A Christmas Cracker: The only festive romance to curl up with this Christmas!

‘If that’s the fiancé, then your Kate was all over him like treacle when he arrived a few minutes ago,’ I said. ‘I assumed he was her husband. So, maybe he’s the axe she’s grinding?’

Charlie grinned. ‘You could be right. She told me her husband couldn’t make it tonight, but that didn’t stop her flirting with you earlier, too, I noticed.’

‘Do you think she’s telling the truth about Tabitha’s involvement?’

‘No idea. The scam’s certainly going on, because we’ve had champagne samples analysed, but I’ve taken what she said with a pinch of salt,’ he said. ‘Innocent until proven guilty. Tabby – everyone calls her that, apparently – was certainly uneasy as soon as Champers&Chocs was mentioned and suspiciously unenthusiastic about the company being featured in a magazine.’

‘That’s all right: it’s not going to be,’ I said drily. ‘Though of course she may be even less keen on it appearing all over a TV programme exposing what’s been going on.’

I looked over my shoulder at Tabitha Coombs as we left. The crowd had begun to thin a little and she was staring after Charlie with those startlingly light grey eyes under brows drawn together into a formidable Frida Kahlo frown. Then the fiancé said something and put a proprietorial arm around her and she looked up at him with such a loving smile that her face was quite transformed.

I felt a sudden pang: she looked like a woman in love and I found it hard to believe that she was having an affair with another man.

But, whether she was or not, if she was involved in the label-swapping scam, then she was risking her happiness for some easy money and her house of cards was about to come tumbling down.

Chapter 3: Bang to Rights

‘So Harry, my boss at Champers&Chocs, told me to show the reporter the packing room and give him some information about the business, because it would be good publicity,’ I told Emma, my best and, as it turned out, only friend. It was only my second phone call out since I’d been sent to prison and it was good to unburden myself of the whole sorry story.

I’d have rung her and told her everything the moment I was first arrested, had her husband, Des, not been back from his latest foreign contract. He’d turned into such a possessive control freak he even resented sharing Emma with her female friends.

‘And I suppose the reporter snooped?’ she said.

‘Yes, when I had to leave him for a few minutes to go to the office to answer an urgent phone call. The line was dead when I got there and I was so naïve, it never occurred to me that this Charlie Clancy had set up the call to distract me. As soon as I was out of sight, he somehow got into the back room, even though it was usually locked when Harry wasn’t there, and photographed the crates of fake champagne.’

‘I do wish you’d told me about the fraud when you first found out about it, Tabby.’

‘You had enough on your plate as it was,’ I said. ‘And I’d handed in my notice when I realised Harry hadn’t stopped the fraud, so another couple of weeks and I’d have been out of there.’

‘It was a huge shock when I saw his secret film exposing the scam on that Dodgy Dealings programme, and there you were! And what was worse, Des was with me and he saw it, too.’

I shuddered. ‘I looked so shifty when the reporter asked me what went on in the back room and I replied that it was just an office … It was clear I knew what was happening.’

‘Maybe, but that doesn’t mean you were implicated in it. I feel guilty for letting Des persuade me to go on a family break with him and Marco to St Lucia before the end of the trial, even though I was sure you would be found not guilty.’

‘I thought so too, at first: I was just an employee, after all. But Harry tried to lay the blame for thinking up the scam on me and said we’d been having an affair, then Kate stood up in court and backed his story up.’

‘What a cow!’ Emma said.

I could still hear Kate’s voice as she stood there in the witness stand, all big, innocent baby-blue eyes, saying sadly, ‘Oh, yes, Tabitha told me in confidence that she’d thought up a way for Champers&Chocs to make some easy money, replacing the bottles of vintage champagne with cheap fakes. I told her it was illegal, but she just laughed and said no one would ever find out.’

‘But none of that was true,’ Emma said stoutly.

‘No, but I could see the jury didn’t believe me – and I suppose it did look bad that I hadn’t told the police, or handed in my notice as soon as I found out. Only, Harry had been kind to me in the past, letting me work hours that fitted in with caring for Mum and then offering me a per-manent job later.’

‘I know,’ she said sympathetically. ‘And things suddenly seemed to be going right for you, what with getting engaged to Jeremy and then your first solo exhibition.’

‘Jeremy didn’t believe I was innocent, even before Kate stood up there and lied through her teeth – we’d already had a big argument and I’d moved back into the flat,’ I said. ‘I was found guilty of involvement in the fraud and the judge said he was going to make an example of me and send me to prison, and though my solicitor had warned me the day before to pack a small bag just in case, it was still a huge shock when I got an eight-month custodial sentence.’

‘I couldn’t believe it when I got back from the holiday and found out you were in a prison in Cheshire! I wanted to visit you, but Des was still home and … well, he’s worse than ever. Wants to know what I’m doing every minute of every day. But at least I managed to write to you and tell you when he’d gone off again. Was the prison horrendous?’

