Seeing Stars (23 page)

Shoving some more money into Teignmouth’s gaping mouth, she punched out the final number.

‘Retro Music and Theatre, Winterbrook, Paris, New York,’ a cheerful Berkshire accent informed her. ‘How may I help you, duck?’

For the umpteenth time, Amber explained her mission.

‘Ah, right, duck … look, why don’t you pop over soon as. I can show you the entire retro client list. I’m sure we’ll have
something to suit. Are you local now?’

‘Yes, but I’m working. I’m free this afternoon though.’

‘Lovely. We’re on the main drag. Next to the bank. Can’t miss us. Knock three times and ask for Freddo, OK? About three-ish?
Great, duck. Look forward to it. ’Bye!’

‘I say!’ the HHLL hostess screamed from the hall. ‘I say! Waitress! We’re ready now!’

The lean-to throbbed with midday heat. All four literary ladies were looking rather moist and uncomfortable. Two of them were
eating the Bronte Buns with spoons.

‘They’ve gorn orf,’ a chunky women whose make-up had run into her wrinkles and stayed there, brayed, spraying the hostess
with slurry. ‘I say, Georgette, they’ve gorn orf!’

Georgette? Amber blinked.

‘It’s not her real name,’ the little-girlie woman whispered. ‘Her real name is Doris. She didn’t think Doris was literary
enough so she calls herself Georgette Austen.’

‘Lovely. Most original. And is that the name her books are published under?’ Amber smiled her very best professional-under-duress
smile as Mitzi had shown her, while handing round napkins and the least lopsided of the remaining Angelica Angels.

‘Books? What books? She’s never had anything published.’

‘Hasn’t she? Oh, but I thought … that is, I got the impression …’

‘We’re aspiring,’ the little-girlie lisped. ‘On the cusp. We’ve written several massively commercial volumes
between us but as yet we’re unpublished. It’s all so unfair, of course. So many rubbish books out there by atrocious authors,
when we’re all talented and write much, much better stuff – and so far not a sniff of interest.’

‘Not fair, no, I can see that,’ Amber murmured, circulating as obsequiously as the cramped space would allow. ‘Another Saffron
and Lemon Lump, anyone? There’s plenty here.’

The HHLL looked as though what they really needed was an ice-cold plunge pool, but to give them their due, they munched on
regardless.

As none of them seemed to be overtaken by wild urges to shed their clothes or anything over the top, Amber assumed that this
lot of Mitzi’s recipes contained subdued herbs suitable for soothing the fevered brows of unpublished novelists. Just as well,
she thought. There was enough pent-up anger and resentment bubbling under those well-bred vowels without a bit of hedge-witchery
thrown in to fuel the fire.

Glancing to make sure the plates were empty and the wine glasses filled – mean so and sos hadn’t even offered her so much
as a slurp of chilled white – she dived into the cool box for the Ginger Janite Cake and started to slice.

‘No, no, no!’ Georgette-Doris screamed. ‘Give it some welly, girl! Not little slivers like that! You’ve had the pleasure of
my telephone and had absolutely nothing to do for hours – the least you can do is give us a decent chunk.’

Gripping the knife and willing herself not to run bansheelike at Georgette-Doris’s throat, Amber hacked the Ginger Janite
Cake into four massive squares. Still smiling manfully, she handed it round, making sure the requisite napkin was folded neatly
on the edge of each plate.

None of the HHLL said thank you.

Amber, her mind on the forthcoming meeting with Freddo in the sure and certain knowledge that his retro bands would be along
the lines of Winterbrook’s answer to the Wurzels, packed up the debris of the literary lunch as the ladies chomped and mopped.
She wondered if she
should mention to the HHLL that they all had green faces thanks to the less-than-perfect napkins and the heat.

Nah, she thought, stacking plates into the boxes, best leave it. It had all gone so well. Mitzi would be delighted. No hitches
whatsoever.

‘Tart!’ The chunky woman suddenly screamed at Georgette-Doris. ‘Talentless tart!’

‘Bitch!’ Little Girlie rounded on Chunky. ‘Your last reading from your work in progress was remorseless drivel! My dyslexic
grandson could have produced better.’

‘Whey-faced cow!’ The up-until-then-silent fourth literary lady stamped a massive foot. ‘How dare you! We have to listen to
you drone on and on about your turgid characters and we all know you’ll never be published in a million, zillion aeons!’

