Wish Upon a Star (11 page)

Aimee Calthrop pondered her phone call to Jago, and the surprising comfort it had given her to hear his soft, mellow voice
.
I could get him back, if I wanted him, she told herself.

In retrospect, it had been such a big mistake to dump a handsome, kind man who adored her … But then, he’d earned peanuts at Gilligan’s and seemed to have no aspirations to do anything other than bake cakes.

Cold feet had set in, which was part of the reason she’d run off to Dubai just before the wedding. But Vann Hamden had seemed a lot less enthusiastic about her arrival when he met her at the airport than he’d been during their brief affair in London, and positively blanched when she tried to kiss him.

They didn’t do that kind of thing in public over there, he’d explained, and immorality was a big no-no, so he was too afraid it would affect his business to step out of line.

Dubai had to be the most boring place on earth: no one seemed interested in having her organise their parties for them and, in any case, she wasn’t part of the fashionable in-crowd there. She couldn’t even shop, because Daddy, who’d liked Jago, had been so cross with her that he’d stopped her allowance. So she spent her days drinking too much (privately; that was also frowned on) and sunbathing none too wisely, between Vann’s visits, and when he said things weren’t working out too well and suggested he buy her a plane ticket home, she accepted the offer.

The whole fiasco was really Daddy’s fault. It was his sudden decision to marry his young PA that had made her nudge Jago into proposing in the first place. And now her place had been taken by a new baby girl for Daddy to dote on just as he’d once doted on her …

He refused to reinstate her allowance, too, saying that since she was in her forties it was time she was earning a proper living, which was another nasty shock, because she’d been totally in denial about her age for so long that she’d forgotten what it really was. So what with that and the realisation that she was never going to oust the two new contenders for her father’s affections (and wallet), she’d plunged into a bit of a panic.

He’d finally relented to the point where he agreed to pay her a reduced allowance for six months while she got on her feet, but her friends and the party crowd had moved on in her absence and now she was struggling to pick up the threads of her old life. She was out of touch … and suddenly starting to feel old.

When someone told her the rumour about the big lottery win at Gilligan’s, she wondered … and even tried pumping that snotty, red-headed fiancée of Jago’s friend David, while she was having her hair done, but got nowhere. Sarah had pretended she had no idea what Aimee was talking about and then insinuated that her hair extensions were giving her a bald spot on the crown, which had to be a foul lie.

She wished she knew just how much he’d won on the lottery … No one at Gilligan’s had been prepared to tell her – in fact, they’d been really reluctant even to give her his new contact details. Maybe that meant it had been squillions? She certainly hoped so!

She tried ringing him again, but still couldn’t get hold of him on his mobile, because he must have been so flustered at hearing her voice that he’d given her the number wrongly. She thought that was a good sign, but it was annoying that the shop number now rang through to voice mail and that friend of his was quite probably wiping her messages as fast as she left them …

On Monday morning I was up so early again that the sky was still a deep blueberry with only the tiniest hint of single cream seeping into the east. The sparse streetlights of Sticklepond glimmered like tired fireflies below me and were answered by the sharp, minute diamond sparkle of a star overhead.

Twinkle, twinkle … I thought of next Christmas and how much I hoped that Stella would be running round, fit and well and excited about Santa’s bumper crop of presents for a special little girl …

That sky made me want to try out blueberry fairy cakes, but apart from the fact I didn’t have any blueberries, I’d got up expressly to have a giant baking session for the new articles, so I got on with that. I’d produced Eccles cakes, Chorley cakes and even a few Sad cakes, before anyone other than Toto and Moses was awake, and I added a recipe to my ‘Cake Diaries’ outline.

Although there are several variations on the same theme as Eccles cakes, there’s nothing else quite as delicious as a proper one, made with thin, flaky, crisp pastry and stuffed full of juicy currants. If you’ve never tasted the real thing, follow my recipe and be amazed!

The kitchen air smelled so good it could have been cut up and sold by the slice, and I munched on a warm Eccles cake as I wrote. When Ma came down she said she was becoming accustomed to waking to the smell of baking, because even if I don’t cook first thing, I still pop some kind of loaf into the bread maker the night before and she can smell that.

