Winter wishes, p.21
Winter Wishes, page 21
part #3 of Polwenna Bay Series
“You don’t want the paper. And I don’t like apples. You just want to talk without me listening,” Morgan said. “Fact.”
“Yes, fact.” Danny opened his wallet and with the same hand deftly removed a five-pound note from it. “Now go and get the paper.”
“Can I have some sweets? Some Skittles?”
His father grimaced. “Mum will kill me but, OK then, one packet of Skittles. Now scram!”
As Morgan raced up the road to the general store, his dinosaur rucksack bouncing on his back, Danny turned to Jules. All the humour of seconds before had vanished.
“Don’t treat me like an idiot, Jules.” His voice was cold now. “I might only have one eye but I know what I saw just then. Do you really think I’m stupid?”
“Yes, if you don’t listen to what I’m saying!” Jules caught his sleeve. “Slow down, Danny, and listen to me! I’m not seeing Caspar!”
But Danny just shrugged. “See who you like, Jules. It’s none of my business, is it? You’ve made it pretty clear that you’re not interested in me, so you’re a free agent.”
“Yes, I am but you’re not!” Jules cried. “Which we’ve been through a million times. And you always trot out the same old argument that there’s something I can’t know that would explain it all, if only you could trust me enough to tell me.”
Her voice was raised and joltingly loud in the early morning. Net curtains twitched in cottage windows. Great, thought Jules. It would be round the village in seconds that the vicar and Danny Tremaine were having a row.
She took a deep breath. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to shout.”
He stared at her. “I probably deserved it. Anyway, I do trust you, but trust’s a two-way street – and when I say that I can’t tell you something, you need to know that I’m telling the truth.”
“Just like I am now about Caspar,” she retorted. “Dan, let me explain…”
“Explain? I’m not stupid. It’s barely eight in the morning and you’re leaving his house, looking like neither of you have slept. I don’t think there’s much to explain,” spat Danny. “He’s artistic, handsome in his own way, and you like his company. You don’t owe me any explanations.”
The hurt that lay beneath the anger in his voice was enough to flood her eyes with tears.
“Danny, I know you’re upset but it really isn’t what you think.”
“So how about you tell me what it really is?” His voice had an edge of steel in it now and Jules’s heart sank. “What were you really doing at his house?”
It was checkmate.
“I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.”
Danny laughed, a bleak laugh. “A secret. I see.”
“Danny, please! This isn’t my secret,” Jules said desperately. “Caspar needed help.”
“In the small hours? Yeah, right.” He shook his head. “It’s all right, Jules. You don’t have to spare my feelings. I thought there was something between us. Christ, I actually thought I was falling in love with you, but it wasn’t real, was it? It was totally one-sided.”
Jules couldn’t keep quiet a second longer. All the months of eating her heart out for him – of crying quietly at night, of praying and praying for the strength to do the right thing – all those long lonely months finally took their toll.
“If you really think that of me then you’re right!” she shot back. “It isn’t real if you can judge me so quickly and write me off. Of course I’m not seeing Caspar. How can I when you know I love you? If you want the truth then here it is: Caspar’s a bestselling romantic novelist, one of my favourites as it happens, and he’s deleted the file containing his latest book. He called me in a panic because he needs to find it. That’s why I was in his cottage, and if neither of us look like we’ve slept then it’s because we haven’t!”
Her chest burned and she was shaking. Danny just stared at her.
“Say that again? How you feel about me?”
Jules could have ripped her tongue out. Her face was on fire. “I… err…”
“Jules,” Danny said softly. “Look at me.”
Reluctantly she dragged her eyes from the pavement to meet his gaze. Her heart flipped over and over.
“Do you love me?” Danny asked. “Did I hear that right? I only have one fully working ear, remember?”
Jules was trapped. In the heat of the moment she’d told the truth.
“I love all my parishioners,” she said quickly. “It’s the greatest commandment.”
