The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

empty.
    Meli picked up the phone to call Cal, but then stopped half way through punching in his number with a trembling finger. What was she going to say? That someone had been in their home? Cal would say that she hadn’t closed the door properly and that she had left the muddy footprints herself when she came in to answer the phone. Elsa and the van had been an accident, and the yard was purely her over-wrought imagination. She was getting paranoid in her old age. She managed to crack a smile, but it was a wobbly one at best. It was some time later that she dared venture back to the workshop. This time she took Quassi and the rolling pin, mentally and physically registering in her anxious brain that the door was secured by rattling it several times and telling herself ‘the door is locked’, ‘the door is locked’ over and over again, so there could be no possible confusion later, if, when she came back, the door was open.

    “Something wrong today?” Cal enquired.
    Generally, Meli was quite adept at hiding things from Cal when she chose to. Today, however, Cal seemed unusually perceptive; although it could have had something to do with the fact that since he came home, Meli had dropped the lid of the coffee jar, shouted at David for speaking out of turn, and trodden on Quassi’s tail, not to mention putting the jug of gravy granules in the fridge and the jug of milk on the table, ready for pouring over their chicken dinner.
    “Oh, not really,” Meli’s hand gave an involuntary jerk, chucking a spoonful of sugar onto the work surface, totally missing Cal’s mug of coffee. “Just someone has been in the house, Quassi vanished, again, and Elsa nearly flattened me into a pancake with her van.” Despite her earlier stern talking to herself, Meli knew she sounded positively panicked, it was evidenced by the strangled and slightly nasal twang to her voice. She found herself glued to the work surface, by fingers which clasped the ledge as though clinging to the edge of a precipice and her very life depended on it. She felt her eyes hot with tears. Stop it, she ordered herself sternly. You’ve behaving like a frightened child.
    “Hey, come on, it’s okay.” Cal’s voice was filled with unexpected concern, there was none of his usual derision. “Come and sit down and tell me all about it.” Meli couldn’t move, not while her fingers were still clamped tight. Cal was behind her, his fingers almost gentle as they prised hers free, and then holding her hand he led her to the table and pressed her rigid body down onto a chair.
    “Come on,” his large, warm hand was placed over one of hers as it lay on the table. “Out with it.”
    Lowering her head, Meli hid her damp face behind a curtain of hair, her lips pressed tightly together to stop them quivering as she prepared. “It’s all so stupid,” she eventually began hesitantly, but it was such a relief to be given the opportunity to liberate her worries, the fact that she had almost been killed, that she soon launched into a full, if chaotic account of her unusual day. Did it all sound absurd? All the time she was speaking, she half expected to hear Cal laugh, or to stop her mid sentence to tell her she was being stupid. But he didn’t. Meli didn’t raise her eyes to look into his until she had finished, and silence fell. His blue eyes, beneath heavy brows, were pragmatic, a little hard.
    “Mel, if you don’t like living here we could move. Maybe you’re spending too much time on your own.”
    Meli couldn’t bring herself to speak for a moment as she digested his double-barrelled statement. What was he trying to say? He knew she loved living here, so the first sentence was just daft. And what did he mean about her spending too much time on her own? If she needed a tower of strength, he was about as useful as a flimsy tower made of cheap playing cards. Resentfully, she slid her hand away from his, and stored it out of reach under the table.
    “You know I don’t want to move. I love it here,” when she found the will to speak, her voice was flat. “And I don’t spend too much time on my own. There’s only a few hours each day while the kids are at school, and besides, the holidays will start soon.” In her mind she was chastising herself. She should have been telling Cal in no uncertain terms that he was absurd; that he should know better, yet here she was defending herself, and not very well at that.
    “Meli, you know that there are