her expressive face like clouds across the sky.
‘As soon as Mum went to make him some fresh tea, he told me he’d bumped into someone he knew at university the previous day, Chloe Lyon, and Mr Merryman had told him you were a friend of mine! He said it had been quite a surprise to find you were living in Sticklepond.’
‘I bet it was!’
‘That’s what I said, and then I think he realised you’d told me all about him, because he said it seemed to have given you a bit of a shock when you ran into him in the High Street, but he assumed that you’d long ago forgiven and forgotten and moved on with your life, just as he had.’
‘What does he mean, just as he had?’ I demanded indignantly. ‘I was the wronged one – and I was doing just fine with the moving-on bit until he chose to turn up on my doorstep.’
‘Yes, but of course at that point he was assuming you were married, because he’d seen you that morning with Jake and thought he was your son.’
‘But why on earth should he—’ I began, then remembered. ‘Oh, yes, I think Jake did call me Mum when he was leaving, the way he does when he’s trying to wind me up.’
‘I told him you weren’t married and that Jake was your half-brother, and you’d practically brought him up singlehanded. He looked really surprised.’
‘There, that just goes to prove he never even looked at the letter I sent him after I got back from university, or he would have known all about Jake! And now I suppose he thinks I’ve been pining for him all this time and that’s why I’ve never married.’
‘Oh, no, I’m sure he doesn’t, Chloe! I explained that you’d spent the last few years building up a really successful chocolate business and he’d actually eaten one of your Wishes at his welcome party.’
‘I wish it had choked him!’
‘You don’t really think that, it’s just his arrival’s temporarily stirred up all the hurt feelings again, that’s all. But I’m positive he’s an entirely different man from the one who let you down, a nice man.’
‘Can leopards really change their spots?’
‘Yes,’ Poppy said simply. ‘Even the blackest sinner can repent. And he must have done, or they wouldn’t have let him enter the Church, would they?’
‘I suppose not,’ I agreed reluctantly, only half believing in this metamorphosis from rock god to man of God. ‘Did he say anything else interesting?’
‘No, there wasn’t time, because Mum came back with the fresh tea and a plate of Bourbon biscuits and started flirting with him, which was hideously embarrassing. And she told him she was going to start attending church services, though I shouldn’t think she ever has, apart from the occasional wedding.’
‘She won’t be the first. He’ll have every woman in the parish drooling over him, just wait and see.’
She giggled. ‘Except Hebe Winter! He’s going out to Winter’s End in the morning and then he said he thought he might visit your grandfather in the afternoon, since she’d made such a big thing of it and he was quite interested in the concept of the museum, anyway.’
‘Visiting Grumps might not be the wisest move he’s ever made,’ I said. ‘I have a feeling Zillah has told Grumps everything she knows about Raffy Sinclair. Look, I’ll have to go and see to the chocolate now – I’ll talk to you later.’
It was late afternoon by the time I’d finished making Wishes and cleaned the workshop up again.
I felt tired and drained, but I went through into the museum because I’d promised to help Grumps check the proofs for the guidebook. It was just a short brochure, but he was now thinking of using the same firm in Merchester to privately print his definitive guide to the history of magic, an old project he was suddenly keen to resurrect, and which had so far been rejected by every publisher he’d sent it to, even the one who published his book on ley lines.
He had the proofs spread out on the desk and they didn’t take long to go through. Then, just as we finished, Zillah appeared with Clive Snowball, who was carrying an old cardboard wine box.
‘Clive’s got something for you,’ she said, with one of her gold-glinting smiles. She seemed to be on surprisingly friendly terms with the publican.
‘Mother sent these,’ he said, dumping the box onto the desk in front of us, then added, without showing any sign of curiosity about the strange objects that surrounded him, ‘I’ll be off then. There’s a delivery due at the Star.’
‘I’ll see you later at the tea dance club then, will I?’ asked Zillah.
‘No, I’ll pick you up and drive you, love: you don’t want to be walking the length of the village in those pretty silver sandals of yours, not in winter.’
I won’t say that Zillah simpered, precisely, but there was more than a hint of sashay in her walk as she went off to let Clive out again.
Grumps didn’t seem to have taken in any of this exchange but had folded back the lid of the box and was engaged in unpacking thick, greenish, old bottles, the sort that have a glass marble stopper hinged to the neck on a strong wire.
They each seemed to have several objects inside them, but when I held one up to the light I could only make out a slip of paper and what might have been twigs tied together. ‘Witch bottles? Is that Mrs Snowball’s mysterious magical speciality?’
‘Of course. Florrie Snowball makes the best and she’s built up a large stock over the years, because we all felt they would be needed, sooner or later.’
‘Oh,’ I said thoughtfully, because the purpose of the bottles is to ward off ill-wishing, and they’ve been found hidden in many old houses. ‘Are these supposed to guard us against Mr Mann-Drake?’
‘The first line of defence,’ he agreed, ‘for as boy scouts say: be prepared!’
I couldn’t imagine Grumps had ever been a boy scout, but something was puzzling me. ‘Grumps, I thought the bottles contained magic to keep witches out. So how come a witch is making witch bottles? And if she had boxes full of them in the pub cellar, then they can’t be working, can they?’
‘They work very well.’ He held one up and shook it gently and for a moment I thought I saw a glittering spark of light like a shooting star in the murky depths, but it must have been a reflection.
‘But if the charm works, then why isn’t it affecting you either, Grumps?’
He looked at me in a surprised sort of way. ‘Because my heart is pure and my intentions good, though I confess to feeling the odd twinge, should I…er…inadvertently stray over the borders of white magic, even with the best of motives. A little revenge, for instance…’ He winced slightly. ‘It is like a sort of spiritual lumbago. Practitioners of the Old Religion can take two paths and this charm works against those who have taken the wrong one, and protects those of us who have not.’
‘Right,’ I said, thinking that at least if his coven believed that, then the witch bottles should keep them all on the straight and narrow – or, as straight and narrow as magic usually is: it
