'People following the SatNavs are just like sheep,' Jess said. 'At least most of the lorry drivers take one look at the lane down by the junction and realise there's a mistake, though once one did turn into it and got stuck on the first bend. They had an awful job getting it out, Grandpa says, and had to rebuild a bit of the dry-stone wall.'

The small shop next to the shuttered Merry Kettle cafe had overflowed onto the pavement with a stand of fruit and vegetables, bags of potatoes and carrots and netting bags of firewood.

'I love this shop! Mrs Comfort's got everything.'

'It certainly looks like it,' I agreed. 'What shall I do with Merlin?'

'There's a hook in the wall to tie him to and a bowl of water,' she pointed out. 'There, under the table.'

There was, too, and Merlin, tethered, sat down on a piece of flattened cardboard with a look of patient resignation. I think he'd been there before.

Inside, the shop proved to be a Tardis, since it went back quite a way into what had probably originally been the second room of the cottage. In America I think they call this sort of shop a Variety Store and there was certainly an infinite variety of stuff crammed into this one.

Mrs Comfort was plump, with a round face and high cheekbones that turned her eyes to slits when she smiled rather attractive, in a Persian cat sort of way. Her straight mouse-brown hair was pulled back tightly and clamped to her head with a large, crystal-studded plastic comb.

'Hi, Mrs Comfort, this is Holly, who's minding Old Place for Uncle Jude over Christmas.'

'I thought that couple were back again, that have been before?' she said, looking at me curiously as I ducked my head to avoid the wellingtons hanging by strings from the beams.

'They had to leave because their daughter had her baby much too early,' I explained.

'Shame hope the poor little mite is all right?'

'I don't know, they haven't told us.'

'Well now, what can I get you?' she asked, a hopeful glint in her eye.

'Do you have newspapers?'

'There's a Mail left, but that's the last. I've had three lots of lost drivers in already, and they've all bought one. That SatNav's good for trade!'

'We just saw another one,' Jess told her, 'but they didn't hang about after we told them they'd gone wrong.'

'I expect there's more of them in the pub I sometimes think the Daggers must have paid the SatNav people to send cars up here, they do a much better winter trade in coffees and lunches now than they used to.'

'It's an ill wind that blows n.o.body any good,' I said and she agreed fervently.

She had most of the things on my list, including dried fruit so I could bake another cake to replace the one that had vanished. I bought more flour too, because if I was getting daily visitors, I might as well offer them a seasonal mince pie or two, and the Chirks had left several enormous jars of mincemeat.

While I was buying all this Jess had expended much time and thought over the line of sweet jars and now purchased a supply of Fairy Satins, triangular humbug-shaped sweets in alarmingly bright colours, and a large bag of wine gums.

'And can I see proof that you're over twenty-one, young lady?' asked Mrs Comfort.

'Ha, ha, very funny,' said Jess. 'You know there isn't a drop of alcohol in them.'

'How's the book coming along, dear?' asked Mrs Comfort, weighing out Satins on the scales and tipping them into a paper bag, which she twisted at the corners.

'I'm on Chapter Six now and the vampires are having a midnight feast.'

'That sounds like fun.'

'Not for the girls they're feasting on but they deserve it,' Jess said.

'Mrs Comfort is a poet,' she confided to me as we left the shop and collected Merlin. 'There are lots of writers here: me, Mrs Comfort, Grandpa with his Christmas book and Granny's cookery books. Richard has written a couple of pamphlets too, on the Revels and the red horse.'

'Little Mumming is clearly a hive of literary activity!' I said, impressed.

Chapter 10.

Wrung.

I find myself looking forward to seeing N every day now, which makes me feel disloyal to Tom's memory, so that I was hardly able to meet his father's eye when I went to the chapel. But soon he will be well enough to leave and things will be as they were.

February, 1945.

The Auld Christmas was a smallish hostelry with a large barn behind it and a cobbled forecourt on which a few vehicles were parked. Now I was closer I could see that the old man on the sign seemed to be wearing a mistletoe and oak-leaf crown and carrying a club, but it was hard to tell, because the coats of varnish protecting it had turned it the colour of Brown Windsor soup.

