Wish Upon a Star

Ma looked at her. ‘I suppose you’re right and no one cares much about the old stories now.’

‘You should come to the pub,’ she invited me. ‘We have a coffee machine what makes any kind you fancy, and my son, Clive, will show the little ’un the meteorite.’

‘The meteorite?’ I repeated.

‘That’s how the pub got its name,’ Ma said.

‘What’s a meatyright?’ Stella put in suddenly, having finally torn her gaze away from the Nativity scene.

‘It’s a big rock that fell out of the heavens,’ Florrie explained.

‘God threw a rock at you?’ Stella gasped, impressed. ‘You must have been really naughty.’

Florrie gave a wheezy laugh. ‘Not me, lovey – this was last century … or maybe the one before that. But there it sits in the courtyard now, right in the way, but bad luck to move it.’

‘I’d like to see it,’ breathed Stella, and I had to promise to take her next day.

‘Good. I’ll make you a charm, poppet, too,’ Florrie promised obscurely.

On the way home, I asked Ma what old stories Florrie knew about the Almonds. ‘Is this Granddad’s cousin Esau that you never want to talk about? Did he do something very bad?’

‘Nothing that matters now,’ she said, and wouldn’t be drawn. I’m not sure if she even knew exactly what it was.

‘And what did Florrie mean when she said she was going to make a charm for Stella?’

‘Rumour has it that she’s a witch, one of Gregory Lyon’s coven that has the witchcraft museum opposite the Falling Star.’

‘Really? How do you know?’

She shrugged her plump shoulders. ‘Hal tells me stuff, and anyway, there’s always been a history of witchcraft in the village. Ottie says the Winter family are distantly related to the Nutters, and her sister, Hebe, dabbles in the dark arts, though really I think she’s more of a herbalist.’

‘The Nutters?’ I repeated.

‘A famous witch family, further north. Didn’t you read the information boards at Winter’s End when you visited?’

‘No, mostly we were in the gardens, but maybe I should.’

‘Well, you’ll have to wait till it reopens for the season at Easter, if you can come up then.’

‘That would be lovely,’ I agreed, then ventured tentatively, ‘I … don’t suppose Esau’s disgrace was anything to do with witchcraft …?’

Ma gave a derisory snort. ‘Don’t be daft! Strange Baptists, the lot of them.’

Chapter 5: Falling Star

Stella gave me no rest until I took her down to the Falling Star next morning where Mollie, the barmaid, asked me to sign her copy of the last Sweet Home magazine at the top of my ‘Tea & Cake’ page where, as always in this edition, there was a variation of my Christmas tree biscuits: ‘Crisp ginger and spice biscuits are quick to make and you can hang them on the Christmas tree or have them as a festive treat with coffee …’

Then Clive, who was Florrie’s middle-aged son and the landlord, took us outside and proudly showed off a rather unimpressive grey rock sitting squarely and inconveniently in the middle of the small courtyard that was now a car park.

I took a picture on my phone of Stella poised on top of it, looking a bit like a well-wrapped-up fairy about to take flight, and then we went into the snug out of the icy breeze, where Florrie expertly produced a cup of cappuccino for me from a large, hissing, stainless-steel monster of a machine, and then a hot chocolate for Stella.

I still couldn’t quite believe that she was a witch, but when she put a little leather bracelet on Stella’s wrist and told me to let her wear it night and day, it didn’t seem quite so far-fetched. It was a bit lumpy, which she explained by saying that normally she put her charms in a little pouch, to be hung around the neck.

‘But that’s not safe with childer, so I’ve bound it into the bracelet instead.’

I noticed her use of the old Lancashire word ‘childer’ for children, something I remembered from my grandmother, whose speech patterns had also been peppered with ‘thees’ and ‘thous’, though that might have had something to do with the Strange Baptist religious sect the Almonds used to belong to.

‘Is it magic?’ Stella asked seriously, fingering the leather band and, when Mrs Snowball nodded, she looked pleased.

‘It’ll help get the roses back in your cheeks and a bit of flesh on your bones, so the wind doesn’t blow you away,’ she said.

