Winter Wishes (24 page)

Jules grinned at the memory. “You must admit that it was quite amusing. I thought Miss Powell was going to combust.”

“In my dreams,” Tess said gloomily. “Miss Powell’s so stuck in the dark ages, it’s untrue. Do you know she even told me that autism’s just an excuse for bad behaviour? How am I supposed to work with that? She really hasn’t got a clue how to handle Morgan. He totally winds her up. Maybe I shouldn’t have made him the narrator.”

“Bollocks,” Jules said staunchly. “That was a brilliant idea and he’s going to be fantastic. Alice tells me he already knows all his lines inside out. He’s the perfect choice.”

Tess nodded. “I think so. It’s been wonderful to see his confidence grow since he’s been here. He’s such a character. It’s nice that he’ll be staying too, isn’t it?”

Jules nodded. Tara and Morgan seemed settled into Waterside Cottage and Danny was by all accounts a frequent visitor. Maybe they were sorting things out as a family at last? This thought was bittersweet; it was what she’d wanted for him, but knowing that Danny was lost to her forever was the most painful sensation in the world. Jules prayed constantly for the strength to handle it and to do the right thing, but she still struggled.

“Another drink?” Tess was asking as, purse in hand, she rose to collect hers.

It was a tempting offer, given that the pub was warm and the fire crackling merrily in the big inglenook was crying out to be sat by with a glass of mulled wine. However, Tess was also meeting Nick Tremaine when he came in from sea. The two had shared a couple of dates and were in the first flush of a touchy-feely fling, and Jules wasn’t sure she could face being around a loved-up couple right now. Besides, she also had the joy of a PCC meeting to contend with.

“Thanks, but I’m going to head back to the vicarage. I’ve got a meeting at half seven and a mountain of paperwork to finish.”

“Fair enough; I know how that feels. Just take care that you don’t get accosted by any parents on the way home! Maybe keep your hood up and go the long way around?”

“Don’t even joke about it,” Jules said grimly. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

* * *

The cold hit Jules like a slap as she pushed open the pub door and stepped outside. It was a sharp November night with bright stars freckling the sky and a fat white moon floating above the sea. Some keen villagers had already placed fairy lights in their cottage windows, and as she walked through the narrow streets Jules noticed that the Pollards had been busy stringing up the first few rows of Christmas lights. These were an ingenious combination of brightly coloured seaside buckets stuck together in pairs with bulbs inside. Just seeing them made her smile because they were so cheery and just so Polwenna. Making a mental note to ask Big Rog if there would be any spare to decorate the church hall after all the remaining streets had been adorned, Jules continued up the hill to the vicarage – where she bumped into Alice, who was waiting patiently on the doorstep.

“Hello, love. I know I’m a little early for the PCC but I thought I’d give you a hand setting up,” Alice said. She looked incredibly tired, Jules thought with a lurch of concern. There were deep bags beneath her faded brown eyes. Alice was such a dynamo that it was sometimes easy to forget she was actually nearly eighty.

“You should have called me. I’d have got here sooner and let you in,” Jules said as she unlocked the door.

“I always forget you lock the place,” Alice said, following her inside.

“Call me a paranoid townie but I just can’t get out of the habit.”

Jules made tea while Alice laid out the agendas and arranged biscuits onto plates as the members of the PCC drifted in, bickering gently over who was sitting where and what items on the agenda were the most important. Danny was the last to arrive, nodding at Jules as he took his usual place beside her.

She smiled at him. “How’s things?”

“Fine.” Danny didn’t look at her, instead seeming to be intrigued by the last meeting’s minutes. “How’s your new friend settling in?”

“New friend?” Jules was stumped. Who was he talking about? “Do you mean Tess? She’s fine. Stressed over the nativity play and Morgan’s Richard Dawkins moments, but apart from that she’s fine.”

Danny grinned at the mention of his son. “Yeah, I had words with him about that.” Then his smile faded. “I meant that writer chap you’ve been hanging out with.”

“Oh! Caspar!” Or should she say Cassandra Duval? Jules was still a little star-struck from meeting one of her literary idols and trying to equate the uber-feminine bodice-ripping pink covers with the rather theatrical and very male Caspar. She’d spent a few afternoons chatting with him, but generally he’d been absorbed in admiring Tara from afar and writing his novel. “He’s fine.”

