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  But no, there it was, surely too small and totally unsuitable for his purposes, but he made a mental note of the estate agent’s name anyway.

  Chapter 16: Puffball

  At breakfast on Sunday Ma told me a little more about how the villagers had united to fight off a business consortium who wanted to turn the old Hemlock cotton mill site into a retail park. I did vaguely remember her telling me at the time, but I expect I was too occupied with Stella to take a lot of notice.

  Force for Nature, the animal rights group, had backed them and then, thanks to the generosity of an anonymous benefactor, the site had been bought and was in the process of being made into a nature reserve.

  ‘There turned out to be lots of wildlife of various kinds on the site – it’s quite a big area, river and a bit of woodland – and some of it was endangered,’ Ma went on, buttering her toast lavishly. ‘I went over there with Hal last autumn, because the colours of the foliage were really something.’

  That perhaps explained where the inspiration came from for the series of paintings of angels with fish faces whirling about in the water instead of the sky, though I think portraying innocent little red squirrels as devilish imps is a bit mean.

  Stella had eaten most of her boiled egg and soldiers and was now drinking orange juice and watching in fascination as Ma prepared her toast. ‘I do love you, Grandma! You’re funny.’

  ‘Thank you, darling, I love you too,’ Ma said, then took a bite of toast. A look of surprise crossed her face. ‘Cally, I think this jam has gone off.’

  ‘You put Marmite on top of lemon and lime marmalade,’ Stella pointed out. ‘And your cigarette’s in the coffee.’

  Ma fished out the soggy pink Sobranie and put it on the edge of the stove to dry out, before rinsing her cup and pouring herself another coffee.

  ‘You shouldn’t smoke, it’s bad for you,’ Stella said severely. ‘Your insides go black, because they’re covered in treacle. I saw a picture at the hospital.’

  ‘Don’t start,’ Ma said. ‘I told you, I’m down to two a day now. Everyone’s entitled to a little pleasure in their lives.’

  Stella looked disapproving, but didn’t say anything else and Ma drank her coffee down, then got up, stuck the empty jade holder back in her mouth and went on up to the studio, taking the Marmite and marmalade toast with her.

  When we got to the Hemlock Mill nature reserve and I’d looked on the big information board with a map of the various paths, I thought it would be tricky with the buggy, so we left it in the car.

  After what Ma said, I wasn’t entirely surprised at how much progress they had made. A prefabricated wooden tourist centre had gone up practically overnight and walkways were partly laid through the grounds, which ran up the side of the river Ches to woodland.

  There were lots of things for Stella to look at, from puffball toadstools to the red squirrels, boldly and gracefully bounding between the trees, and it was nice to have Jago with us – especially once she tired and he carried her the rest of the way.

  She wound her arms around his neck and looked at him adoringly from time to time, even when he floundered while answering classic Stella questions like, ‘Why are trees up and not down?’ and ‘Why are clouds?’

  ‘Trees are down as well, you just can’t see them,’ he said. ‘Their roots spread out under the soil as wide as the branches do at the top of the tree trunk. And clouds carry water vapour about from one place to the other … sort of.’ He looked down at her. ‘How old did you say you were? Ten?’

  She giggled. ‘Nearly four. If we saw a dragonfly close up, would it look like a dragon?’

  ‘No, it would look like an insect,’ I told her. ‘They might have a picture of one in the nature centre … and I hope they’ve got a café too, because I’d love a cup of coffee. Why don’t we have a very quick peep into the old house and then go and see?’

  The former mill manager’s house was in the process of being renovated and restored to how it would have looked in Victorian times, according to the notice in the tiled hall. The main rooms were freshly painted in period colours, or papered in William Morris patterns and matching curtains had been hung. There wasn’t much furniture yet, so there wasn’t a lot to look at.

  A back door from a large, bare kitchen led to a cobbled courtyard with substantial outbuildings round three sides where, according to another sign, they hoped to recreate an authentic Victorian shop or two.