‘It passed in a bit of a blur, to be honest. I was totally stunned when I heard the sentence, though someone said to me, “You’ll be out by the spring,” as I was led down to the cells below the court, which I think was meant to cheer me up. Prison – especially over Christmas – was like a strange nightmare I kept thinking I’d wake up from. I was so scared that I retreated right into myself, but then in the New Year I got moved here, to the open prison.’

‘Is it much better?’

‘Yes, it’s in a lovely old building in the countryside, and though of course we’re still prisoners, with strict rules and regulations to obey, it’s more relaxed. I’ve got a library job and help clear after dinner, too, so I keep myself occupied.’

‘Perhaps you’ll be able to do your papercuts and collages again?’ she suggested.

‘I haven’t got any art materials with me and I’m not sure even open prisons would be that keen on my having sharp craft knives,’ I said. ‘I’m only hoping the greetings card firms I’ve sold designs to in the past didn’t see that TV programme and realise it was me, so I can carry on working with them when I get out.’

‘Probably not,’ Emma said optimistically. ‘And even if they saw it, people aren’t that quick at putting two and two together.’

‘That’s true,’ I said, feeling a slight flicker of hope.

‘I’m afraid it’s too far away for me to come and visit,’ she said apologetically, though I hadn’t expected her to, since her little boy, Marco, was only six and in addition to being a mum she was doing some supply teaching in the reception class at his infants’ school.

‘It’s lovely just to talk to someone,’ I said. ‘The only other person I’ve rung is Jeremy, because I was desperate to know how Pye is. Even though the engagement was off, I’d begged him to look after Pye if I got sent to prison and he said he would, though I’m sure he didn’t believe that would happen any more than I did.’

‘So, how is Pye? You were so inseparable, you must be missing each other terribly.’

‘I am, and I’m so worried about him, Emma!’ I told her. ‘The minute Jeremy heard my voice he put the phone down, and when I wrote he didn’t answer, so I don’t know what’s happening.’

‘Look, don’t worry, I’ll drive over there tomorrow after school with Marco and see how Pye is,’ she promised. ‘I can’t take him home with me, because Des would have a hissy fit when he gets back, but I’ll make sure he’s OK.’

‘If you would,’ I said gratefully. Emma had only met Jeremy a couple of times, but she was less than twenty minutes’ drive away. Thank God Des was working abroad again and she was, for the moment, a relatively free agent.

‘Do you need anything?’ she asked. ‘I could send it in a parcel if so?’

‘That would be wonderful, because I seem to have packed all the wrong things. I need more clothes and maybe my sketchbooks …’

I told her what I needed and where they would be found.

‘What about money?’ she asked.

‘I’m actually all right for cash, because when the solicitor warned me the night before the verdict that I might get a custodial sentence, I drew out a month’s rent for the flat to give to Jeremy and then forgot and wrote him a cheque, so I’ve got quite a bit of credit for my phone calls and anything I need. On release, they deduct it from the money you brought in with you.’

‘He was so mean, making you carry on paying rent for the flat after you got engaged!’

‘He is a bit tight, but I spent quite a lot of time there working on my pictures. I was going to keep it on as my studio when we finally got married …’

If we’d ever got married, because Jeremy had proved really reluctant to name a year, let alone a date!

I was on tenterhooks, wondering how Pye was and hoping for good news, but Emma sounded troubled when we spoke again.

‘Jeremy wasn’t pleased to see me at all, and didn’t even invite me and Marco into the house. And I’m afraid Pye wasn’t there, Tabby – Jeremy said that he couldn’t cope with the constant yowling after you’d gone, so he’d found him a good home, but he wouldn’t tell me where, or who with.’

Cold dread seized my heart, for not only did I adore Pye, but he was the last living link to my mother, who had also loved him.

‘You don’t think he’s just saying that and he’s had him put to sleep?’

‘No, I’m sure he hasn’t,’ she reassured me. ‘When I told him he shouldn’t have rehomed Pye without your permission, he said you’d abandoned him by committing a crime, so it was your own fault, but I was to assure you the cat was perfectly all right.’

‘I hope so … and thank you for trying to find where he was,’ I said, but inwardly I was thinking of Pye – my awkward, demanding, adorable Pye – out there somewhere living with strangers … Was he happy and safe? A slow tear slid coldly down my face.

‘The other thing is, Tabby, that your belongings weren’t in the flat any more, but in boxes piled at the back of the garage. Jeremy said since obviously you and he didn’t have any kind of future together and your rent had run out, he was going to let the flat again. I can’t believe how mean and horrible he’s turned out to be!’

I didn’t feel that surprised after our final argument … and anyway, it paled into insignificance compared with his arbitrary rehoming of Pye.

‘He let me go and rummage through the boxes and I found most of the things you wanted. He says he’d be grateful if you’d have them removed at the first opportunity,’ she added.