“Jolly good,” said Danny, but in the kind of voice that implied he’d prefer it if Caspar were six feet under. Jules was about to ask him what his problem was when Big Rog Pollard thumped his fist on the table and declared the meeting open.

Jules had a feeling she was shortly going to regret letting him be chairman…

“Item one on the agenda,” Big Rog declared grandly, “discrepancies in the accounts. More sums of money have been deposited anonymously into the St Wenn’s bank account.”

“Why is that a problem?” asked Alice, frowning. “Surely that’s a nice thing.”

“Because it looks as though we’re laundering money,” Richard explained. “We have no idea what the source is, so it could have come from anywhere. Crime or drugs, for example. For all we know, we could be heading for an official investigation into it.”

Alice’s hand flew to her mouth. If she looked pale before, it was nothing to her pallor now.

“I’ve spoken to the bank but we haven’t been able to trace who made the deposits.” Jules was exhausted trying to untangle it all. “There are all sorts of issues I’ll need to start looking into.”

“It’s that serious?” Alice asked.

“About as serious as it gets,” Richard sighed. “No development here at all, I’m afraid, so I guess we just have to minute that as ongoing?”

“Already minuted,” Sheila said proudly. “Next item?”

As the meeting progressed Jules listened with one ear while keeping a worried eye on Alice, who really didn’t look too well. By the time they reached the final item on the agenda, the bishop’s visit, she’d pleaded a headache and gone home. Jules didn’t buy this for a second. Stoic Alice wasn’t given to headaches and complaints; she was the kind who only took an aspirin if forced.

“Danny, would you go and check on Alice?” she asked, interrupting mid-flow Sheila’s description of the tea they would lay on in Bishop Bill’s honour. “I’m really worried about her.”

“She looked bloody awful,” agreed Big Rog, a grave expression on his weathered face. He tugged his whiskers thoughtfully. “Hope it isn’t her heart. My old Ma looked just like that before she keeled over and died.”

“Wasn’t she coming up for eighty too?” asked Little Rog.

“She was, my boy, she was. Strong as an ox one moment and stone-cold dead the next. Tragic, it was.”

“Thanks for that,” said Danny drily. He pushed back his chair and reached for his jacket. “I’m sure she’s fine, probably just all the usual stress of having to referee us lot, but I’ll walk over and make sure she’s all right. Then I’ll text you, Jules, OK?”

She nodded gratefully. At least they could put the weird atmosphere between them aside for Alice’s sake, which was something. Whether or not they would ever be friends again was another matter entirely.

Big Rog sneaked a glance at the clock. It was eight-thirty and way past beer time. “Any other business?”

“A Christingle service would be nice,” Richard suggested. “Jo, my practice nurse, is really keen on the idea.”

“Five-year-olds carrying candles?” Sheila pooh-poohed the idea instantly. “St Wenn’s will be up in flames in minutes.”

“It might be asking for trouble,” Jules agreed, wondering if the church’s insurance was up to date for this kind of thing. Another job to do.

“So why not use those fake flickering candles you get down Par Market?” This was from Little Rog. “Ma loves those, doesn’t she, Pa?”

“She does, my boy. Bleddy hundreds of them in our house. But we haven’t had to call the fire brigade since she discovered them, which is good,” said his father. “Buggers were threatening to charge us!”

“They did come out five times,” sniffed Sheila.

“That’s why I pay my taxes,” grumbled Big Rog.

“Well you certainly got value for money,” grinned Richard.

“I’ll think about a Christingle with fake candles and speak to Tess.” Jules privately thought that if she told Tess the children would need to decorate oranges, on top of everything else, her friend would freak. Polwenna Primary was a Church of England school and for Jules treading the fine line between being actively involved and interfering was proving easier said than done.

“Anything else?” Big Rog was getting twitchy now; it was definitely beer o’clock.

“Charity!” trilled Sheila. “After the huge success of the Polwenna Bay calendar we need to up our game and raise even more money for the church.”

“I wouldn’t call the calendar a success exactly,” Jules said quickly, before Sheila could suggest something else that would give her even more grey hairs. “We were lucky the bishop saw the funny side.”

“It was perfectly decent,” Sheila huffed.

“I’ll say so!” leered Little Rog. “June was my favourite.”

“March was better, son. What Patsy does with those buns!”

