Wish Upon a Star Page 15

  ‘Just a little,’ agreed Jago, drily.

  We trooped back down again. Charlie led the way through the bare kitchen into a smaller room that contained nothing more than an old galvanised washtub with a wooden dolly standing in it, and unlocked the back door. Across a strip of old stone flags a long, low building faced us.

  ‘This must be the “attached outbuildings providing further self-contained accommodation”,’ Jago suggested, and Charlie nodded. The last of his assumed enthusiasm had long died and I don’t think he expected anything to come of this viewing other than a dry-cleaning bill for his now-grubby suit.

  ‘Yes, and it was also let for several years, though not as recently as the flat. It would make a perfect granny annexe.’

  ‘I haven’t got a granny,’ Jago said.

  ‘Or holiday let,’ Charlie suggested hastily.

  The annexe was minute, with a bathroom that had obviously been created by knocking through into the outside toilet and coal house and inserting into the resultant space the smallest bath I’d ever seen. It was occupied by the largest spider I’d ever seen, too.

  ‘Oh my God, it’s moving!’ I cried, grabbing Jago’s arm tightly.

  ‘I’ll save you,’ he said, grinning.

  ‘My hero!’

  Charlie glanced at his watch and then quickly ushered us outside into a bramble-smothered wilderness. ‘The garden, with vehicle access at the rear and garage. Well, there we have it,’ he added, and then abandoned us the moment he’d locked the shop door to dash off to what he obviously hoped would be a more fruitful viewing.

  We brushed ourselves down and I got Jago to check there weren’t any spiders on the back of my coat.

  ‘At least it’s stopped raining,’ he said. ‘Have you got time for a quick cup of coffee in the café next door?’

  ‘I think so. Ma’s friend Ottie Winter is coming round and we haven’t been out all that long. Call-me-Charlie didn’t exactly let us linger in the house, did he?’

  ‘No, he abandoned hope pretty quickly, for an estate agent.’

  Over coffee and a cake apiece, we discussed the house and shop.

  ‘There’s lots more accommodation to it than I expected, though it’s spread out a bit,’ Jago said, examining his Florentine with the eye of a connoisseur.

  ‘Yes, it’s so narrow, yet it goes back for miles. I love the seventeenth-century bits at the front.’

  ‘It may be big, but the price is still way too high, considering it isn’t a going concern and the whole place wants painting, decorating and generally dragging into the twenty-first century.’

  ‘I don’t really think it’s what you had in mind,’ I agreed, licking icing off my fingers in an unladylike way. I’d had a vanilla slice, Ma’s favourite, and very good it was too. ‘There were some lovely authentic period features, though, like that cast-iron fireplace in the downstairs living room, with the pink and turquoise tiled surround.’

  ‘You’re right, it’s not what I had in mind at all, but there’s something about it I really like …’ he said thoughtfully. ‘And the shop is certainly big enough for a kitchen and preparation area, if it was properly arranged.’

  ‘You’re not seriously considering it, are you?’ I asked him.

  ‘Well, not at that price, obviously, because it’s right at my limit so I wouldn’t have enough left to renovate and equip the business. But the village does sound perfect, especially since there’s already one specialist wedding shop.’

  ‘You could always make Miss Honey a really cheeky offer and see what happens,’ I suggested. ‘If you got it, I could help you do it up. It’d be fun, and it would be nice having you living nearby.’

  He smiled. ‘I might just do that – but a really low offer. I got the impression she was a bit of a battle-axe, though, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but you’re a cash buyer, after all, so that might tempt her. But it would need a lot doing to it before you could move in, let alone start up your business there, and you want to move quite quickly, don’t you?’

  ‘Ideally. The Happy Macaroon has taken off so much faster than we could have ever hoped for that David’s fiancée’s going to move up to Ormskirk at the end of June. His mother, Dorrie, started working in the shop today too and I think she and Sarah will be able to handle it between them. It’s just as well, really, because David’s getting a surprising number of orders for his macaroon party pyramids and I’ve had a few more for my croquembouches, too, so we can’t be serving in the shop and doing those at the same time.’