‘He’ll have to wait then, because I can’t do anything till I get out – and even then I’ll have nowhere to live, no job and a criminal record.’

‘Jeremy’s such a pompous, self-satisfied prig, though I couldn’t say so when you were in love with him. And I should know, because I married one myself,’ she said wearily.

‘Is Des being just as difficult?’ I asked sympathetically.

‘He gets worse every time he gets back from a contract and wants every second of my time accounted for. And the least thing that isn’t quite the way he likes it, or the way his mother used to do it, and he flies right off the handle. Even when Marco was a toddler, he didn’t have tantrums like that!’

‘He isn’t violent, is he?’

‘No, it’s all verbal bullying. I’d be straight out of there if he tried anything else. And I know I should stand up to him more, but I don’t want Marco to hear us arguing all the time. I could do with your sharp tongue to cut him down to size occasionally.’

‘My sarcastic tongue frequently gets me into trouble,’ I said ruefully. ‘I don’t think one or two of my smart answers to stupid questions went down well in court.’

Emma was still following her own thoughts. ‘Sometimes he’s really sweet, just like he was when we were first going out. It’s since he started working away on longer contracts that he’s really changed.’ She sighed. ‘It seems to me we’re both in prison, in a way.’

‘I’ll get out in a couple of months, if I don’t blot my copybook.’

‘And Des is going to be back for only a couple of days and then he’s off for six weeks to Dubai,’ Emma said, then added, to my puzzlement, ‘And thank you for not saying it.’

‘What?’

‘“I told you so.” Remember when Des and I decided to get married only a couple of months after we met and you suggested I didn’t rush into it? I told you he was wonderful and I knew it was the right thing for me and Marco. But you were quite right.’

I’d worried that it was too soon after she’d been widowed, even though I could understand her longing to be loved again and to give Marco a father. I hadn’t been sure that Desmond was the right man for her, either.

‘I’m a fine one to talk about making mistakes – I didn’t exactly choose wisely with Jeremy, did I?’ I pointed out.

‘We’re both poor pickers,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll catch up with you whenever I can and when I can’t phone you, I’ll write.’

‘That would be wonderful. I can’t tell you how nice it is to get good, old-fashioned letters!’

I wished Jeremy felt the same way about letters but, not unexpectedly, I had no answer to the one I wrote to him, telling him I would pay him back for storing my belongings when I was released and asking him to give me the name and address of Pye’s new owners, so I could write to them, too, and make sure he was all right. Not getting a reply made me want to escape and go to find him – but I knew if I did that I’d be sent back to a stricter prison again and it would be even longer before we could be reunited. I had to bide my time and count the days until my release. But at least I now had a link to the outside world in Emma.

Until the happy day that I met Cedric Lathom, I think she was the only person in the whole wide world who was prepared to believe I was innocent.

Chapter 4: The Prisoner’s Friend

Ceddie, as he asked me to call him during his first visit, described himself as a Prisoner’s Friend but he was also, as it turned out, a Quaker Friend, too.

When it had been suggested to me that since I had no visitors of my own, I might like him to visit me, I’d thought, well, why not?

This proved to be one of the best decisions I’d ever made, because not only did it give me access to the visitors’ rooms in a small separate building, where I could indulge in coffee, hot chocolate, fruit juice and even biscuits, but Ceddie was the most wonderful person.

He was a tiny, elderly man with a pointed face, a mop of silvery curls and large, innocent grey-blue eyes – though perhaps the word ‘innocent’ implies a trusting simplicity, which he didn’t have. It was more an unshakeable belief that there was inner good in everyone.

Over several visits I found myself pouring out my life story to him. I’d never had a significant male figure in my life, father or grandfather, but if I had I’d have wanted him to be just like Ceddie.

‘Looking back, my life seems to have been a bit sad, only it didn’t feel like that at the time,’ I said ruefully one day towards the end of my sentence, while I was drinking the cup of hot chocolate he’d bought me as usual.

‘Your mother sounds such an interesting and loving person that giving up everything to care for her was clearly something you did from love, not duty,’ he agreed.

‘When she was first diagnosed with MS we hoped that it might be the slow kind, but she deteriorated very quickly … But she was never a burden and I had the support of my best friend, Emma, and my childhood sweetheart, Robbie, so I didn’t feel totally alone.’

‘Ah, yes, I remember you mentioning Robbie before,’ he said, smiling at me benignly.

‘He went straight into the army from school and we were too young to get engaged really, especially since I’d never have left Mum, but he understood that. He was a really nice boy.’

‘You said he was badly wounded and married one of the nurses who’d looked after him?’

‘Yes, they just fell in love. I hadn’t been able to get down to see him much, because of leaving Mum, so I didn’t blame him in the least. In fact, I wished them both well.’

‘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.

Chapter 5: Engagements

Randal

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.’