“I thought we could have a slave auction,” Sheila said.

“Like in that
Fifty Shades
book?” Big Rog’s eyes lit up. “Great idea!”

“Absolutely not,” said Jules, horrified as the most gruesome image of Big Rog trussed up in bondage gear flitted through her mind. Lord, she’d need Dettol for her brain to get rid of that picture. “It’s cake sales or nothing.”

“Spoilsport,” said Little Rog.

“I think we’re forgetting something,” interrupted Richard, “and that is that we don’t actually need any more money coming in. We’ve got enough problems explaining our surplus away as it is. No, the only piece of any other business we need to worry about is finding out where the extra payments are coming from – and fast.”

“And if we can’t?” said Jules.

Richard took off his glasses and polished them carefully. His grey eyes were worried.

“Then, Jules, I’m afraid St Wenn’s really is in trouble, and it will take a lot more than a calendar or an auction to save us. The bishop might overlook a daft calendar, but any suggestion of money laundering or improper accounting isn’t going to look good for us.”

Jules felt a cold sense of dread in the pit of her stomach.

“In that case,” she told the group gathered around her kitchen table, “we’d better get sleuthing.”

And with that final instruction the meeting closed, leaving Jules with a horrible sensation that time was running out for St Wenn’s.

Chapter 16

Tara had lived in the village long enough to know that when the St Miltons threw a party it was well worth going to. No expense was ever spared: champagne flowed faster than the River Wenn, the food was always exquisite and the hotel would be beautifully decorated. This was never truer than for the annual Christmas charity fundraiser, which was always held on the last Saturday in November. The big cedar trees outside the elegant old house were filled with twinkling coloured lights and in the entrance hall an enormous Christmas tree had pride of place, reaching from the bottom of the sweeping Adam staircase right up to the dizzying heights of the cupola above. Tickets were hugely expensive but generally sold out like hotcakes, especially because the proceeds always went to a local charity. Tara was having to be super careful with her money, budgeting down to the very last penny of the child support from Danny and her wages, and there was no chance she could have attended under her own steam.

“Glad you came to work for me?” Sy asked her as they oversaw the unpacking of the evening’s canapés. Miniature Yorkshire puddings with beef jus and horseradish, goujons of fish with matchstick fries, and mouth-watering retro-style lobster vol-au-vents were all being laid out perfectly on silver platters. Meanwhile, the pièce de résistance, a colossal meringue and cream fairy-tale castle, was just having the finishing touches added by Tony, Sy’s sous-chef.

“It’s just about bearable,” Tara sighed, but the big smile as she said this told Sy just how much she appreciated the work he’d put her way. It was wintertime now, hardly peak tourist season, and he probably didn’t need an extra member of staff nearly as much as he’d implied. That was Symon through and through: quiet and thoughtful and very kind. After Danny, he’d always been Tara’s favourite Tremaine sibling.

“Now that this lot’s off our hands, I say we go and enjoy the party,” said Symon. With the last platter set out and the containers stacked, he looked relieved. He was such a perfectionist when it came to his food. No wonder he was rumoured to be about to receive a second coveted Michelin star.

Tara was shattered after working a double shift in the kitchen all afternoon and then a few more hours at the hotel. Morgan was staying at Seaspray with Danny, which had given her an opportunity to earn some extra funds. She’d hardly seen Danny since their kiss, which was fine by Tara. He’d made it clear how he felt about her, and she could hardly blame him. If Danny hated her it was nothing compared with the contempt Tara had for herself. The past could never be undone and the echoes that it would send into the future were terrifying. That Danny understood why she’d been lonely and bored was one thing, but to lose his beloved son was more than any man should have to bear. Her only comfort was that the young soldier she’d spent that one fateful night with seemed to have vanished. No amount of Googling or searching for him on Facebook had shed any light on his whereabouts.

She guessed that was a wrong she’d have to put right another day.

Leaving Sy to circulate, Tara changed out of her kitchen gear and into a little black dress. She put on a quick slick of make-up and dragged a brush through her hair, but when she walked into the party she felt underdressed. The other guests were all beautifully attired in designer clothes, the women freshly made up and with their hair lovingly styled. Their wrists and necks glittered with jewels – real ones, Tara was sure, and worlds away from the Dorothy Perkins pendant she had picked out to wear.