The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

throw up. Being here, contemplating her plans, her uncertain future, made her recall the date. Frantically, she pumped a hand in front of her face, as though she was about to swoon as the temperature around her shot up a couple of degrees, finding herself in the broiling depths of the inner dungeon where she had locked away her ghosts. But today was their special day too. Spinning, she ran back to the lodge, battling the tears that were threatening to pop her eyeballs from their sockets, if not released.
    In the doorway she cannoned into Dick Swindon, making him drop his canvas tool bag on the floor at their feet with a resounding clatter of metal against metal. Panting, Meli could only mumble her apologies, as Mr. Swindon glowered down at her, clearly conveying his distain by exposing an upper row of protruding teeth in a manner that resembled a snarling hare.
    Sinking to his haunches, he began collecting together the plumbing odds and sods that had spewed from his bag. When Meli went to help him, he waved her aside brusquely. “We’ve done all we can for today.” Was it her imagination? Or did he sound quite relieved to be making his escape? He probably couldn’t wait to get out and relay the graphic details of his gripping morning with the Village Idiot, living at Brambly Lodge. She could just see him now, sitting in the Fishermans Rest or the Smugglers Arms, causing grins and sniggers to fester on the usually po-faced expressions of the regulars who lined the bar from opening to closing time; and all at her expense. She wouldn’t be able to show her face in either of the two village pubs again.
    Meli suddenly frowned as she flicked her eyes to her watch to check the time. The Swindons had been here less than three hours. Dick had told her only last week that the job would take most of the day. Meli had a sinking feeling that rivalled the Titantic. Could today possibly get any worse?
    “ We can’t finish today.” She blinked slowly, had he read her mind? “The plumbing centre gave us a wrong part. I’ve just rung them and they’re going to have to order it. Should be here sometime next week though. I’ll give you a call when it arrives so we can book you back in.” Rising to his full height he took a step backwards, gripping his bag tightly to his chest with both hands as he surveyed Meli cautiously across the top of it as though he expected her to somehow catapult it from his grasp again. Meeting his gaze, Meli found it extremely difficult not to view him as the rabbit, and herself as the ravenous wolf.
    The sinking feeling stretched wide its jaws and swallowed her whole. Another week! Another seven days without the essential commodity of running hot water and central heating, when she ’d expected it all to be sorted today, was going to send her potty! Everything in the village seemed to happen in slow motion. It was like living in a time warp. In Reading the part would be ordered and delivered the next day. Controlling her slathering lips, forcing herself to see the man, and not the prey, she found herself nodding meekly and thanking him very politely, with a great deal more calmness than she was feeling! She deserved an Oscar. But it didn’t take someone with the wisdom of Solomon to know that ranting and raving at him wouldn’t achieve anything, and after the problem they had had finding a plumber in the first place, who wasn’t booked up for the next six months, she knew that attacking him would only result in him walking away, permanently. Especially after the events of the morning. She took absolutely no satisfaction from being proved right that her premonition that today was going to be abysmal had been totally correct.
    Silence dragged at her heels and the day drew out endlessly. For the first time since moving in, Meli felt desperately lonely. She missed her friends, who would have made sure she was kept busy today to keep her mind off things; she even missed her old job, which she ’d hated! Her only companions were her morbid thoughts, and they were taking a great deal of pleasure out of torturing her. Straying into the garden, she perched like a fragile sparrow on the bench on the patio, willing herself to relax. In the distance, the sound carried on the back of the wind, she heard a chorus of dogs barking. They had to be the dogs on Elsa’s property, which were kept in kennels somewhere on the far side of the farm beyond a copse. They didn’t usually hear them, it was only when