Page 60 of Winter Magic on Railway Lane

‘I did,’ said Libby, with a brief grimace.

Thankfully, her throat was entirely free of smoke damage and she felt much more like her old self.

She concentrated on rolling up the truffle she was holding in the tray of cocoa powder that she had placed on the kitchen table.

‘So, what next?’ asked Flora, sitting down at the table whilst she began to stick the printed labels that Katy had produced on each box.

‘I sleep,’ said Libby, with a smile.

‘And then what?’ asked Harriet. ‘You’re not going to give up making chocolate, are you?’

Libby laughed. ‘Never! But I may just decide not to try to burn down any more kitchens,’ she added with a grin.

‘Let’s hope not!’ laughed Katy. ‘Not that Ethan seems to have minded about that too much.’

‘He never did where Libby was concerned,’ murmured Flora.

Libby looked at her. ‘What are you getting at?’ she asked.

‘Is there something you want to tell us about you and Ethan?’ said Flora, in a pointed tone.

‘Your eyebrows are telling all,’ replied Libby. ‘And yet there’s nothing to tell.’

Harriet rolled her eyes as she dried up a couple of trays on the draining board. ‘You always do this,’ she said.

‘Do what?’ asked Libby.

‘You don’t really tell us anything,’ Harriet told her. ‘Not anything deep anyway.’

‘And look how that turned out!’ said Katy with a grin.

Libby blushed. She didn’t think she’d ever get over almost burning down the old schoolhouse.

‘So let us in,’ urged Flora.

Libby shrugged her shoulders but could feel the blush spreading across her cheeks. ‘I told you, there’s nothing really to tell.’

‘Yes, there is,’ said Harriet.

Libby took a sharp intake of breath. Was it possible that they knew about her and Ethan’s secret marriage in Las Vegas?

‘The prom,’ added Flora, to Libby’s semi-relief. ‘You always say he ruined it, but you’ve never really explained why.’

‘All we know is that one minute you were as close as we all are to each other, the next you hated him with a passion,’ said Harriet. ‘Any time we asked you, you just brushed it off.’

Libby hesitated. Perhaps she could just give them the truth for once.

In the end, she decided to just go for it. After all, these were her best friends and she trusted them.

‘Okay,’ she began. ‘So I was all dressed up, but when he came to pick me up, he was completely and utterly miserable. Snappy and cold. It was so unlike him.’

‘Why?’ asked Katy.

‘No idea,’ said Libby, shaking her head. ‘He wouldn’t tell me. But it carried on like that for the first hour of the prom. No dancing. Not even any conversation. He was just morose and sulky and nothing I could say could bring him out of his bad mood.’

She certainly hadn’t had the first kiss with him that she’d been wishing for and dreaming of.

‘That’s not much to go on,’ said Katy, still frowning.