‘You’re like a sort of culinary Pied Piper, luring me into the kitchen. Just as well I took to elastic-waisted trousers and baggy tops years ago,’ she remarked, deciding to try one of each pastry for breakfast. ‘I’m sure otherwise I’d be exploding out of my clothes like the Incredible Hulk.’

‘I think I already am,’ I said ruefully.

‘Oh, I don’t know, you look about the same as when you got here,’ she assured me. ‘I expect those long walks in the afternoons with the buggy and Toto are keeping it down a bit.’

‘Yes, that’s true, I must be getting fitter even if not thinner, because apart from Primrose Hill, which is more of a grassy bump than anything, there weren’t really that many nearby open spaces to tempt you to have long walks in London. Stella says she misses the zoo, but that’s all. It’s a pity the little one at Southport closed down.’

Chloe hadn’t rung me to warn of any pestilential disease laying the local children low, so mid-morning Stella and I went to the Mother and Toddler group at the old vicarage for the first time, and I felt a bit nervous, not really knowing anyone.

It was held in the drawing room, which was vast enough to hold most of the footage of Ma’s cottage, and had lots of toys for the little ones to play with scattered over its acreage.

There were nine or ten other mothers there and the children ranged in age from tiny babies upwards. Stella was the oldest, but she was by no means the biggest. In fact, she looked worryingly fragile next to some of those sturdy, rosy-cheeked toddlers …

Chloe introduced me to everyone, though of course I knew several of them slightly already from my shopping expeditions into the village, like Poppy, who was married to Felix Hemmings, proprietor of Marked Pages, and Tansy Poole from Cinderella’s Slippers, and many others by sight. They all made me very welcome, anyway, though I immediately forgot several of their names. I don’t think the warmth of the welcome was entirely due to the three cake boxes I’d put down on the coffee table …

‘I’ve already told everyone about Stella’s Stars and the fundraising,’ Chloe said. ‘We’ve decided to think up some ways to raise money.’

‘That would be wonderful,’ I said gratefully.

‘I know Raffy’s got some ideas, too,’ she said. ‘He’s going to come and see you again soon to discuss them, so perhaps we’d better see what he suggests first and then fit our fundraising around it?’

‘Or we could just have a jumble sale in the village hall; that’s always good,’ someone suggested, and they all seemed keen on that idea. Poppy, who was also a member of the parish council, said she would find out what day the hall was free in June, to give everyone time to get their jumble together.

That was a great start, but I hoped Chloe was right about Raffy having come up with a plan, because time seemed to be galloping by and I still had so much money to raise.

‘Cally’s kindly brought us some Eccles cakes she’s made, to have with our coffee,’ Chloe announced.

‘Yes, I’m writing an article on the differences between the traditional Eccles cake, Chorley cakes and Sad cakes for my next “Cake Diaries”,’ I explained, ‘and I thought perhaps you could tell me which you prefer?’

‘Oooh, lovely, a taste test,’ said a tall, attractive dark girl who I think was called Zoë … or maybe her friend was called Zoë and she was called Rachel? It was one way or the other.

‘I did mention that Cally is a well-known cookery writer, didn’t I? She writes the “Tea & Cake” page in
Sweet Home
magazine, and “The Cake Diaries” for a Sunday supplement,’ Chloe said, and several of them said they got the magazine, even if they hadn’t seen my pieces in the Sunday paper.

A tall, grim and alarmingly Mrs Danvers figure in a black apron brought in a tray of coffee to have with my cakes, and left without saying anything, her rat-trap mouth firmly shut, though I heard Chloe thank her and call her Maria, so she must be some kind of housekeeper.

Once everyone was munching on Eccles cakes the conversation turned to nice local places to visit with children and they told me about the new nature reserve that had been created on the site of a former mill, and how the Victorian mill manager’s house was being turned into a museum.

‘Oh, yes, the vicar mentioned that when he was telling me about how everyone in the village always came together to fight for a good cause,’ I recalled.

‘They were going to build a retail park on the site, but we were all against that, so in the end it was sold to a charity, Force for Nature. Luckily there was a huge anonymous donation, so already they’ve put up an eco-friendly wooden café and information centre and boardwalks around the site,’ Poppy said.

