The House of Hopes and Dreams

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘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’s where 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’re interested 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.’

  ‘Or trails,’ 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.

  ‘That may have given them the idea …’ admitted Lulu. ‘There is a bit of free licence, in the way of ghostly goings-on in Halfhidden.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘I’m all for a bit of imagination.’

  ‘On the way to the farm, the visitors can make a small diversion over a stile and across a field to an outcrop of rocks where the Mossby Worm used to hang out,’ Cam continued. ‘Some kind of dragon.’

  ‘Every village should have one,’ Carey said gravely.

  ‘Unfortunately, the new trail is a dead end at the moment,’ Lulu said, ‘so the visitors would have to walk back the way they came. But there used to be a way from the farm track down to Mossby, though it hasn’t been used for a long time, so I wrote to Mr Revell, asking if he might be interested in being the next destination on the ghost trail.’

  ‘I bet that went down like a lead balloon,’ Carey said. ‘My uncle seemed to prefer living like a hermit, and under sufferance only let a couple of coach parties a year have a look at the old part of the house.’

  ‘Yes, he told me that in no uncertain terms! It was such a pity, because I know there’s a real ghost legend there. And if people will be able to visit Mossby, then they could carry on down the drive and along the road back here afterwards.’

  ‘I wrote twice to Carey’s uncle soon after I moved to Lancashire, asking for permission to view some stained glass in the Arts and Crafts part of the house, which I had a particular interest in, but he refused me, too,’ I said.

  ‘Never mind, Angelique, you can drool over the Jessie Kaye windows as much as you like now,’ said Carey.

  ‘Might you be interested in making Mossby part of the ghost trail, then?’ Lulu asked him hopefully.

  ‘It’s a possibility, because I need to make the place pay its own way. I already have plans to turn the renovations into a new TV series, a bit like my old one, but on a much bigger scale.’

  ‘That sounds like fun,’ Lulu said. ‘We loved your cottage series, didn’t we, Cam?’

  He nodded. ‘The new series, with that actor bloke presenting, just isn’t going to be the same. People liked watching you get stuck in and work, not ponce about waffling about architecture.’

  ‘That’s what I liked doing, and I don’t mind being filmed working on the house, but I don’t want to open the Arts and Crafts part to the public, because it’s my home, after all.’

  ‘Some places on the ghost trail open only from Easter to late September,’ Cam said. ‘That’s when Lulu’s Haunted Holidays and Weekends run. There aren’t so many visitors the rest of the year.’

  ‘The ghosts are in the Elizabethan bit, too, Carey,’ I pointed out. ‘And you could rope off the parts of the grounds that you didn’t want people to wander down on opening days.’

  ‘Good idea. I wouldn’t want them drowning themselves in the lake, or getting brained by a falling rotten tree branch in the woods,’ he said. ‘And I suppose the house only needs to open part of the week, too.’

  ‘Thursday to Monday, say two till four in the afternoon, to get the long weekenders?’ I suggested. ‘And Mrs Danvers could show people round and sell them postcards and souvenirs.’

  ‘Mrs Danvers?’ repeated Cam.

  ‘She’s Mrs Parry really; that’s just a silly joke,’ Carey explained.

  ‘She and her husband live in the Lodge. He gardens and she used to housekeep for Carey’s uncle.’

  ‘We know them by sight, but they don’t come to the pub,’ Lulu said.

  ‘You’ll both have to come and
see the Elizabethan wing,’ Carey suggested. ‘The main ghost seems to be a seventeenth-century one, Lady Anne Revell, who hangs out in the haunted bedchamber, and there’s a family legend that if the stained-glass window she had made is ever removed, some sort of doom will fall on the family.’

  ‘It’s a very unusual window for its time anyway,’ I enthused. ‘Well worth seeing.’

  ‘The first thing Angel’s going to do when her workshop is up and running is mend the Lady Anne window, because a bird flew into it,’ Carey told them.

  ‘Reluctantly, because it should really go to a specialist glass conservator.’

  ‘No way! I’m definitely not risking the family curse. I feel I’m dicing with death just having it taken to the workshop.’

