Trisha Ashley - A Christmas Cracker - The only festive romance to curl up with this Christmas!

‘That shows a warm and generous heart, my dear,’ he said.

‘I think our engagement lasted only as long as it did because mostly we were able just to write to each other,’ I confessed. ‘But by the time he got married I was fully occupied anyway, what with my casual packing job at Champers&Chocs, when my neighbour could pop in and sit with Mum, and my art work, especially when I started to sell designs to greetings card companies.’

‘I’m very impressed with your papercuts, Tabby,’ he said. ‘I think you have great talent.’

I’d recently given him one depicting the prison as seen through the rose arch, the thorns like a circlet of barbed wire and inmates standing in every window, looking out.

‘Thank you – I get my arty side from Mum. She was a costume assistant and dresser at a Liverpool theatre until she got too ill to work. My father was an actor who was part of a touring production, but when Mum discovered she was expecting me, she found out he was married with a young family, so she never told him.’

‘I think she should at least have given him the opportunity to provide for you,’ he said, ‘but I can see that she wouldn’t want to upset his wife and family with such a disclosure.’

I looked at him fondly, quite used by now to the somewhat Victorian flourishes of his conversation.

‘I checked him on the internet out of curiosity once, and I don’t think he’d have been much of an asset as a father. Anyway, we moved in with Granny and then later, after she died and Mum’s condition had deteriorated, the council gave us a specially adapted bungalow, so we were all right.’

‘When one door shuts, another opens,’ he said.

‘One thing does seem to lead to another,’ I agreed, ‘just not always fortunately. Once Mum passed away I had to give up the bungalow and started working regular shifts at Champers&Chocs, so I could pay the rent on Jeremy’s flat … which led to us getting engaged.’

‘Which should have made a happy ending, at last.’

‘I did feel as if I was on the brink of it, just before I was arrested. I’d had a successful small solo exhibition at a gallery in Liverpool and I was hoping to make a living from my artwork. I’d handed in my notice once I realised Harry, my boss, was still defrauding the customers, but the only thing I was guilty of was not reporting what I found out immediately.’

I smiled and added, ‘Practically everyone I’ve met in prison has protested their innocence of the crime they were charged with, but I really didn’t do it!’

‘I am certain in my heart that you are innocent of any crime,’ Ceddie assured me.

‘Thank you – and I wasn’t even guilty of having an affair with Harry Briggs. I was engaged to Jeremy and, other than Robbie, my childhood sweetheart, I’d never even been out with anyone else.’

‘God always knows the truth,’ Ceddie told me, but I wished the judge had, too.

‘I will be away visiting relatives next week, but a friend of mine would like to come here in my stead, if you approve of the idea,’ said Cedric Lathom, on his next visit.

My heart sank and I realised just how much I had come to depend on seeing him.

‘A friend as in Quaker Friend?’ I asked. I’d been reading up about the Quakers since Ceddie’s first visit had piqued my curiosity.

He nodded, silvery curls bobbing. ‘She’s called Mercy Marwood. Her benevolence, like that of all the Marwoods, has always taken a practical turn. For many years she’s been sourcing and renovating old sewing machines to take out to Malawi, where she has also taught needlework. She’s just returned from her final trip there, for she feels that now she has turned eighty, it’s time to attend to affairs closer to home.’

I’d grown used to Ceddie rambling on as if he’d escaped from between the covers of a Charles Dickens novel, but I thought that if Mercy Marwood had been teaching in Malawi into her eighties, she must be a tough old bird!

‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve told her a little about you,’ he added, slightly anxiously.

‘No, not at all,’ I replied. ‘I imagine you can read the whole story of my life online, by clicking on the newspaper reports of the trial.’

‘I doubt the affair made the national headlines and, in any case, they would reveal little about the real Tabitha Coombs, who is a very fine person,’ he said, with one of his warm smiles.

‘Thank you. Somehow, after your visits I always feel better … and when they release me, I’ll miss you.’

‘I will always remain your friend,’ Ceddie said. ‘Had you any thought about where you might go and what you might do after your release?’

‘I have to wear a tag for two months and be under a sort of night-time house arrest – assuming I have a house to live in, of course,’ I said. ‘With no relatives, little money and a criminal record added to my lack of qualifications, I don’t see much chance of getting a job and renting somewhere, and anyway, they need an address before they’ll even release me. But I’m told they can find me a temporary place in a hostel somewhere, till I get back on my feet,’ I added, trying to sound more positive than I felt.

‘Well, my dear, Mercy has a proposition to put before you that may change that.’

‘A proposition?’ I echoed. ‘Do you mean … a job?’

‘The possibility of a fresh start, with somewhere to live, at least,’ he said. ‘But I’ll let her tell you all about it herself.’

‘But surely she won’t want to employ an ex-con?’

‘I have every reason to believe that she will and I think you’ll suit each other very well,’ he reassured me.

He wouldn’t say any more about it and I wondered if his friend was returning because she was now so decrepit she needed a carer. After all, I had been my mum’s sole carer for years, so I was certainly experienced at looking after an invalid.

It would mean my life had gone round in a circle again … but then, beggars and people with criminal records can’t be choosers.

Charlie Clancy and I were having a catch-up session over a few beers at my flat between assignments. Being more or less in the same line of business, we were seldom in London at the same time.

‘I haven’t seen you since we bumped into each other in the street after you got back from that cruise. You looked like crap – and you don’t look much better now,’ Charlie said, with the frankness of an old friend. ‘How much weight have you lost?’

‘Too much: I wouldn’t recommend a toxic tummy bug to anyone as a diet aid,’ I said. ‘You don’t expect amazing luxury from a cut-price cruise company, but Kharisma sucked. So many passengers and even crew went down with it that if there hadn’t been a mutiny off Mexico it would have been like the Mary Celeste and running on autopilot round and round the Caribbean.’

‘That bad, was it?’ Charlie said sympathetically.

‘You’ll see the horrible details when the programme comes out,’ I said. ‘It was even worse than we’d been told, mainly due to a lack of deep cleaning between cruises and poor food preparation practice. I bribed my way into the kitchens for a look and, believe me, I pretty much lived on bottled water and biscuits after that. And when half the toilets weren’t functioning … well, you can imagine. It spread like wildfire. The stewards were paid so little, it’s not surprising they weren’t keen to tackle sick passengers’ cabins.’

‘But you caught it anyway, despite all the precautions.’

‘I was careful, but I suppose it was inevitable, and at least we’d all been taken off the ship at Cancún by that point. It was a week before the medical authorities would let me fly home and I’m still sticking to eating bland stuff for the time being. This is the first alcohol I’ve tasted in weeks.’