  ‘I’ve seen something similar in Ironbridge,’ Jago said. ‘That idea could work well here, too.’

  ‘They seem very enterprising,’ I agreed. ‘They’ve already done so much in such a short space of time.’

  But by now we were all flagging, so we went into the tourist centre, where we diverted into the gift shop area long enough for Jago, who was now putty in Stella’s hands, to buy her a stuffed toy red squirrel. Then he insisted on paying for lunch in the tea room.

  ‘I’ll buy lunch next time,’ I said. ‘I mean … if you’d like to come out with us again, that is?’

  ‘I’d love to, I’ve really enjoyed today.’

  ‘We could go and look at Rufford Old Hall next Sunday, then, if you fancy it?’ I suggested. ‘It’s a National Trust property, over near the Martin Mere bird reserve, and there are rumours that Shakespeare stayed there during the lost years … except that now, of course, after finding that document up at Winter’s End, they think it might have been there instead.’

  ‘I didn’t even know he had lost years,’ Jago confessed. ‘Stella, do you like going to see very old houses?’

  She nodded. ‘They’re where princesses live.’

  ‘Right. It’s a date then, Princess Stella,’ he said, and she giggled.

  The walk had done her good, for there were faint pink roses in her cheeks. Over her head my eyes met Jago’s light brown ones and we smiled, like conspirators.

  When Stella was getting ready for bed that evening, she insisted that her toy white mouse family should be ranged on her bedside table to listen to her bedtime story. After I’d fetched those and she was tucked up under her pink duvet, with Bun on one side and the red squirrel that Jago had bought her on the other, and I was finally about to open the Moomins and start reading, she asked out of the blue, ‘Is Jago my daddy?’

  ‘What?’ I said, taken by surprise. ‘No, darling! I’ve told you, your daddy lives at the North Pole, because he has to count all the penguins. But one day when he’s finished counting them, I expect he’ll come and visit you.’

  ‘Is he a penguin, too?’

  ‘No, of course not. If your daddy was a penguin, you’d have webbed feet and a beak, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Would I?’ she murmured drowsily. ‘I don’t think I want a penguin daddy. I like Daddy Jago best … ’

  I thought it better not to say any more about it at that point, because although phenomenally bright for nearly four, she was clearly too tired to take in any explanations. I opened the Moomins and began to read.

  Jago rang me on Monday morning, just as I was getting Stella ready for the Mother and Toddler group again. I was in the kitchen with Ma, putting my shoes on, and Stella had dashed off to fetch her scarlet mack, because it was a gloomy, rainy day.

  Jago said how much he’d enjoyed the day out and then added, ‘You know that old shop in Sticklepond we saw on the way back from the meeting on Saturday night?’

  ‘If you can call a frontage about five feet wide, hidden between two bigger buildings, a shop, then yes.’

  ‘I popped round to the estate agents as soon as they opened this morning – they have a branch here – and I’ve got the details.’

  ‘That was quick work.’

  ‘I thought they might have something more suitable in Sticklepond, but that was the only thing in my price range. Apparently prices there are going up and up. Anyway, Honey’s Haberdashers sounds bigger in the leaflet than it looks, so I’ve got an appointment to view it this afternoon at two thirty. I’m meeting the estate agent there. I don’
t suppose you’d like to come too, out of sheer curiosity?’

  I wavered. ‘Stella usually has a nap around then … and I’m really curious to see it.’ I covered the receiver and asked Ma, who was sitting pensively staring out of the window at the heavy rain, coffee cup in hand, if she would be in this afternoon and could listen out in case Stella woke.

  ‘Yes, I’ll be here. Ottie’s back at Winter’s End and she said she’d drop in this afternoon. We’re thinking of a joint retrospective exhibition in the autumn and need to discuss it.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, Ma. I’ll make you something nice for you both to have with your coffee,’ I promised, and then uncovered the phone again.

  ‘I heard that, that’s great,’ Jago said. ‘Shall we meet outside the shop just before two thirty, or would you like me to pick you up? It looks like the monsoon has struck.’

