Ottie says the Winter family are distantly related to the Nutters, and her sister, Hebe, dabbles in the dark arts, though really I think she’s more of a herbalist.’
‘The Nutters?’ I repeated.
‘A famous witch family, further north. Didn’t you read the information boards at Winter’s End when you visited?’
‘No, mostly we were in the gardens, but maybe I should.’
‘Well, you’ll have to wait till it reopens for the season at Easter, if you can come up then.’
‘That would be lovely,’ I agreed, then ventured tentatively, ‘I … don’t suppose Esau’s disgrace was anything to do with witchcraft …?’
Ma gave a derisory snort. ‘Don’t be daft! Strange Baptists, the lot of them.’
Stella gave me no rest until I took her down to the Falling Star next morning where Mollie, the barmaid, asked me to sign her copy of the last Sweet Home magazine at the top of my ‘Tea & Cake’ page where, as always in this edition, there was a variation of my Christmas tree biscuits: ‘Crisp ginger and spice biscuits are quick to make and you can hang them on the Christmas tree or have them as a festive treat with coffee …’
Then Clive, who was Florrie’s middle-aged son and the landlord, took us outside and proudly showed off a rather unimpressive grey rock sitting squarely and inconveniently in the middle of the small courtyard that was now a car park.
I took a picture on my phone of Stella poised on top of it, looking a bit like a well-wrapped-up fairy about to take flight, and then we went into the snug out of the icy breeze, where Florrie expertly produced a cup of cappuccino for me from a large, hissing, stainless-steel monster of a machine, and then a hot chocolate for Stella.
I still couldn’t quite believe that she was a witch, but when she put a little leather bracelet on Stella’s wrist and told me to let her wear it night and day, it didn’t seem quite so far-fetched. It was a bit lumpy, which she explained by saying that normally she put her charms in a little pouch, to be hung around the neck.
‘But that’s not safe with childer, so I’ve bound it into the bracelet instead.’
I noticed her use of the old Lancashire word ‘childer’ for children, something I remembered from my grandmother, whose speech patterns had also been peppered with ‘thees’ and ‘thous’, though that might have had something to do with the Strange Baptist religious sect the Almonds used to belong to.
‘Is it magic?’ Stella asked seriously, fingering the leather band and, when Mrs Snowball nodded, she looked pleased.
‘It’ll 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
