The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

you also know that at one time I had a brief relationship with Elsa?” Again Meli nodded. When was he going to tell her something she didn’t know? Lifting a hand, he spent a moment inspecting a set of brutalised finger nails, all raggedly chewed to the quick. “That was a big mistake, getting involved with a bad un like Elsa.” Without looking up, he seemed to sense Meli’s contemptuous expression, reflecting her previous bafflement that anyone, let alone three women, could find him even remotely attractive. “Don’t scoff. I know I’m no Paul Newman, but I’m not so bad. Although a lot of people think so, including you.” Meli lips didn’t even flicker. She didn’t have any inkling to challenge his statement because so far, he hadn’t said anything to change her opinion of him.
    “Finn, the second one, not the first, is the result of that relationship.”
    Meli’s lips did move now, springing up and down as though her jaw was on knicker elastic while her mind tried to assimilate this earth-shattering revelation. “You. You and Elsa had a son? Finn?” Meli eventually blurted out, her forehead twisted with confusion. “But, but..” She went on to mutter those immortal words spoken by philosophers and statesmen alike throughout history when they were, well, simply struck speechless.
    Agitatedly, Bill rose on teetering legs, and began pacing their cell. “Elsa somehow kept the pregnancy and birth secret. I only found out by accident. Caught Finn following me one day when he was five. He was interested in his old man,” he explained. “He nearly gave me heart attack when I first saw that disfigured face and body. That was twelve years ago. Nobody else knew about him until you and your kids came here.” Bill closed his eyes, took two further steps, and promptly collided with the door. At first, he didn’t move, he just stood there looking quite daft, with his nose pressed to the wood. Meli half expected him to pass right through it, like Patrick Swaze in Ghost.
    After a moment, when he didn’t dematerialise, he prised himself from the resilient barrier and turned slowly to face her. The glow from the bulb cast deep, troubled shadows across his features, highlighting the stress of the last couple of hours, or perhaps even the last seventeen years. At that moment, Meli came close to pitying him, but she quickly hardened her heart. She suspected that he had more than enough pity for himself, a notion that was confirmed, when he added. “I guess he was my punishment. Just like Vilma’s accident. Everything I’ve touched has been cursed.”
    Meli didn’t trust herself to make any comment.
    “Even my marriage was ill-fated from the start. Marigold knew how desperate I was to have a family, and even though she knew she was barren, had known since before we married, she didn’t tell me for years. It was so ironic,” he paused and ran his tongue over his parched lips, before collapsing sack like onto the bench which buckled and groaned. “There I was, desperately wanting to have children, and look what I ended up with! Marigold only came clean when I insisted we went for tests, to see what was wrong. I couldn’t forgive her for not telling me, but even when she offered me a divorce, I couldn’t do it. Although with hindsight it might have been kinder if I had. Just look at us now. All of us. What a pickle.”
    Meli nodded to herself. It certainly was a pickle, with a capital P. He must have upset the Good Luck Fairy at some time, as it sounded as though the only luck he was granted was the rotten kind, and it certainly rubbed off. All you had to do was look at the females in his life to see that. Take herself for example. Until she met Bill, her life had been on the up, and now? But his revelations certainly explained a lot, especially about the odd relationship between the two Barbers’.
    “Does Finn, your Finn,” she distinguished between the two of them, “have the same abnormalities as his half brother? I heard he was disfigured too.” Totally absorbed, and unnoticed by Meli, she had edged along the bench, drawn like steel to a magnet.
    Bill nodded. “You have heard a lot,” he answered sarcastically.
    They both stiffened when they heard a grunting, scraping noise outside. Instantly they were both on their feet, shouting and hammering for all they were worth on the wall, bombarding themselves with clouds of choking dust motes and gauzy ribbons of ancient black cobwebs that were