Creature Comforts

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘I expect it was just a bit of embroidery, to make herself look better,’ I suggested. ‘That’s what Lulu and Cam think.’

  ‘I wish I could remember more,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I think I can … but then, I’m not sure if I’m really remembering what happened, or it’s just that I’ve been told about it.’

  ‘I know what you mean, because I keep having the strangest dreams, more like memories. And there was one flashback when I was in the rear of the car with Cara – only of course, I was in the back of the car with her the week before the accident.’

  ‘Dad says he saw me get out of the back of the car after the accident and you were in the front with Harry, and I believe him,’ Simon said.

  ‘Yes, I know, because Tom saw your dad lifting me out of the front. I accept that I drove up from the pub, but what’s puzzling me now is why Harry didn’t take over the wheel once we were on the estate. He was safe enough then from the police.’

  ‘I wondered about that, too,’ he said. ‘Well, I’d better get back to Grimside, because I’ve asked for Wednesday off. I’m going to talk to the National Trust about going back to work for them. There are two jobs going – under-gardener on a big property down south or head gardener at a smaller place up in the Lakes.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ I said, as he got up and then helped me to my feet. ‘Let me know how you get on. I gave you my mobile number, didn’t I?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Do you think you could give me Cara’s?’

  ‘She made me promise not to,’ he said. ‘But then, she made me a lot of promises and look what they came to!’ He got his phone out.

  ‘Thanks, Simon,’ I said as I put Cara’s number into my own phone.

  ‘She might not answer – she’s not replied to any of my calls or messages,’ he said and then, as he turned to go, paused and added, ‘Dad had a bust-up with that Fliss woman on the phone the day she went back to London. I don’t know what it was about, but she’d done something he didn’t like when he’d left her alone in the house. He didn’t realise I was in the kitchen till he put the phone down.’

  ‘Oh? I’d heard they’d had an argument, because one of his friends was talking about it at the pub,’ I said encouragingly.

  ‘They must have made up again, because he went down late Friday and he’s still there. I didn’t meet her when she was here, but everyone’s talking about her, and not in a good way,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry my dad’s been such a fool over her and messed things up with Rufus Carlyle. I warned him good jobs weren’t that easy to get at his age and a woman like her wouldn’t stick around for long.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he listened to you.’

  ‘No, he said he’d heard Cara had got off with some other bloke, so I was a fine one to be handing out advice. And I suppose he’s right, but I didn’t come here to have an affair with another man’s wife, I just fell in love with her.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll find a nice girl wherever you go next, Simon,’ I said, but he didn’t look either consoled or convinced.

  I was so stiff and creaky that evening that Rufus drove me down to the pub in the Land Rover, and on the way I told him most of what Simon had said.

  ‘I think I’ll have to accept that I’ve gone as far as I can with my mission, because Cara’s not likely to say anything else now, even if I corner her. I sent her two messages to her phone once I got her number, but she ignored them. And I’m never going to be totally certain that my dreams really are memories, am I?’

  ‘If they feel like memories, then they probably are.’

  ‘Perhaps, but they’re more sporadic now – and I’m just as likely to have the other kind of dream …’ I tailed off, going pink.

  He glanced at me sideways, pale green eyes glinting. ‘I dream sometimes that I’m swimming up and down the pool at the Spring with you and you’re wearing that white bikini you had on the first time we met.’

  ‘That would only be in your dreams!’ I said, and he laughed and then told me how well Pearl was settling into Sweetwell.

  ‘She has the occasional little accident, but she favours the tiled kitchen floor, so it’s easy to clean up. Olly’s besotted with her and keeps offering to take her for walks, which will be useful when she’s totally recovered and more energetic. Myra complains about the mess, but is trying to spoil her to death with home-baked dog treats.’

  ‘There, I told you it would all work out well,’ I said. ‘You were made for each other!’

  We all decided that since Monday was Cam and Rufus’s day off and the day Lulu was always less in demand at the pub, we’d take a trip to Blackpool next day. Rufus had never been there, so we thought it was time he visited this Mecca of the north.

