Wish Upon a Star (32 page)

When I went down to open up Honey’s, the village was still quiet and I barely saw a soul. Inside the shop it didn’t look that bright even with the light on, so I gingerly tried raising the blind. It got almost all the way up, but then the cord at one side snapped and it hung down at an angle like a bird with a broken wing, though at least we now got a little light, revealing that Jago didn’t seem to have done more than swipe down the cobwebs from the ceiling and scrape off the top furring of grey dust.

Jago would be arriving later, after he’d delivered his croquembouche to a wedding reception venue, but Tim Wesley and a whole bunch of students got to Honey’s soon after I did. They swarmed over everything like ants, photographing and measuring and noting the position of every last thing. Easy-peel labels were slapped all over the place and then they started to pack.

I was more of a hindrance than a help, really, since the contents of the drawers were such a fascinating jumble: button hooks and buttons of all kinds, papers of rusting pins, darning wool, knitting needles, hanks of pale blue and pink silk, button-up leggings for toddlers, hairbrushes, rattles, matinée jackets, silk socks and yellowing leather booties for babies. There were hand-crocheted dressing table mat sets, hairpins, fifties-style crepe dresses and flowered cotton pinafores, nylons, rayon scarves and bits of costume jewellery … The list went on and on.

All the price tickets were in pounds, shillings and pence, and candy-striped paper bags with pinked tops and gussets hung from a string under the counter.

I made a little selection of the buttons, lace, trimmings and hatpins before they were packed up, because I thought that if they were displayed in a deep frame, it would make a nice memento for Miss Honey.

The students had a short break outside the back door, washing the dust out of their throats with cola or the kind of energy drinks that would have had me bouncing off the walls in minutes. Then a small hired removal van came for the dresser, organ and the hefty pedestal table, which were carefully packed in hessian as if they were very precious, which was something Miss Honey would appreciate. The organ went in last, since it was to be delivered to the restorers on the way to the mill.

There was still no sign of Jago even after the van returned to ferry the first consignment of shop contents up to the mill – the counter, stands and mannequins, along with as many boxes as would fit around them.

I’d started to worry about Jago’s non-arrival till he texted me again to say he was stuck in a traffic jam caused by an accident. He only finally arrived just as the students were packing the final boxes of stock for the last load.

‘It’s been an absolute treasure trove,’ Tim told him, enthusiastically describing some of the things they’d unearthed. ‘Thanks so much for letting us have it. I know you could have sold a lot of it off – some of it is very collectable.’

‘I didn’t feel any of it really belonged to me: it’s the Honeys’ heritage. But I’m looking forward to seeing it all set up again at the mill house and so is Miss Honey.’

‘We’ll have a special opening ceremony when it’s finished and see if she feels up to coming along and cutting the ribbon,’ Tim suggested. ‘She’s a very lively old lady for her years, so she might well.’

‘I’m sure she wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ I said. ‘How are the tape recording sessions going along? She said some students had been up.’

‘Oh, we’ve got hours of reminiscence and it’s being edited down for a short permanent audio loop for the shop. I told someone from the Middlemoss Living History Archive about her – that’s an ongoing project to record the memories of people living in the borough of Middlemoss – and they asked for a copy of the tapes. I think they were going to see if Miss Honey would let them tape some reminiscences of her life for them too, since ours is mostly about the shop.’

‘Yes, she mentioned that, and I think they’ve already started. All this excitement has given her a new lease of life!’ Jago said.

Tim drove off back to the mill, ready to supervise the van when it arrived with the last load, and Jago and I watched the final boxes carried out, leaving only light patches on the wooden floor where things had stood. The long empty room seemed to stretch back like a dark cave.

‘I’ll need loads of lights in here when it’s my preparation area,’ Jago said thoughtfully. ‘I must have a think about that before the electricians come in.’

He went out to have a word with the students before they departed, but it turned out he wasn’t just thanking them: he was arranging for some of them to come back next Saturday, when they were free, to clear out all the rubbish from the house into a skip he was going to order for the weekend.

‘It’ll cost me a few quid but it will be worth it. So, all in all, a pretty good day,’ he said with satisfaction.