'Are you sure about the dog?' I asked as we went in.

'Yes, come on,' Jess urged me, pushing open an inner door to the left of the pa.s.sage.

We stepped down into a dark cavern, lit at one end by a roaring open fire and at the other by the dull glow of a fruit machine. Behind the counter was a buxom, red-haired woman of about forty-five and a couple of obvious locals were sitting near the fire, eating bread and cheese. An even more obvious pair of strangers were eating at a table nearby and they looked at Merlin with acute disapproval.

'Do you mind the dog?' I asked the woman behind the bar. 'Only Mr Martland said-'

'Oh, we know Merlin, Jude brings him down here all the time and he's better behaved than most of our customers,' she said, then shot a look at the muttering strangers and added loudly, 'and them that don't like it can go in the public bar next door or take themselves off.'

The complaining voices abruptly ceased.

The woman wiped her hand on a pink-spotted, duck-egg blue ap.r.o.n and held it out to me: 'Nancy Dagger. My husband Will's down the cellar, changing kegs and that's his old dad over there near the fire.'

A tiny man with a long, snowy beard suddenly leaned forward out of a hooded chair, the like of which I had never seen before, and said in a high, piping voice, 'That's right I'm Auld Man Christmas, I am!' Then he laughed wheezily, like a pair of small musical bellows. 'Heh, heh, heh!'

'Take no notice,' Nancy said. 'We know you're looking after Old Place instead of those Chirks what have been here before, Henry told us all about it last night. But I've never known Martlands to be away from Old Place at Christmas before!' And she shook her head. Then she gave me a sharp look and added, 'But then, I suppose you're family?'

'Not at all, I just work for the same agency as Jim and Mo.'

'I thought you had the look of a Martland, being tall and dark and all,' she insisted, eyeing me closely but then, it was gloomy in there.

'No, I'm not related to them and Mr Martland will definitely be back for Twelfth Night, because I'm due to leave that morning.'

'He should be here now, that's how it's always been,' she said. 'People round here don't much like change.'

'It's because he argued with Guy and didn't want to see him,' Jess told her. 'But I think it's mean of him not to think of the rest of us.'

'Well, talking won't mend matters,' Nancy said. 'What can I get you ladies? Are you having lunch?'

I ordered a hot pot pie and, after much deliberation, so did Jess. 'Pies aren't my favourite thing,' she explained, 'but I'm getting a lot of cold food from Granny, so I might as well have something hot while I can.'

'I expect the old folk will have a bit of a struggle to cope this year, poor things,' Nancy said. 'I can make you a nice cup of drinking chocolate, how about that? Squirty cream on top.'

'Oh yes, that would be lovely, thank you!' Jess said. 'Oh, and Grandpa gave me some money to pay for Holly's lunch, too.'

'That was a kind thought,' I said, touched and also still feeling uneasily and illogically guilty again after Nancy's remarks.

I did have all the food for Christmas dinner and cooking it wouldn't be a problem . . . so was I now obstinately punishing Noel, Tilda and Jess, simply because Jude had got my back up? Was I being as selfish as he was?

How much of a hardship would it really be, to put my personal inclinations on one side and invite them for one meal?

It was no use, I was simply going to have to do it!

I could look on it as research and write that Christmas chapter for my book, after all!

When we got back to the lodge I handed over the sherry, then said, 'I've been thinking things over and you know, it seems such a pity to waste all that lovely Christmas food that the Chirks left behind, because I won't be able to eat it all. So, even though it's very short notice, I wondered if you could possibly all come for dinner on Christmas Day with me anyway?'

'Oh yes!' exclaimed Jess, bouncing up and down in her large, black lace-up boots.

'But you don't celebrate Christmas, m'dear, so surely that would be an imposition?' Noel asked doubtfully.

'I don't have to celebrate it, just cook it,' I said brightly. 'Anyway, I'm sure it will make a nice change.'

'Well, in that case . . .' he said, glancing at his wife.

'It's very kind of you,' Tilda said. 'Of course, I was fully prepared to do a festive lunch, but I do see your point about not wasting the Chirks' food.'