  ‘And I suppose you’re competing for space in the bakery, if you both have orders?’

  ‘Yes, and in the flat.’

  ‘Then Honey’s wouldn’t be ideal, would it, because you’d have so much to do first.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. If I could buy it at a reasonable price, then I’d be able to afford to get workmen in to sort it out quickly. And as soon as part of it’s habitable I can move in and oversee the installation of the preparation area, which is the important thing. There’s a steady trickle of orders now, so I’ll probably be run off my feet with them by next spring, when we move into the wedding season.’

  ‘I’ll apply for the post of assistant then,’ I joked, but then, with the sudden dread that could strike chills up my spine at any moment, added, ‘though who knows what will have happened by then? Stella will have had her operation and …’

  Jago took my hand in his and looked down into my eyes, his caramel ones sympathetic.

  ‘Everything’s going to be fine, you’ll see,’ he said in his soft, comforting, mellow voice. ‘By Christmas Stella will have had the operation and she’ll be home again, well on the way to total recovery.’

  I clung to that thought.

  Jago

  ‘I’ve just been through a time warp into the late sixties,’ Jago told David when he went back to the bakery behind the Happy Macaroon, where his friend was packing three hundred little silver boxes with macaroon wedding favours while Dorrie, his mother, minded the shop.

  Jago washed his hands at the sink in the corner and then went to help his friend.

  ‘What, this shop you were viewing in Sticklepond?’ David asked. ‘I thought you said it looked tiny.’

  ‘It does have a very narrow frontage, but it goes back forever, so it was like stepping into the Tardis. There’s a house behind the shop with a small separate flat in the attic storey and a minute annexe at the back.’

  ‘What sort of nick is it in?’

  ‘Neglected, but basically sound, I think. The décor in the main part of the house is Victorian, but the flat and cottage are sixties style, so the wiring to the whole house might have been updated,’ Jago said optimistically.

  ‘Or then again, it could all be Bakelite two-pin plugs,’ David pointed out. ‘But even if it was rewired in the sixties, it’d need doing again and that’s expensive.’

  ‘I know, and then it would need replastering once that was done.’ Jago inserted a pink and a white macaroon into a tiny silver box and pushed the lid closed, before reaching for another. ‘The whole place would need a lot of money spent on it. You should see the shop, for a start. It might have been closed up and abandoned in the late sixties, but most of the stock dates back to just after the war, I should think … and some of it well before.’

  He told David about the elderly owner, Miss Honey, who thought it could be sold as a going concern. ‘She must be deluded, because I shouldn’t think there was much of a turnover even by the time it shut.’

  ‘Well, even if it was a viable business, you don’t want a haberdashery shop,’ David said. ‘Though I wouldn’t have thought you wanted it at all – didn’t you say viewing it was a very long shot?’

  ‘I did,’ admitted Jago, ‘but now I can see its potential. But although it’s cheap for Sticklepond, the asking price is still right up to my top limit, so there wouldn’t be any money left to do it up.’

  ‘I’ve heard it’s a bit pricey out there. I think it’s quite a
thriving tourist village now.’

  ‘Yes, and there are lots of shops, including a specialist wedding shoe one, oddly enough. Although most of my orders will come through the website or the adverts in wedding magazines, I might still get some passing trade.’

  ‘You’re really keen on it,’ David said, then added, ‘I can’t see Aimee settling down in a small Lancashire village!’

  ‘No – but then, she won’t be asked to,’ Jago said. ‘Come to think of it, she hasn’t rung, has she? So maybe she’s found someone new.’

  David gave a slightly guilty glance at the answering machine. ‘Perhaps she has,’ he agreed. ‘So, are you going to put in an offer for the shop?’

  ‘Yes, but a really, really low one, so I can afford to do it up.’

  ‘What did Cally think?’

  ‘The same as me: it grew on her. She said she’d like it if I was living out there, too.’

  ‘That sounds keen! Who knows what will happen if you’re living right on her doorstep,’ David teased.

