The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

every corner, going through the shelves, searching for anything. In the end he accepted defeat, just like she had. Meli had long ago decided why wild animals accepted captivity so easily. There was simply no point fighting something you couldn’t change.
    “I’d kill for some paracetamol,” he murmured.
    “You and me both.” If we had a pack I would take my two, then force the rest down your straggly throat, she thought unkindly. They both slumped down onto the hard wooden seat. “And a nice tall tumbler full of cold water,” Meli added, “And a big plate of shepherds pie, with ice cream to follow.” The acid in her stomach must have eaten away an entire layer of the lining by now.
    When Bill didn’t reply, she checked him out. His head was hanging between his knees, and he was fingering his scalp again. Although it made her flesh creep, she found herself offering. “Here, let me take a look for you.” Before he could decline, or before she could change her mind, she shuffled along the bench and then prised his fingers away. “Turn slightly right, into the light,” she ordered him, peering closely at the base of his scalp. The bleeding had stopped long ago, the blood now crystallised in his hair. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to touch his head, intent on working her fingers through the strands to see what damage there was below.
    “Don’t do that,” Bill suddenly announced as he threw himself to his feet. To Meli’s horror, his scalp parted from his head, and she found it tangled in her fingers. She screamed. Instinctively she hurled the offensive object into the air, and amazingly, Bill caught it in mid flight. He flopped it back on his head. Oh, my God, she thought, her pounding heart working its way back down her throat. It’s a toupee. Bill wears a toupee. And what was worse, was that he had not only put it on sideways, but where the congealed fibres had stood on end he looked the image of Freddy Starr doing an impersonation of Groucho Marcs; all he needed was the moustache and boots. She averted her eyes before she did something dreadful, like fall about laughing, giving him a chance to sort it out and flatten it back in place.
    Stifling her hysterical giggles, Meli withdrew into her corner, and leaning back, closed her eyes, not daring to look at him. She dozed for a short while, then suddenly sat forward. Finn. Bill hadn’t asked who had attacked him. Her neck snapped round to look at him. Any impulse to laugh had well and truly been quashed. He had to know that Finn was their captor, so it therefore followed that he knew who Finn was.
    “What do you know about Finn?” She demanded. She thought she saw his body give a nervous twitch, but it was difficult to tell in the poor light. Rising stiffly to her feet, she moved to stand squarely in front of him.
    “You know who he is, don’t you?” She accused him. It was all she could do not to grab him by the throat, and the only thing stopping her was her fractured wrist. “You’d better tell me everything, or I swear, if you think you’ve got a headache now, just wait and see what I can whip up.”
    It was all so bizarre. The two of them prisoners, locked away by some inbred Deliverance hillbilly type. They should have been allies, not arch enemies. Bill didn’t even have the decency to glance up at her, which only incensed her further. Her eyes narrowed murderously. He was going to answer her questions, whether he wanted to or not. Flinging out her right hand, she punched him hard on his shoulder. If she could have used both hands, she would have clamped them around his spindly throat and lifted him bodily to his feet. “Answer me.”
    Snaking out a small hand, he grabbed her arm in a controlled grip, one she sensed was capable of exerting far greater pressure if he chose to. “There’s no need for that,” he uttered, in a low bearish growl. With a flip of his wrist he pushed her arm away. “Yeah, I know Finn.” Meli felt the atmosphere dip a couple of degrees as he shot her an icy look. “You might as well sit down and get comfy.” He invited gruffly.
    Backing away, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on Bill, Meli squeezed herself onto the furthest extremity of her half of the seat, an action which didn’t go unnoticed. “I don’t bite,” he commented sarcastically.
    “You were going to tell me about Finn,” she reminded him.
    “You know about me and Vilma? Our long affair?” When Meli nodded he carried on. “Do