them do that, Chloe.’
‘No, I haven’t. Although it was nice to see David, I’ve no intention of falling for him all over again – or anyone else that might pop up from my past. You have a look at my tea leaves: they’ll show you.’
‘Sometimes you can’t see all aspects of the future until it’s unfolded.’
‘Then I’ll keep mine tightly creased. But maybe you could read the cards for Poppy? She’s getting so desperate for love that she’s abandoned the internet dating sites and started ringing up men advertising in the newspaper. Felix and I are both worried about it. That’s what we were doing at the Green Man earlier, keeping watch to see if her latest date looked OK…though I have to admit he looked very nice.’
‘I would have thought your angels would have told her what her future held,’ Zillah said, a trifle tartly.
‘They have. I did a reading for her birthday, but it was all a bit general.’
‘Oh, bring her to me, then,’ she sighed, putting my teacup down. ‘And whatever you say, your life is about to change greatly. The cards and the leaves don’t lie.’
‘No, but that could simply be interpreted as meaning all the changes involved in moving here and Jake going off to university in the autumn and that kind of thing, couldn’t it?’ Then a horrid thought struck me: ‘Oh God – perhaps the cards mean Mum’s about to turn up again and totally disrupt everything!’
Although I would have been quite pleased to have had word that she was definitely all right, I wanted it to be in the form of a postcard from a long, long way away. Call me selfish, but I really didn’t want to share my little cottage with anyone, and especially not with my chaotic and totally self-centred mother.
On the other hand, I could ask her who my father really was – if she actually knew. It was a problem I was going to have to deal with at some point, though I was not yet sure exactly how.
Chapter Thirteen Ashes of Roses
Jake and I had dinner with Grumps and Zillah and she came right out and told them I was going to see David again!
Grumps looked up from his plate of seafood risotto (Zillah likes to try out new recipes from magazines, though she spices them up with peculiar little additions of her own), and said that if my former fiancé crossed the Old Smithy threshold he would ill-wish him, and that went for any of the other men who had let me down in the past.
Then Jake said, ‘Good idea, Grumps – I’ll help!’ so clearly that news didn’t go down too well.
‘What does Felix think?’ Jake added, removing a clove from between his teeth and laying it on the side of his plate beside two more. I’d wondered what the hard black bits were until I’d tried to bite into one – but then, I think cloves are good for the teeth, aren’t