'Lovely then that's settled,' I said. 'If Mr Martland gets through to you again on the phone, will you a.s.sure him that Lady and Merlin are both fine, if he is still fussing about them, and tell him of the change of plan? He did suggest yesterday that I carried on with the Chirks' invitation, so he can't have any objection.'

'Oh, did he? How kind and thoughtful of the dear boy,' Noel said.

'Yes, wasn't it just?' I replied, slightly sourly.

'Of course it will be a lot more work for you than you bargained for originally,' he said. 'I expect you usually charge quite a lot for cooking, don't you?'

'Yes, but actually you'll be doing me a favour, because I still have to write the chapter on Christmas house-party catering for my book, so it'll be good research.'

'I may well be able to give you some useful tips for your book, too,' Tilda said graciously, and I thanked her.

'I think you should be paid a little more I'll speak to Jude about it,' Noel insisted.

'No, please don't I'm sure I'll love doing it and of course I'll bill him for any extra food I have to buy.'

Noel rubbed his gnarled hands together gleefully. 'Well, well a Martland family Christmas celebration after all how splendid! And I include you in the family now, m'dear, because you already feel like one of us.'

'Nancy Dagger thought she was a Martland,' Jess said.

'Only because I'm tall and dark,' I said with a smile. 'It's quite gloomy in the pub, isn't it?'

'I expect that is it,' he agreed, 'and by the way, do call Jude by his first name. There is no need to be formal when we are going to be seeing such a lot of each other.'

'But I'm not going to be seeing anything at all of Jude,' I pointed out. 'Though if the telephone works, I suppose I'll hear a lot more.'

'Do call him Jude he isn't one to stand on formality,' Tilda said. 'The artistic type, you know.'

'Not really, the most artistic I ever get is cake decorating . . . and that's a point, because the Chirks didn't leave a Christmas cake. I'd better get back and start one. Thank goodness I just bought more dried fruit and candied peel!'

'It is too late in the day and it won't taste right,' Tilda objected. 'But I have a Dundee cake in a tin that Old Nan gave us, so I could bring that.'

'No, it's fine, I have a last-minute recipe where you steep the fruit in spirits for a couple of days before making it and it really tastes rather good. If I do that today, it can have a good long soak.'

'Oh great,' said Jess. 'And you were going to make mince pies anyway, you said.'

'Yes, those too. Would you mind if I borrowed this basket, Tilda? Only I bought much more than I expected. Jess was a huge help carrying everything back, though she had the heavy rucksack.'

'Good girl,' Noel said.

'And I'll come and help you put the decorations up,' Jess offered.

'Decorations?' I echoed, not having thought any further than food, drink and the ch.o.r.e of cleaning the dining room for Christmas Day lunch.

'Yes, all the decorations are in the attic, and there's holly and ivy in the woods for the taking.'

'I hadn't thought that far yet,' I hedged. 'Let me make a start on the baking first.'

'Okay, and then we'll do it,' she persisted. 'There's a couple of trunks of amazing old clothes in the attic you might like to see, too . . . though I'm too old for dressing up now, really.'

'Oh . . . well, we'll see.'

Tilda, suddenly looking much more alert and bright-eyed, swung her legs off the sofa and slid her feet into a pair of improbably tiny black velvet high-heeled slippers, edged with waving fronds of pink marabou. 'Now, what would you like us to bring? We have a lovely big box of luxury crackers and Noel has the keys to the cellar, of course, so he can find us something decent to drink.'

'If you're sure Mr I mean Jude won't mind?'

'Not at all, he's the most generous of souls.'

I hadn't seen much sign of anything except selfishness yet, but perhaps, as well as hidden cellars, the unknown Jude had hidden depths too?

But as far as I was concerned, they could stay hidden: I'd never before liked a man less just on the sound of his voice! And now, because of him, instead of spending the anniversary of Alan's death in quiet contemplation, I would be gearing up for a feast.

I got up. 'Well, if you'll excuse me, I'd better get back. I have a lot to do.'

Merlin retired to his basket by the Aga, exhausted, and watched me with his bright amber eyes while I listed all the things I needed to do before Christmas Day.