Page 69 of A Merry Little Christmas
‘Thankfully, I kept some jars back at home to sell here. Otherwise, there would have been none left. I still can’t work out why the thieves targeted my chutney and nothing else in that stock room.’ She shrugged happily. ‘But I’ve decided it’s a compliment. It must have been super-tasty for them to have gone to such great lengths to steal it!’
‘Erm... absolutely,’ I murmured, eyeing the remaining jars with a sense of trepidation.
Would they all fit in my bag when Ellie wasn’t looking?
I could always say someone had come along and bought the whole lot!
A woman by the stall, who looked heavily pregnant, had heard our conversation. ‘Oh, wonderful!’ She beamed at me. ‘I thought all that chutney had gone. I’ll take all six jars, please.’
‘All six?’ I stared from her to Ellie, who was serving a customer, and back again.Was she joking?
‘Yes, please.’ She didn’t look as if she was joking. In fact, her smile said she was over the moon. ‘It’s so good, that chutney. I was intending on stocking up at the WI sale. But when I went along to it, they told me it had all vanished into thin air!’
Ellie was busy handing a Victoria sponge cake over to a customer but I could tell she was ear-wigging on our conversation at the same time.
‘So you tasted the chutney before it . . . um . . . vanished?’ I asked her.
The poor woman was clearly having a baby, which didn’t fit well with also having a dose of food poisoning.
She leaned forward and whispered, ‘I’ve had a thing for vinegar throughout my pregnancy. Can’t get enough of the stuff. I was at a card-making class in the village hall when Elliedelivered her jars of Christmas chutney, and I just couldn’t resist... I had to sneak along to try it.’ She laughed. ‘Ended up standing in the stock room eating a whole jar of it! I left some money on the side, of course. And as I said, I was going to buy a dozen jars to keep me going through the rest of my pregnancy. But then they all vanished overnight!’
‘You ate awhole jar of it?’ I stared at her in wonder. Apart from the fact that even a single spoonful of the stuff had tasted so acrid, I’d almost spit it out, how on earth had she managed to survive the after-effects?
‘Oh, yes. Wonderful stuff. I’ve even asked Ellie for the recipe.’ She smiled over at Ellie.
‘But didn’t it... well, I would have thought it might have given you a bit of – um – tummy trouble? Eating all that vinegar?’
‘Not at all.’ She beamed. ‘I did think I could have overdone it and all that acid might have dire consequences, but I was perfectly fine the next day. I’m Jenna, by the way.’
‘Right.’ It was all I could do not to pull a weird face as I tried to make sense of this. ‘Katja. Nice to meet you.’
Glancing around, I saw Maddy and Jaz standing chatting to Kenzie at her pottery stall. So I asked Jenna if she’d mind waiting because I had to check something, but that I’d be back in a moment to serve her. And I hurried over to tell my friends the news...
They were equally puzzled when I told them.
‘But wouldn’t she have been really sick if it had been the chutney that was affected?’ murmured Kenzie. ‘And being pregnant as well! It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘But apparently she was fine.’ I shrugged. ‘So maybe it wasn’t the chutney that madeusall ill.’
There was a brief silence as we all thought about this.
‘You mean it could have been something else?’ said Maddy. ‘But what? What did we eat or drink that day that could have given us all a touch of food poisoning?’
‘We were at the café so maybe it was the milk in our coffees?’ suggested Kenzie.
Maddy shook her head. ‘I had a black coffee so it couldn’t have been that.’
‘Hang on.’ I suddenly remembered. ‘Didn’t we all go to yours afterwards, Kenzie?’
Kenzie’s eyes opened wide. ‘Yes, you did. And we drank some of that lemon drizzle gin you’d just bought, Maddy.’
Maddy frowned. ‘It couldn’t have been the gin. But... maybe it was the lemonade? You asked me to fetch it from the kitchen.’
Kenzie nodded. ‘I’d made it earlier that day and put it in the fridge.’
‘The fridge?’ Maddy stared at her. ‘I didn’t get it from the fridge. There was a bottle out on the counter. I sniffed it and it was definitely lemonade.’
Kenzie’s face had fallen. ‘Yes, itwaslemonade. But it had been there for weeks – left over from a batch I made in the summer – and I’d left it out on the worktop intending to pour it all away!’
