Page 69 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
Carey got into the buggy and suggested to Clem that he might like to oil the gate hinges and pull out some of the weeds and ivy that were trying to take over, then he drove off up to the farm. The buggy jolted over the rough and unused bit of track, then trundled off along the tarmac.
I went back into the house and worked on my equipment list in the studio for a while, with Fang curled companionably at my feet, but I was making coffee in the kitchen when Carey returned. He was carrying a box of freshly baked cheese scones and wearing a brightly striped blue and purple alpaca scarf.
A tractor roared down the drive, rattling the window. It was driven by a freckle-faced girl and there was a weather-beaten older man sitting next to her.
‘That’s Jodie Rigby and her dad, Steve,’ Carey said. ‘They think they can get the stone ball out of the ditch with that digger thing on the front.’ He stole my coffee and washed half a cheese scone down with it.
‘Right, I’d better go and see how they’re getting on.’ He got up again and reached for his stick.
‘No, you don’t!’ I told him firmly. ‘I’llgo down, because you need to rest. When you came in, you weren’t so much limping as hopping, even using the stick.’
I was positive the accident had jarred his bad leg yesterday, and it really must have been painful, because although he grumbled he agreed to go and lie down for a while.
The Rigbys were still manoeuvring the tractor, so I took the opportunity to have a better look at the ground behind the gatepost. There, pressed into the leaves, I was sure I could make out the impression of the edge and corner of a box or crate. It was very faint, so it was no wonder I hadn’t spotted it the previous day – and I didn’t think the squirreltheory explainedthat. On the other hand, it was hard to believe that anyone would have deliberately rolled the stone down.
Still, I thought I’d like to know where Ella had been at the time, since she was the one with a grudge and a dodgy temper, and also she had been listening at the door when Carey was discussing the codicil leaving Mossby to her. Call me a nasty, suspicious person, but maybe we should find a way of letting her know Carey had changed his mind about that.
I had to admit it all seemed a bit melodramatic and unlikely in the bright light of day, so having watched the successful recovery mission and chatted to the Rigbys about the alpacas and the ghost trail, I returned to the house and went up to check if Carey was awake and ready for a cup of tea and something to eat.
When I quietly opened his door he was lying on his bed, fast asleep, and his face looked smoothed out, innocent and pale as the dawn, just like it had when we were small children. I brushed a lock of burnished red-gold hair off his forehead and then tiptoed away.
That afternoon when I suggested that we take some time off to explore the village of Halfhidden, Carey didn’t put up much of a protest.
‘I’ll drive,’ I said firmly. ‘And we’re not going to trek round any of the ghost trail this time, we’ll just check the place out.’
‘When we clear the back gate, we’ll be able to drive over that way, if we want to.’
‘We’ll have to see how many farm gates, if any, there are along it to open first,’ I suggested as I turned the car up the lane just after the Screaming Skull, which was deserted at that time of the afternoon.
Carey said wistfully, ‘I’d love to take that trail up through the woods from the pub to the Lady Spring, but I don’t think my leg is up to it yet.’
‘Never mind, I’m sure it won’t be long till you can make it – and maybe swim in this healing spring too, when the weather warms up?’
‘I don’t really expect it to work, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try,’ he agreed.
‘Meanwhile, perhaps I can get some of the spring water for you to drink, or pour over your leg, or whatever,’ I joked.
‘I can’t really see why it should do any good, but I’m willing tosuspend belief and do anything that might speed up the recovery process … and if we tell Nick about it, he’s going to want to film it.’
‘I’m sure he will.’ I carefully negotiated the narrow road, which wound steadily upwards with the walls of the Sweetwell estate on my right and the occasional cottage huddled in front of some heavy pine woods on the left.
It brought us to a sort of green, which I thought must be the centre of the straggling village, for there were larger houses and other buildings around it, including a small church and a village hall.
I pulled in and put Fang on the lead before we looked around. There was another of the big ghost trail information signs nearby, with a helpful ‘You are here’ arrow on the map, though I think we could have worked that one out for ourselves.
Carey unfolded one of the leaflets Lulu had given us and we compared the two maps.
‘That’s Cam’s gallery over there next to the village shop, which we’d better suss out, because it’s the nearest if we run out of anything,’ I said.
‘There’s a clock repair shop in Halfhidden too, of all things,’ Carey exclaimed, surprised. ‘I hadn’t noticed that on the map before. It’s further uphill, where there are a lot more houses. This village seems to stretch right up the valley.’
‘I think they call that a “linear village”,’ I suggested, dim recollections of school lessons surfacing.
‘Well, this is the middle and that drive over there belongs to the big house, Sweetwell.’ He swivelled round. ‘There’s a garden antiques place there that sounds interesting.’
I’d been vaguely conscious of some steady barking nearby since we arrived and now I noticed ‘Debo’s Desperate Dog Rescue’ on a sign just inside the Sweetwell gates, where an offshoot to the drive veered to the left behind a neat fence fronted by rose beds.
At that moment, Lulu walked down it, together with her friend Izzy, whom we’d met the other night in the pub, and a very tall, elegant woman with urchin-cut silvery hair. She looked vaguely familiar.