‘Sod you lot!’ Georgette-Doris, her inner-bitch well and truly unleashed, shrieked, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin and
emerging with emerald lips. ‘I’m the only one here with a modicum of talent. You all do commercial fiction.
I’m
literary …’

‘Illiterate, you mean, you dozy bat!’ Little-Girlie splattered crumbs of Janite cake over the lean-to. ‘And probably illegitimate
to boot!’

‘Whoo-wooo-wooo!’ Chunky wailed. ‘Bitch, cow, bastard, tart! Unimaginative, boring, derivative – ouch!’

The large silent lady had punched her.

Little-Girlie and Georgette-Doris screamed with laughter and piled into the fray.

Amber, diving out of the way, hastily packed up the remainder of the literary lunch as the HHLL fought like hellcats on the
floor of the lean-to. She imagined the Ginger Janite had been a touch too heavy on the bodhi leaves as Mitzi had anticipated.

‘Er—’ she coughed politely at the heaving, punching bodies rolling across the lean-to floor, ‘I’m leaving now.’

‘Sod off!’ the HHLL snarled in unison, not missing a punch.

Amber, giggling, fled.

Shoving everything into the back of the van, she drove away from the demure semi as fast as residential double-parking would
allow.

Still laughing, she stopped at traffic lights and peered up at the deep-blue sky through the windscreen. ‘I know you’re up
there somewhere, Cassiopeia, lass, even if I can’t see you. Well, you’re going to have to pull out all the astral magic stops
to beat that bit of herbal witchery. So – what have you got up your celestial sleeve, eh? It’s going to have to be pretty
spectacular to convince me that star-wishing is more powerful than Mitzi’s magic, I can tell you …’

Swinging on a Star

Darting in and out of The Weasel and Bucket with non-stop plates of food and trays of iced drinks, Zillah really didn’t have
time to dwell on anything other than the ever-demanding and steadily increasing river of customers. Timmy’s forecast had been
correct and Fiddlesticks shimmered in sky-high temperatures. The whole village seemed to have decided that after the excesses
of the night before, preparing lunch or making their own cold drinks was way beyond them.

Repetitive cries of ‘When you’ve got a minute, duck!’ and ‘Over here, Zil, love!’ from both inside and outside the pub, meant
she could concentrate on nothing else.

‘Handy I turned up when I did this morning, wasn’t it?’ Fern beamed from behind the bar as Zillah rushed in with an order
for the Motions. ‘I’ve always wanted to be a barmaid. Next!’

Zillah, balancing three pints of Hearty Hercules and a box of matches on the tray, shoved her way into the kitchen. ‘Three
ploughman’s for the Motions, please. Heavy on the pickle for Perpetua.’

‘Gotcha,’ Timmy grinned, working like summer lightning round his kitchen table. ‘Feeling better now, love?’

Zillah shrugged as she balanced the three plates on the
tray and managed to get pickle on her thumb. Better? Not really. She’d probably alienated Lewis forever, and she still had
to tell Timmy that the Fowey love-nest was a non-starter. Not that the latter, oddly, seemed to be bothering him much.

She backed out of the kitchen with the tray, manoeuvred her way through the jam-packed bar and out into the blinding reflected
light. Negotiating the trestles was like an obstacle course, and only two of the Motions were in situ.

‘Slo’s slipped off to the lav,’ Constance informed the entire beer garden. ‘Call of nature – not a ciggie – we searched him
before he went.’

Zillah, who knew Slo kept cigarettes, lighter and Gold Spot hidden behind the gents’ third cistern, said nothing.

She straightened up, pushing damp strands of hair away from her face. The stream reflected dancing crystal prisms of sunlight
and young and old alike were cooling their feet in the flat brown water. She longed to join them; longed to be young and carefree
again and run barefoot through damp grass at dawn and splash through the early evening shallows on deserted sunset beaches,
and make love in dark and drowsy secluded places.

Oh, bugger it all!

Ignoring Billy and Dougie’s insistent cries for refills of Pegasus Pale when she had a minute, Zillah slid her feet out of
her flip-flops, dumped the tray on the nearest table, and trotted across the road.

Finding a patch of shade beneath one of the willows, Zillah sank down on to the soft short grass, bunched her long purple
skirt above her knees, and slid her feet into the stream. Ooooh, bliss. The water was ice-cold, making her shiver with pleasure.