‘Now they’re starting to convert the mill owner’s house to how it would have been in Victorian times,’ Chloe put in. ‘There’s a courtyard with some outbuildings at the back, where I think they might have a couple of craft workshops eventually, or something like that.’

‘I’ll have to take Stella out there; it sounds lovely,’ I said.

‘We have an annual teddy bears’ picnic, and we’ve decided to have that there this year,’ the tall, dark girl said, then nudged her friend. ‘Rachel, Betty Boo’s put an entire Duplo figure in her mouth.’

‘She’s got a mouth like a letterbox, that child,’ Rachel said with a long-suffering sigh, going over and casually hooking it out again. ‘She doesn’t get it from me.’

Betty Boo roared loudly for five minutes, then stopped suddenly and crawled off towards something else. I hoped it was larger than the plastic figure.

Stella tired after a bit and came and sat quietly on my lap, thumb in mouth, so I carried her home, glad I’d taken the car because of carrying the cake boxes. They were now much lighter, containing only the odd crumb.

‘Did you enjoy that?’ I asked her.

She nodded. ‘I liked all the toys, especially the pink castle. Could I have one of those, Mummy?’

‘Do you want a Barbie doll to go with it?’ I asked cautiously, because she’d never shown any interest in dolls to date, and I’d hoped if she was going to start, it wouldn’t be with something so strangely mutant-looking and unnatural, so it was a relief when she shook her head so the fine silvery-gold curls danced.

‘No, I want it for all my
families
,’ she explained.

‘It’s pretty big, so you could certainly fit them
all
in. Do you want it more than that tree house we saw?’ I asked. ‘Or the camper van?’

She pondered. ‘Not
more
…’ she said finally. ‘The same.’

‘You could ask Santa if he’d bring you one, when we get a bit nearer to Christmas,’ I suggested. ‘I expect he’ll feel you deserve a
big
present after we’ve been to America to get you made better, so you never know.’

I emailed Jago when I got home and told him the verdict on the cakes: Eccles cake was definitely favourite, Chorley cake was all right, but Sad cake was a bit more shortcakey, so that fingers of it would go well for elevenses with a cup of coffee. That could be my next recipe on the ‘Tea & Cake’ agenda – more crossover of my two different regular columns.

He emailed back and said maybe biscuits like garibaldi would make a good follow-up article, because it was only one step from an Eccles cake to a garibaldi really, when you thought about it.

That was a great idea! It’s so wonderful having someone on the same wavelength that I can bounce baking ideas off, because it’s clearly going to spark all kinds of useful things.

Celia came over on the Wednesday for another fundraising discussion, though without Will, since he had to deliver one of his larger sculptures, a group of driftwood birds on a sea-smoothed log, to a customer.

Stella was in her room with the door open so I could see her playing on the carpet with her fuzzy ginger cat family and I could just hear the murmur of her voice as she talked to them, too. She looked up long enough to wave at Celia, before vanishing back into her game.

She kept an eye on Stella while I went to make coffee and fetch in some Sad cake, which I’d made into bar shapes this time, rather than rounds. ‘See what you think of these.’

‘Are they fattening?’ she asked, picking one up.

‘Yes, very.’

‘Good,’ she said, taking a great bite before unrolling her ideas.

The Crafty Celia circles had taken the fundraising bit between their teeth and were planning all kinds of events. They were all up for a sponsored Knitathon, to start off with, producing as many squares of an afghan blanket as possible in a day.

‘That sounds like a lot of knitting.’

‘It’s going to be crochet really, only “Crochetathon” didn’t really sound right. Afterwards we’ll sew all the squares into blankets and sell
them
to raise money, too,’ she explained. ‘Then we’ll have a selling exhibition of craftwork in the coach house in summer, maybe combined with a garden party. We could lure people in with the promise of coffee and cakes, with entrance to the exhibition included in the admission charge.’

‘I could make the cakes for that,’ I said. ‘Oh, Celia, you and Will have already done so much more than all the rest of my friends put together.’

‘Will says if you have a fundraising auction, you can have one of his bird sculptures as a lot.’