Page 2 of Winter Magic on Railway Lane

Her friends all thought that she had this amazing life, dating pilots and travelling the world. But the truth was that most of the time she was away, she was lonely. Really lonely. Perhaps now she could find a job closer to home and be with the people she loved more often.

For a brief moment, she wondered about whether losing her job might just give her the push to turn her hobby into something more permanent.

Growing up, her favourite time of the week was when she and her mum had made different flavours of chocolate truffles in their tiny kitchen at home. The smell of cocoa still invoked the warmth and love that her mother had given her.

After her mother had passed away, Libby had stopped making chocolate for a long time. Then, on a stopover in Switzerland a couple of years ago, on a whim she had booked herself in for a chocolate making course. From there, her curiosity had grown into a full-blown obsession.

She didn’t want to upset her dad as it had been his wife’s favourite hobby. So when he was at church on a Sunday morning, for one morning of the week she would make all sorts of chocolates and truffles. For those couple of hours, she would forget about all of her worries and just focus on the fabulous flavours that she could concoct. However, she always ensured that everything was cleared away by the time her dad returned, with no trace of what had occurred for him to suspect. Only the alluring, sweet aroma of cocoa hung in the air afterwards.

Eventually, she had been brave enough to show her friends what she had been making. And after much positive feedback, Libby had even sold quite a few boxes of her handmade truffles from a small stand in Platform 1 – the coffee shop in the village owned by her friends Ryan and Katy.

But Libby had a dream. And that was to make chocolate from bean to bar so that she could control every step of the processand ensure it tasted just right. On a flight to Venezuela, she had taken time to source a local cocoa bean farmer. She had even bought a small bag of cocoa beans and had taken time to roast the beans herself when she had got home. It had been such a success that she had ordered a couple of larger bags for future use.

The trouble was that the kitchen in the tiny cottage in Railway Lane was miniscule and there was no way that she could up production to any degree without her dad finding out. She had even changed the name on the packets that she sold in Platform 1 on the off chance that he happened to come across them. She couldn’t upset him any more. He had already been through so much.

But despite the secrecy, chocolate brought her joy. It felt as if it was the only thing that she did solely for her own pleasure. The only selfish thing she could call her own when nothing else made her feel whole, not even the endless stream of first dates she went on each month.

As if on cue, her phone lit up in the darkness. She could just read the beginning of a flirty message from one of the pilots she had met on her outbound journey. She would press delete as soon as she parked up the car, having already spotted his wedding ring whilst they had been chatting.

She rolled her eyes in the darkness. Men! She had dated many but none had compared to Ethan Connolly. Upon thinking of him, as usual she was instantly irritated at her lack of self-control. Surely she should be over him by now?

She had grown up with Ethan and his elder brother Ryan, who both lived at Cranfield station with their family. But she had always been closest to Ethan, who had become her best friend throughout their childhood. Together they had rebelled, bunking off school when they should have been studying ormessing about in the classroom whenever they did decide to attend.

But as her teenage years had progressed, Libby had become aware of something else, wanting something more from him. When Ethan had asked her to the prom, she had thought all her secret dreams were about to come true. But Ethan had been a completely different person that night, cold and uncaring towards her. She had totally misread the situation and had quickly realised that he didn’t care for her at all. So the evening had ended in disaster with Libby not speaking to him.

Then her mother had grown ill and Libby didn’t have the time or energy to question what had gone wrong in their friendship. So they had slowly drifted apart when she had never needed Ethan more. She remembered him giving her a hug at her mother’s funeral. But, after that, he had left Cranfield to work abroad, rarely coming home to visit his family.

Whenever she did bump into him, eager to protect her still vulnerable heart, she treated him with cool indifference and sarcasm. And apart from one catastrophic lapse in judgement a couple of years later, they still barely conversed with each other.

Libby shook her head. She couldn’t think about Ethan now. She had to concentrate on working out how she was going to pay the bills when her redundancy money ran out.

Annoyed at herself for giving in to the old familiar feelings he always seemed to invoke in her, she put her foot down and the Mini Cooper quickly accelerated. However, she took the next corner too fast and almost ended up in the ditch at the side of the road. With a squeal of tires, she slammed on the brakes and took a deep breath to steady herself.

As she sat there, a gust of wind blew some nearby fallen leaves across her windscreen. Autumn had arrived and the air was noticeably cooler.

With a shiver, she put the car into first gear and then drove more slowly as she neared Cranfield. Once more, she wondered how on earth she was going to tell her dad that she had lost her job. What was she going to say? How could she allay his fears and worries about money when her own were already almost overwhelming?

As she passed the sign for Cranfield, she saw that the tiny hamlet was still in darkness. But on the far horizon, beyond the green rolling hills, the first glimmer of daylight was beginning to appear as dawn began to break.

All the houses were in darkness. Except one, she realised, slowly drawing the car to a halt. The old infants school, long since closed, sat at the very end of Railway Lane where she lived in one of the cottages with her dad.

When her father had lost his job, the school had been shut down and the children moved to a bigger school in the next village. The schoolhouse had remained empty for the past decade until it had been bought and renovated a couple of years ago. Even then it had stayed empty. But as Libby looked through her windscreen once more, she knew that she wasn’t mistaken. There was most definitely a light on inside. It looked like a torch flicking around, its beam showing through the glass windowpanes.

Suddenly, all her frustrations boiled over. The school, so beloved to her dad, was precious, with its memories of happier times, long since gone, when life was simple and complete, before the pressures of growing up had come upon her. How dare someone decide to break in, no doubt to steal whatever was left inside!

Ever impetuous, Libby grabbed the first thing she could think of from her carry-on bag as a weapon – a square marble pastry board she had bought from a cook shop in Washington DC on her stopover the day before. Although she had beenintending to use it to practise tempering chocolate, it was certainly nice and heavy, she thought, weighing it in her hands.

And then, carrying the marble board and still in a fury, she got out of the car and raced up the short path to the front door of the schoolhouse.

Noticing it was ajar, she stepped into the entrance hall, fumbling for a light switch. But before she could adjust to the darkness, she found herself blinded by a light shining straight into her face!

Libby reacted instinctively, lifting her arm up high and bringing down the marble board onto the intruder’s head with as much force and pent-up anger as she could muster.

In the darkness, she felt the person slump to the floor and heard him swear.

Then she heard a familiar voice drawl, ‘Always a pleasure to see you too, Libby.’

The torch on the man’s mobile suddenly lit up his face and Libby found that she was staring into the eyes of Ethan Connolly.