Chloe’s Cornish Christmas (The Blossomwood Bay #7)

Chapter Twenty Six

‘Wow, Chloe,’ said Fran, settling her purple-framed glasses onto the end of her nose to peer more closely at the three Goldilocks and the Three Bears backdrops. ‘Don’t tell Ryan I said this, but I think they’re better than the originals. You are a very talented artist. Maybe you should consider pursuing this career as well as running your wonderful gin-tasting and cocktail-making classes.’

‘Thanks Fran. I did actually want to be an artist when I was at school.’

‘I can’t thank you enough, Chloe. The Perrinsby pantomime will be better than ever now!’ said Liz, giving her a grateful hug and sending a cloud of Miss Dior into the air between them. ‘Can I ask you for one more favour?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ve tried everything I can think of to find someone willing to take on the incredibly challenging role of Oak Tree No. 3 , but for whatever reason, it seems no one is tempted to explore their inner arboreal spirit, so would you mind continuing where you left off at the dress rehearsal?’

Chloe smiled. ‘I’d be honoured.’

‘It was a serendipitous day when you arrived in Perrinsby, Chloe. You’ve become an indispensable part of our community, and I know I speak for many people when I say that it would be wonderful if you wanted to stay, even if Ruth’s loft is no longer an option.’ Liz paused, then cast a glance at Fran. ‘Talking of Ruth, do you know if Nick has heard from her at all?’

‘Only a couple of texts and the occasional photograph, I think.’

‘I’ve tried to call her quite a few times now, but I’ve not been able to speak to her, which is strange. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was avoiding us.’ Liz shrugged. ‘I suppose she’s just busy enjoying every moment of her adventure, and who can blame her after everything she’s been through this year. Okay, I think that’s enough work for one day.’

‘I thought you’d never say that!’ Gordon laughed. ‘Come on, Derek, I’ll buy you a pint.’

The two men all-but sprinted from the village hall for fear of being asked to help with the tidying up. While Chloe replaced the lids on the paint pots, Fran rolled up the paint-splattered old curtain, and Liz spent a few minutes arranging the scenery boards to her liking at the back of the stage, ready for the following day’s matinee.

They were about to turn off the lights and join Gordon and Derek in the Dog the farm, the salon, the pub. What are you doing in here?’

‘Just a bit of last-minute tidying up before the show,’ said Liz quickly, flashing Chloe and Fran a warning glance. ‘Please, please tell me that Jake has made a full recovery from his bout of food poisoning. Otherwise our forest scene will end up being sadly depleted in a case of art imitating its real life equivalent.’

‘He’s fine,’ said Hannah, her cheeks flushing pink. ‘In fact, he’s better than fine.’

‘What do you mean?’

Hannah jumped up to sit on the edge of the stage. ‘Hey, did you change the background scenery?’

‘Hannah, forget the scenery! Tell us what’s going on!’ said Chloe, unable to wait another moment to hear what Hannah was clearly bursting to tell them. ‘What happened when you went over to see Jake? Did you tell him what you’d done? Did you confess about the biscuits?’

‘What biscuits?’ asked Liz.

‘Never mind that,’ said Fran, grabbing a wooden chair from the front row and spinning it round so she could sit astride it, her eyes fixed firmly on Hannah’s. ‘We’ll fill you in later, Liz. Hannah? What happened?’

‘I can’t believe I’m saying this but… we’re an item!’

Hannah’s face was alight with happiness. ‘Like I told Chloe I would, I went over to see Jake to tell him what I’d done, but when I got there, I decided to just come clean about how I felt about him instead. To tell him how upset I was that we’d spent the whole of Theo’s Hallowe’en party kissing, and then the next day it was like nothing had happened and we were back to being “just good friends”, and guess what?’

‘What?’ said Chloe, taking the seat next to Fran.

‘He told me he felt exactly the same way! Apparently, he’d wanted to say something, but he was worried about jeopardising our friendship, so he waited to see how I reacted, and when I didn’t say anything either, he just assumed I wasn’t interested in taking our relationship to the next level. Can you believe it? So, I told him there and then exactly how I felt about him, and he told me how he felt about me, and then we spent the rest of the night the same way as we’d spent Hallowe’en, kissing and kissing and kissing some more! We talked, too, until the early hours of the morning, about what we were going to do when Jake went travelling, and he said he couldn’t bear for us to be apart for so long now that we’d finally got together, so… I’m going with him!’

‘What? I thought—’ Chloe began.

‘We went to see Mum this morning. We told her what we had planned, and she gave us her blessing straightaway. She’s just as thrilled as we are and she’s offered to pay for my flight to Mumbai as part of my Christmas present. Oh, I’m so excited!’

