Winter Wishes Read Online Free

supermarket, according to Tess.”
    Alice smiled at Jules. “What was I telling you about profiteering and wrecking earlier? Not a lot changes here.”
    “It seems not,” agreed Jules.
    “We’re having a gathering at Seaspray,” Alice continued. “It’s not a Halloween party as such, just some nibbles and drinks. There won’t be many of us, just family, so why don’t you join us?”
    Seaspray was the Tremaine family home; an old and stately whitewashed house with weathered blue shutters, it stood sentinel at the beginning of the cliff path, watching over the restless waves. Inside, it was full of scuffed furniture, faded rugs, tatty drawings, sand and odd gum boots – a true family home in every sense of the word. The Tremaine siblings still gathered there to squabble, drink tea and eat their grandmother’s cakes. Some of Jules’s happiest times had been spent sitting in Seaspray’s kitchen, nursing a mug of tea and putting the world to rights with Danny.
    Danny.
    Of course. He would be there this evening, wouldn’t he? Not a good idea, then, especially after this afternoon’s slip of resolve.
    “That’s really kind, Alice, but I’ve got a lot on tonight,” she hedged.
    “Like what?” Issie asked. Her voice rang with challenge and Jules’s heart sank into her wellies. She really didn’t want to have to fabricate an excuse, although a night in with a glass of wine and Sky TV was on the cards.
    “Just catching up on some stuff,” she shrugged.
    “Jules is busy with church business,” Alice said gently. Her brown eyes met Jules’s, and for a heart-lurching moment Jules saw such sympathy there that she was terrified Alice might have guessed the real reason she’d been staying away. But that couldn’t be possible, not when she’d worked so hard to keep her feelings hidden.
    “That’s total bollocks,” scoffed Issie. “Jules could leave all that for one night if she wanted to. And she bloody well should, because she’s in her early thirties, not her nineties.” To Jules, she added, “Chillax, Vic. We’re not having a Black Mass, you know, just a glass of wine and some sausage rolls.”
    “Oh, Issie, honestly,” said Alice, pulling an exasperated face. But Jules couldn’t help laughing. Sometimes she needed the younger girl’s irreverence to make her see the lighter side of life.
    “How can I say no to sausage rolls?” she said. “OK, count me in. I’ll only get pestered like mad for trick or treat otherwise, won’t I?”
    “Not a problem at Seaspray,” Alice assured her. “The children are all far too lazy to climb all the way up to our front door. Well, most of them, anyway. We do get a few.”
    “Most likely the closest thing you’ll get to Halloween tonight is the wicked old witch who lives in there ,” Issie whispered to Jules, gesturing at a tiny cottage that overlooked the village green. “I’d bet you anything, Poison Ivy has a cauldron rather than a cooker. She’s probably boiling up some children right now.”
    Issie was referring to Ivy Lawrence, one of Jules’s most trying parishioners and known in Polwenna Bay as Poison Ivy. She’d only lived in the village since the summer but had already made her presence felt, complaining about children playing ball games on the green, calling the council when the live music from The Ship was too noisy and refusing point-blank to replant the window boxes that had previously been a feature of her cottage (a matter that had cost Polwenna Bay a winning place in the Blooming Cornwall competition). With a face that could sour milk at twenty paces and a negative word for everyone, Ivy was pretty difficult to love – and Jules, despite praying for tolerance, was certainly struggling.
    “She must be very unhappy to be that mean,” was all Jules could come up with in her defence. Alas, Ivy’s behaviour was poisonous and justifying it was far from easy, even for a vicar.
    “Nobody could possibly be that unhappy,” countered