‘From what I’ve heard,’ Brooke said, ‘Agnes has developed an absolute passion for chocolate lately. Ever since they got married, in fact. I’ve heard that she and Aubrey can’t get enough of… chocolate. And who would have expected that of them?’
‘Are you insane?’ Danny asked, thoroughly confused. ‘They can’teatchocolate. How can they have developed a passion for it?’
‘Oh, it’s true they can’teatchocolate,’ Brooke conceded. ‘But that doesn’t stop them getting pleasure from it. I mean they can look at it, and they can inhale the scent of it and they can imagine… Oh, they canimagineit. Imagine what it would taste like on their tongue, and what it would feel like in their hands, and just by imagining the pleasure they’d get from that… Well, it wouldn’t beexactlylike it would be if they were alive, but it would be pretty close. From what I’ve heard,veryclose. So close that, right now, Agnes and Aubrey seem to think of nothing else but eating chocolate. What do you think of that?’
Danny stared at her, baffled. ‘I think you’re a bit too obsessed with Agnes and Aubrey’s weird chocolate habits. Come on, let’s go in and get this over with.’
Brooke gave what sounded suspiciously like a sigh of exasperation, which was odd, because if anyone was entitled to do that it was him, he thought. Really, she was so annoying at times.
They passed through the front door of the inn and walked through the bar, both looking round rather enviously at the happy, chattering crowds, who were tucking into their Sunday roasts and clinking glasses of fizz over the tables.
‘Betthey’llhave Easter eggs when they go home,’ Brooke muttered bitterly.
Danny decided the only sensible thing to do was to pretend he hadn’t heard her. She was obviously in the middle of some strange chocolate obsession, and it wouldn’t do to pander to her cravings, since there was no way of satisfying them. It was a shame, but it wasn’t as if there was anything he could to do to make it better for her, was there?
The function room at the pub was already full of their fellow ghosts when they walked in, and few people noticed their arrival as they were so engrossed in arguing about what they should give Callie and Brodie.
Danny noticed Aubrey and Agnes sitting together in a corner, holding hands. He couldn’t help imagining them standing round an Easter egg, inhaling its scent. Weird.
Florence, their adopted daughter, was sitting cross-legged on the floor, along with Robert and John, two little urchin children from the eighteenth century. They were all listening to their tutor, Walter Tasker, the former tutor of Shakespeare no less, who was insisting that a poem would be the perfect present for Callie and Brodie. Judging by the children’s expressions they didn’t agree.
‘But it would be so beautiful! So personal and special. I could dictate it and Sir Lawrence could write it down for me. Naturally,’ he added hastily, ‘I would make it clear that it was from all of us. I certainly wouldn’t take all the credit.’
‘Yeah, like they wouldn’t guess it was you who’d written it,’ Ronnie Smith sneered. ‘No one else would write that kind of rubbish, would they?’
‘Ah, but you’re forgetting, Ron,’ Bill Fairfax, his fellow First World War soldier said with a nudge, ‘they might get confused and think it’s by Shakespeare.’
As they both collapsed in laughter – for once in agreement rather than fighting each other – Walter gave them a thoughtful look.
‘Hmm. Well, I take your point,’ he admitted. ‘Indeed, William did take inspiration from me so it would be an easy mistake to make.’
Ronnie and Bill stopped laughing.
‘Unbelievable,’ Bill said, stunned.
‘I don’t think a poem would be quite right,’ Peter said, much to everyone’s relief. Peter was a quiet man, who’d learned restraint since being fatally hit on the head with a rock back in the eighteenth century. He’d been secured in a pillory at the time, as punishment for getting drunk and causing a disruption on a Sunday. Now, when hedidspeak, he usually made sense.
‘No one wants to hear some boring poetry,’ Millie agreed. ‘Bad enough when you’re at school and youhaveto listen to it.’
‘Well, really!’ Walter said indignantly. ‘If you’d been my pupil?—’
She’d have driven him mad, thought Danny with a wry grin. Millie, though, had died back in 1964, after falling out of the bathroom window while trying to sneak out to see The Beatles in concert.
‘What about asking Clara if she’d draw a picture of the happy couple on our behalf?’ Isaac interrupted tactfully. ‘Aubrey, you could ask her for us.’
Aubrey, who was Clara’s direct ancestor and therefore visible to her, shook his head. ‘She’s already drawn lots of sketches of them both and she’s started a painting of the two of them with Immi, so there would hardly be any point.’
‘Honestly, this is impossible,’ Percy Swain said glumly. ‘We may as well give up the entire idea.’
‘Hey now, Mr Swain, is that any way to talk? Where’s that famous British spirit I’ve heard so much about?’
Everyone’s heads turned and there were a few surprised gasps as Hollywood actress Harmony Hill entered the room. The surprise turned to shock when she was followed by the imposing Roman soldier, Quintus Severus.
‘Coo,’ said Florrie excitedly. ‘Look what the cat’s dragged in!’
‘Good heavens,’ Agnes said weakly. ‘I never expectedhimto turn up.’
‘I never expectedeitherof them to turn up,’ Aubrey admitted. ‘How extraordinary.’