It seemed kindly meant, so I thanked her, but later Stella threw a typical three-year-old’s tantrum when I took it off before she had her bath, even though I put it right back on again afterwards.

The next afternoon I left Ma minding Stella while I went for a rummage round the Sticklepond shops. Chloe Lyon’s was my first port of call. I bought a box of Chocolate Wishes for Christmas Day, which were a sort of chocolate fortune cookie, and a little milk chocolate angel lolly for Stella’s stocking. Chloe made all the chocolates herself and the smell had lured me in a few times before, so she recognised me. She was the vicar’s wife, too, which was odd, seeing as her grandfather was Gregory Lyon, who ran the next-door witchcraft museum and Ma said was a self-confessed pagan.

While she was putting my purchases in a glazed paper carrier bag, she absently handed me a pack of cards to hold. Then she took them back and laid them out on the counter. ‘These are angel cards. Pretty, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, lovely,’ I agreed, admiring the pictures on the backs.

She smiled, turned some of them face up, then shuffled them back together and lifted down a large chocolate angel from the shelf, which she insisted was a special present just for myself, refusing any payment. It was extremely kind of her because her chocolate is very expensive, so I thanked her and said I would save it for a special treat on Christmas Day.

I popped in and out of the village shops, buying Stella the latest Slipper Monkey children’s book in Cinderella’s Slippers, the wedding shoe shop, since the owner, Tansy Poole, is the author and keeps a rack of them next to the till. I didn’t dare even to glance at the gorgeous shoes, since spending money on myself for something so impractical was totally unthinkable when I had Stella’s fund to think of.

I crossed the road and bought Ma the latest Susan Hill crime novel from Felix Hemmings in the Marked Pages bookshop, and had a nice chat with him about my cookbooks. I hadn’t realised before quite what a literary hotbed the village was, but apparently Ivo Hawksley, Tansy’s husband, writes crime novels, Gregory Lyon at the Witchcraft Museum writes supernatural thrillers and even Seth Greenwood from Winter’s End has had published a gardening tome called The Artful Knot.

When I got back to the cottage and went up to the studio I found that Ottie had visited in my absence. She divided her time between her house in Cornwall and Winter’s End, where she lived in the converted coach house, but of course she came back for Christmas. There was always a huge party up there for all the staff, family and friends, and I knew Ma had been invited a few times, but wouldn’t go.

I was sorry to have missed Ottie (as a little girl, I had attempted to call her Auntie Ottie, but it had been too much of a mouthful), who had always been kind and prone to arrive with unexpected presents.

Stella was fast asleep on the battered old chaise longue, with a fistful of pheasant feathers from the collection she kept in the studio loosely splayed around her, but woke as soon as she heard my voice.

She was still pretty sleepy, though, and after lunch went willingly off for her nap just before Will and Celia arrived for our fundraising session.

Will had put the finishing touches to the Stella’s Stars website and it was about to go online, which was exciting.

‘The fundraising will really get going then,’ Celia said.

‘I only hope you’re right, because it’s such a lot of money to raise quite quickly. I mean, Dr Beems wants to do the operation before she’s five, so the latest date she’d have it would be spring of the year after next … and he did warn me that if her condition suddenly deteriorated, it might have to be much sooner.’

‘We’ll hope it won’t; that’s just the worst-case scenario,’ Celia assured me.

‘I know, but I’ve had some sleepless nights thinking about what I’d do if it came to it and I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way I could raise the money in time would be by selling the flat.’

‘Sell the flat?’ echoed Celia. ‘But you still have a mortgage on it, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but because Dad gave me a good deposit and I bought it just before prices went through the roof, I’d make a huge profit,’ I said optimistically.

‘But then you’d still have to rent somewhere for you and Stella to live,’ Will pointed out, ‘and that’s likely to cost more than your current mortgage payments.’

‘Well, that’s the thing – we’d have to move up here and live with Ma for a while.’

‘I think that would be a bit hard after having your own place – and would Martha think it was a good idea?’ asked Celia. ‘I know she loves to have you visit, but that’s a bit different from your being here all the time.’

‘I don’t know, but I think she’d do it because she loves Stella – they seem very alike in some ways. And it would be only until Stella had had the operation and recovered, then I’d move back to London and pick up my career again.’

