Finding Hope at Hillside Farm

by Rachael Lucas

  ‘Please don’t go leaning out of any windows,’ Jenny said to Hope’s back as she scampered out of the room.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked Lou.

  ‘Fine, darling.’ She could see her husband doing his best not to roll his eyes. ‘Don’t fuss.’

  ‘I’m not fussing.’ Jenny pursed her lips. ‘I just prefer you alive to hooked up on a million machines.’

  ‘I’ve no intention of letting that happen again.’

  A fleeting image of Lou, covered in monitors which had beeped and whirred alarmingly, popped into her head unbidden. She shook her head slightly as if to scare it away.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Fine.’

  He smiled at her for a second, his eyes twinkling, and something in his look reminded her of the boy he’d been when they met. Maybe this place could be a chance for them to remember who they’d been, before – everything.

  Chapter Three

  Ella

  Each of the trees that lined Llanidaeron High Street was wrapped with a thousand tiny orange lights, glowing in the evening dusk like fireflies.

  Ella stopped to look in the window of the post office, out of habit. She was still thinking about the little girl she’d seen earlier. She’d probably been out walking with her family, wandering up to look at the strangely compelling sight of the wind farm that stretched out along the top of the hills, filling the air with an unceasing, mysterious hum which spoke of ley lines and magic and not, more prosaically, of renewable energy and the town’s contribution to the National Grid. A surprising number of visitors made their way up the hill just to stand and watch the huge arms spinning. It was a contentious subject in the village – most of the locals had been positive about it, seeing it as an obvious way to bring much-needed money into the town, the population of which was slowly dwindling away, year on year. There was still a tattered poster hanging on by two rusted drawing pins to the announcement board, advertising a protest meeting. It had been arranged by one of the incomers. Ella had somehow bypassed incomer status and been accepted into the fold, probably because she’d moved in with Bron – so she’d been accepted over the last ten years as one of the locals. She’d attended more than her fair share of village improvement meetings and watched as many of the little businesses struggled to keep afloat. There were always people – floating out to the countryside to live the self-sufficient life, dressed from head to toe in ethnic-printed organic cotton – who were determined to keep the quaint nature of the village sacred, unaware that the village they imagined, sadly, no longer really existed. Teenagers left in search of university or jobs as soon as they could, the shops closed as the owners retired, and sometimes it felt like one day Llani would be nothing more than a ghost town.

  But they’d still have the Lion, of course. It was a permanent fixture. Ella paused for a second to check her reflection in the shop window. Her dark hair was already wind-ruffled and in the blue-white glow of the shop light her face looked pale, her freckles standing out even more than usual. She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and ran a finger along her lower lip, wiping away a smudge of lipstick. Behind her a gaggle of tiny ghouls tottered past, their faces painted white, high on artificial colours and squealing with delight.

  ‘All right, Ella?’

  It was Susan from the art shop, hair covered with a black wig, cloaked in a voluminous black garment threaded with trailing silver ribbons. She was mummy to two of the tiny ghouls who’d just passed – Ella had no idea which, disguised as they were by the darkness and their elaborate costumes.

  The sea of tiny people stopped, connected to Susan by some psychic link, and as one, swirled back, an ever-moving black cloud of energy and excitement, and surrounded them.

  ‘You going to the party at the Lion? As soon as I’ve filled this lot with as many sweets as they can eat and sent them to bed to dream of the dentist, I’ll be joining you. Lissa said you were coming out.’

  Ella nodded. There were a million emotions swirling around inside her and, like a child, she felt an urge to rush home and cling on to her aunt. What if Bron never came back? What if the flight was too much for her and she suffered the same fate as her sister? Ella chewed on her lip, realizing as she did so that she’d probably taken off half of the plum-coloured lipstick she’d so carefully applied.

  One of the children tugged at Susan’s sleeve. ‘Can we go now? Mrs Evans said if we came to her house she’d be doing hot dogs and party games and grown-up drinks.’

  Susan brightened slightly at this.

  ‘Grown-up drinks?’ She waggled her eyebrows at Ella. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  ‘We might get Coke!’ said a small boy.