‘Yes, but I’d better go now, because Celia and Will will be bringing Stella home soon. They called earlier to say they’d picnicked in the garden and then she had an afternoon snooze on the swinging seat – it was too warm to stay in.’

‘I’m sure she’s had a lovely time,’ Jago said.

‘Actually, I feel quite guilty, because it’s all been so interesting today that I’d quite forgotten about her until they rang!’ I confessed.

He laughed. ‘I think that’s pretty healthy.’

‘I’m desperate for a shower before they bring her back. I feel filthy.’

‘Me too, even though I haven’t been here that long,’ he agreed, and said he’d go back to the flat to shower and change, then return later with a Chinese takeaway, since Ma and Hal were going out again – this was getting to be a habit!

And the following day we’d
all
be at Honey’s, since Ma and Hal wanted to look at the garden and see what – if anything other than weeds – was in there.

When Stella got home she excitedly showed me the toy-families-sized quilt she’d made out of a snippet of silk and a little thin wadding. Actually, I’m sure Celia had made the whole thing, but since Stella had directed the operation, she felt that she’d had a major part in it.

Before Celia and Will went home again, I showed them my treasure trove of buttons, bows, lace, hatpins and tiny wooden cotton reels, and Celia offered to construct a sort of little three-dimensional collage out of them for Miss Honey, which Will would put in a deep box frame. In fact, she said there was enough there for two, so I think one would be nice for Jago to display somewhere, maybe in the office/reception area he was going to make at the front of the shop.

Stella had tea and then was so tired she went willingly to bed, though with the promise that when he came, Jago would come and say good night to her.

Next morning we were all at Honey’s for the great garden inspection, Hal armed with a giant Strimmer and me carrying a picnic basket with refreshments and a rug.

I wouldn’t let Stella go into the house because of all the dust, though I thought Ma and Hal might be curious to see it. But Ma refused, because she didn’t feel Miss Honey would approve, and Hal was disinterested in anything except the garden.

He and Ma waded about in waist-high weeds – practically head-height on Ma – and then he cut a path to the far end by the garage, which we all trooped down in single file, like a strange Famous Five.

Actually, the garage was in better condition than you might have expected, apart from the paint having peeled away from the wood like silver birch bark. Inside, there was nothing except some dubious heaps of sacking, a rusty jerry can and a few ancient oil stains on the cracked concrete.

‘Perhaps the lodger, or whoever rented the annexe, had a car and used it at one time?’ I suggested.

‘Not for ages, though,’ Ma said. ‘The gates to the lane are nearly off their hinges too.’

‘Corrugated iron never looks good, even when it isn’t rusty,’ Hal observed. He was chewing a long piece of grass, though Ma had told him it would give him liver fluke. I hoped not, but I expect it was just an old wives’ tale.

‘It seems a strange thing to make gates of,’ agreed Jago. ‘I’ll have them replaced to make the back access more secure. What’s that small stone building for, over the other side of the gate?’

‘Oh, that was a midden, for putting the rubbish in,’ Hal explained, then peered into the small door at the back of it. ‘Looks like they blocked up the other side and used the midden to keep chickens in at some time: there’s nesting boxes.’

‘There you are, see – you
can
have your hens. Just not cockerels,’ I said to Jago, and then had to explain the covenant on the property to the others.

‘I like hens,’ Stella said, peeping in at the nesting boxes.

‘You can help me look after them, if I get some, then,’ promised Jago. ‘It won’t be for a while yet, though.’

‘Perhaps Santa will bring you some?’ she suggested seriously. ‘You’d better write him a letter.’

‘Lots of people keep hens in the village and you don’t notice a cock crowing if you’ve been brought up to it,’ Hal said. ‘I wouldn’t take no notice of any covenant.’

‘I suppose it’s only newcomers who notice that kind of thing,’ Jago said.

Hal began wading about in the weeds with his Strimmer, the modern-day machete-wielding explorer in the jungle, while we watched him from the paved area near the back door.

‘Anything worth saving?’ Ma called when he finally turned it off and could hear us again.