  ‘Is it badly damaged?’ asked Cam.

  ‘Some of the small panes at the top are cracked and one shattered. It might be a bit tricky preserving as much as possible of the original.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know where to start,’ Cam said, so I described some of the techniques that were used to conserve and repair old glass.

  ‘Couldn’t you just stick the fragments of the original panels to a piece of clear glass, with resin?’ he suggested, interested. ‘I’ve seen whole windows made like that in churches – appliqué glass, they call it, don’t they?’

  ‘They do, and it had a real vogue at one time. The effect could be quite stunning, but there turned out to be a drawback. When the windows were exposed to outside temperatures, the glass and the resin tended to expand and contract at different rates. It wasn’t unusual for pieces of glass to drop off and fall on the congregation.’

  ‘Bit of a drawback,’ Lulu said, laughing. ‘Maybe the old techniques are best!’

  ‘They’re certainly what I prefer to work with. I know a lot of glass conservators use resin these days, but even the best yellows after a time.’

  Carey had been lost in thought but now suddenly exclaimed, as one seeing a vision of Paradise: ‘You’ve got broadband!’

  ‘Yes, all of Halfhidden has it now,’ Cam said.

  ‘I wonder if it could extend to Mossby? If I’m stuck with dial-up much longer, I’ll go stark, staring mad.’

  ‘Talk to the people at Moel Farm – they’re about to get it, too,’ suggested Lulu, and then our table in the restaurant was ready, so we swapped phone numbers and went in, feeling we’d made new friends and opened up some interesting possibilities.

  On our return to London I threw myself back into my work and, most particularly, into my ideas for the Mossby hall panels. I was pleased with the final design, which featured the roses so beloved of Miss Revell, and I had already sought out a plantsman specializing in these blooms, who had dispatched to her what he assured me was an unusual rose, as a thank you for her hospitality. To me, it had looked like a small bundle of thorny twigs, but I was told this is the most propitious time of year for the planting of roses.

  Mr Revell was not long in following us back to London and approving my designs … and that was not all: to my total surprise I found myself caught up in a dizzying, intoxicating, whirlwind courtship, which ended with his asking Father for my hand in marriage.

  My normally logical thought processes deserted me and so, I fear, did my common sense. I had fallen in love with Ralph, as I now called him, but yet I also loved my work and knew that I could not be truly happy unless I was engaged in it.

  However, when I explained my feelings to Ralph, I found he perfectly understood me, for he immediately suggested that he turn the disused small mill at Mossby into a workshop. What is more, he promised to have it ready by the time we married in the New Year, if Father would lend him some of his men to set it up.

  He told me it was to be my wedding present and I felt truly I had found a soulmate. We had been friends first and out of that had grown love.

  If I occasionally felt that what was happening was quite unreal, or that I couldn’t bear to leave London, my friends and especially Father’s workshop, I also felt swept up in the train of something pulling me inexorably along, aided by Aunt Barbara’s enthusiasm for the match.

  Miss Revell sent me a chilly, formal note saying how delighted she would be to welcome me to the family and thanking me for her gift.

  It was evident that it would take more than the present of a few roses to make her love me like a sister.

  20

  Good Will

  On my way to breakfast next morning I went into the nursery to check out the stained glass Carey had mentioned the previous evening and found the top panels of the windows glazed with charming scenes from Aesop’s fables: ‘The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse’, ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’ and ‘The Lion and the Mouse’. There was a beautifully worked embroidered hanging on the same theme, too.

  I went down the backstairs to the kitchen and found Carey leaning on to the long table, doing leg exercises, like a ballet dancer limbering up for Swan Lake.

  Fang was sitting upright in his basket watching him with an expression of faint astonishment.

  My hand delved into my bag for my phone, but Carey said evenly, ‘If you film me doing this and put it on social media, I’ll kill you.’

  ‘Just checking for messages,’ I said quickly. ‘Anyway, I’m not on social media and you know I wouldn’t do a thing like that!’