  ‘We can go up the Tower, buy sticky rock and ice creams … but not ride on the donkeys. If there are still donkeys,’ Lulu said.

  ‘It sounds wonderful … or it would if I was about eight,’ he said ungratefully.

  ‘You’ll love it,’ I assured him. ‘In the autumn, we’ll go again one evening when the illuminations are on all along the prom.’

  ‘As soon as we get back, my Haunted Holidays website goes live,’ Lulu said. ‘And the Izzy Dane Designs launch is Tuesday, isn’t it?’

  I nodded. ‘Everything’s ready; it’s just a bit like jumping off a cliff.’

  ‘But you won’t fall because you have little angels to hold you up,’ she teased.

  In the Land Rover on the way home, Rufus suddenly asked, right out of the blue, ‘When Simon said he’d overheard his father arguing on the phone with Fliss, did he say what it was about?’

  ‘No, not really.’ I tried to think back to what Simon had said. ‘It was something she’d done after he left her alone in the cottage that morning. I wondered if he’d heard she’d threatened Debo on her way to the train and thought that was going a bit far.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he agreed, but he sounded abstracted.

  At the Lodge, he just dropped me off but wouldn’t come in. But by then, I was so stiff anyway that I could barely move. I went straight to bed and went out like the proverbial light.

  In Blackpool we did all the things I’d promised Rufus we would and more, including a tram ride along the prom, a visit to the funfair, a pink candyfloss-eating competition and fish and chips wrapped in greasy paper.

  It was a good day, the sort that would linger as a happy memory for ever. Tired and happy, we dropped Lulu and Cam off at the pub, where they intended taking Dusty for a walk together before the launch of the Haunted Holidays on the Screaming Skull website.

  At the Lodge, Tom had been really busy: the last pile of debris from the old kennels was in a skip that was in the process of being manoeuvred onto a lorry, and the land was cleared ready for the new fence – and the kennel block and pens had finally arrived and were stacked where they were to be built.

  Luckily there was a good foundation at the back of the wall, where the big Victorian greenhouse once stood, so Tom could build directly on that.

  Rufus came into the Lodge with me, carrying the giant pink teddy bear he’d given me after he won it on the rifle range, and plates of rock made to look like bacon and eggs, for Judy and Debo.

  ‘We could do with the sugar for energy,’ Judy said, after thanking him. ‘We’ve had an extremely eventful day!’

  ‘You can say that again,’ agreed Debo, slumped on the old sofa with her long, corduroy-clad legs stretched out before her. ‘The new kennels arrived on a ridiculously huge lorry just after you’d gone, and then about every ten minutes after that, an official from the council, the RSPCA, or some other body turned up.’

  ‘That’s a slight exaggeration, but not much,’ Judy said. ‘There was one RSPCA inspector and three other assorted officials, but they were fairly well spaced out through the day. Most of them were here for ages, though.’

  ‘What on earth did they all want?’ I asked.

  ‘They’d been anonymously tipped off that there was a problem of one kind or another wi
th the kennels. The RSPCA man said overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and cruelty had been reported. Actually, we’d met before,’ Debo said, not to anyone’s great surprise, ‘and when I showed him round and he saw the plans for the new block, he said everything looked fine to him.’

  ‘I should think so too,’ Judy said. ‘Then after him, we had someone from the planning department, who’d been told we’d hugely extended the kennels without permission, but of course he could see straight away we hadn’t … or at least, we had temporarily, but were restoring the land to what it was before.’

  ‘So that was two,’ I said. ‘Who else?’

  ‘That nice woman who’d been before to measure how loud the dogs barked, but now there are fewer dogs so the noise isn’t that bad. I’ve forgotten what the other one wanted …’

  ‘Something to do with checking we didn’t have forbidden breeds, like American pit bulls,’ Judy reminded her. ‘But, of course, we haven’t.’

  ‘It’s very odd they should all come on the same day. Who tipped them off?’ I asked.

  ‘They wouldn’t say, but I expect it was Dan, because he’s done that kind of thing before. Only not several at the same time,’ Debo said.