  Both adults laughed.

  Ella recognized him as one of the children of the couple who owned the health food shop. He’d probably been dreaming of this night all year long. Coke and sweets weren’t allowed the rest of the time. The children were treated once a week, his mother had informed Ella recently, to a bar of carob on a Friday – if they’d done their meditation every morning.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s the kind of grown-up drink she meant, Danny.’ Susan caught Ella’s eye with a conspiratorial wink. She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Bloody hope not, anyway. I’ll see you later.’

  Ella trailed up the high street to Lissa’s little cottage. The curtains were not yet drawn. The lit window framed a picture of pre-party disorganization. There was an ironing board set up in front of the outsize television screen which was showing one of the music channels, half-naked girls gyrating in front of an unappealing-looking singer in too-tight leather trousers. A bottle of wine stood on the floor, half empty already. Behind the sofa Lissa was standing in a dressing gown, face mask on, drying a pair of tights with a hairdryer. Lissa seemed like the sort of person who’d escape Llani for the exciting lights of the city as soon as she could. She had, in fact, when she was eighteen – heading to Manchester University to study politics, determined to make her mark. But the lure of the Welsh mountains had been so strong that following a postgraduate teaching qualification and a few years (‘absolute bloody hell, it was’) teaching in a grim, failing inner-city primary school she’d found herself drawn back to the village and now taught at the local primary school. As a senior member of staff, she prided herself on her professional standards, maturity, organization, and the certainty that the parents knew that while she was teaching she was a model of decorum, even if she was downing pints at the bar with the rowdier half of the PTA on a Friday night.

  ‘You going to stand out there all night?’ The front door was wrested open as Ella went to knock. ‘There I was, blow-drying my tights, and I look up and you’re staring in the window looking like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘I was dreaming,’ said Ella, taking off her coat and hanging it on the end of the banister. She dodged two huge crates of schoolbooks, which Lissa would have to mark tomorrow with a hangover.

  ‘Here,’ said Lissa, pouring a glass of sparkling wine. ‘Get that down you.’

  By the time Lissa had got herself dressed and Ella’s make-up had been redone (‘Let’s make you a bit witchy, like. Here, I’ll do your eyes’), the bottle was finished and another one had been opened. Lissa shoved it under her coat as they headed out into the cold night and pulled the door closed behind them. Ella, concerned, peered into the empty house through the window.

  ‘What you doing?’

  ‘Just checking you haven’t left the iron on, or the hair straighteners, or any of the other things you do when you’re distracted.’ Ella nudged her friend, teasing.

  ‘I checked them all, I’ll have you know.’

  ‘Right,’ said Ella. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  ‘It’s not a bloody torture session, Ell, it’s a night out at the pub. And it’s Hallowe’en. Everyone loves Hallowe’en –’

  There was a tiny beat of silence and Lissa tipped her head slightly, looking at Ella as if she’d just remembered something.
<
br />   ‘Oh, honey. I know this is a shitty time of year.’

  Ella shook her head. ‘Pass us that bottle,’ she said, reaching across. She took a long drink and handed it back to Lissa, wiping her mouth. She put the thought of the enormous bill, Bron leaving, and everything else to the back of her mind. There was nothing else to do with it.

  They walked down the hill towards the old Victorian hotel which stood on the road that skirted the edge of Llanidaeron. A handful of young teenagers ran past, prompting Lissa to shove the wine bottle, previously waving about as she made a point, back underneath her long purple cloak.

  ‘You out trick or treating, Miss?’ one of the boys shouted back over his shoulder.

  ‘Bloody hell, that was close.’ Lissa pretended to mop her brow.

  Their footsteps echoed in the empty street. An owl hooted overhead in the silence, and a rumble in the distance could be heard, as the lights for the level crossing started to flash. There was a creak and a metallic clanking as the arm of the barrier groaned into life.

  ‘Shit, the bloody Aber train. I was stuck here for ten minutes the other day. I swear there’s something wrong with the timer on it, or something.’