‘Not a lot. That tree there’s an apple – clear it around and feed it some good muck, then prune it back hard and see if it does anything. And there’s some quince up the dividing wall that look all right. I doubt there’s anything else worth keeping.’

‘I’m not a great gardener, so I’m thinking mainly lawn and maybe a herb bed?’ Jago said.

‘You liked the knot gardens up at the hall,’ I reminded him.

‘I know, but I don’t think I’ve got the patience to keep one trimmed into shape.’

Hal said that now he’d started he might as well finish Strimming all the weeds down, so we all had a little picnic with cake and cold drinks, and then Ma, Stella and I left them to it and went home.

It was ages before they turned up at the cottage, hot and tired, just as it started to rain in big, splashy drops, and a late roast Sunday lunch was nearly ready. Over it, Jago said Hal was going to knock the garden into shape for him.

‘Moonlighting from your moonlighting here?’ Ma said, but I don’t think she minded and anyway, it seemed unlikely to take up much of his time, since he was going to get a couple of the other Winter’s End gardeners down next Sunday to clear it ready for turfing and to dig out a herb bed at one end.

‘Oh, good,’ Ma said, ‘because this lady’s not for turfing.’

Stella was half asleep in bed and I’d just got to a mention of Moominpappa in her favourite storybook when she suddenly opened her eyes and said, ‘Where’s
my
daddy?’

‘At the North Pole, counting penguins,’ I said, as I always did. ‘There are an awful lot of them and they keep moving around, so it’s taking him a very long time.’

‘No,’ she said crossly, ‘Daddy-
Jago
. I want him to read my book. I bet he can do the Moominpappa voice better than you can.’

‘Maybe,’ I conceded, not reminding her that Jago tended to stumble his way through unfamiliar books, due to his dyslexia. ‘But he had to go home. He did say goodbye, don’t you remember?’

‘He should live with us and be my Moominpappa,’ she said, her eyes closing again, so that I abandoned my half-formed notion of trying to explain to her a little more about why her real daddy had never been around because she was way too tired tonight to take it in.

‘Jago will read your bedtime story next time he’s here,’ I promised rashly, and then carried on until she was fast asleep, which took about a minute.

Next morning the weather had changed and the sky was a soggy, fuzzy grey blanket lying heavily across the landscape.

I’d had an Easter idea for a ‘Tea & Cake’ recipe, carrying on from the little nests that Stella and I made the previous day, and created a big one using a ring mould, lots of melted chocolate and twiggy cereal. I decorated it with little sugar eggs stuck on with dabs of icing and tiny sugar flowers I had left over from something else. The effect was very pretty.

I arranged my collection of painted wooden eggs in the middle and then sent Jago some pics, though he didn’t reply straight away so he and David must have been baking.

When I’d cleared up, assisted by Toto, who was under the table hoovering up any fallen scraps, I checked on Stella and found her still fast asleep. So I turned on the laptop, meaning to type up the Easter ring recipe, though first, as usual, I checked the donations to the Stella’s Stars fund and then my email inbox.

And there, in the inbox, was a once-familiar name … Adam Scott’s.

In case my short-term memory was really bad, he’d put ‘From Adam Scott’ in the subject line, too.

I deleted it before I knew what I was doing, and then sat there, my hands shaking, my nerves twanging and my heart pounding. Then I took a couple of deep breaths and fished the email back out again.

Another intake of breath and it was open in front of me.

Hi Cally, it’s me, Adam,
it began, followed by a smiley face emoticon.

A smiley face? I stared at the screen blankly. Not a word during the years of trauma his child had suffered and he’d sent me a
smiley face
?

Creep! The air turned bluer than Gauloise smoke.

Heard from a friend that you had a little girl and I assume she’s mine? Have been thinking about you a lot lately and I know I behaved badly, but I’d really like to meet up and say I’m sorry.

Bit late, Adam, I thought.

I did two tours of Antarctica, then I was based on a small island near the Falklands, but I’m back now. Got a job in London with Wesley Marine and ready to settle down.

Another smiley face.

Had all that exposure to extreme cold done something to his brain?
And why would he think I had any interest in what he’d been doing, or was doing now? I wished I’d changed my email address as well as blocked him on Facebook!