The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

of the family and their friends who were staying.
    “How do you know about that?” Meli garbled the question. Mrs. Barber lifted one of her porky fingers and tapped the side of her nose, imperiously swinging her gaze around the attentive audience gathered behind Meli, who had all oddly fallen silent.
    “A squirrel told me.” The revelation caused a chorus of sniggers in different keys to reach Meli’s ears.
    “Pardon me?” Meli managed to expel the unnecessary question from her mouth, unnecessary because she knew she’d heard the other woman quite clearly. It wasn’t so much a request to repeat what she’d said, more an exclamation that this woman must be delusional. How could a squirrel tell her anything? Although, if there had been a witness, SS could have been it. However, Mrs. Barber was not going to be drawn into any debates, and she certainly wasn’t going to elaborate. Sobering the banana split curve carved into her dumpling cheeks, she somehow managed to look right through Meli as she turned her attention to her next customer as though Meli had donned a cloak of invisibility. Meli had the distinct feeling that she was being made a fool of, and to top it off, she felt she had been short changed. Everyone else had had a full two minutes, whereas she’d had less than thirty seconds; a rip-roaring thirty seconds though she conceded.
    Turning, she tripped over Mrs. Rushmore’s oversized handbag, which she’d placed on the floor behind her. Pulling herself from poor Mr. Marshall, who must have been in his nineties and weighed all of six stone, and who was the unfortunate recipient of her flying tackle, Meli helped straighten his buckled body, handed him his walking stick that had clattered to the floor, muttered her apologies and squirmed red-faced from the shop.
    Outside the sky had darkened as Meli hurled her mail angrily through the gaping slit of the red post box, bizarrely wishing it was Mrs. Barber’s mouth. The clouds, which had been rolling in from the sea had thickened, and the first drops of rain were falling. Untying Quassi, and keeping her head down, trying to keep the rain out of her eyes, she motored up the road as quickly as she could, puzzling over what had happened. How could anyone know about the washing line? It simply wasn’t possible; and yet they did. For two point five seconds, Meli actually wondered whether there was any truth in Mrs. Barber’s explanation! She couldn’t understand why she hadn’t said something more usual, like ‘a little bird told me’. Why use a squirrel, unless of course that was Mrs. Barber’s subtle way of saying she knew about SS and the assault course. Maybe there was a video camera in the garden, and the action was broadcast live throughout every home in the village? But then the answer came to her. It was the boys. They must have told someone. That had to be it.
    By the time she let herself into the lodge Meli was quite damp, but she was actually able to smile about Mrs. Barber’s gentle ribbing. Drying her face and neck, she quickly changed and then made herself a cup of tea. “Are you coming or staying?” she asked Quassi, who was curled up on a chair, allowing his wet fur to darken the brown material. Rolling back his eyelids, he gazed at her through huge sleepy eyes. The only other movement he managed was to blink. When he didn’t get up to follow her, Meli left him there.
    Switching on the overhead lights, Meli stepped across to her work bench, where the three masks had been left, their wide, staring eyes, gazing up at the ceiling, where the rain was clattering against the roof. They were almost finished now. Just a few final touches. Collecting the hair extensions she had been preparing over the last two days, she smoothed them out, before settling at her bench and beginning the task of carefully attaching them to the masks. As the first mask was completed, she sat back and critically studied it, taking time to compare it to the original sketch. Her masks were no cheap imitations. Each commission was painstakingly researched to ensure the end result was totally individual and as authentic as it could possibly be, whether the original artist had been an Aborigine from Queensland or a Celt from the Scottish Highlands. Attention to detail was Meli’s trademark, even to the point where she made her own dyes to colour the masks if she couldn’t buy them. So few people had had the opportunity to train with someone who had studied under