His mouth curved into a smile. The blue of his eye was no longer arctic but a Caribbean hue. “Yeah, nice try, Jules. Let me think: Sheila and the Pollards and Keyhole Kate? You feel the same way about them as you do me?”
“Yes! No!” Wrong-footed, she searched for the right answer. How had she managed to let her guard down and blurted out the truth like that? Luckily at this point, Morgan came scampering up, armed with The Guardian and a monster bag of Skittles, and she was spared any further explanation.
“Are you friends again?” Morgan asked her. “Dad thought you wanted to be friends with Caspar Next Door instead – but you don’t, do you?”
“I’m friends with everyone,” Jules said.
“Even Ivy?” Morgan’s brow crinkled. “She’s very mean.”
Ivy was very mean, there was no denying it, and having a stern word with her was still on Jules’s ever-growing list of things to do.
“Even Ivy,” she said firmly.
“But you like my dad the best. Fact.” Morgan tipped a pile of Skittles onto his palm and regarded her beadily. “My mum says so.”
His mum. Tara. Jules felt as though she’d had a bucket of icy water thrown over her head. What was she thinking, telling Danny she was in love with him, when they both knew it was impossible? How could he and Tara possibly mend their marriage with her in the way? She was horrified with herself.
“I like you all,” Jules told him staunchly, but Danny was laughing.
“But you like me best,” he said. “You can’t take that back now, Jules, no matter how much you might want to. Here, have some Skittles and stop looking so worried. Morgan hates the orange ones, so help yourself.”
“I’m tired and I wasn’t thinking straight,” Jules protested. “Blame Caspar for that. Two and a half hours I spent trying to find that deleted folder. My words are coming out all wrong.”
“Fibber,” Danny said fondly. “Your words are coming out just perfectly. Don’t look at me like that either. You and I are going to talk. You can count on that.”
“Did you look in the trash?” Morgan asked, looking up from the important task of selecting orange skittles from the packet. “That’s where all the deleted folders go.”
Jules hadn’t and she stared at him. “What?”
“If you haven’t emptied the trash then that’s where the files go. Fact. It’s very simple,” Morgan explained, with the same pity in his voice that Jules heard in her own whenever she tried to explain to her mother how to use an iPhone.
All those hours of searching the hard drive and the bloody book might still be in the trash? She could have wept.
“Looks like the missing book problem is sorted. You can pop back and tell Polwenna’s answer to Shakespeare that all’s well that ends well,” Danny said. He checked his watch. “Look, I have to get this one to school or Miss Powell will probably put me in detention, but you and I are definitely going to catch up later. This conversation is not over, Jules. Not by a long way.”
“There’s nothing more to say,” Jules said.
“You’re wrong,” Danny told her. “We haven’t even started.”
As he walked away, Jules stared after him. Her stomach was more tangled than the nets heaped on the quay. It was time to face facts. The feelings she had for Danny Tremaine were not going away. If anything, they were getting stronger.
There was only one solution – and no matter how painful it was, she had no choice but to acknowledge it and do the right thing. She could only avoid Danny for so long, and it was getting harder and harder by the day because every fibre of her being yearned for him.
Her heart was shattering into a thousand pieces already, but Jules knew that she had no other option. If she was to stick to her principles and live by what she knew to be right, then she was going to have to leave Polwenna Bay.
Chapter 18
“I don’t understand it. My dear, you’ve been so happy at St Wenn’s and such an asset to the village.” The bishop leaned back in his chair and looked at Jules with a worried frown. “This is a very sudden change of heart. It’s nothing to do with the unfortunate events of earlier on this year, I hope?”
It was Wednesday morning and Jules was seated in a big comfy chair in Bishop Bill’s office, doing her best to balance a large cup of tea and a plate of biscuits on the arm. Her hands were trembling so much that she was in danger of spilling the lot. Plucking up the courage to make the appointment to see the bishop had been hard enough. Telling him that she wanted to leave the parish and find another post had been even more difficult.
