Creature Comforts

by Trisha Ashley

  Suddenly my inner voice was telling me, loud and clear, to go home to Halfhidden and that I was needed there – not only by Aunt Debo, but also by my friend Lulu.

  Lulu had been living in France for years, in an increasingly abusive relationship with an older man called Guy, who’d turned out to be an alcoholic – and since he had his own vineyard, that gave him rather a lot of scope. He hadn’t been physically abusive to her, but instead sapped her spirit and self-confidence over the years with the drip, drip, drip of criticism. Cameron and I had both worried about her, but there wasn’t a lot we could do.

  She efficiently ran the self-catering holiday gîtes and B&B rooms in the small manor and outbuildings of the estate, while Guy occupied himself with the making and consumption of wine. I’d visited only once and, on the surface, he’d been jovial, charming and welcoming … though since Lulu, Cam and I emailed each other most days, I knew that he was jealous of any other men who might show an interest in her.

  Cameron went out there every summer to teach watercolours at their annual artists’ week, and Guy tolerated his presence because he was under the misguided impression he was gay!

  Then, at the end of the last summer school, Guy had been off on a bender and Lulu had finally snapped, packed a bag, grabbed her passport and left with Cam.

  Now she was living in a static caravan in the small paddock that had once been occupied by her pony, Conker, behind the Screaming Skull Hotel in Halfhidden, and trying to expand the Haunted Weekend breaks set up by her parents into week-long Haunted Holidays.

  ‘I need you,’ she’d told me during our last brief phone call. ‘My brother, Bruce, and his wife, Kate, have taken over the pub and restaurant, leaving Mum and Dad to concentrate on the hotel side, and I’m sure they only handed over the management of the Haunted Weekends to give me a role. So my Haunted Holidays simply have to be a success. I need way more ghostly goings-on and you have a better imagination than I do.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask Cam’s grandfather, Jonas?’ I’d suggested. ‘He told me all kinds of old legends and stories when I was little, so I’m sure he could come up with some ideas – especially if it brings more visitors to the Lady Spring, too. In fact,’ I’d added, ‘why not call a meeting and get other people from the village on board? This could bring visitors to the whole valley, not just the pub.’

  ‘Great idea,’ she’d enthused. ‘See, I said you have lots of imagination!’

  Now she was going to do just that, holding the first meeting on Tuesday evening – so if Kieran and I had the almighty falling-out tomorrow that I suspected was on the cards, I’d be back in time for it.

  ‘I’m so looking forward to seeing you again,’ Lulu had said. ‘Do you know, it’s been nearly four years? And Cam hasn’t seen you for even longer. It’s lovely that Cam has moved back here too, but it’s not the same when it isn’t the three of us.’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ I’d agreed, and then suddenly I’d longed even more to be at Halfhidden again, that Shangri-La of my childhood. It was pulling me back and, despite what had happened in the past, it would always be the place where I felt I truly belonged.

  I got off the plane in much the same sticky and dishevelled state I’d got onto it, though at least I’d sent most of my heavy luggage on to Halfhidden and only had one suitcase with me.

  Kieran’s father was meeting me, which made me feel a little awkward, anticipating the next day’s full and frank discussion. I wasn’t sure what would happen after that, except I’d be going straight home, leaving the ball in Kieran’s court.

  There had been no getting out of it, though: Douglas had to be in London for some meeting or seminar the day before, and had stayed up to have lunch with friends before heading home, and he’d insisted on collecting me from Heathrow on his way back to Oxford.

  ‘Rough journey?’ he said, after failing to recognise me until I went right up to him. This lack of tact only hardened my resolve as we set off towards Oxford, and since I was thinking ahead to what I was going to say to him and Miranda when we arrived, it was a while before I noticed he was driving very fast … and also, unless he’d taken to using whisky as an aftershave, he’d been drinking.

  And on that very thought, even though we were just approaching a sharp bend, Douglas recklessly swung out to overtake a lorry – straight into the path of a small blue car coming the other way.

