what seemed to be a very advantageous price. I wondered how he’d managed that.
There was no sign of Felix and Poppy until I crossed the road to the Falling Star and saw them waving at me from the bow window of the snug. Mind you, if I didn’t know them so well, I wouldn’t have recognised them behind the thick bull’s-eye glass panes, because they looked like dubious sea creatures seen dimly lurking in green waters.
As usual I tried to avoid stepping on the clean square of pavement as I went in, because it seemed an unlucky thing to do. Mrs Snowball was now sitting behind a tiny reception desk under the stairway (the inn lets rooms, mostly to business reps), knitting something voluminously pink and fluffy while watching a portable TV. She looked up at me, described a suspiciously pentagram-like shape in the air with one needle, and grinned gappily.
Oh God, not another of them? She’d never done that before!
Slightly shaken, I turned right into the snug, where Felix was now at the bar buying me a ladylike half of bitter shandy (I was driving, after all). He turned and gave me a hug – a tall, loose-limbed man with soft, light brown eyes, floppy hair and the sort of nose that has a knobbly bit in the middle. It’s a nice face, in its way, but you can’t call it handsome.
‘Hi, Chloe – you look lovely,’ he said warmly, though I was just wearing jeans garnished with cobwebs and the odd streak of garden slime, but he’d probably just said exactly the same to Poppy, because he’s nothing if not kind. I sometimes think I’m imagining that he’s trying to move our relationship onto a new, more romantic footing and actually I do truly hope so, because I like things just the way they are.
‘Is that my drink? I’ll carry it, then you can manage the other two,’ I said, kissing his cheek. He smelled, not un-attractively, of old leather book bindings.
‘Look what Felix found for me!’ called Poppy, gaily waving a paperback copy of I Had Two Ponies by Josephine Pullein-Thompson. ‘The last one of hers I hadn’t got!’
‘Great,’ I said, sitting down next to her. She smelled of sweet hay and horses, and I expect I was permanently chocolate-fragranced, with just a hint of scented geranium, so anyone with a good nose could guess blindfold what the three of us did for a living.
‘I thought I had a Heyer for you, Chloe, but the cover was torn,’ Felix said.
While Poppy loves old children’s pony adventure books, I collect vintage Georgette Heyer hardbacks in those lovely, misty, dream-like paper jackets. Felix also looks out for the rarer volumes Grumps would like to add to his already huge, esoteric and eclectic library, which is probably where most of his income goes.
Poppy was almost as excited about my moving to the Old Smithy as I was. ‘But I still think it was mean, not letting us view it with you.’
‘I just wanted to see it on my own the first time,’ I explained. ‘I’ll have to come back and measure for curtains and furniture, so perhaps if you can both get away, you can see it then?’
‘I’ve been in the museum and the doll’s hospital, but not for years,’ Poppy said. ‘So, what’s the rest like?’
I described it all in detail, but I may have dwelled rather longer on the garden than the rest of it put together. Anyway, they both generously volunteered to help me clean and paint the cottage.
‘Or anything, really, that you need another pair of hands to do,’ Poppy added. ‘Now, do you want to hear our news?’
‘Our?’ I looked from one to the other of them, with a raised eyebrow. ‘You’re getting married and you want me to be bridesmaid?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Poppy giggled.
‘It would be nice to settle down with someone, though, wouldn’t it?’ Felix suggested rather pointedly. ‘Just not Poppy!’
‘Yes, because the three of us are so like family that it would be like marrying a sibling,’ she agreed. ‘Completely out of the question.’
‘It certainly would be,’ I agreed heartily, and Felix looked gloomy.
Poppy said, ‘What I meant was the news from last night’s emergency Parish Council meeting.’
‘Did you tell them that Grumps had bought the museum?’
‘No, though I expect we both looked totally guilty. Luckily, something else was distracting Miss Winter, because she usually has eagle eyes. You remember I told you that the bishop was trying to find a non-stipendiary vicar to take over All Angels?’
I nodded. ‘Have they found one?’
‘Yes, and the brilliant thing is that he’s buying the vicarage too!’
‘And he’s the kind of vicar you were telling me about, who doesn’t need to be paid?’ I asked. ‘A freebie?’
‘Well, in effect,’ Felix agreed. ‘Basically, it’s someone who’s been ordained but is either still following another career, or so rich he doesn’t need a salary. Hebe Winter is terribly pleased about it, but the bishop didn’t say a lot about the new vicar except that he used to be some kind of pop star. And she seemed to think that when he came to look at the vicarage he should have called in to see her too, so she was a bit narked about that.’
‘I expect he came when the estate agents had that open day and perhaps he hadn’t even made his mind up to move to Sticklepond then. But isn’t that exciting news, Chloe?’ Poppy’s cheeks glowed and her eyes, the soft blue of washed-out denim, sparkled. ‘An ex-pop star! I thought it might be Cliff Richard, but Hebe says that’s daft.’
‘It is daft. Everyone would know if he’d taken holy orders,’ Felix pointed out.
‘Yes, but then who on earth could it be?’
‘I think one of the Communards got ordained,’ I offered.
‘I didn’t know that,’ Felix said.
‘You’ll have to come to church and see him when he arrives, whoever he is,’ Poppy suggested.
‘Come on, Poppy, you know I haven’t been inside a church in my life! Grumps would have forty fits, the earth would tremble and the spire crumble to dust.’
‘No, I’m sure it wouldn’t. Remember the angel in the churchyard?’ she reminded me. ‘I think she was trying to tell you something, so perhaps you should try it and see.’
‘What? Which angel?’ Felix demanded. ‘Have you two been keeping secrets from me?’
I hesitated. We’d never discussed the angel with anyone except Granny, and at this length of time it was hard to know how much of what we remembered was real and what imagined.
‘Oh,’ I said as lightly as I could, ‘it was something that happened when we were little girls. Poppy had come to stay for a couple of nights because Janey was in hospital and since Mum was away too, we were in a bedroom in the main part of the house, near Granny. The window looks down over the wall into the old churchyard and the first night we both saw…well, we saw a white figure. With wings.’
‘An angel,’ Poppy agreed positively.
‘But surely the churchyard is full of white marble angels?’ suggested Felix. ‘Two over-excited and tired little girls, late at night…the imagination does play tricks.’
‘The angel was moving and we could see her clearly even though it was a misty night – swirly mist, like in horror films, only this wasn’t frightening.’
‘Her face was a bit scary though,’ Poppy put in.
‘Scary?’
‘I didn’t really mean scary – just sort of beautiful, but remote,’ she explained. ‘And then Chloe’s granny heard us whispering and came in, and when we told her and looked for the angel, she had gone.’
‘There had to be a rational