One: Hillary didn’t want to be found.
Two: Even if she did, no one would want Ashley pestering them.
Three: Ashley would inevitably drag me into it.
Four: This would put Hillary in even more of a hurry to move, taking Mack with her.
Five: Mack would consider it mean and petty for me to blab his wife’s secret. I really, really didn’t want him thinking me mean and petty.
The reasons for spilling were:
One: Ashley was my friend.
Two: No more Hillary hunts.
Three: Meeting Hillary might help reduce Ashley’s infatuation, given that she seemed a bit of a rude, patronising cow.
‘All right, Jenny?’ Sarah asked as she brought a tray of drinks over. ‘You seem a bit ruffled this evening.’
Understatement. ‘I’m fine. Just tired.’
‘Whatever. You can tell me later.’ She winked, handing out the rhubarb gin and tonics without even looking at them.
Jamie kicked us off, carefully lifting a selection of cake boxes out of a large paper bag. ‘See what you think. Sarah’ll put any that are good enough on the menu as a July special.’
‘These areallgood enough,’ Ellen gushed.
‘You haven’t tasted them yet,’ Lucille said.
‘OW!’ She glared at us all, scooting away from the table and clutching her shin. ‘Someone kicked me!’
After an awkward silence, Frances muttered, ‘Well, you shouldn’t have been rude. It was only a nudge.’
‘I’m going to have a bruise there tomorrow. If you’ve affected my training, then—’
‘Then what?’ Frances crowed. ‘Are you going to kick me back?’
‘Ladies, stop acting like children and try Jamie’s cakes!’ Ellen said, in her no-nonsense-mum voice.
In the end, for research purposes, we all had one of each save Lucille, on a strict training diet, and Frances, who only managed a nibble: dainty pink macaroons, gooey chocolate truffle tarts topped with strawberries, crisp spice cookies iced like smiling suns.
The vote was unanimous, of course. Jamie had better get baking.
Frances showed us pictures of her balloon ride. ‘It was glorious. As the sun rose I could almost have stepped out of the basket and straight into heaven. But I’m not quite ready yet, so I shouted up some instructions to Big Mike instead.’
I tried not to sound too apprehensive. ‘Instructions?’
‘Well, I told him to put the kettle on. And to let the family know. I’ve been waiting a long time to see them. I’m particularly curious as to whether my sister, Susan, is still so enormously fat.’
‘What did the other people in the balloon think about that?’ Ashley asked, eyes wide.
‘Well, I don’t know, I didn’t ask them,’ Frances huffed. ‘I’m hardly in a position to waste time worrying what people think.’
‘It looks amazing,’ Jamie said. ‘What’s next?’
‘Next month, I’m going with Lucille to Tough Muck,’ Frances said. ‘If I can’t race, I can cheer from the sidelines. Have you all sponsored her yet?’
It turned out Lucille was running for Cancer Research. Frances insisted we all donate before moving on, and somehow in doing that we ended up promising to come and watch. Thank goodness race entries had closed, or who knew what would have happened?
