The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

she summoned them down to the kitchen.
    “Now, I don’t know what you think you are playing at, or why you are being so disobedient, but we are all going to sit at the table until one of you spills the beans.” Scraping back two chairs she indicated for the boys to sit, and then took the seat opposite them. She checked the clock. Three thirty.
    While the boys studied the grainy pattern of the table top, Meli read the paper from front to back. Twice. At four she gave them all a glass of water. By four fifteen she was part way through the crossword. Ten minutes later David went to leave the table.
    “And where do you think you’re going? Sit down,” a sharp finger jerked him back into his seat.
    “But I need to go to the loo.”
    “No, I told you that no one is going to get up until I know all about this Finn person.”
    “But I really need to pee,” he bleated.
    “Then you’d best tell me what I want to know, hadn’t you?” David, who had clambered back onto his chair, crossed his legs. The boys remained silent. Meli was beginning to think that she should have started this earlier in the day, becoming anxious that Cal or Cassie could walk in at any moment, just when they might be on the verge of cracking. David began to squirm in his seat. It must have been catching, as George was soon squirming beside him. This looked promising.
    David finally cracked at five past five.
    “We met Finn just after we moved here, down by the farm, in the yard.”
    “That’s a good start. Now, where does he live?” Displaying an illusion of calmness, Meli folded the paper in half, and placing it in front of her on the table she laid her pen on top of it. Her heart was clanking and clunking in her chest like a rusty engine.
    “Somewhere on the farm.”
    “But where exactly?”
    David managed to shrug as a huge shudder ran through his body, quickly followed by a shrug from George.
    “Need the loo,” grimaced David, his whole body twisting into a mass of arms and legs in an effort to hold back the tide.
    “You must know. Come on.”
    A frantic shake of the head was all he could manage.
    “Okay, then what else do you know about him?”
    “Nothing, except he breeds mice.”
    “And dogs,” George added, bouncing up and down in his seat.
    Even Meli was beginning to want to go; watching them was a bit like someone running the tap. “What dogs?”
    “The ones down in the woods, where Quassi came from.” George thrust both hands between his legs and crushed them between his thighs.
    “You mean Quassi belonged to Finn?” Meli was confused. She thought Elsa bred the dogs. But then, Elsa did rent out parts of the farm, so she could have made a wrong assumption. But if Quassi hadn’t been hers to give, how had she got him from Finn?
    Both boys heads were bobbing up and down like pistons. David’s face was burning.
    “So why did he give you mice?”
    “Oh mum,” David bit into his tongue.
    “I want answers,” Meli replied firmly.
    “Because we were upset that SS was dead. You should have told us.” Despite his agonising discomfiture, he managed to cast her a hurt and accusing look.
    Ignoring this, Meli pressed on, aware that a light mist of perspiration was glistening on her upper lip. “What did this Finn tell you about SS?”
    “That he had been shot, blown to pieces.”
    Meli’s hands began to shake. Whipping them under the table out of sight, she clasped them tightly together. “What did he know about that?”
    Reproachful, blue eyes fixed on hers. “He found him dead and then he put him indoors so we would know. But then you put him in the bin.”
    Meli’s heart was pumping with full bloodied fear now. So Finn had been in here, in her home. He’d been watching her when she dropped the squirrels little body in the bin. She thought about all the things that had gone missing, about the flies, about the door being opened. She thought about all the times she had felt she was being watched. Her skin began to crawl. What did Finn have to do with all of this?
    David’s eyes turned into puddles of water, and his whole body looked on the verge of exploding. Suddenly realising how distressed her children were, Meli pushed aside her own fears and rising to her feet she circled the table and pulled them both into a hug. Her own eyes welled with tears. “I’m so sorry,” she told them. “We should have told you about SS, but we didn’t want to upset you. We thought it was kinder to let you think he was