  Crossing when the lights were flashing and the alarm beginning to sound might be Lissa’s style, but that kind of risk wasn’t Ella’s usual sort of thing. But –

  She grabbed Lissa’s arm and pulled her on. They hurtled across the metal railway tracks to the other side.

  ‘Duck,’ she shouted, and they bobbed underneath the barrier.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Lissa bent over, puffed out and laughing. The huge floodlight that illuminated the crossing cast a pale white glow on her face, emphasizing the black shadow that formed sharp, witchy peaks at either side of her huge dark eyes. The alarm continued to sound, beeping repeatedly in time with the three red lights that flashed a warning in the darkness.

  ‘Cutting it a bit close there, girls. You off to the Lion?’

  Looming out of the darkness, Alan from the post office approached. He lifted an arm in greeting.

  ‘Yes we are,’ Lissa indicated Ella with a nod of the head. ‘If Ella doesn’t get us run over by a bloody train first.’

  Ella, exhilarated and feeling the wine going to her head, grinned.

  There was a faint metallic hum as the train approached the little station platform behind them.

  Alan shook his head. ‘Don’t think it’s my thing, girls. I’m a bit old to be out partying in my Hallowe’en outfit. I’m away off home with a pie from Rhian.’ He lifted the paper bag he was holding from the fish and chip shop.

  ‘Are you sure you can’t be tempted?’ Lissa waved the wine bottle in the air in reply.

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  The lights of the train loomed out of the dark fields that lay beyond the village and drew closer. In a moment it had passed, pulling with a squeal of brakes into the little train station, disgorging its cargo of weekend tourists, students home for the weekend from university, and the late-night commuters who worked each day in Shrewsbury. It was another world – Ella couldn’t imagine it. Leaving this beautiful place every day for traffic and noise? There might be downsides to living in the middle of nowhere, but she wouldn’t swap life here for the bright lights now, not for anyone.

  The warning lights blinked off and with a groan the hydraulic arm was lifted up again, pulling the barrier back. As Alan passed, his normally deadpan face broke into a rare smile.

  ‘You’re looking very glamorous tonight, Ella,’ he nodded. ‘Nice to see you out and about and out of your work clothes.’

  Ella and Lissa opened the door to a wall of noise and the heat of countless bodies crammed into a tiny space. The air was thick with perfume and the damp, hoppy smell of spilt beer. A werewolf, a zombie nurse, three vampires and a mummy, his bandages already drooping, were hunched over the wooden stools that circled one of the beer-barrel tables just behind the door.

  ‘Ella!’ The mummy raised his glass in greeting. She peered forward through the half-lit room and recognized Mick from the grain stores, lifting a hand in a half-wave of recognition. It was busier this year than ever, with everyone having dressed up for the occasion. Like a masked ball, she thought, nobody quite knew who anyone was – and it meant that this night, of all nights, was the one when misbehaviour was at its peak. Even Adelaide Evans, owner of the little village bookshop, who normally presided owl-like over her desk like a Victorian schoolmistress, was standing by the bar with a glass of cider in one hand and a broomstick in the other. Her hair, still in its neat little top knot, was sprayed silver and a cobweb – complete with spider – hung from her round-framed metal spectacles. She was deep in conversation with a black-clad shape wearing a ghoulish rubber mask.

  Sally behind the bar gave them a wave, rolling her eyes and lifting palms upward in mock despair, as if she couldn’t believe what was going on. She was the architect of the yearly Hallowe’en party, instituted years back when her children were much younger. ‘Why should they get all the fun?’ she’d said, telling everyone at the school gates and along the river when she met them out dog walking. ‘We can bloody well have our own Hallowe’en celebration once we’ve got our lot off to bed.’ And so she did – Gareth and Charlotte, her twins, were at university now, no doubt causing mischief wherever they went, but the tradition continued. Now whichever parents had drawn the short straws – Susan was one, this year – would be trailing over-excited children around the village, looking for the lit-up carved pumpkins that indicated a welcome while the others would be back home, preparing for a much-anticipated night out. The children would be delivered home and teenagers bribed into babysitting with money and vast buckets of trick-or-treating leftovers.

