‘Poppy, it wasn’t just a shock, it was a nightmare! Raffy Sinclair—’ I began, but she had the bit between her teeth now and was galloping off.
‘I expect you felt as stunned as we all did when he walked into the room last night. But I’m sure we’ll all soon get used to seeing him around the parish. We’ll have to, won’t we, since he’s the vicar?’ She giggled. ‘It’s going to be such fun!’
‘Poppy, stop gabbling for a minute and listen! Raffy Sinclair is the man I met at university – you remember, the boyfriend who went off and left me when his band was offered a recording contract, and didn’t come back? The one I never, ever, heard from again – unless you count reading about his debauched exploits in the newspapers.’
There was a gasp. ‘That was Raffy Sinclair? I had no idea! If only you’d told me his name instead of clamming up about it, I would have warned you and – oh, Chloe, he seemed so nice too!’ she exclaimed, distressed.
But of course Poppy had been away at the crucial time and when she eventually returned I’d lost any desire to share more than the barest details, even with my oldest friend. Only Zillah knew the full extent of what I went through then and I hadn’t told even her the name of the man who’d broken my heart.
‘I never wanted to see him again!’
‘No, and I suppose I can understand that, because I still feel a bit sick when I think of the silly way I behaved over that instructor when I was doing my course and I’m sure I’d die if I had to see him again,’ she agreed.
‘That was a bit different, Poppy – I thought Raffy loved me. He told me so!’
‘I know, and it’s terribly sad and romantic, just like a film,’ she sighed.
‘Yes, one with an unhappy ending!’
‘But it was an awfully long time ago. I expect you’ve hardly thought about him for years, it was just the shock of suddenly seeing him that’s upset you.’
‘Poppy, Mortal Ruin’s music is inescapable, so I’ve never had the chance to forget him!’
In fact, ‘Darker Past Midnight’ still makes me want to cry, because I’m not the girl in the song he’s longing to see again…but I didn’t tell Poppy that.
‘Oh, yes, I suppose that would keep stirring it up,’ she agreed. ‘But at least you got over him long ago, even if you couldn’t forget all about him, and you’ll probably soon get used to seeing him about. And after all, now he’s been ordained, he must be a totally changed man from the one you knew.’
‘I don’t care if he’s on the fast-track shortlist for sainthood,’ I snapped and slammed the phone down, though I was sorry almost immediately. It wasn’t poor Poppy’s fault that I was so upset.
Then some slight movement out of the corner of my eye warned me that I was not alone and I saw that Zillah was sitting quietly on a kitchen chair as if she had materialised there, with a large pot pie in a ceramic dish, the ostensible reason for her visit, on the table in front of her.
‘Oh, Zillah!’ I gasped, wondering just how many shocks a heart could take in one day. ‘How much of that did you hear?’
‘Enough,’ she said, while the roll-up fag dangling from one corner of her mouth shed a long trail of ash that narrowly missed the pot pie. ‘Finally I know the name of the man who made you so unhappy. Who deserted you in your hour of need. Who—’
‘Let’s not go there,’ I said wearily, dropping onto the chair opposite. I was starting to feel quite wrung out and the day had barely got going yet.
‘And now here he is, masquerading as a man of God,’ she said, ignoring me. ‘The warning was on the cards!’
‘It’s a pity they didn’t spell it out a bit more clearly, then, because I thought they just meant David. And Poppy doesn’t understand why I’m so upset that Raffy’s come here, since it was all such a long time ago. She says that since he’s become a vicar he must have changed a lot since I knew him, but it’s hard to believe.’
‘Whatever he’s become now doesn’t excuse what he did in the past. And anyway, Chloe, the past tends to come around and bite you on the bum when you’re not looking.’
‘Yes, it certainly just bit mine.’
‘And it will bite his, in time – his punishment will find him out.’
I looked up quickly at that. ‘You’re not going to tell Grumps, are you?’
She didn’t reply, just grinned at me, golden teeth glinting, and then hoisted herself up leaving a final discarded snakeskin of ash on the table. ‘There’s a nice pie for your dinner. I’m off out later, so I thought I’d cook early – I’ve joined the local tea dance club.’
She held out one small foot in a jewelled high-heeled silver sandal for me to admire. ‘New, breaking them in.’
‘Lovely,’ I said, my mind still focused on other things. ‘Zillah, you really won’t tell Grumps anything about what happened between me and Raffy Sinclair, will you? I mean, he doesn’t know we ever went out with each other, let alone—’
‘You can’t hope to keep secrets from your grandfather,’ she said ambiguously, which either meant that she thought he was so all-seeing that he would automatically pick up information from the airwaves, or that she told him everything.
I hoped my little Sticklepond Sibyl was wrong.
‘So now I don’t know if she’ll tell Grumps that Raffy’s the man who treated me so badly, and if so, whether he’ll feel the need to try and take some kind of revenge. Though if he did, Raffy would totally deserve it,’ I said to Poppy and Felix later in the snug at the Falling Star.
Felix had entirely forgotten that I’d been out with anyone while at university (he too had had other things on his mind at the time, being in the throes of his divorce just then), and was unflatteringly astounded to discover that Raffy and I had been an item.
‘But it’s all so long ago and anyway, you couldn’t really blame the man for going off when Mortal Ruin got its big opportunity, could you?’ he said, even more inclined than Poppy to think I should have got over it by now. ‘Be reasonable, Chloe!’
‘Perhaps not, but I could blame him for dumping me without a second thought!’
‘But you spent only one term at university, so it was hardly a long relationship, was it?’
‘And you were both terribly young, so it probably wouldn’t have lasted anyway,’ Poppy suggested gently.
‘I wouldn’t worry about your grandfather doing anything to him, either,’ Felix said with his sudden attractively lopsided grin, ‘because if he tried to put some kind of curse on all your old suitors, he’d have no time to do anything else.’
Poppy giggled. ‘That’s an exaggeration, Felix! Chloe’s only been out with a handful of men and no one at all for ages and ages.’
‘I wouldn’t mind if he put a curse on David Billinge,’ Felix said. ‘I’m sure he’s trying to get back with you, Chloe. And you seem to have managed to forgive him, even though he jilted you on the eve of your wedding, haven’t you?’
‘That was because he did me a favour. I realised almost immediately that marrying him would have been a big mistake. Now he just wants to be friends, which is fine by me. He’s picking me up on Wednesday afternoon and we’re going to look around a few country cottages. It’ll be fun – I love looking at other people’s homes.’
Felix looked unconvinced, and I’m pretty sure Poppy wasn’t listening at all, because she suddenly said, ‘You needn’t see much of the vicar, Chloe, so it may not be such a problem as you think. I mean, it’s not like you go to church, is it? Your