We talked through lots of fundraising ideas and drafted a standard email that we could send out to everyone we could think of who might help, with a link to the website. ‘And everyone in your address book,’ Celia suggested, ‘even if you haven’t heard from them in years. If you give people a positive way of helping, I’m sure they’ll do it.’

‘Yes, everyone loves to support a good cause, especially where a child is involved,’ Will agreed.

‘I’ll organise a couple of events too. My knitting circle can have a sponsored knitathon, perhaps, and in the spring we could have a Crafty Celia garden party. I’m having lots of ideas,’ Celia said enthusiastically. ‘Will could put one of his sculptures in if we had a selling exhibition, too.’

He nodded, ‘Good idea. And maybe Martha can get some fundraising going in the village?’

‘She isn’t really tuned in to village life,’ I told him. ‘She’s been to one or two sessions of the Musical Appreciation Society and she goes to the monthly Gardening Club, and to the library, but that’s about it. She did suggest mortgaging this house and giving me the money, but I wouldn’t let her: she isn’t that well off.’

We tossed ideas around a little more, while eating warm mince pies, then Ma came down from the studio and Stella woke up, so we all had an expedition to the gatehouse at Winter’s End to buy bunches of the mistletoe they grow there, a local tradition.

Later, I asked Ma the important question.

‘I mean, I really hope that Stella stays well and it won’t come to it, but I wanted to ask you now, just in case …’

‘I see what you mean,’ she said, ‘but I hadn’t thought of that possibility.’

‘Well, do, but don’t answer me now, have a think about it, because I know you like your own space and so it would be a big ask.’

‘It’s not so much that, but I think you’d find it very difficult getting back on the property ladder in London when you moved back.’

‘I know – impossible, in fact; we’d have to rent. But at least Stella would be well again …’

‘Let me sleep on it,’ Ma said.

Ma wasn’t much of a churchgoer, except to admire the architecture, monuments and windows, but she’d attended every Midnight Carol Service at All Angels since moving back to the village. I think it was the music: her tastes were very eclectic and she often said that Mr Lees, who was the organist there, had to be heard to be believed.

And actually, I had heard him, because he often played the organ at the strangest times, and a fugue distantly haunting you in the dead of night when the wind was in the right direction certainly got the hairs standing up on the back of your neck.

I’d never been to the services with her, because taking Stella out in the freezing cold night hadn’t seemed like a good idea, so that evening Ma went off with Hal, who called for her. While she fetched her voluminous black cape, which made her look like a smaller and more rotund version of the woman in that Scottish Widows advertisement, I asked Hal why he didn’t fly out to New Zealand and spend Christmas with his daughter and her family and he said he wouldn’t go in an aeroplane ever again for love nor money, but he’d be off up to his sister’s in Scotland for Hogmanay instead.

‘I couldn’t miss the Winter’s End Christmas party,’ he added. ‘I’m the Lord of Misrule and we have a grand time.’

‘I don’t know about Lord of Misrule, but you’re an old fool, getting dressed up and prancing about at your time of life,’ Ma said, reappearing.

‘There’s nowt about my time of life to stop me prancing, and anyway, you never come to the party so you don’t know what goes on.’

‘I’ve heard things, though.’

‘I’d love to go, and Ottie invited us, but it would be a bit much for Stella,’ I said.

Stella was already overexcited by the thought of Father Christmas arriving during the night and it had taken me ages to get her settled down that evening. Still, finally she’d gone to sleep and later I’d tiptoed in and hung her stocking on the bedpost, then arranged the presents beneath the little pine tree, before eating the gingerbread and carrot left out for the great man and his trusty reindeer.

Ma had already put her presents under the tree, roughly wrapped in brown paper and tied up with green garden twine, so they looked strangely trendy.

When she came back from the service she looked cold and the tip of her nose was scarlet. Once she’d divested herself of her woolly cape, I handed her a warm mince pie and a glass of Laphroaig, her favourite whisky.

‘How was the service?’

‘Very good – all the old favourite carols and hymns, sung to the right tunes, although Mr Lees played us out with “Nearer, My God, to Thee”, which was a slightly odd choice. It was worth going, just for that.’