  There wasn’t enough room to get past and Douglas jammed on the brakes, jerking me sharply forward … Then the weirdest thing happened. It was as if, for just a second, the fabric of time ripped open and I fell through, right into the Range Rover on the night Harry Salcombe died.

  Then, equally suddenly, I was catapulted out again, into a gentle, familiar bright light, filled by a soft susurration of wings and a hint of celestial music …

  I found I was now hovering above the car, which had spun right round and was facing back the way we’d come, while the small blue one was in a ditch. I could see myself sitting like a statue in the passenger seat, eyes wide with shock, and hear the thin thread of Douglas’s voice, as if through water.

  ‘Come on, Izzy, be quick – change places with me!’ he demanded, pulling at my arm urgently, as if he could drag me across into the driver’s seat. ‘Izzy, come on, I’ll lose my licence,’ he snapped. ‘Pull yourself together, you’re not hurt.’

  Then he sharply slapped my face and instantly I was back in my body and gasping with shock, partly at the blow and partly from once again being wrenched back from Heaven.

  Chapter 2: Fault Lines

  ‘By then other drivers had stopped and the police were there in minutes,’ I said, trying to describe the scene to Daisy Silver, one of Aunt Debo’s oldest friends. ‘An ambulance came soon after, and then it all got a bit confusing.’

  ‘I expect it did, after such a shock,’ Daisy said in her calm, warm voice, pouring me a mug of coffee and pushing it across the wide, battered pine table in the cosy basement kitchen of her Hampstead house.

  Her ample curves were enveloped in a familiar old rubbed purple velvet kaftan and she had loosened the thick plait of hair that usually circled her head like a silver crown so that it hung down her back to her waist … or where her waist would have been, had she had one.

  ‘Douglas is an awful man! I mean, he’s a doctor, yet instead of getting out to see if the people in the other car needed any help, he just kept on and on at me to say I was driving. Luckily no one was seriously injured, but the mother and two small children in the other car were really shaken up.’

  ‘He does seem to have entirely disregarded his Hippocratic oath,’ she agreed drily.

  ‘Yes and even when the police were questioning him, he insisted the driver of the other car was at fault and wanted me to back him up.’

  ‘Which I’m assuming you didn’t?’

  ‘No, of course not. I told them it was entirely his fault for overtaking on a bend and then, of course, he was even more furious with me. When they breathalysed him, he was way over the limit, so they charged him with drink-driving as well as dangerous driving and goodness knows what else … though, come to think of it, I didn’t tell them about him asking me to pretend to have been the driver.’

  ‘It sounds like he’ll be in enough trouble without that, so I wouldn’t worry about it.’

  ‘It would be just my word against his anyway, wouldn’t it?’

  She nodded. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘We had to go to the police station, but eventually they said I could go, so I got into a taxi and came here. I never gave a thought to how much the fare would cost until we arrived, but I’ll pay you back tomorrow.’ I clamped my hands around the mug of hot coffee.

  ‘That’s not important, and you know I’m always glad to see you, whatever the reason.’

  ‘I do, and it seemed natural to head here,’ I said gratefully, for as well as knowing Daisy from her frequent visits to stay with us in Halfhidden, I’d spent several weeks convalescing with her after the orig
inal accident when I was sixteen. She was a child psychiatrist by profession, but I hadn’t been her patient; it was just that Debo had thought a total change of scene would do me good.

  ‘Very sensible,’ she approved. ‘In fact, you behaved extremely well, given the shock you’d had.’

  ‘It could easily have been a fatal crash.’ I shivered. ‘All because he drank too much and drove like an idiot.’

  ‘Health professionals have all the human failings, just like anyone else,’ Daisy said. ‘But I’m horrified he should have asked you to change places in the car with him.’

  ‘I don’t suppose Kieran ever told him about the accident I was involved in – in fact, Douglas probably doesn’t even know I can’t drive.’

  ‘He should never have thought of asking you, whether he did or not. It’s wonderful that the family in the other car weren’t hurt.’