  ‘Come on, you know we’re only friends,’ Jago protested, though he went slightly pink. ‘It may feel as if I’ve known her for years, but it really isn’t any time at all.’

  ‘No, but considering how often you talk on the phone, or text or email or—’

  ‘Even if I did want more,’ Jago interrupted him, ‘talking cake with me is just a distraction for Cally – she’s too focused on Stella and the fundraising to think of anything else. And I know that when Stella’s well again, Cally will be hightailing it back to London to pick up her career.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. Pity, though, because she’s so much nicer than Aimee … and speak of the devil, she did ring again while you were out,’ David confessed (though not to all the other calls he’d deleted). ‘I told her you’d gone out with a friend. A female friend.’

  ‘Did she say what she wanted?’

  ‘She didn’t have to, because it’s obvious. I’m hoping you won’t be a soft-hearted pushover and let her muscle back in on your life, or you’ll find yourself back in London, in a flat mortgaged to the hilt and competing with Gilligan’s for business from rented premises.’

  Jago shuddered. ‘No way! She’s crazy if she thinks that saying, “Oh, whoops, I made a teeny mistake running off before our wedding, but never mind, it’s all on again, isn’t it?” is going to work.’

  ‘Good. I’d settle for a place of your own up here and friendship with Cally. You’ve got much more in common. And you’re almost as focused on the fundraising for Stella as she is now, so you couldn’t let her down.’

  ‘No, I think she’s going to continue to need a lot of support,’ Jago said.

  David had been worried at first that his friend might fall for Cally and have his heart broken all over again, but he’d quickly realised that the attraction between them was mutual, even if Cally seemed unaware of it. In fact, when Sarah saw them coming in from the Blue Dog that first time, she’d said they seemed so comfortable together they might have been married for years. Then there were the constant texts, emails and calls between them, as if they needed that tenuous link of contact. It seemed to David that Jago talking cake with Cally was both a comfort and a kind of courtship, and though he wasn’t sure how it would all turn out once the little girl was – please God – better again, if that bitch Aimee didn’t scupper things, they just might get together …

  ‘I just want Stella to have her operation and be well again. I’m fond of her already, she’s such a lovely, bright little girl, and she says the funniest things,’ Jago said with a grin.

  ‘So, you’re going to make an offer for the shop in Sticklepond?’ David asked, getting back to the original subject.

  ‘Yes – in fact, I’m going to ring the estate agent as soon as we’ve finished boxing these up. I’m a cash buyer, after all, so Miss Honey might take a low offer.’

  ‘If it’s been on the market for ages, there should be room for negotiation,’ said David.

  ‘If I bought it, I’d be spending a lot of time out there overseeing the renovations and I’d move in as soon as part of it was habitable, though if you don’t mind, I’d have to keep doing my cake making here for quite a while.’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind, and Sarah, Mum and I can easily manage the Happy Macaroon between us, so long as you carry on giving me a hand with rush orders?’

  ‘I’ll always do that. You know, this could all work out really well – if they accept my offer!’

  ‘Then you’d better go and ring the estate agents and make it, while I finish these,’ David said, thinking it would be great if his friend was living nearby – and even better if that meant he managed to get rid of the leech-like Aimee.

  He wondered if he’d been right or wrong to hint earlier to Aimee that Jago had a new love interest up here. And he also wondered if Jago had actually told her exactly how much he had won on the lottery, or if perhaps she was still under the delusion that they had become millionaires with modest aspirations. Perhaps, if he got a chance, he’d tell her himself.

  Chapter 18: Pinker’s End

  ‘I put in a really low offer on that shop in Sticklepond yesterday when I got back to the Happy Macaroon,’ Jago said when he rang me next morning.

  ‘You have?’ I was so surprised I almost choked on the mouthful of brandy snap I was taste-testing. ‘You don’t hang about, do you? I mean, you said you liked it, but it wants a huge amount doing to it.’

