my working outfit of jeans and a T-shirt, with a blue and white spotty cardigan for warmth, all lightly smeared and fragranced with chocolate – glamour personified. I was closing the door before I remembered I hadn’t even brushed my hair, but I didn’t bother going back.
The air was cold and damp and the sky was paling into a reluctant and jaundiced dawn. There was no one about in Angel Lane, though I could hear the steady pestle-and-mortar sound of Mrs Snowball donkey-stoning the flags in front of the Falling Star.
I looked back at her over my shoulder as I turned the corner into the High Street and she grinned and waved a pink, rubber-gloved hand at me. I returned the wave while walking backwards, thinking that it would be a miracle if I had that much energy when I was the wrong side of ninety, not to mention the flexibility to be able to get down onto a kneeling mat and back up again. She must be one of the livelier members of Grumps’ coven…
Mrs Snowball’s smile suddenly vanished and she pointed behind me, gesticulating wildly. I whipped round, afraid I was about to collide with a lamp-post, but I wasn’t – the threat was much, much worse. For there, almost upon me, was a tall, dark figure from my past, the open wings of his long black leather coat flying back with each stride, so that he seemed to swoop down on me like a huge bird of prey.
By his side trotted a small, jaunty white dog, so incongruous that it made me desperately hope that this was all just a really bad dream – until I realised that if it was, then the frantic thumping of my heart would have woken me up by now. There was a loud rushing noise in my ears that sounded like my guardian angel, either arriving or departing – and I sincerely hoped it was the former, because I needed her.
He came to a jarring halt way too close for comfort and stared incredulously down at me as though I were the ghost of some half-remembered and not entirely delightful past.
‘Chloe?’
For a second or two I was caught and drowning in those startled, turquoise eyes, in which swirled a hard-to-decipher mixture of emotions among which, bewilderingly, anger seemed to dominate. Then the light in them died and he took a step backwards, breaking the spell.
‘It is you,’ he said coolly. ‘I thought I’d conjured you up from thin air.’
Released, both my wits and the power of speech returned to me with a rush and I didn’t need the white clerical collar around his throat, or even the silver crosses that dangled from the rings in his ears, glinting among the long, black curls, to tell me what he was doing here, however unlikely it seemed.
‘Yes, it’s me – but I’m not the Chloe Lyon you once knew, Raffy Sinclair!’ I said and then added, with a powerful uprush of bitterness and loathing, ‘And of all the parishes in all the country, why did you have to pick this one?’
‘I didn’t – it was chosen for me,’ he said, and those oh-so-familiar winged black eyebrows twitched together in a puzzled frown. By now he was probably wondering why I hadn’t thrown myself at him with cries of joy, as I’m sure any of his other ex-girlfriends would have done. ‘I had no idea you would be here, but I can’t see why you are upset about it when I—’
But I didn’t even wait for him to finish his sentence, instead turning to flee back round the corner into the chocolate-scented sanctuary of my cottage, where I leaned against the door, panting, as though he might attempt to burst in at any moment.
Jake, looking mildly surprised, was standing in the doorway between the sitting room and my workshop, a half-eaten piece of toast in one hand. ‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing – I just ran into the new vicar, that’s all!’ I said slightly hysterically, my voice wobbling. ‘It was a bit of a surprise.’ And that was the understatement of the year.
‘Why, is it someone famous after all?’ He went to peer out of the shop window. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d have gone all weak-kneed and groupie over—’ He abruptly broke off, then exclaimed, like an awed twelve-year old, ‘Oh, wow, is that him in the long black coat?’
‘He’s still there?’
‘Well, he was standing looking at the house, but now he’s walking past. He looks familiar.’
‘It’s Raffy Sinclair from Mortal Ruin – the band that did the “Darker Past Midnight” song you had on your phone.’
‘Raffy Sinclair? He’s the new vicar? Cool!’
‘No, it isn’t cool and he’s the last man in the world I would have expected to get ordained, let alone turn up here,’ I snapped, and he gave me a puzzled look.
‘I suppose it is weird. I mean, he and his band were pretty wild, in their time, weren’t they? But I don’t suppose it’s going to affect us in any way, so what are you getting your knickers in a twist about?’
‘I am not getting my knickers in a twist!’ I yelled, then managing with a huge effort to pull myself together, added more calmly, ‘But of course, you’re right, it won’t affect us.’
‘I’d like to know where he got that coat from,’ Jake said enviously, then inelegantly stuffed the rest of the slice of toast into his mouth at once. He looked like a Goth hamster.
Now I was starting to recover my equilibrium and return to surrogate-mother mode, I was amazed that he’d got up without being told a second time and also made himself something other than his usual breakfast. But then, I suppose a constant diet of Pop-Tarts palls after a while, as even Raffy Sinclair seemed to have found out.
‘I’ve got to go. Kat wants to be in college early this morning,’ Jake said, picking up his bag and coat. That explained everything.
‘Drive carefully, won’t you?’ I said, fussing as usual as I stood on the doorstep watching him open the Saab door, which he’d left parked by the kerb the previous night.
‘Get a life, Mum!’ he called out in his usual cheeky way and then roared off as though he’d made a pit stop in a Ferrari.
I was just thinking that fussing over Jake was stupid, since it had completely the opposite effect to the one intended, when a movement in the shadows of the gateway almost opposite caught my eye: Raffy was standing there, the little dog wrapped inside his coat, but now he turned and walked off without a backward glance.
If he’d been waiting to see if I would come out again, so he could speak to me, then he’d thought better of it.
Just as well: we might have had a lot to say to each other once upon a time, but now it was all way too late.
Chapter Seventeen Written on the Cards
‘Why on earth didn’t you call me last night and warn me who the new vicar was, Poppy?’ I demanded, when I finally got someone to answer the telephone up at Stirrups. As usual, her mobile had either gone flat, been trodden on by a horse, or not been switched on at all.
‘Sorry, Chloe. I was going to, as soon as I had a minute, only I’ve been up half the night.’ I could hear her stifling a yawn. ‘When I got home after the party I could hear one of the ponies banging about in his stall with colic, so I had to get the vet out. Mum wanted me to lie in this morning, but I couldn’t leave her to do all the work alone.’
‘But, Poppy, the new vicar is Raffy Sinclair.’
‘Yes, isn’t it exciting?’ she agreed enthusiastically. ‘Though actually, I didn’t think you were a huge fan of his, because you’ve never mentioned him and—’
‘Poppy,’ I interrupted, ‘I came face to face with him in the High Street less than an hour ago and it was such a huge shock that my heart is still racing.’
‘Oh, I know and I don’t blame you, because he’s terribly