  ‘I hope you’re wrong,’ Rufus said grimly. ‘I’ve already told him I won’t have you harassed, but I suspect my mother’s egging him on now. I think a few words with her on that subject are well overdue,’ he added ominously, getting up to leave, so I expect the phone wires to London would be burning as soon as he got home.

  I had a look at the Haunted Holidays on the Screaming Skull website and then sent Lulu a row of smiley emoticons, but that was the only excitement of the evening. I was so tired, what with the path cutting on Sunday and the day out at the seaside, that I went early to bed not long after Debo and Judy.

  If I dreamed of anything during the night, I couldn’t remember it next morning.

  Rufus swam with me and then I took him back to the Lodge for breakfast, at Judy’s invitation. She’s convinced that he wouldn’t get half as many gloomy moods if he was eating properly.

  ‘I’m certainly eating a lot of cake these days,’ he said ruefully, ‘because Myra’s always leaving them about in the kitchen under covers with notes saying “Eat Me” stuck to them.’

  ‘How odd of her,’ Debo said, puzzled. ‘What does she think you’re going to do with them?’

  ‘It’s just a little joke – something from Alice in Wonderland,’ Judy explained.

  ‘I’d better get back,’ Rufus said. ‘Though Foxy’s always there to open up in good time. In fact, I’m starting to suspect she doubles back in the evenings and beds down in one of the wheelbarrows, instead of going home.’

  ‘Well, it’s good she enjoys her work, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so. But I’ll have to get back anyway, because today is not only your website launch, Izzy – which I hope goes well – but the day I officially change my name from Carlyle to Salcombe on everything. I’ve already done some of it, like ordering new business cards, but the ads on the side of the vans and the signs all need altering. It’ll be odd not to be Rufus Carlyle any more,’ he added, ‘but also a relief, now I know I don’t have any right to the name.’

  ‘But you do have a perfect right to call yourself Salcombe, and you’ll soon get used to it,’ I assured him.

  Once my website went online I worked on my new designs for most of the day, though I have to admit that I checked for Izzy Dane Designs orders about every five minutes. Lulu was doing the same with her Haunted Holidays and we kept texting each other to ask if anything had happened yet.

  But in the afternoon I finally got a grip on myself and went over to the gallery, where I arranged all the packaging ready for when the first order did actually come in. Already it was becoming clear that it wasn’t ideal having to go to and fro across the Green from my studio in the Lodge to the gallery, though I wouldn’t be able to afford to rent separate premises till my business took off – if it ever did. Since I didn’t drive, running the business from anywhere but Halfhidden would be a bit difficult, too. I hadn’t thought of that before.

  The Regeneration Committee meeting that evening was a short one because by now everything was pretty much in place. The postcards were printed and distributed, the new souvenirs – tasteful and otherwise – had arrived, and Hannah Blackwell had finally got permission to open her tea garden.

  As we came out of the Hut, I asked Lulu if she had any Haunted Holiday bookings yet and she said no.

  ‘I’d really like the first holiday to start the weekend of the May Morris dance, so I hope I get some by then.’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ Rufus said, and then suggested we all go back to Sweetwell, because he’d found a Chinese takeaway in a nearby village that delivered. So we did that and watched a film in the small, cosy room at the back of the house that Baz had always called the library, even though the only books on the shelves in it were his own.

  Keeping with tradition, the takeaway included a bag of fortune cookies. Mine said, ‘Fortune favours the brave’, while Rufus’s suggested he laugh in the face of his enemies.

  I think Lulu and Cam’s must have come out of a different box, because theirs were on the theme of love. I told Rufus about the Chocolate Wishes shop in nearby Sticklepond, set up by an artisan chocolate maker and he said we should take a trip there soon so I could show him the Witchcraft Museum and the local big house and gardens, Winter’s End, too.

  ‘There seems to be a lot happening in Sticklepond these days,’ Cam observed.

  ‘Soon it will all be happening in Halfhidden, too,’ Lulu said determinedly.