“After all,” he continued when she merely shook her head in reply, “although it was a little misguided, the calendar did raise a lot of money for St Wenn’s – and I have to say that the accounts are looking very healthy indeed. You should be very proud of all that you’ve achieved.”
Jules smiled faintly. After seeing the bishop, her next port of call was the main branch of her bank.
“Thanks,” she said. “I am proud but I still feel that leaving is the right thing to do.”
The bishop raised his teacup to his lips, took a delicate sip and replaced it in the saucer with a rattle. “You look tired, Julia, and you’ve lost weight. Do you think that maybe you’re under stress? Perhaps a rest is what you need?”
All the rest in the world wasn’t going to mend her broken heart, thought Jules, but the bishop didn’t need to know this.
“No, it’s nothing at all to do with that. I just feel that it’s the right time for me to move on.”
“Is this because of the audit?” The bishop wasn’t buying her excuses. “If it is, then – and this is strictly off the record, you understand – then you really don’t need to worry on that score. St Wenn’s isn’t under any imminent threat.”
A week ago Jules would have been orbiting the moon with joy at this news. Today, however, all she could do was nod.
“Provided we don’t find any issues with the registers, of course, and the audit makes sense,” the bishop added. “But that’s just a formality. Oh, and no more scandals of course, ha ha!”
What if their mysterious benefactor continued to make big donations? Jules thought with alarm. What an irony if somebody who really wanted to help St Wenn’s actually became the church’s downfall. For the hundredth time Jules wracked her brains trying to work out who this person might be, but as usual she drew a total blank. Beneath her teacup her fingers were firmly crossed. As long as she kept Sheila away from the slave-auction idea and the Pollards were kidding about a “butlers in the buff” fundraiser, then things should be fine.
“I’m sure everything will be perfectly in order.” Jules sent up a quick prayer with this thought. “Whoever takes over from me won’t have any problems.”
There was a pause as the bishop gazed at her thoughtfully. The room was quiet except for the heavy ticking of a longcase clock and the buzz of traffic outside.
“Is this something that you feel comes from God? Or are you running away?” he asked eventually.
“Running away?”
“From a situation you feel that you can’t escape? Or maybe someone?”
Jules looked up, shocked at his insight. “Is it that obvious?”
“Not at all, but it’s not an easy path that you’ve been called to follow. It comes with many blessings but also many burdens, and sometimes you’ll have to decide if those blessings are enough to compensate for the hard choices you’ll make along the way.”
She swallowed back the lump in her throat. “I love my job, and I know it’s what God wants me to do. It’s just that there’s a conflict for me now and I think that leaving would be the best thing to do.”
The bishop removed his glasses and regarded her with faded brown eyes that had doubtless watched many young clerics come and go. There was probably nothing that he hadn’t seen before.
“The best or the easiest?”
“Both, maybe?” Jules wasn’t sure. She loved Polwenna Bay and St Wenn’s and Danny. Leaving these behind would be like losing a part of herself but, ultimately, if it cleared the way for Danny to resolve his issues with Tara, then that had to be for the best. “So, is it possible for me to leave?”
“All things are possible, Julia. You’re not a prisoner in your parish. If you really do believe that God wants you elsewhere, then of course you’re free to move on. But I would ask you this: make sure that it really is His voice you’re listening to and not just the whispering of your own fears. Sometimes what God wants for us is the steep and rocky road rather than the smooth downhill one.”
“So you’re saying I should stay?”
He inclined his grey head. “I would suggest that you give it until the New Year. Let’s get Christmas out of the way; it’s always the busiest and most emotive time. Then come and speak to me again once you’ve had time to reflect.”
“So I can’t have some time off now?” Jules had been hoping that the bishop would put forward the idea of a locum filling in for her while she had a few weeks away. That would be enough time for her to write her resignation and think about her next move.
