The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

ceiling.
    Freed from his wife’s scrutiny, Cal glanced at Quassi and raised his eyebrows questioningly. Quassi tilted his head and hunched his shoulders in a manner that looked very much like a shrug.
    “By the way, I found your shoes outside in the rain.” He held them up. Behind him, he was conscious that the twins had started twittering. “What’s the matter?” he asked guardedly.
    “Nothing,” Meli said. She didn’t have the energy to tell him. “Just put them in the hall. You might want to wash your hands though.” Even the huge chip on Meli’s shoulder slipped off for a moment. “Plumbings working by the way,” she suddenly thought to tell him.
    “That’s great. I’d better go and christen the bath then, get out of your way,” Cal announced, as though this was his contribution to the turmoil.
    “Not so quick,” his wife rounded on him as he slipped out of his coat. “He’s got to have a bath first.” She stabbed a finger at Quassi, sending him into tremors again.
    “You’re kidding me?” Cal fixed her with a pair of bruised blue eyes as it dawned on him that the mangy mutt was getting priority over him for first go at the hot water. His standing as head of the household wobbled like a throne made of cards. He was also wondering whether he was being delegated this task. If he hadn’t wanted the brute in the first place, he certainly didn’t want him now.
    With cunning cruelty, determined that Quassi’s need for a bath overcame all others, Meli aimed for Cal’s weak spot “There’s no dinner until he’s bathed,” - wriggling backwards, Quassi pressed himself to the wall like he was stapled to the stonework. - “And the bathroom is strictly off limits to everyone. If you’d seen the place he’s just come from you’d understand.”
    She watched her husband take a calculated look at her uncompromising expression, and saw any objections he might have shrivel and die. Very occasionally, Cal was gifted with a speck of insight, and this was one of those occasions. They both heard his stomach clear the last sludges of his lunch down the pipes with a series of snorts and glugs. Even if he wouldn’t speak up, his stomach was not bound by the same sensibility. If they had still been living in Reading, he might have ordered pizzas as a way to overcome part of her threat; but there was no possibility of that out here in the back of beyond. She’d got him.
    “Shall I take the kids to the pub for a meal? Get them out from under your feet? Then you won’t have the worry of cooking for them.” He thrust out the inspirational carrot, his expression brightening as though someone had just plugged his fingers into the mains.
    Meli didn’t need a crystal ball to read his selfish motives. The primary, driving motive was food, closely followed by the hope that by the time he returned with the kids, Meli would have bathed the dog, sorted the laundry and finished the other half dozen outstanding jobs. “Whatever,” Meli mumbled weakly. Maybe it would be better to be left on her own to get on.
    The boys sprang to life, leaping and shouting madly as they raced off to get ready. Walking through to the hall, Cal lifted Meli’s shoes and inspected them. They looked fine; sparkling clean in fact. Fighting his way through the bulging wad of coats, that hung from the wall like a family of headless bodies, he wedged them into the stack of twisted shoes piled beneath their hems. He didn’t understand what was going on, but every instinct was screaming at him to make a run for it, even if that meant taking the kids as well.
    Ten minutes later Cal and the twins were headed out the door. Cassie had declined, saying that she would make herself a snack later. Quassi did his best to slip out with the other men, and when he was forcibly left behind, he fought his way to the living room window, and supported on buckling hind legs, he watched their fast departing figures, nose pressed tightly to the glass. It was almost as if he knew what Meli had planned for him.
    Meli didn’t tackle Quassi however, until the hoover had sucked up every possible dog flea that might have taken up residence in the boys’ room, and their beds were remade. She then spent a moment preparing the bathroom, stocking up with a pile of old towels and a two pint water jug, before filling up the bath one third full with a flow of beautifully hot water. A quick search found her victim curled up on the door mat in the hall. Across the