  She smiled at me and pushed over the open tin of coffee-iced biscuits. ‘Have some soothing sugar.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, taking one and crunching into the crisp coating.

  For a few moments we munched in amicable silence.

  Then Daisy said with her usual acuity, which I suppose was a vital component of her success as a psychiatrist, ‘Did something else happen, Izzy?’

  ‘Yes – or rather, two things happened just as we hit the other car. One of them was that I briefly went back to Heaven, like I did after the first accident … and then I was right out of my body, looking down.’

  ‘So you went through the bright tunnel again?’ she asked, interested.

  ‘There wasn’t any tunnel this time, I was just momentarily enveloped by light and colour and a strange kind of music … it was lovely. But right before that, just as we struck the other car …’

  I tailed off, trying to frame the words for what I had experienced, and Daisy didn’t push me. Any more than she had when I’d arrived by taxi half an hour before in a distressed condition, and she’d merely greeted me with her usual, ‘Oh, there you are, Izzy! Come in,’ as if I was the most welcome and expected visitor in the world.

  She’d always made me feel that way, especially when I was convalescing with her after that first dreadful accident. It was during that stay, after a trip to the V&A Museum, that I’d developed the consuming interest in textiles that eventually enabled me to help other women escape from grinding poverty. If you looked, there seemed to be a reason for everything that happened in life, good or bad … and that thought brought me back full circle to what I needed to say.

  I looked up at her familiar apple-cheeked, wise face with its clever dark eyes. ‘It was the weirdest thing, Daisy, just as if time was a curtain that ripped open to let me slip through – because suddenly, I was there in the Range Rover on the night of the accident when Harry … when I …’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Daisy said, ‘because you had no recollection of even getting into the car, let alone subsequent events.’

  ‘So you think it was a memory?’

  ‘Possibly, because a sudden shock can bring back things the subconscious has hidden – though it can also create new “memories”,’ she gently suggested.

  ‘You mean, I might have imagined the scene I saw? But it seemed so real! We were going along the lane up towards the Green and the others, Harry, Cara and Simon, were all singing. They’d been celebrating their exam results and Harry wanted me to go back to Sweetwell Hall with them to a party, but I’d already told him I couldn’t. If I wasn’t home by ten, Judy would go down to the pub to look for me … and that’s the last real memory of that evening I have.’

  Aunt Debo, who had become my guardian after my mother’s early demise, had tended to lose track of my movements and the passing of time, while Judy, her best friend, who’d originally moved in to help with the childcare but never left, was more practical and firmly set the boundaries a teenager needed.

  ‘Judy was surprised you’d disobeyed her, but we knew Harry must have persuaded you. But to return to the flashback you had, if everyone was singing and happy, that was a good memory?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said, and though I think she guessed I was still holding something back, she didn’t press me. I changed tack.

  ‘I had another argument with Kieran on the phone last night and I’d decided things weren’t going to work out – or not the way he wanted them to – so I was going to have it out with him tomorrow, when he got back.’

  ‘You did seem unhappy about the way his parents were taking over your plans, last time we spoke.’

  ‘That was certainly part of it. Do you know, his mother had even started planning a huge wedding in Oxford, when I’d told her I’d always dreamed of a small one in the Halfhidden church.’

  ‘Well, Izzy, you certainly couldn’t have a big one in St Mary’s, because it can’t hold more than about thirty people at once, can it? And it’s your wedding, so you must have it where you want it.’

  ‘Or not at all. And there’s more. They’ve found us a house round the corner from theirs, which they think I’m going to put that legacy from my father into. Kieran can’t see any problem with any of that. In fact, he’s entirely failed to see my viewpoint at all, and last night after we argued he put the phone down on me!’

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear it isn’t working out, but it’s better to find out whether you’re entirely compatible before you get married, rather than afterwards,’ Daisy said. ‘If Kieran’s set on joining the family GP practice in Oxford, you’d definitely have to see a lot of his parents.’

  I shuddered. ‘I don’t even want to live in Oxford.’

  ‘It’s a very lovely place.’