“I’m afraid not. There’s nobody who could help out at such short notice and you’d be leaving St Wenn’s without a vicar at Christmas. Of course, if you still feel that’s the right thing…”
His voice trailed off but the meaning was clear. She could stay and deal with her issues or walk away and leave St Wenn’s in the lurch. Jules could no sooner do that than she could just switch off her feelings for Danny. She was damned either way. As the conversation turned to the upcoming nativity play, the matter of her resignation having been gently but firmly put aside, Jules knew that she would have no choice but to go back to the village and tell Danny once and for all that there could and would never be anything more than friendship between them.
Then she could count the days until she left for good.
* * *
“One hundred, one twenty, one forty, one sixty, one eighty, two hundred… and four fifties.”
The bank teller was busy with the customer at the head of the queue while everyone else fidgeted quietly and, in true British style, watched for anyone who might surreptitiously try to push in. Jules, sitting on the furthest side of the bank, checked her watch and sighed. She’d been due to see the bank manager over fifteen minutes ago and there was still no sign of him. It felt a bit like waiting for the dentist.
“Shall I put that in an envelope " for you?” the bank teller was asking.
“No thanks. Could you pay it straight in to this account please? I’ve got the details here.”
“Certainly, Madam.”
Although Jules couldn’t see the front of the queue there was something familiar about the customer’s polite and well-modulated tones. Craning her neck she made out an elderly woman delving into a printed jute bag and pulling out a piece of paper.
“Sorry, Madam, I can’t read the writing. What does that say? St Winn?”
“St Wenn’s church. It’s in Polwenna Bay. I’ve written down the sort code.”
Jules was on her feet and at the counter before she even knew it. This was the mystery benefactor caught red-handed, she was certain of it!
But what she hadn’t guessed was who this person might be, and it was hard to say who was more surprised – Jules or Alice Tremaine.
“Alice?” Jules’s eyes were round with shock. “It’s been you all along? You’ve been paying money into the account?”
Alice’s face was ashen. “Jules! I can explain! I’ve just been trying to help.”
“But you know the trouble it’s been causing,” said Jules in bewilderment.
Alice looked stricken. “Of course, but what can I do? If I have the money in our account Jake will see it or Jimmy will fritter it. He’s been twice as bad since he came back from America. This was going to be the last donation, I promise. Giving it to the church felt like a good thing to do.”
“In theory it is, but not like this.” Jules was staggered. “Alice, where on earth are you getting all this cash from?”
A look of guilt crossed Alice’s face. “I can’t tell you.”
Jules was starting to feel a little tired of the Tremaines’ capacity for secrets.
“Oh yes you can,” she said grimly. “I need to know everything. And so will our accountant. And maybe the tax man. Do I need the police as well?”
Alice looked offended. “Certainly not! It’s all perfectly legal and above board.”
“Will you get a move on?” grumbled the next person in the queue. “Some of us have got homes to go to.”
“Madam, shall I pay the money in?” asked the bank teller, looking nervously at Jules. The wad of money in her hand trembled.
“Yes,” said Alice.
“No!” cried Jules. “Those deposits of yours look like money laundering. Any more and we’ll probably have a tax inspection – at the least.”
The notes were pushed beneath the window and Alice put them in her purse with great reluctance.
Jules shook her head. “I don’t know what this is all about but I think it’s time we had a chat.”
There was a coffee shop across the road from the bank, a trendy affair that was all glass and steel and bleached driftwood, and which had a mind-boggling menu. Once they were seated, each with a latte and a cinnamon slice, Jules fixed Alice with a stern look.
“So? Are you going to tell me exactly what’s been going on?”
It was like opening the harbour gates mid-storm. As Alice began to speak, her words gathered speed and her breath became ragged. Several times Jules had to tell her to calm down and take a sip of her drink. It was as though she was unloading a dreadful burden, and with every word she uttered her face seemed to become less pale and strained. Jules listened, her mouth hanging open, while her untouched coffee grew cool. She couldn’t believe her ears.
