the verger, opening the plastic box of Choconut Consolations I’d brought with me and setting it in the middle, so everyone could help themselves. ‘I don’t know where Annie’s got to, but Uncle Roly’s gone to the races. He said after all these years he could do the Voice of God in his sleep, so you could sort it all out without him.’
This year’s committee was formed of the usual suspects; some of them also CPC members. There was Dr Patel, our semi-retired GP, Miss Pym the infants’ schoolteacher, the new vicar — untried and untested and looking more than a little nervous — and Clive and Marian Potter, who between them ran the post office, the
Mosses Messenger
parish magazine and also pretty well everything else that happened round Middlemoss, including directing the annual Mysteries. Then there was my humble self, for Clive liked to have a token Pharamond on tap, since Uncle Roly was inclined to give his duties the go-by if something more interesting came along. Annie was presumably held up somewhere.
‘Very well. I’ve convened this meeting earlier than usual for two reasons,’ announced Clive, who is like a busy little ant, always running to and fro. Marian is the same, and I have a theory that they never sleep, just hang by their heels for the odd ten minutes to refresh themselves, like bats. Come to that, they’re so in tune with one another they have probably leaped up the next rung of the evolutionary ladder and communicate in high-pitched squeaks us mere bog-standard humans can’t hear.
‘First off, I thought the vicar might need a bit more time to get to grips with the Mysteries, it all coming as a bit of a surprise to him, like.’
The vicar, a carrot-haired, blue-eyed man with a naturally startled expression, nodded earnestly: ‘But I’m delighted, of course — absolutely delighted.’
I wondered if anyone had warned him that the last vicar was currently having a genteel nervous breakdown in a church nursing home near Morecambe. An elderly man, he’d been hoping for a quiet country living, I feared, where he could jog along towards his retirement, not the whirl of activity that is the Mosses parish. But at least the new one was younger
and
unmarried. I observed with interest the way he suddenly went the same shade as his hair when Annie, breathless and dishevelled, rushed into the room.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, subsiding into the seat next to me. ‘One of the dogs slipped its lead and was practically in Mossrow before I caught him.’
She smiled apologetically around at everyone and, apart from the vicar, who was still looking poleaxed, we smiled back, since Annie is Goodwill to all Mankind personified. Even though I’m her best friend, I have to admit that she is a plump, billowy person the approximate shape of a cottage loaf and, although her hair is a beautiful coppery colour, that pudding-bowl bob does not do her amiable round face any favours. She certainly doesn’t normally cause men to go red and all self-conscious …
‘We were only just starting,’ I assured her. ‘Clive’s called the meeting to familiarise the vicar—’
‘
Do
all call me Gareth,’ he interrupted eagerly, finding his voice again, but I expect most of us will just carry on addressing him as ‘Vicar’ because we are nothing if not traditionalists in Middlemoss.
‘And you must call me KP,’ said Dr Patel agreeably, ‘like the nuts.’
‘And I’m Lizzy,’ I put in hastily, seeing Gareth’s puzzled expression at KP’s old joke. ‘You’ve already met Annie, haven’t you?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. ‘At church.’
He was
just
Annie’s type and clearly smitten, but she didn’t seem to notice!
‘Perhaps we’d better get on?’ suggested Clive. ‘Only the Youth Club will be in here tonight for snooker, and I’ll need to set the tables up. First, could you all please read this quote from a recently published book.’
He passed round a
Jane Washington
C. Michele Dorsey
Red (html)
Maisey Yates
Maria Dahvana Headley
T. Gephart
Nora Roberts
Melissa Myers
Dirk Bogarde
Benjamin Wood