The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

soon as they were parked, the boys shot off to inspect the new arrival.
    “Don’t touch anything,” Meli called the warning after them, picturing oily or bleeding fingers. Storming into the lodge, she came face to face with a morose looking Cassie who had rushed indoors without a second glance at the Citroen. “And what’s wrong with you?” Meli enquired with a barely civil tongue, her lips tightly drawn.
    Anger added flashes of scarlet to Cassie’s hazel eyes as she regarded her mother through dense layers of black lashes. “You don’t really care, so why ask?”
    Meli didn’t miss the subtle challenge in the hostile expression. The wrong response now could cause an explosion to rival a direct hit with an exocet missile on a gas station. “That’s not fair, and you know it,” Meli replied, this time keeping her annoyance with Elsa from affecting her tone to her daughter. “I do care. Why don’t you try me?”
    Cassie continued to regard her sourly for a moment before her hazel eyes misted over. “I’m bored here. I’ve hardly any friends, and the ones I have are too far away to walk to see. All I can do is sit and play on the computer, or listen to CDs, or be driven mad by those little scraps, and its driving me mad. I want to go home,” her voice broke on a sob.
    “But this is your home,” Meli gently reminded her.
    “No, it’s not. Reading is my home. This dump is your home,” the air became thick and foul with barely contained fury, as Cass slammed one curled fist into the palm of the other hand.
    Meli really wasn’t in the mood for one of their verbal sparring matches, where they went round and round, like a dog chasing its tail; never quite sure who was the dog and who was the tail. She wished that she had averted her gaze when she came in. It would have been so easy. But she hadn’t, so begrudgingly she supposed that she was under an obligation to at least respond to her daughters representation. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry you feel that way. But you know we can’t go back to Reading.” A simple statement, but it was the plain, simple, unchangeable truth.
    “I knew you wouldn’t care.” The words were snorted from Cass’ flared nostrils.
    “I didn’t say that. Look Cassie, we are here, and here we are staying. Somehow we’ve got to overcome some of these problems for you. I don’t take any pleasure from seeing you unhappy, and I certainly don’t want you to be lonely.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “How would it be if I gave you an extra allowance so you could visit your friends more? You could take the bus, or an occasional taxi.” She wasn’t going to make any false promises to be at her beck and call and drive her anywhere whenever she wanted, just in case you got her commission, as she would be too busy. “Or maybe you could have friends stay here with us, or even go and stay with them?” Money was tight, but she should be able to put something aside, besides, it would be worth it to get Cass out from under her hair.
    Cassie’s face seemed to brightened, although her eyes were still mildly abrasive as they studied her narrowly. “Do you mean it?”
    “Of course I do,” Meli managed an insipid smile; what did she have to do? Write it in neon lights and hang them from the ceiling? Amazingly though, her reassurance seemed to work, and any remaining suspicions evaporated from her daughter’s eyes as they crinkled delightedly. Listening to Cassie romp up the stairs moments later, Meli moved to stare out of the window at the latest carbuncle on the landscape, sinking into a mire of misery.
    “Mum, mum,” Cassie’s panicked cry had Meli racing up the stairs.
    Cassie was on the landing, her fingers tightly grasping her doorknob, keeping the door closed in a rather worrying manner.
    “What is it?”
    “Take a look.” Releasing her hold, Cass stepped to one side.
    Cautiously, Meli inched open the door, wondering whether she should have collected her rolling pin. She saw instantly what the problem was. The room was swarming with flies, not your ordinary little ones; which would have been bad enough, but horrible, buzzing fat blue-bottles. Rushing to the windows, hearing the door slammed closed on her heels by a repulsed Cassie, she threw them wide, then picking up some magazines from the bed, she began chasing them out. There was no sign of her daughter.
    Emerging onto the landing minutes later, her ears still reverberating with the buzz of