  Carey stood upright and stretched himself. ‘There, that’s the last one. Some of them you can do lying flat, so I get those over with before I get up in the morning.’

  ‘Good idea,’ I said, then began rummaging in the fridge to see what there might be for breakfast. As I buttered toast and Carey poached eggs, he told me that his mother had called him early, waking him up.

  ‘Mum has even less idea than I have about the time difference between wherever she is in the States and here. She’s on location somewhere.’

  ‘She didn’t say where?’

  ‘I’m not sure she knew.’

  When her husband died, Carey’s mother had reverted back to being Lila Carey – which is where he got his Christian name from – and was now based permanently in the States, co-starring with her best friend, Marcie, in the long-running cosy crime TV series.

  ‘I told Mum about Julian and that you’d moved in here. She sends you her love and says she hopes you’ll stop me doing anything stupid.’

  ‘Fat chance,’ I said, watching him neatly deposit a poached egg in the centre of each rectangle of toast. ‘How did she feel about your inheriting Mossby?’

  ‘Surprised, but pleased. She’s dying to come over and see it, but she can’t till the new series of The Little Crimes is in the can. When she does, she’ll probably bring Marcie with her.’

  I liked Marcie, who was tall, slim and just as sassy as the character she played, while Lila had grown laid-back and comfortably plump over the years.

  ‘Eat up, because Mr Wilmslow will be here soon,’ Carey advised me.

  ‘Have you fed Fang?’ I asked. ‘Only he’s looking at me ravenously.’

  ‘Ages ago. I’m thinking of taking shares in that upmarket and overpriced dog food he favours.’

  ‘You’ll have to keep him out of the way when Mr Wilmslow arrives. I should think biting a solicitor would be a really bad move.’

  ‘Biting anyone is a really bad move. He’s coming at half past nine and he’s the punctual type, so we can take him into the small sitting room. Fang hasn’t learned to open the baize door yet.’

  ‘It swings, but I think it might be too heavy for him. I’ll make coffee and bring it through when Mr Wilmslow’s here. And by the way,’ I added, ‘I had a quick look at the nursery windows and I’m not entirely sure, but I think they might also be early Jessie Kaye: they’re certainly beautifully made. I’ll have a better look later, when there’s more light.’

  When the solicitor arrived I gave him and Carey time for some private discussion before taking the coffee in.

  Mr Wilmsow stood up politely to shake hands, saying he’d been hearing all about me and my plans for t
he workshop.

  Carey knew all my secrets, so I sincerely hoped not …

  The solicitor was a pleasant man who probably wasn’t as old as his manner suggested. His face was plumply wrinkled, much like a good-quality prune, and his eyes were a soft brown.

  ‘We’ve been talking about my will, Angelique,’ Carey said cheerfully. ‘Do you remember I said that last time we were just discussing a draft codicil leaving Mossby to Ella, I heard a noise outside the door and I’m sure she was trying to listen in?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Your uncle always suspected that she snooped whenever she had the opportunity,’ said Mr Wilmslow. ‘He kept the door to the muniment room locked except when the cleaners went in, and he had the key of his roll-top desk on his watch chain.’

  Carey said, ‘She won’t be hanging about this time, because the back door’s bolted and, anyway, Fang would bark at her.’

  ‘She does creep in very quietly, though,’ I pointed out. ‘Remember yesterday when she suddenly appeared in the kitchen while we were talking? She could have been there for a while, before Fang started growling.’

  ‘I believe she has only the back door key – and those to the Elizabethan wing, of course,’ Mr Wilmslow said. ‘She spends a lot of time there. Your uncle said she had a fixation with it.’

  ‘He could be right,’ agreed Carey. ‘But she can’t get into this part of the house that way, because the door from the muniment room into the old part is locked on this side, as is the one from the turret upstairs into Lady Anne’s bedchamber.’

  I thought Ella could have lifted the bunch of spare house keys off the hook any time, and had them copied, but I said nothing. I probably have a nasty, suspicious mind.

  ‘After our last meeting, you decided to think further about making a new will entirely, instead of adding a codicil. Have you come to any decision?’ asked the solicitor.