Trisha Ashley - The Magic of Christmas

Apart from the kohl-edged eyes and puffy, fuchsia-pink lips (which reminded me, strikingly, of a baboon’s bottom), her face was pale as death. Paler.

‘Oh, Polly, are you all right?’ I asked. ‘You haven’t been eating your own home-bottled tomatoes or anything like that, have you?’

From time to time she fancied herself as the Earth Mother type and tried her hand at jams, chutneys and bottled goods, which she then gave to all and sundry, in my case together with a generous dose of botulism or something equally foul. Just my luck to get that one!

‘Oh, no, I haven’t had time for any of that, Lizzy — I’ve got a book to finish, you know.’

‘Yes, Senga does like you to keep them coming, doesn’t she?’

Having fallen out with two agents and three publishers, Polly had been taken on by my own agent, Senga McDonald — and may the best woman win.

Her dark eyes slid curiously to the closed workshop door and back to my face. ‘I thought I heard raised voices — is everything OK with you and Tom? Only sometimes lately you haven’t seemed entirely happy, and you know you can always depend on me if you need a shoulder to cry on.’

Oh, yes, but only if I kneel down first, I thought, as she smiled at me in a horribly pseudo-sympathetic sort of way.

‘I’m fine,’ I said shortly. ‘We were just discussing business. Were you looking for me?’

She gave a start. ‘Oh, yes. I picked loads of mushrooms in the paddock this morning early and I thought you might like to swap them for some quail eggs? But if it’s inconvenient, it doesn’t matter.’

‘No, not at all. I’m just off for a walk, but you know where they are in the small barn? Help yourself and leave the mushrooms there,’ I told her, and walked off, not caring whether she thought me rude or not. When she first moved to Middlemoss she went all out to be my best friend, but we had absolutely nothing in common (apart from Senga). Anyway, I already have a best friend in Annie.

Nor, it occurred to me, was she the type to skip about the fields at dawn gathering mushrooms, which in any case looked suspiciously like shop-bought ones, small, clean and perfectly formed. My marzipan mushrooms looked earthier than those!

I headed for the woods, for I found their dark, cool depths wonderfully soothing, especially on a hot day. They restored a sense of my unimportance in the great scale of things, shrinking my problems down to a more manageable, acorn size.

Luckily I was wearing a pinky-red T-shirt, so Caz would spot me if I strayed onto the smaller paths he stalked so relentlessly. But if he was out there with his gun, he didn’t make himself known. He’s not much of a talker in any case; but then, most of his dealings are with squirrels, so he doesn’t need to be.

After a while I found my thoughts turning away from more painful subjects onto the comforting one of food, wondering which member of the Christmas Pudding Circle would come up with the best recipe for brandy butter ice cream.

More than likely it would be Faye, since she’s a farmer’s wife who has diversified by opening a farm shop and café, where she sells her own home-made organic ice cream. She was already perfecting a Christmas-pudding-flavoured one.

Eventually, as the shadows lengthened, I reluctantly had to turn for home, even though I dreaded seeing Tom again. But there was no need: he wasn’t there and, more to the point, neither was my car.

Come to that, even the punnet of mushrooms Polly Darke had presumably left had vanished into thin air, though possibly Caz had been around and fancied them. He knows he can help himself to anything edible he can find, though it seemed a bit greedy to take them all. (He keeps the freezer I gave him locked, so goodness knows what’s in there. Better not to know, perhaps?)

I searched for a note saying where Tom and my car had gone to, but there was nothing. Unless he came back by the time I returned from the Mystery Play Committee meeting, Jasper was going to have to cycle home that evening, and I would be extremely annoyed.

I fed, watered and generally cared for everything that needed my attention, then changed and set off for the village hall — on foot.

The members of the Middlemoss Mystery Play Committee were gathered around a trestle table in the village hall, which exhibited reminders of its many functions: the playgroup’s brightly coloured toys poked out from behind a curtained alcove and their finger-painting decorated one wall, while the other bore posters of footprints illustrating the various new steps the Senior Citizens’ Tuesday Tea Dance Club were trying to master.

Personally, I thought salsa might give one or two of them a bit of trouble, but I was sure they would all give it a go. Their line dancing ensemble at the last Christmas concert had been a big hit, and Mrs Gumball, the cook up at Pharamond Hall, had got so excited she fell off the end of the stage. But fortunately foam playmats were always stacked there after an incident a few years back, when one of Santa’s little elves fell over, causing a domino effect along the line until the last one dropped off and broke a leg.

‘I think we might as well start, Clive,’ I suggested to the verger, opening the plastic box of Choconut Consolations I’d brought with me and setting it in the middle, so everyone could help themselves. ‘I don’t know where Annie’s got to, but Uncle Roly’s gone to the races. He said after all these years he could do the Voice of God in his sleep, so you could sort it all out without him.’

This year’s committee was formed of the usual suspects; some of them also CPC members. There was Dr Patel, our semi-retired GP, Miss Pym the infants’ schoolteacher, the new vicar — untried and untested and looking more than a little nervous — and Clive and Marian Potter, who between them ran the post office, the Mosses Messenger parish magazine and also pretty well everything else that happened round Middlemoss, including directing the annual Mysteries. Then there was my humble self, for Clive liked to have a token Pharamond on tap, since Uncle Roly was inclined to give his duties the go-by if something more interesting came along. Annie was presumably held up somewhere.

‘Very well. I’ve convened this meeting earlier than usual for two reasons,’ announced Clive, who is like a busy little ant, always running to and fro. Marian is the same, and I have a theory that they never sleep, just hang by their heels for the odd ten minutes to refresh themselves, like bats. Come to that, they’re so in tune with one another they have probably leaped up the next rung of the evolutionary ladder and communicate in high-pitched squeaks us mere bog-standard humans can’t hear.

‘First off, I thought the vicar might need a bit more time to get to grips with the Mysteries, it all coming as a bit of a surprise to him, like.’

The vicar, a carrot-haired, blue-eyed man with a naturally startled expression, nodded earnestly: ‘But I’m delighted, of course — absolutely delighted.’

I wondered if anyone had warned him that the last vicar was currently having a genteel nervous breakdown in a church nursing home near Morecambe. An elderly man, he’d been hoping for a quiet country living, I feared, where he could jog along towards his retirement, not the whirl of activity that is the Mosses parish. But at least the new one was younger and unmarried. I observed with interest the way he suddenly went the same shade as his hair when Annie, breathless and dishevelled, rushed into the room.