  ‘I know, only it’s not my place.’ I tried to explain. ‘I know I wasn’t born in Lancashire, but despite what happened there, Halfhidden still feels like home and the one place where I truly belong. It … pulls me back.’

  ‘You were only about five when Debo and Baz Salcombe became an item and you all moved into Sweetwell Hall with him, so you probably don’t recall much before that.’

  ‘No, nothing at all. I think I remember Judy and I had our own suite in the Victorian wing of Sweetwell, where the housekeeper and her family live now, but mostly my memories are of after the affair finished, when we all moved to the Lodge.’

  ‘Debo does have the knack of staying best friends with her former lovers,’ Daisy said with a smile. ‘And it made sense to stay in the country, because by then she and Judy had got about eight or nine rescued dogs between them, way too many for town.’

  ‘Baz liked dogs, too,’ I said. ‘He never minded when Debo’s escaped and ran around the estate, or that she extended the kennels beyond the garden into the grounds.’

  ‘He was a very likeable, easy-going man,’ Daisy agreed, for she had got to know him on her frequent visits to the Lodge.

  I sighed sadly. ‘He was, and the nearest to a father figure I’ve ever had. I missed him so much after he went to live abroad …’

  Baz had been so broken by the loss of his only child that he’d shut up Sweetwell and gone to live permanently in his beachfront house in the Bahamas, leaving the housekeeper as caretaker and Dan Clew to look after the garden and keep an eye on the wooded grounds.

  Baz had rarely visited after that and never at times that coincided with my visits, though he and Debo had always remained friends – and occasionally, I suspected, more than friends.

  ‘Kieran absolutely idolises his father,’ I said, following this train of thought. ‘So he’s going to be a bit upset about the accident, though I don’t know if Douglas will tell him I refused to take the blame for it.’

  ‘If he does, since Kieran knows about your history, he’ll hardly be surprised about that. And if he truly loves you, he’ll be more concerned with how it’s affected you.’

  ‘I’m not at all sure he really does love me, and in any case, when push came to shove, he seemed quite prepared to override what I wanted to please his parents.’

  ‘It certainly sounds to me as if you t
wo at least need some breathing space apart,’ Daisy said. ‘Things will seem clearer then and you may even find that you do have a future together.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said doubtfully. ‘But if so, it definitely wouldn’t be in Oxford. And not only have I already used some of this legacy they seemed to have been counting on, I’ll probably have to bail Debo out with the rest.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think it will come to that. Debo does stagger from financial crisis to crisis, but she always manages to raise the money she needs from somewhere,’ she said, surprised. ‘I mean, for a start she can get as much modelling work as she wants and she often pops down to stay with me for various assignments.’

  Debo had been a famous model in the sixties and seventies, and even though she was now the wrong side of sixty, she was still much in demand. Tall, thin and elegant, with huge grey doe-eyes and cropped ash-blonde hair, she hadn’t changed much since her heyday. Judy always told me I looked like a miniature version of Debo, but with my father’s dark colouring and lack of height, though I think she was just being kind …

  ‘Debo hates leaving the dogs though, so if she’s been down a lot recently it shows how bad things have got – and this time there’s no Baz to come to the rescue,’ I pointed out. ‘She was devastated when he died so suddenly – not to mention the shock of finding out the whole estate had been left to some illegitimate son she’d never heard of!’

  ‘Actually, when she rang to tell me, the main shock seemed to be more that Baz must have had a fling with Fliss Gambol, an old enemy of hers from her early modelling days, even though it was before Debo took up with him,’ Daisy said. ‘Even worse, she’s always blamed Fliss for your mother’s death.’

  ‘Oh? In what way?’ I asked, puzzled. I knew from Debo that my mother had been sweet, but a bit of a wild child and died young from an accidental drug overdose. I was the result of a brief fling with a married American artist twice her age. Although he’d known about me, we’d had minimal contact until, to my surprise, he’d left me a little bit of money a few years ago. ‘Fliss Gambol was some sixties singer, wasn’t she?’