She put her feet up on a red Moroccan leather pouffe, sipped her whisky and said, ‘Well, our Cally, I had a good think about things while Raffy was doing his sermon, all about the Nativity. And, of course, there’s always room at this inn.’

‘You mean … we can come and stay, if I have to sell the flat?’

‘Of course you can, you daft lump. I was hardly going to turn you down, was I?’

I got up and went to give her a hug. ‘If it happens, I promise we’ll keep out of your hair as much as we can, and then as soon as Stella’s well again, leave you in peace.’

‘You can have too much peace,’ she said surprisingly.

Ma’s reply was not unexpected but it was a weight off my mind.

Of course, part of me still hoped for a miracle to happen before the operation became necessary – or at least that some new treatment would become available over here. But logically, I knew that it was unlikely that the cavalry would come riding to my rescue over the brow of the hill, and the most I could hope for was that Stella’s condition didn’t worsen over the coming year.

Since she was born I’d learned to live in the present, but nothing could stop me dreaming of a future.

Chapter 6: Hasty Pudding

After a magical Christmas, when Stella seemed to be eating well and growing stronger, as she always did in Sticklepond, it had been quite a shock when she became ill with breathing difficulties and a rocketing temperature right after we got home, and was rushed into hospital.

What would be a minor sniffle cured by a dose of Calpol in a normal child became a near-miss with pneumonia for Stella, and though luckily they quickly got her stabilised and her temperature down, it was a week before she could come home, clingy, pale and exhausted by the least exertion.

It was another setback but – more than that – I’d seen the writing on the wall. Even before the consultant suggested contacting Dr Rufford Beems in Boston about bringing forward the date of the operation, I’d told Ma I was putting the flat on the market.

The operation had been booked for the coming autumn. All I had to do was raise a vast amount of money, and keep my darling child from catching any more infections between now and October, when we were to leave …

To say I was stressed out was an understatement, and after comfort-eating four microwave-in-a-mug chocolate cakes in quick succession, when it got to the fifth I started thinking of ways to jazz them up a bit and came up with Black Forest gateau variation.

I sent the recipe off to Sweet Home magazine with some others I’d stockpiled, and the editor liked it so much she slipped it into the April edition (which of course, as is the way with magazines, came out in March) instead of a raisin roll one.

In the same April issue, Celia was showing the readers how to create friendship bracelets from old buttons, and Will had an article about making found-object pictures using an old frame he found in a skip, bits of driftwood, sea-washed fragments of glass, and shells.

A lot of the stuff you find these days washed up on beaches after high tide you wouldn’t want to stick in a picture, but Celia and Will never seem to notice anything ugly, only what is good and beautiful.

You know, before we met him, when Will had only just started sending articles about his driftwood sculptures into the magazine, we used to jokingly call him Wooden Willie. But once we’d met him we liked him so much we never did again.

When Celia went to live in Southport with him I really missed her, so at least once the flat’s sold and we’ve moved in with Ma I’ll be living near her and I can file my Sweet Home articles from Lancashire like they do. Stella always seemed both happier and healthier in Sticklepond, too.

I was pretty sure Ma was dreading it even more than I was, so it was with mixed feelings that I picked up the phone on the same brisk March day that the Sweet Home magazine came out, to tell her I’d had offers on the flat at full asking price – luckily two people had wanted it – and accepted the one who could complete quickest.

‘I’m flabbergasted you’ve sold it so fast,’ she said. ‘Fancy someone paying all that money for a space no bigger than a shoebox, and down a hole, too.’

Ma had never been a big fan of basement living … and come to think of it, neither had Toto, since we only had the little paved area at the front for him to go out into, the garden belonging to the flat above.

‘It’s still not going to be quite enough,’ I said. ‘The expenses for the trip seem to go up all the time – lots of things I hadn’t thought of before, like finding insurance and paying for somewhere Stella can convalesce before coming home.’

‘What about those people at the magazine – weren’t they supposed to be doing some fundraising?’

‘Yes, and they raised quite a bit, but now they’ve moved on to the next Big Cause,’ I said. ‘Celia and Will are planning some fundraising events, and there’s been a steady trickle of small donations into the Stella’s Stars website – that had quite a boost when the evening paper did a story about us – but once we’re in Sticklepond I’ll have to come up with a few new ideas for the rest.’