  ‘I know, but if Miss Honey accepts the offer so I’ve got enough money left, then I’m sure I could at least move in there pretty quickly, even if getting the cake preparation area sorted would take a lot longer.’

  ‘It certainly would,’ I agreed, thinking about all that ancient, moth-eaten stock in the shop, not to mention a few drawbacks in the rest of the house, like the dodgy wiring, ancient plumbing, or the hermit’s skyscraper stacks of old newspapers in the attic.

  ‘If the offer is accepted, I’ll have to see what the surveyor’s report says, so let’s hope it’s mainly cosmetic.’

  ‘It smelled dry, and I didn’t notice that it was falling down a hole, or you could see through the roof or anything,’ I said helpfully.

  How lovely it would be having him living in the village, even if by the time the renovations were done and he’d moved in, I’d probably be thinking about going back to London … if everything went well, that was.

  As always when I thought of autumn and what it would bring for Stella, I felt shivery, even though I knew I was doing the right thing …

  I shook off the negative thoughts and got back to the subject in hand. ‘When will you know if she’s accepted your offer or not? I assume it is down to Miss Honey? She isn’t gaga or anything?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing – she may be a hundred and two, but she sounds sharp as a tack and she insists on meeting me before considering my offer. She’s still under the illusion that the shop can be sold as a going concern, so I’ll have to convince her otherwise. The estate agent says mine isn’t the first offer; he’s already tried and failed more than once.’

  ‘Mmm, tricky, then.’

  ‘She’s asked me to go and see her at her nursing home, at three this afternoon, though it was more by way of a royal summons, really, and I wondered … could you possibly come with me? Please?’ he begged. ‘Only I’m terrified and I need you to hold my hand.’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t, really. Weren’t you mainly raised by your grandmother?’

  ‘Yes, but she was the cosy sort, while Miss Honey sounds anything but as sweet as her name. Please come with me,’ he wheedled.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know … I’m already feeling guilty at leaving Ma baby-sitting so often and I’m always worried she’ll forget and go up to the studio. But actually, I suppose Stella will have woken from her nap by the time we leave, so she could go up there with her.’

  ‘Could you ask her? It would make me feel better if you came with me.’

  ‘All right. I’ll get back to you
in a bit.’

  Asked, Ma said I was welcome to take Stella up to the studio when she woke, because she was no trouble. Hal had started making a village for her animal toy families on an old coffee table in the corner, with moss and a couple of broken plant pots, so she would probably quite happily play with that.

  When I left Stella with Ma, along with sandwiches and chocolate apricot flapjacks, she’d already begun adorning her tabletop village with a jar of seashells, while her rabbit and mouse families stood at the edge, waiting to move in. Ma was engrossed in her latest canvas – yet more bird-angels and another red squirrel-imp thing. Very odd.

  ‘Are you two going to be all right?’ I asked, turning at the door. ‘Will you remember to eat the sandwiches and cake?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mummy,’ Stella said seriously. ‘I’ll look after Grandma.’

  She probably would, too.

  Jago’s car was waiting to pick me up in the lane and we set off for Pinker’s End, though any name with End in it seemed an unfortunate choice for a retirement home.

  Jago had an ancient Saab estate car. I’d never seen one quite that shape and I was surprised he hadn’t swapped it for something glossy and new when he won the lottery, but when I asked him he seemed surprised and said actually, this was the car he’d chosen with his winnings.

  ‘I’ve always liked these old Saabs, and it’s been completely renovated.’

  ‘It is a nice car,’ I agreed. ‘Chloe’s grandfather at the Witchcraft Museum has one a little bit like it.’

  ‘Has he?’ Jago asked, interested. ‘I’d like to see that. But I think I’ll have to buy a little van soon too, and rig out the back to make transporting the cakes easier.’

  ‘Yes, that would be much more practical and you can advertise on the sides too, so that would be a bonus.’

  ‘I’m really glad you could come with me. Was your mother OK about looking after Stella?’

  ‘It was more the other way round, because Stella promised me very seriously that she’d look after Ma. Still, I’m starting to think I should look for an occasional baby-sitter.’