Creature Comforts. Trisha Ashley

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СКАЧАТЬ so vast I don’t suppose she even noticed the child was there and she seems friendly enough,’ I said, stroking her. She heaved herself up into a sitting slump and licked my hand.

      ‘Oh, she’s daft as a brush and wouldn’t hurt a fly on purpose. But I think she must have been fed a diet of junk food, because she was even fatter and in really poor condition. She’s already lost a stone.’

      ‘She looks very sad,’ I said, stroking her head. Her eyes were like lumps of dark, moist amber.

      ‘They’re supposed to be faithful, one-person dogs, so she’s probably missing her owners, even if they were useless – but she certainly seems to like you.’

      She pushed the dogs back and closed the hatch door. Then she added, as she turned the car out of the short-stay car park and headed towards home, ‘Perhaps you could be in charge of Babybelle once you’ve settled in? She needs encouraging to take exercise.’

      ‘I could take her out a bit,’ I agreed cautiously, because since my dog Patch died I’d avoided getting too attached to any of the dogs, mostly because I was away so much.

      I looked round, and saw a flat, black, furry face and two sad amber-brown eyes staring through the mesh of the dog guard at me. She whined. At least, I hoped it was Babybelle and she wasn’t lying on the other two dogs.

      We drove through the sizeable village of Middlemoss and turned into the high-hedged lane that would lead eventually to the Screaming Skull Hotel and the turn up the valley to Halfhidden.

      ‘How is everything?’ I asked. ‘Debo sounded very upset about Baz’s will and this new heir suddenly appearing on the scene.’

      ‘She certainly is, but I’ll tell you all about it when we get home, because Debo said we needed a council of war.’

      ‘Has this man actually arrived?’

      ‘Well, he’s been up a couple of times, but he hasn’t moved in yet, since he has to relocate his business from Devon first. Garden antiques, apparently.’

      ‘So, you’ve met him?’

      ‘I have, but Debo was away working when he was around. A magazine flew her to the Maldives for a shoot – it’s all right for some! – and then she had a cameo role in a film. Anyway, we’ll save that for later, or I’ll be repeating myself.And then you can tell us both what’s brought you home early, because I can see something’s up.’

      ‘Fair enough,’ I agreed, and she began to update me on the local gossip, though of course I’d heard some of it as Lulu and Cam had been emailing me all the time now they were back living in the village.

      ‘I was going to give a talk in the Village Hut tomorrow, on knitting with dog hair,’ Judy said, dawdling behind a slow tractor, ‘but Lulu’s plans seemed more urgent so she’s talking tomorrow and I’ll give mine later. You know about Lulu’s meeting?’

      ‘Yes, but she was very mysterious and wouldn’t go into details. The Halfhidden Regeneration Scheme sounds very grand.’

      ‘We’re all agog to know what she’s up to.’

      ‘I gather it’s part of her plans for expanding the Haunted Weekend breaks into week-long Haunted Holidays.’

      ‘Then it’ll be interesting to find out how that will regenerate the whole of Halfhidden, won’t it?’ Judy said. ‘Did you know that old Jonas has moved to live with his daughter, Lottie, behind the shop and Cameron has gone to take his place at the cottage by the Spring?’

      ‘No, but I thought Cam had been quiet these last few days! He must have been busy moving, though I do know about the art gallery he’s trying to set up.’

      Cam, after teaching art in a London inner-city school, had returned to Halfhidden to live with his widowed mother a few months ago, intending to create a studio and art gallery in the old garage next to her shop.

      ‘Jonas is into his nineties now and his rheumatism was playing him up, so he’s better living with his daughter. And Cam will take over the Lady Spring from his uncle one of these days anyway … or he should do, though of course it’s tied to the Sweetwell estate, like Dan Clew’s cottage, so until the new owner makes his presence felt, we don’t know what he intends.’

      ‘He can’t change how things are at the Lady Spring, because that’s how it’s always been,’ I said quickly. ‘They pay a peppercorn rent for the cottage, I remember Tom telling me once.’

      ‘Yes, they’re the guardians of the Spring, so long as there’s a male Tamblyn to carry on, as I understand it,’ Judy said.

      ‘Well, he is a Tamblyn, it’s even his middle name – Cameron Tamblyn Ross,’ I said.

      ‘There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm,’ Judy said deeply, and then we both giggled, for a love of reading was something we shared.

      The tractor finally rumbled off up a farm track just before the pub and Judy paused the car briefly so I could admire the huge, freshly painted sign outside, which boldly proclaimed: ‘WELCOME TO ONE OF THE MOST HAUNTED HOTELS IN BRITAIN!’

      ‘Is it?’ I said dubiously. ‘I thought really it only had Howling Hetty’s skull behind the bar, the footsteps on the backstairs at night and one haunted bedchamber.’

      ‘It is now,’ Judy said drily.

      ‘The car park’s empty,’ I commented, as she drove off again.

      ‘Monday’s always quiet, with the weekend visitors gone home and the restaurant closed, and I don’t suppose Tuesday is ever much busier, so it’s a good night for Lulu to talk to everyone.’

      ‘Yes, that’s true, though it sounds as if she’d like to fill the hotel every night. She just sent me a text to ask me to go to the Hut early tomorrow to help her set things up for the meeting.’

      ‘What things?’

      ‘She didn’t say. I think she wants to surprise me.’

      ‘There are rumours that she’s been going up and down the valley talking to all kinds of people, but if she did, she must have sworn them to silence till the big reveal tomorrow night.’

      The road took a sharp turn between dark hawthorn hedges starred with silvery constellations of blossom, and then began to climb. The dark and densely planted conifers of Sir Lionel Cripchet’s estate, Grimside, crowded up to the backs of the cottages on our left, while the tangled ancient woodland of Sweetwell lay to the right. Oddly, although Cripchet’s estate was well known to be overrun with grey squirrels, they never crossed the road into Sweetwell. Tom Tamblyn always reckoned that this was to do with the taste of the water there, which despite the name is anything but sweet.

      I put my window down and inhaled the familiar scents of home appreciatively. Already spring seemed to have arrived in the valley and all the buds and blooms were bursting forth at once, with bluebells, saffron-yellow gorse and daffodils along the grass verge, and creamy magnolia and bright yellow forsythia in the gardens.

      The cottages edging the lane grew in number for, although Halfhidden straggled all the way up the steep lane to the Summit СКАЧАТЬ