  ‘I’ve been thinking, why is it that the dogs only ever seem to break out at night?’ Judy said at breakfast next morning, buttering toast so leaden that the toaster had groaned under the strain of trying to pop it. ‘And mostly Fridays, or at least weekends.’

  ‘Babybelle can break out whenever she pleases,’ I pointed out, but Debo was looking much struck, her own buttery knife suspended in mid-air.

  ‘You know, that’s very odd,’ she said. ‘Now I come to think of it, you’re quite right. And what’s more, even the nervous ones who you wouldn’t expect to break out, sometimes do.’

  ‘So, we’re thinking sabotage?’ Judy said. ‘Dan, of course – who else would be that mean?’

  ‘Or that stupid, because one of them could well have turned on him and given him a nasty bite. He’s lucky they haven’t.’

  ‘He probably unlocked them and just crept off, hoping they’d push their way out,’ Judy replied.

  ‘You haven’t got any proof yet that anyone did it,’ I said. ‘But funnily enough, Rufus and I discussed the possibility of it being Dan the other day when we found Belle outside and the garden gate wide open, but we didn’t really think he’d do it. He’s usually all empty threats and hot air.’

  ‘Oh, but it’s so obvious now,’ Debo exclaimed. ‘We should put one of those CCTV cameras up, or a tripwire or something. And actually, I know someone who sells and installs all that kind of thing.’

  ‘You would,’ Judy replied.

  ‘I’ll give him a ring later and see what he suggests.’

  ‘The mind boggles,’ Judy said, and then they both giggled like teenagers.

  ‘You could use Babybelle as a guard dog and leave her pen wide open at night,’ I suggested. ‘She can’t get out of the garden gate unless it’s deliberately unlocked and since she hates Dan, she’d probably pounce on him if he came in.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ Debo agreed.

  Simon rang later to say that Cara had gone off with Kieran again on the Sunday night after he’d spoken to me and she hadn’t returned. He’d also been offered, and accepted, the post of head gardener at the Lakes property, so had handed in his notice. Or at least, he’d handed it in to the estate manager, because Sir Lionel hadn’t returned yet, either.

  I wished him well, but I was pretty distracted because I’d just had my very first orders – three of them!
I had to print out the invoices and packing slips and then go across to the gallery to parcel them up, ready for Judy to take down to the post office.

  And as I said to Rufus on Thursday morning, as we floated side by side in the greeny-turquoise water of the pool, I’d soon be fit as a flea, constantly trotting to and fro across the Green.

  He said, ‘It would be much easier if you had everything under one roof.’

  ‘I know, and maybe if the orders flood in I’ll eventually be able to rent somewhere.’

  ‘I could find you some space up at Sweetwell, when you’re ready,’ he offered unexpectedly. ‘There’s the upstairs of the office building in the courtyard, for a start, and it could be extended into the loft room over the stables next door.’

  ‘That would be ideal – thank you!’ I said gratefully, then I described how Debo’s friendly security expert had already been round and installed a tripwire and a camera in the kennels, which would be switched on at night, and Rufus said he could do with something like that at the antiques centre.

  ‘But it’ll probably just show a fox jumping over the wall and driving all the dogs mad,’ I said sceptically. ‘I mean, only Babybelle has got out since they’ve been kept inside the garden perimeter wall, and that was only because the gate was open, which might have been accidental.’

  ‘Well, you’ll soon find out, won’t you?’ he said.

  We arrived early at the Screaming Skull that evening and found Lulu standing in the public bar in earnest conversation with a small, bald-headed, side-whiskered man.

  ‘Thank goodness you’re here!’ she exclaimed. ‘Cam’s taking an art class, so he’ll be late. Mr Chumley here – Professor Chumley – is an expert on bones and he’s been looking at Hetty.’

  ‘I could tell you more if you’d let me pick the skull up,’ said the man amiably.

  ‘She can’t do that, because moving her brings bad luck,’ I told him, aghast.

  ‘Professor Chumley says the skull can’t really be Hetty’s,’ Lulu told us, having first looked round to see if any customers were within earshot. But luckily it was so early that only one elderly man was sitting at the other end of the room, reading a newspaper.