Trisha Ashley - Wish Upon a Star

I liked his thin, mobile face and the way it reflected every passing emotion, something he probably wasn’t aware of, his unusual light brown eyes and the way his dark hair, released from the pirate scarf, was just a little too long and trying to curl around his ears …

When I got home Ma and Stella were in the garden – Ma sketching and Stella sitting in her blue plastic clam-shell sandpit, carefully arranging a pattern of bits of sand-washed glass that we’d picked up on Southport beach into an intricate pattern. Toto wagged his tail but didn’t get up from under the lavender bush.

The May sun was quite warm, but there was still a bit of a chilly breeze, so I was glad to see that Stella was wearing her little purple corduroy coat. She must have put it on herself, because only one of the big buttons was fastened and it was in the wrong hole.

Ma’s ample derrière rested on her ancient and ingenious fold-up sketching stool, which incorporated an easel in front, and she had obviously been working for some time, for oil pastel and charcoal sketches of Stella littered the grass around her. Toto and Moses featured in some of them, though I don’t think Moses was feeling very co-operative since I could see the tip of his tail from underneath one sheet of paper, where he must have decided to go to sleep.

‘Mummy!’ Stella exclaimed, and Ma looked up.

‘Had a nice time?’ she asked.

‘Yes, and I’m sorry I was a bit longer than I expected,’ I said guiltily. ‘I did the shopping and got the flake white paint and the linseed oil, and I’ve brought you a vanilla slice from Greggs and a gingerbread pig for Stella from the Happy Macaroon.’

‘Lovely …’ Ma said absently, adding a touch or two to the sketch in front of her.

‘I had a sandwich in a café and shared the table with Jago from the Happy Macaroon – remember I told you about him? He makes croquembouches and we’d met before, when I went to Gilligan’s Celebration Cakes where he used to work.’

Now I was closer I could see that Ma’s current sketch was of Stella, who seemed to have sprouted little white feathered cherub wings, as had Toto, and even Moses the cat, and were all three whirling about among a lot of clouds.

Ma finished edging the bottom of the picture with giant foxglove spikes and started to collect her stuff together. ‘Yes … I remember,’ she said vaguely. ‘I expect it was nice to meet an old friend.’

‘Hardly that, because I only saw him that once very briefly in London, but I got to know him a bit today while we were chatting and he’s such a nice man.’

Stella looked up and asked, ‘Can I have my gingerbread piggy now, Mummy?’

‘Did you eat the little dinosaur sandwiches I left you for lunch?’

She shook her head. ‘We haven’t had lunch, have we, Grandma?’

‘Haven’t we?’ Ma looked surprised, but when I checked the fridge the sandwiches were untouched under their cling film, as were the two little dishes of chocolate mousse.

I went back outside. ‘Come on in, Stella, and eat a sandwich, and then you can have your gingerbread pig. Ma, do you want your sandwiches out here, or are you coming in?’

‘I’ll be in in a minute. I’ll just take everything back up to the studio and fix the charcoal drawings.’

Stella got out of the sandpit and I closed the lid in case Moses took it into his head that it would make a super cat litter tray, and we went in the house holding hands. Ma wandered off up to the studio and I knew she would forget to come back, so I took her lunch up there after we’d had ours, along with the vanilla slice. There was a steaming mug of tea next to her, so Hal must have been around somewhere.

‘I should have got another cake for Hal, shouldn’t I?’ I said. ‘Does he like vanilla slices?’

‘I don’t know. He likes Nice biscuits, garibaldi, gingernuts and fig rolls, though,’ she said, taking a big bite out of a ham sandwich. ‘I’m ravenous,’ she added, sounding surprised.

‘Well, it’s after two. Stella’s eaten a dinosaur sandwich and she started on the gingerbread pig, but got too sleepy, so she’s gone for a nap. I expect she’ll eat the rest when she wakes up. Her appetite really seems to be picking up since we moved here.’

‘There’s magic in the air in Sticklepond,’ Ma said.

David’s eyebrows had gone up when Jago and Cally walked into the Happy Macaroon together chatting comfortably like old friends, and Jago knew he’d be in for a bit of merciless teasing later, when the shop was quieter.

He was right, too, because David told him he was glad to see his broken heart was on the way to being mended.

‘Don’t be stupid, Cally’s just really nice and we’re interested in similar things, but mostly we’ve been talking about her little girl. She was born with a very serious heart condition and Cally’s trying to raise money to send her to America for an operation in autumn.’

‘Oh, poor little thing,’ Sarah said.

‘She’s set up a charitable website, called Stella’s Stars. I’m going to have a look at it later.’

‘Well, I hope you’re not going to give them all your lottery winnings, Jago,’ David said forthrightly, because he knew his friend’s soft heart. Being bullied at school because of his dyslexia, and being always in the shadow of his older and academically gifted brother, had dented Jago’s self-confidence, so that he always felt for the underdog.

‘She’s already raised the bulk of it by selling her flat in London, so she only needs about another twenty thousand … and I did offer,’ he confessed, ‘but she turned me down, because she knew by then I’d only just won enough to set myself up in my own business. She told me not to try anonymously donating it either, because she’d guess it was me and give it back.’

‘She’s certainly got your measure in a short space of time,’ Sarah said admiringly. ‘I like the sound of her.’

‘Yes, and she’s much more your type than Aimee ever was,’ David agreed. ‘I can’t imagine why she ever agreed to marry you. Unless it’s like Sarah says, that it was just to pay her dad back for getting engaged to his PA.’

‘Oh, once she was the wrong side of forty she probably found good-looking straight single men willing to settle down were thin on the ground. I expect panic had set in by the time Jago proposed and that was part of it too,’ Sarah said airily.

‘I keep telling you, she’s younger than me,’ Jago protested.

‘No way: you only had to look at her knees.’

‘Her knees ?’

‘Baggy, saggy knees.’

‘She has the longest legs in the world …’ Jago sighed reminiscently. ‘I can’t say I noticed her knees. And gee, thanks for the confidence boost, by the way.’

Still, it was true that he hadn’t been able to believe his luck when the tall, elegant, beautiful, sophisticated Aimee had accepted his proposal … which actually he would never have had the courage to make if she hadn’t prompted him into it.

‘You’re a good-looking guy, don’t get me wrong,’ Sarah said kindly, ‘but you had absolutely nothing in common.’

‘I know,’ he said humbly.

‘All that late night partying followed by the early starts for work ran you ragged and made your friends worry about you,’ David said.

‘And while we’re speaking of the devil who wore Prada,’ Sarah said, ‘you had a phone call when you were out. She’s back.’

‘Who’s back?’ Jago demanded, startled.

‘Aimee.’

‘ Aimee? Aimee’s back in the UK?’

‘Yes, she’s been back a while, but she’s only just tracked you down. I expect she heard about our winnings,’ David said drily.