him off, anyway.’
Arlo had heaved himself up and followed me into the kitchen, presumably in the hope of food, but he was so fat he rippled under his velvet coat so I hardened my heart…to the point where I only gave him half a biscuit.
I took the cups of chocolate through and put them down on the brass tray table.
‘I don’t see why you can’t carry the charm, since it’s a goodwill thing, Raffy. It can’t do any harm, can it?’
‘I suppose not. I could pin it inside my coat.’
‘That would be fine, except that you don’t wear it all the time and if you don’t take it off when you visit Mann-Drake he’ll think it odd. I know – you can pin it inside your jeans pocket, only you’ll have to remember to switch it over when you change clothes.’
‘Yes, and try not to blow my nose on it,’ he agreed gravely, though his turquoise eyes gleamed mischievously. ‘And, Chloe, it’s nice to hear you say my name again!’
My newborn state of forgiveness was still such a precarious thing that I wasn’t quite at the stage of replying to that yet, nor did I offer to help him attach the charm, in case I was tempted to ram the pin into a delicate area. I just handed it to him, silently. It would have been a lot easier if he’d taken his jeans off, but I certainly wasn’t going to suggest that, either.
I looked down at his bent head, where the long, black curls had swung forward exposing the strong, pale nape of his neck. His shoulders seemed broader and his back under the T-shirt more muscled than I remembered…
‘I wish you wouldn’t go to see Mann-Drake,’ I said involuntarily.
He straightened and pushed the hair back from his face with both hands in a familiar gesture. ‘Why, you don’t really think he has any magical powers, do you?’
‘No, but I do think he sounds a really horrible man and also terribly persuasive.’
‘I think that probably sums up how I used to be, doesn’t it? So I should be largely impervious,’ he said drily.
‘You were never horrible or evil, just young, hedonistic and totally self-obsessed.’
‘Thank you for that tribute: I feel so much better now,’ he said with un-Christian sarcasm, draining his chocolate and getting up. ‘I’ll be off on my dragon-slaying right away.’
Arlo seemed to want to stay put, which rather spoiled Raffy’s grand exit. In the end, he had to carry him out.
Unsurprisingly, I felt very unsettled after he’d gone, as if all my emotions and ideas were shifting about into new patterns, all on their own. And I was really on edge…
Felix was talking to customers when I passed his shop on the way back from the post office, so I didn’t stop, just went home and typed up Grumps’ latest chapter instead.
After a bit I wandered in to see Zillah, who was back and sitting at the kitchen table riffling the Tarot pack. Cartons of biscuits, catering-sized tins of fruit salad and giant jars of pickles surrounded the urban consumer squirrel. I only hoped I wasn’t getting any of that lot, gift-wrapped, for my birthday – especially the pickled eggs.
‘So, did you give Raffy the charm?’ she asked, looking up.
‘Yes, but wouldn’t he need more than that to protect him when he visited Mann-Drake?’
‘Stop fussing. The cards said he came to no harm, so it worked. Your grandfather, Hebe Winter and Florrie Snowball dreamed that one up between them. It was powerful.’
I felt the tension I’d carried round with me all day evaporate a bit. ‘Maybe God made him invincible and it was nothing to do with the charm?’ I suggested, and she gave me one of her looks.
‘You can ask him tomorrow,’ she said, for there was to be a general meeting of the villagers to discuss the future closure of the tennis court and lido field, and everyone would be there. Sticklepond has never needed much encouragement to party, so following the meeting there would be tea, coffee and a buffet, when everyone could chat.
Zillah’s reassurance still didn’t stop me walking back up the High Street later, on the pretext of giving Felix a jar of my chocolate and ginger spread, pausing at the vicarage gates for long enough to see that Raffy’s small silver car was parked before the door.
Physically, at least, he must still be in one piece, and I hoped for his sake that his immortal soul was still hanging on in there too.
And with a bit of luck, even if Mr Mann-Drake had taken exception to what Raffy had been saying to him, he would be too much occupied in the near future with all his moneymaking schemes to do anything about it.
Apart from Zillah’s reassurance (for what it was worth) I knew Raffy really was OK because Poppy popped in after the latest Parish Council meeting and said his visit to Mann-Drake seemed to have been a bit of a damp squib.
‘I mean, I don’t know what Miss Winter and your grandfather were imagining would happen to Raffy, but he just said that Mann-Drake had been polite, but unforthcoming about both his personal beliefs and his business plans.’
‘I knew Mann-Drake hadn’t turned him into a frog, because he couldn’t have driven back if he had little stumpy legs and webbed feet,’ I said, and she giggled.
‘I can’t see Raffy as a frog, can you? Anyway, a queue of women a mile long would instantly form, ready to kiss him back into a prince. Effie Yatton would be one of them. She called him “dear boy” twice at the meeting and she keeps bringing him food.’
I pushed the box of truffles we were sharing back in her direction and she selected one covered in chopped nuts, then said, ‘We had some really good news for the householders on the Green that Mann-Drake is trying to extort money from. Miss Winter’s solicitor found a similar case that had been recently successfully contested.’
‘That is good news,’ I agreed.
‘Yes, and the Rights of Way Act was changed after it, so that if you’ve had at least twenty years’ right of access across common land, no one can impose a charge – and that’s all of the houses along there.’
I’d picked up another truffle, a rum one but, feeling slightly sick, put it back again: you can have too much, even of good chocolate. Poppy’s complexion, however, remained a healthy pink although she had eaten twice as many as I had. ‘So Mann-Drake hasn’t got a leg to stand on?’
‘Not even a little, green, stumpy webbed one,’ she agreed happily. ‘The solicitor is going to send a letter to him pointing this out, though he thinks he probably already knows about it and just hoped to panic everyone into paying the charge before they discovered it.’
‘So that’s one problem solved, at least,’ I said.
‘We’re going to announce it at the meeting tomorrow night in the village hall – you are going, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,