Hannah jumped down from her perch on the stage, performed a theatrical twirl, then dropped into the chair between Liz and Fran.

‘What about the bookshop?’ asked Fran.

‘Well…’ Hannah paused.

‘Hannah!’ the three women chorused.

‘It’s being kept under wraps at the moment, but Mum said I could tell you if you promise to keep it to yourselves until after the pantomime, but…. she and Joe have been on a date!’ Hannah glanced round at her three friends and laughed. ‘I know! It was a surprise to me, too, but a wonderful surprise. When she told me, she looked happier than I’ve seen her since… since Dad passed away. They want to take things slowly, one step at a time, which is why they don’t want anyone to know. They want to adjust to their new relationship without the added pressure of everyone’s scrutiny.

‘Anyway, Joe has offered to run the mobile library for me and to host the monthly book club, too. Mum has organised for her WI friend’s daughter to help out at the shop on the weekends, and there’s also Mr Bartlett who comes in on Tuesdays and Thursdays to run the non-fiction book club, who will be over the moon to be asked to man the till for a couple of hours.’

Liz leapt from her chair and wrapped her arms around Hannah. ‘Oh, Hannah darling, that’s the best news I’ve heard this year! And I totally understand your mum and Joe not wanting to make a big splashy announcement. I mean, Mummy Bear and Daddy Bear an item? Something like that could attract headlines far beyond Perrinsby! Actually, it’s not the only partnership our little village pantomime has sparked. Remember Alfie and Flora who played Aladdin and Princess Jasmine last year? I heard they got engaged in the summer, so maybe it has some kind of magical force that brings the actors together.’

Fran laughed. ‘I don’t think it’s the pantomime that was the catalyst here, Liz.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Liz, looking from Fran to Hannah and then to Chloe. ‘What?’

‘Tell her,’ said Hannah.

‘Tell me what?’

‘Chloe made some of Ruth’s biscuits,’ said Fran.

‘What!’

‘Remember? The biscuits we gave to Derek, Gordon and Martyn.’

‘Yes, of course I remember! How could I forget! I’m just shocked that you broke our solemnly made vow not to reveal what we did to another living soul!’

‘Desperate times call for desperate measures, Liz. I couldn’t let Jake head off into the sunset without realising that he was head-over-heels in love with Hannah, could I? And it turned out rather well, don’t you think?’

‘But you don’t have the recipe.’

‘Chloe found it in one of Ruth’s journals.’

‘Did you?’

Chloe’s stomach muscles tightened as Liz turned her laser-sharp eyes towards her.

‘Well, I might have found the recipe but couldn’t find all the ingredients. It was hard to decipher Ruth’s handwriting; the “secret” ingredient looked like “T diffuser”, which we couldn’t find anywhere in her pantry, so we improvised and added a sprinkle of the fairywand herb instead.’

‘Well, that’s not the romance ingredient.’

‘Hang on,’ said Fran, staring at her friend. ‘You know what it is?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t believe it. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because you know what it is, too.’

‘No I don’t.’

‘You do; it’s Turnera diffusa . Ruth grows it in the pots underneath the dovecote.’

‘Ah, yes, of course! I forgot.’

‘How could you forget?’ Liz rolled her eyes at Fran, then held out her wrist and pointed to her dove tattoo. ‘You’ve got one, too! So has Ruth.’

‘So, what you’re saying is that I made Jake eat a few ordinary cookies, which wouldn’t have worked anyway?’ asked Hannah.

‘It looks like it,’ said Fran. ‘But as I keep telling you, and anyone else that comes into the salon looking for advice, talking is the best policy, and you, Hannah, have just provided more evidence that my contention is correct. Talking is all you need, not romance biscuits.’

‘Does Jake still think it was the biscuits that made him ill?’ asked Chloe, keen to clear her name if possible. ‘Did you ask him whether he’d eaten anything else that day?’

‘I did, and he admitted that he had had something else.’

‘What?’

‘An egg salad sandwich for breakfast that he’d had in his bag for a couple of days! Oh, and a couple of bottles of the Sunny Smile cider that Nick gave him, one of which he drank when he got home to celebrate the success of the dress rehearsal.’

‘So it was almost certainly the egg sandwich?’

‘I’d say definitely. I—’

‘What’s Sunny Smile cider?’ asked Liz, her forehead creasing.

‘Oh, it’s just an experiment Nick and I did when we were making the cider cocktails for the panto-promo on Sunday night. We added a generous pinch of one of the myriad dried herbs we found in Ruth’s pantry to a gallon or so of Martyn’s “cooking cider” and left it overnight to infuse, then the next morning we tasted it. Nick liked it, but I wasn’t sure, so we asked Joe and Audrey to try it, too. I don’t suppose Jake happened to tell you what he thought of it, did he, Hannah?’