  ‘I like walking in the rain. I’ll see you there.’

  When I’d put the phone down, I said to Ma, ‘I do love looking at other people’s houses. Jago’s got an appointment to explore Honey’s Haberdashers.’

  ‘Honey’s?’ she said, and a brief unease seemed to pass across her face. The unlit lilac Sobranie at the corner of her mouth wavered in its holder.

  ‘Yes – remember we said the other night that we’d spotted that it was for sale? You know the place, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I know it. It was still in business when I was small, though mostly it was the older people in the village who favoured it, because I don’t think some of the stock had changed much since Victorian times.’

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it afterwards,’ I promised.

  ‘I heard the last of the Honeys was in a care home somewhere,’ she said. ‘Perhaps she’s died and that’s why it’s finally for sale.’

  ‘It’s odd it hasn’t been sold long since to pay the care home bill then, isn’t it?’ I said, thinking about it. ‘I mean, practically everyone seems to lose their homes if they go into care. It seems very unfair.’

  ‘Yes: no inheritance for the offspring. If that happens to me, Cally, then you won’t get anything at all, because your father’s pension will go with me. There’ll just be this house and maybe a few paintings.’

  ‘I wasn’t counting on it anyway, Ma, especially since you’re not much past sixty, which is the new middle age!’

  ‘Tell that to my knees,’ she grumbled. Then she went out to the studio, holding an enormous, vividly striped golfing umbrella with two broken spikes over her head and I went to find out where Stella had got to.

  Inspired by the big puffball toadstools we’d seen at the nature reserve, I’d made microwave meringues that morning and written them up for ‘Tea & Cake’.

  Microwave meringue – how great an invention is that? All you need is icing sugar and egg white to create mouth-watering morsels of deliciousness that magically puff up in seconds.

  I’d intended to take some to playgroup with us, but when I opened the box Ma had beaten me to it and there were only a few crumbs left.

  Chapter 17: Honeyed

  Stella was so tired after playgroup that she was falling asleep over her lunch, but there was no sign of Ma, so after I’d tucked Stella up in bed for a nap I had to fetch her down from the studio. She’d forgotten both that she was listening out for Stella and that Ottie was coming over.

  I showed her the covered plates of fruit fairy cakes and some egg and cress sandwiches. Ottie always had a very healthy appetite, despite being as thin as a lath.

  Life was unfair like that. I was now starting to feel like some strange mutant cross between one of those puffball mushrooms and the microwave meringues they’d inspired.

  I thought all this would make me late meeting Jago at the shop, but actually he and I and the estate agent all arrived more or less at the same time, each with our own umbrellas, which we folded and stood in the small, open porch. They instantly formed pools on the red quarry tiles.

  The young estate agent (‘Call-me-Charlie’) looked like a pale and acned version of Brad Pitt, though he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes with Angelina Jolie. He seemed gloomy as he inserted a large key into the door and then put his shoulder to it, moving a small Everest of junk mail out of the way.

  ‘Haven’t had a viewing for a couple of weeks,’ he said apologetically, though I thought months was more like it, if at all. ‘Usually Conrad from the Merchester office does Sticklepond viewings, because his family come from round here.’

  He didn’t say why that was a good thing, but gestured us past him into the darkness of the shop. Our feet thudded dully on the wooden floor and the air was so fogged and thick with dust particles that our lungs were probably instantly flocked.

  The blinds were down over the shop window but no one suggested pulling them up to let in more light, because clearly there was a more than even chance that the cord had rotted and the whole thing would come crashing down.

  It was a narrow shop, though Jago was right and it was wider than it had first appeared. It also seemed to stretch back an awfully long way. An L-shaped counter loomed in the gloom and above it to the left were glass-fronted display cabinets that were too shrouded in grime to make out the contents.

  ‘The electricity’s off, I’m afraid – pity it’s such a dismal day,’ the estate agent apologised. ‘Still, I’ve got my torch.’