‘And when do you think that might be?’ she asked.

‘Well, that’s the thing: it’s a cash buyer who just wants a pied-à-terre in London, so it should all go through very quickly.’

‘Well, I don’t know, he must have more money than sense,’ she said, slapping down the flat vowels like so many wet fish onto a marble slab.

She sounded more Lancashire every time I spoke to her. Despite her cottage being on the outskirts of the village, and her reclusive streak, when she moved there she’d slipped straight back into the fabric of Sticklepond like a hand into a glove.

‘Ma, I can’t help thinking it’s a major imposition,’ I confessed. ‘And I feel so guilty, because you’ve made everything just how you like it and are enjoying your life up there.’

‘Well, you’re not going to put the dampers on that, are you? We all get on fine when you and Stella come up to stay, and the studio is separate so you won’t affect my work. And if I want a bit of peace, I’ve got my garden room at the back of the house to escape into.’

This was true: and when we stayed she often vanished in there in the evenings, where she read old crime novels or watched endless battered and slightly fuzzy Agatha Christie videos.

But it was very much my mother’s house and besides, both of us were used to having our own space. I would so miss my little flat …

‘Oh, well,’ I sighed, ‘at least you know it won’t be for ever.’

‘True. I expect when Stella’s had her operation and is well again, you’ll want to move back to London and pick up your career. But I won’t be putting you out on the street, however long it takes.’

‘Yes …’ I paused. ‘Ma, we do seem to have a lot more possessions than I thought we did, once I started tidying up the flat to show buyers around. Perhaps when we move up I could rent a storage unit somewhere nearby.’

‘There can’t be that much in such a little flat.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ I told her.

‘My car can live outside then, and we’ll store some of your things in the garage. It’s dry in there and we can cover it all up with dustsheets.’

‘That’s true: it must be the only carpeted garage in Lancashire … and possibly the country.’

‘Don’t mock my garage,’ she said severely. ‘I happened to have the old carpet when I had the sitting room one replaced and it seemed like a good idea.’

‘I’ll buy your car one of those waterproof covers,’ I promised, because I knew she loved her little black Polo hatchback.

‘It’s only a car, love – you save every penny for Stella’s fund. I got the librarian to show me the Stella’s Stars webpage when I was down there earlier. She wanted me to sign up for the Silver Surfers First Wave course, so I could check it myself, but I told her there was nothing else on the internet I wanted to look at.’

My mother is not much past sixty and her short mop of curling hair isn’t silver, but hennaed a red so vibrant that she practically fluoresces in the dark, but I suppose they have to call the course something. This was the first sign of interest in computers that she’d ever shown.

‘I can show you anything you wanted to look at on the internet anyway – and we could do with having broadband put into the cottage quickly.’

‘Could we?’ she asked vaguely. ‘I’ll leave that to you. When do you think you and Stella will be moving up here?’

‘The end of April, I should think, if all goes well. They said Ormskirk Hospital could carry on giving Stella her regular check-ups, though if there are any problems she might be referred to Alder Hey.’

‘We’ll hope there aren’t any problems then, and soon she’ll be on that plane to Boston for the operation,’ Ma said stoutly.

‘If I can raise about another twenty thousand pounds, or so.’

‘That’s a drop in the ocean, compared to the amount you’ve already raised from selling the flat. I could take out a loan against the cottage for that much, if we need to.’

‘You know I won’t let you do anything like that,’ I said firmly. ‘One of us needs to have her own home and be financially secure.’

She had a good widow’s pension from Dad, but income was falling along with everything else. Still, her paintings sold modestly well and her retro exhibition a couple of years ago had been a sell-out.

‘We’ll see how the fundraising goes, but one way or the other we’ll get Stella to America and then she’ll be as right as rain, you’ll see. After that, I expect you’ll be fretting to get back to your career full time. I know how important it is to you.’

‘Actually, none of that seems important any more,’ I confessed. ‘I mean, I love making cakes and writing about baking, but I don’t miss all the urgent deadlines for the freelance articles.’