‘He said it was okay, I think.’

Chloe noticed that Liz was staring at her, her jaw loose. ‘What?’

‘The herb you used, was it labelled “sunny smile”?’

‘Yes, that’s why we called it Sunny Smile cider . I designed a label for it, too.’

Liz continued to stare at Chloe.

‘But that’s it!’

‘That’s what ?’

‘The secret ingredient in Ruth’s romance recipe. Turnera diffusa is the botanical term for the sunny smile herb. It’s what Ruth put in the biscuits we gave to Gordon, Derek and Martyn… Oh, and the vicar.’

Fran laughed and reached out to pat Hannah’s arm. ‘So it worked after all!’

‘And did you say you’d given the cider to Joe and Audrey to sample?’ asked Liz.

‘Yes, but we had no idea it—’

‘And I assume that you and Nick taste-tested it, too?’

Chloe couldn’t speak; her brain had stalled as the full implications of what Liz had told her dawned. She pulled out her phone and did what she should have done before even attempting to create a twist on Martyn’s wonderful artisan cider. She googled “sunny smile” and sure enough it came up as Turnera diffusa , a member of the passionflower family. Then something else occurred to her.

‘Oh… my… God!’

‘What?’

‘Nick and I have entered the cider in the Cornish cider contest! What if it turns out it was the cider that made Jake sick, and the whole of the judging panel falls ill?’

Hannah giggled. ‘It could be worse than that.’

‘They die ?’ Chloe gasped.

‘No, silly. What if they fall in love !’

‘Oh God!’

‘It’s okay, Chloe, you don’t have to worry about any of those things,’ said Fran.

‘Why not?’

‘Because Martyn’s cider has been disqualified for the last three years because he’s not registered as a “commercial supplier”. Of course, that’s just a convenient excuse that Barry Hartfield, the chair of the committee that runs the awards, rolls out every year because he’s a petty “jobsworth” who’s held a grudge against him for more than thirty years.’

‘Why’s he held a grudge against Martyn?’ asked Hannah.

‘Because Barry and Ruth were an item before Martyn came on the scene and swept Ruth off her feet. He’s never forgiven Martyn for that, even though he subsequently married an amazing woman – in Truro Cathedral, no less – and has four children and five grandchildren. Chloe? What’s wrong? You look… upset?’

Panic swept through Chloe’s body as she tried to assimilate everything she had learned in the last few minutes, and its potentially far-reaching consequences.

‘Actually, we didn’t enter the Sunny Smile cider under Martyn’s name. We entered his Pendragon cider, and yes, we got an email to say that it was disqualified for the reason you said, but Nick insisted we enter the Sunny Smile cider under my company’s name, as a bona fide commercial enterprise.’

Hannah burst into laughter and started to dance around the room singing “love is in the air”, before retaking her seat and fixing her gaze on Chloe. ‘Where is Nick, by the way?’

Chloe didn’t answer straight away. Was this the time to tell them what Nick had done? She looked at Hannah’s joy-filled face and she decided that she couldn’t be the one to spoil her friend’s day, a day she had been hoping would come for months, if not years.

‘He’s had to go back to Guildford for a… business meeting, but he’ll be back in time for the matinee tomorrow.’

Chloe knew that Liz had been watching her expression and body language closely and it was clear that she knew she was hiding something, and so, it seemed, did Fran. After a moment of hesitation, Fran rose from her chair, returned it to its place in the front row of the auditorium, and took hold of Hannah’s hand.

‘Come on, Hannah darling, let’s go and grab a coffee at the bookshop. I promised my granddaughter a Julia Donaldson book for Christmas and I’d value your guidance.’

After exchanging farewell hugs, Chloe watched Fran and Hannah disappear from the hall, then followed Liz into the kitchen where her new landlady made them both a cup of strong tea. She took a seat on one of the bar stools at the marble-topped central island unit and met Liz’s gaze.

‘I don’t know what’s been going on between you and Nick over the last few days,’ said Liz, sipping her tea, ‘but if you need a listening ear, then I’m here for you. I also want you to know that there’ll always be a room for you at the Dog about herself, yes, but also about the things she knew mattered to them, and the one question that had been constantly rising to the top of the list since she’d discovered what Nick was planning to do, was whether Ruth knew the full extent of what was going on. Because no matter what, she had a right to know the details before anything was “formalised in writing”.

As she had no idea how to contact Ruth in Australia, the only way she could ensure that happened was by taking Liz – one of Ruth’s best friends – into her confidence. She had to wrench away the shield she cowered behind whenever she found herself in difficult situations, and instead of issuing a vaguely positive, or non-committal, response, she had to speak up and tell the truth, including the embarrassing parts.

‘I need to tell you something about Nick.’