Page 51 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
‘Cam!’ Lulu called imperatively to the blond man, and he tore his eyes away from the screen and looked up.
‘This is my husband, Cameron. He’s an artist and owns the Hidden Hoards gallery in the village.’
She introduced us and told him to move round so we could all sit down. ‘And let me get you both a drink on the house, to welcome you to Mossby. That is,’ she added, ‘if youarestaying and not intending to put the place straight on to the market?’
‘I’m definitely staying,’ Carey told her. ‘And Angel’s moved in today, too. She’s going to renovate and reopen the old stained-glass workshop in the grounds.’
‘That’swhere I know your name from,’ Cam said to me with interest. ‘I’ve seen that window you did at the Whitewood Library.’
‘Yes, I … worked with Julian Seddon for over ten years,’ I said, a lump suddenly and unexpectedly forming in my throat.
‘I saw that big piece about him in the local paper. It was a sad loss. His work was brilliant,’ Cam said. ‘What’s happening to his workshop now?’
‘His son has taken over. Carey and I are very old friends, so when he discovered there was a disused leaded light workshop already at Mossby, it seemed an ideal opportunity for me to start up on my own.’
I’d skimmed lightly over the surface of the events that had led up to my move, but that seemed to cover the essence of the situation.
Anyway, Cam seemed more interested in me as a fellow artist than in my past life. ‘If you want to make any individual hanging pieces, I’d be happy to display them in my gallery. You should come up when you’ve settled in and see it.’
‘I’d love to,’ I said. ‘In fact, we’re both really interested in the way Halfhidden has turned into a tourist hotspot, so we want to explore.’
‘Yes, especially the ghost trail,’ Carey agreed.
Lulu turned from the bar next to us with a drink in either hand and set them in front of us before sitting down next to Cam. ‘Well, funnily enough,we’reinterested in you for the same reason. We know you’ve got ghosts and we want them!’
Cam fished a couple of glossy leaflets out of a canvas satchel that was on the floor at his feet and handed them across. ‘This is the official trail – so far,’ he said significantly.
‘You want to extend it?’ I asked, as we studied the map on the back. ‘It looks quite an extensive trail already.’
‘Ortrails,’ Carey said. ‘I see there are some suggested short walks around the village, or longer ones taking in all of the spooky bits.’
‘It’s quite a hike if you want to do the whole thing in a day, especially if you start here at the car park and go uphill through the woods to the spring,’ Lulu admitted. ‘But most day-trippers just do part of it, and the visitors who stay here for the weekend or longer go round it in a more leisurely way. Almost everyone wants to see the Lady Spring, though.’
‘I’ve heard about that – wasn’t it a spring running into a Roman bathhouse?’ I asked.
‘The healing properties of the water were known about centuries before that and it’s always been an important site,’ Cam said.
‘Carey’s recovering from a bike accident – he had a badly broken leg. Maybe it would do him some good?’
‘It definitely would, especially if he swam in the pool,’ Lulu agreed.
‘Not in early January it wouldn’t,’ Cam pointed out. ‘He’d freeze to death!’
‘Well … perhaps not,’ she admitted. ‘But he could drink the waters, couldn’t he?’
‘I’ll give it a go as soon as I can,’ Carey said. ‘Or I’ll send Angel up to fetch me some in a bottle.’
‘The spring enclosure is only open in the afternoons at this time of year: the opening times are on that leaflet,’ Cam said. ‘There’s a small charge for entry, but if you tell my uncle Tom I sent you, he’ll waive that.’
‘Cam was just designing a new leaflet for the coming season. That’s what he was so engrossed in when you arrived,’ Lulu said. ‘We’re expanding the ghost trail and planning out the new route – an extra loop.’
She pointed to a spot on the map near the central village green. ‘There’s a single-track lane here that serves a couple of cottages and Moel Farm, which is just above Mossby. The farm is the newest ghost attraction and they’ve recently diversified into alpacas, so there’s going to be a little shop selling everything alpaca-related – the daughter and a friend are running that and weaving things out of the wool to sell, too – and the farmer’s wife will provide refreshments in the summer.’
‘Alpacas? That sounds a bit different,’ I said. ‘What kind of ghost have they got?’
‘Actually, they’ve come up with a haunted well,’ Cam said. ‘On nights when there’s a full moon, you can see the face of a maidservant killed and thrown down there, looking back at you.’
‘Or possibly it’s just a reflection of your own face?’ Carey suggested.
