CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It was the day of the WI Christmas sale and members of the café crew had converged on the pop-up skating rink that an enterprising local farmer had set up in one of his fields.
Darkness had fallen several hours ago, but the scene was wonderfully festive with fairy lights twinkling in the hedgerows, tall spotlights trained on the rink, and fresh snowfall sparkling in the trees and crunching beneath our feet.
Catchy Christmas numbers were blaring out from the speakers and a mobile pizza and pancake truck was proving to be a popular and colourful focal point. The foodie aromas drifting over were making me feel very hungry.
‘I thought Ellie said she’d be here after she closed up the café,’ remarked Fen, zipping her padded coat further up, to her chin, and clasping her gloved hands together.
We were standing in a semi-circle, facing the rink and stamping our feet against the cold, our breath emerging like wisps of smoke.
‘Um . . . she told me she was going to drop in at the village hall first?’ I said, wincing as I waited for their reaction. ‘To see how sales of her chutney were doing?’
‘Oh, rats. She’ll know, then,’ said Fen.
‘She was always bound to find out,’ remarked Maddy. ‘I mean, news gets round in a flash here, with the café as the perfect generator of gossip.’
Jaz nodded. ‘True. Unless . . .’
‘Unless what?’ Maddy frowned.
‘Unless no one at the WI even noticed that the chutney was gone.’
I nodded. ‘You’ve got a point. That stock room was packed almost to the ceiling with all kinds of goodies for the sale. Would anyone really miss a couple of boxes of Christmas chutney?’
‘You’re right,’ said Maddy. ‘They probably wouldn’t. I think we might have got away with it, girls.’
‘Got away with what?’ said a cheerful voice, and we all turned to find Ellie trudging through the snow towards us.
I swallowed hard.
‘Erm . . .’
‘Um . . .’
‘Er, well . . .’
Ellie laughed. ‘What is it? What’s the big secret? I thought I was the one with the startling news.’
‘Startling news?’ I asked.
‘Yes. You’ll never guess what’s happened.’
‘Go on,’ I murmured, studying her cheeks which were red with the cold.
‘Well, I’ve just been along to the WI sale and apparently, my Christmas chutney’s been – wait for it – stolen!’ She gave a bewildered shrug.
‘Wow.’
‘Really?’
‘Crikey. It was that good, then?’
Ellie laughed at Maddy’s remark. ‘Well, somebody must have liked the look of it. Because why steal my jars of chutney when there were so many other gorgeous goodies available to nick? Like Christmas cakes and homemade cranberry sauce and gingerbread Santas? It’s just so weird.’
‘Very weird,’ agreed Maddy solemnly. ‘What a surprise they’ll get when they open a jar and find it actually tastes as good as it looks.’
She did a speedy throw-up mime and Jaz’s mouth twitched into a half-smile, but thankfully Ellie was gazing over at the skaters on the rink and didn’t notice.
‘I hope they’re enjoying it,’ said Ellie.
‘Oh, they will be. It would take pride of place in my kitchen, that’s for sure,’ beamed Maddy, as the opening bars of Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody started blaring out. ‘In the bin,’ she hissed in my ear.
I gave her a sharp nudge. ‘You’re terrible,’ I muttered to her, as we queued to hire skates.
‘Why?’
‘Making fun of Ellie’s chutney!’
‘It was revolting.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘But it could have killed us. I saved a village from disaster, remember? At Christmas!’ She started chuckling at the very thought, and after a moment, I joined in. It was pretty funny when you thought about it . . .
Maddy, of course, could skate beautifully, but the rest of us were varying degrees of rubbish.
After half an hour of staggering around the rink, holding onto each other and spending rather more time in a horizonal position than vertical, we called it a day and took our damp butts off to the food wagon for warm pancakes with cinnamon apples or chocolate sauce.
I chose the cinnamon apple pancakes and they were absolutely delicious.
As Maddy muttered to me, out of Ellie’s earshot, it was amazing what you could do with apples – as long you steered well clear of the vinegar . . .