  He sent the beam darting to and fro, illuminating a jar of knitting needles, an old wooden till drawer, some mannequin busts still draped with fifties-style blouses and a lot of hand-lettered signs on metal stands in pounds, shillings and pence – and one in guineas.

  ‘Wow!’ said Jago.

  ‘Good heavens,’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s like a time warp.’

  In fact, the shop looked just as it must have done for many years before it was shut up, somewhere around the late sixties, but with the addition of a ton of dust and the cobwebs that hung like bad macramé from the light fitting and added an extra layer of darkness to the ceiling corners.

  I was pretty sure some of the cobwebs must still have their occupants in residence, so I inched closer to Jago, in case one of them made a sudden move towards me.

  Call-me-Charlie coughed hollowly. I’m not sure if the dust was getting to him, or it was simply the preface to the estate-agent speak he was about to come out with. Probably a bit of both.

  ‘Obviously the place has been a little neglected since the last of the Honeys was taken to a nursing home, after breaking her hip.’

  ‘What century was that in?’ asked Jago. He had taken his own small credit card-shaped torch from his pocket and was casting it about in a fascinated sort of way.

  ‘The last one. I suppose it was about thirty years ago,’ Charlie confessed with a sudden grin. ‘She’s a hundred and two now, and still going strong.’

  ‘So it’s just been locked up and left ever since?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘I think she expected to return one day, but never did. But there was a lodger in the flat over the shop until fairly recently so the roof and guttering have been maintained annually.’

  ‘It smells dry enough in here, too,’ Jago observed.

  ‘I’m surprised the place wasn’t sold to pay for the nursing home fees,’ I commented.

  ‘I think she’s quite well off, because the nursing home she lives in is very expensive. Of course, she was getting rent for the flat at one time, too, and I suspect it was the lodger leaving that finally prompted her to put the property on the market.’

  ‘It says in the details that the shop will be sold as a going concern, with stock,’ Jago said, flourishing the brochure.

  ‘Y-eees …’ Charlie said apologetically. ‘Of course, that’s not possible, which I’ve done my best to explain to Miss Honey, but she hasn’t been back here, and in her mind I think it’s just as it was when she was young.’

  ‘Since it clearly isn’t a going concern, though, the price seems a little high,’ Jago said. ‘That must have put people off.’

  ‘Of course, though
these things are always negotiable and it is a good village. Prices in Sticklepond are rising and new businesses opening all the time.’

  ‘I don’t particularly want a shop, but a display window would be nice,’ Jago said. ‘I make a particular kind of wedding cake, so I need a preparation area and also a packing room and perhaps office space.’

  ‘Ah, not any kind of drapery or haberdashery then …’ Charlie said, seeming to be musing on some knotty problem. Then he got back into agent mode: ‘Come on, I’ll show you the rest.’

  There was a door at the back, half-covered by a thick, moth-eaten curtain with a once-gold bullion fringe, which led into a living room containing more cobwebs, an open fireplace with a pretty art nouveau tiled surround, a large and ugly dark dresser and a small organ with a rotted ruched pink silk front.

  ‘It says in the particulars that the house is to be sold part-furnished,’ Jago said, straight-faced. ‘What with the shop a going concern and some furniture thrown in, I’m only surprised no one has snapped the place up before now.’

  ‘Try explaining that to Miss Honey,’ Call-me-Charlie muttered morosely. Then he readjusted his agent’s expression and led the way upstairs to the front bedroom, which had old wooden panelling and the window that overhung the shop.

  ‘Most of this room is as it was in the seventeenth century,’ the agent said, ‘but the rest of the house has been rebuilt and extended over the years.’

  There were two more good-sized bedrooms and a bleak bathroom, but once we’d seen those, Charlie seemed reluctant to go up the final flight of stairs to the small flat under the eaves.

  I could see the reason for his reluctance once the door was open, for every wall was lined with a towering stack of yellowing newspapers to waist height or higher. You could smell the old newsprint in the air.

  ‘I’m afraid the lodger went a bit strange during the last few years … but it’s a good flat, it just needs a little updating.’