  Ella stood for a moment, letting the sounds wash over her. The music was almost drowned out by the clamour of voices and the clatter of glasses. She ran a hand along the wooden carving on the panelled wall. A hundred years or so ago, someone had lovingly created each of the ornate wooden oak leaves which ran along the edge of the panel, detailing each one with the finest miniature branches of veins, each one different, all beautiful. Over the years, the edges had become smooth and rounded with all the hands that had touched them over a hundred years. The things the hotel had seen years back, when the traders were making their way across the country to and from London. And now here they stood, the place filled with ghouls and gargoyles, the light dim, skeletons and ghosts hanging from the ceiling.

  She lifted her gaze and scanned the room. Lissa had already managed to duck under the heaving throng of people waiting to be served at the bar and could be seen waving a twenty-pound note at one of the young, good-looking barmen. With her dark hair curled and her old-fashioned, bosomy figure cinched into a drawstring corset, Ella wasn’t completely sure what her friend was supposed to be, but she looked like she’d been poured into her dress and the effect was dazzling. Lissa wasn’t having any trouble attracting attention. A second later and she’d exchanged the money she was waving for two pints and two shots of something alarmingly purple in colour. Ella waited as she managed to part the sea of people and make her way back out, beaming triumphantly.

  ‘Here you are.’ She handed two of the glasses over.

  ‘Should I ask what it is?’

  ‘Haunted horror, it said on the poster.’ Lissa raised her glass, clinking it against Ella’s. ‘Something purple and –’ She took a mouthful, pulling a face. ‘Well, it looks nice, anyway. I reckon Andy behind the bar made it up off the top of his head.’

  Ella sniffed cautiously, threw her head back, and downed it in one. She placed the glass on a nearby table, feeling quite pleased with herself. This was more like it. Maybe Dutch courage was what she needed.

  It was hard to move through the bar to get to the function room at the back of the hotel. They sidled, stepping sideways, glasses held high.

  ‘I can’t believe Bron’s off to Australia.’ Lissa took advantage of a break in the music, turning to Ella, her dark eyes thoughtfu
l. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Fine. Good.’ Whatever was in the drink was definitely going to her head. ‘I’m going to make some – changes.’

  ‘Really?’ Lissa looked impressed. ‘So what’s the plan for the new and improved Ella?’

  Ella took a deep breath, and another large mouthful of her drink.

  ‘I’m going to talk to Nick tonight.’

  Chapter Four

  Ella

  ‘Oh.’ Lissa’s eyes widened. ‘I’m not sure that’s –’ She stopped midway through a sentence, looking at Ella briefly, then across the sea of black-clad bodies. The music had been turned up and was thumping so loudly now that Ella could feel it reverberating through her body, shaking her bones, waking her up. It brought back memories of long ago – nights out clubbing, dancing under ever-changing coloured light, staggering exhausted into the hazy half-light of an Edinburgh dawn at four in the morning. Back in uni days they’d stayed out all night. It was a far cry from the life here in Llanidaeron, where the sounds most likely to wake her at that time of the morning were a ewe calling for a stray lamb, or the milk tanker chugging past on the way to start the first collection of the day over on the coast.

  ‘But I’m not ready for him yet,’ said Ella, grabbing Lissa’s hand, pulling her onto the already-packed dance floor. They were folded immediately into a throng of bodies, twirling and thrusting and moving with the beat, which was hypnotic. The lights pulsed in time with her heartbeat and Ella threw her hands in the air, losing herself in the music.

  Lissa, when the music dipped temporarily, grabbed Ella’s hands with a beaming smile, her dark eyes bright.

  ‘This is bloody brilliant, isn’t it?’ She spun around, knocking into a green-clad zombie who nodded his head in acknowledgement, pointing both fingers and dancing backwards, inviting her to join him. ‘That’s – oh my God,’ she yelled, only just audible as the ancient, familiar sound of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ came through the speakers, ‘Gerry, you’ve got the moves, boy.’