The waterfall of green willow fronds surrounded her, giving her much-needed seclusion: a moment of solitude and reflection.
Despite the children with their fishing nets and their jam-jars splashing close to her, no one could see
her. Not Timmy, not Fern, not the ever-thirsty Fiddlestickers outside the pub.

Zillah luxuriated in the cool green shade, moving her throbbing feet lazily through the translucent water. So? What on earth
was going on?

When she’d arrived, with the annoyingly effervescent Fern, at The Weasel and Bucket earlier and had braced herself to tell
Timmy the truth, it had all been rather odd.

‘Tell you what,’ Timmy had said happily, ‘why don’t we give young Fern here a try-out behind the bar as she’s got a few hours
to kill? We’re going to be murderously busy today and—’

‘But you’ve always said she’d be useless,’ Zillah had frowned. ‘Too dotty for words.’

Timmy had shrugged, looking a bit perplexed. ‘I know, but a chap can change his mind, can’t he? Not just a woman’s prerogative,
Zil, love. And you’ll need a hand – you know I’ve been worried about you getting so tired lately. How about it, Fern? Shall
we see how you get on?’

And Fern had dimpled and blushed and almost squirmed with pleasure about this about-face and said yes over and over again.

They’d agreed that it couldn’t be a permanent fixture, of course, because of her job with Win at Hayfields, but on her evenings
off, or the days when Win was doing her cleaning jobs, if and when it suited everyone.

Fern had practically danced on the spot and looked as though she was going to kiss Timmy and Zillah.

Timmy had looked as though he wouldn’t mind at all.

And then, only after he’d given Fern a brisk and basic induction on the art of barmaiding with a lot of giggling, he’d grinned
at Zillah and suggested they go through to the kitchen for their chat.

And he’d made them both iced coffee in tall glass cups and they’d perched on opposite sides of the vast spotless table and
before she could say any of the words she’d been rehearsing so carefully he’d leaned forward and asked her
if she’d spoken to Amber about – well – about her part in finding the Fowey love-nest.

And Zillah had said no, which Timmy had seemed relieved about, and he said that she had seemed rather annoyed about Amber
and he’d hate for there to be more unpleasantness, so Zillah had assured him that she had no intention of being unpleasant,
and Timmy had smiled again.

Then Zillah had bitten the bullet and said as he’d now raised the subject of Fowey … and haltingly she’d attempted to explain
how much she liked him, how much she valued his friendship, but –

Timmy had stopped her at that point. ‘Please don’t say the but bit, Zil, love. Let’s leave it for a while, shall we? I don’t
want to rush anything. Oh, yes, I know I wanted to rush everything last night, but this morning – well, I’ve had time to think
about it … I don’t know why, can’t explain it, but I feel differently this morning. More mellow. Less frantic. Must be the
hangover, eh?’

And Zillah hadn’t reminded him that hardly a drop of alcohol had passed his lips until the house red at closing time, but
had silently thanked her lucky stars that she’d been spared from breaking his heart for a little while longer. One problem
was more than enough to be going on with.

So she’d told him about the fallout with Lewis instead, and Timmy had been kind and gentle, as always, and leaned across the
table again and patted her hand in a brotherly manner. And he’d suggested that maybe he should talk to Lewis, man to man,
and Zillah had said no, she’d cope with it, but thanks.

And then Dougie and Billy and Goff had stomped into the pub and demanded serving and the village had cascaded in behind them
doing the same, and Fern had shrieked for help, so they’d both reluctantly drained their coffee and prepared to go to work.

And that was it.

Now Zillah stared up at the cornflower blue sky,
dappled through the willows, and wondered if Cassiopeia was looking down on them, hiding in her daylight haven, laughing at
them as she played games with their star wishes.

‘Oh get a grip,’ Zillah muttered to herself. ‘You don’t believe in all that hokum, remember? You’re in danger of becoming
as addled as the rest of this star-struck village. If you want to change your life it’s all down to you – not magic, not luck
– just you.’

She sighed. It seemed like a very lonely prospect.

Having returned everything to Mitzi’s shed, scribbled a quick note about the HHLL, a warning about the inclusion of too many
bodhi leaves in future dishes, and her best wishes on the imminent granny-hood, Amber splashed cold water on the bits of her
she could reach, and still laughing intermittently, slid back into the van’s scorching interior again.

Should she go back to Fiddlesticks and change or drive straight to Winterbrook and find Freddo and his Retro Musicians?