The Secret Hen House Theatre

by Helen Peters

But Lottie, still standing at the costume rail, put on her concentrating frown and said, “You know, what if Sam’s right?”

  “What?” said Hannah.

  “Maybe he would like the play. Maybe he’d be proud of you. Maybe, once he saw it, he’d think the theatre was a good thing.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Hannah. “Great idea. And what if he didn’t? What if we invite him and he goes ballistic and orders us to dismantle the theatre and put all his stuff back here? After all the work we’ve done, and the theatre looking so beautiful, and the judge coming on Saturday—”

  “But if we don’t invite him,” said Lottie, “and he sees the judge arrive and finds out what we’ve been doing behind his back, he might go even more ballistic and storm into the theatre and shut it all down on the actual day. We can’t risk that, can we?”

  Jo, who had been crouching down at the auditorium wall fixing a piece of sacking, suddenly put her fingers on her lips and hissed, “Sshh.”

  They looked at her in surprise. “What?” said Hannah.

  “Rustling,” she said softly. “Just outside. I think it’s a dog.”

  Everyone listened. There was a definite rustling outside. And now panting too. “It’s Tess,” whispered Jo. “She can smell us.”

  The panting turned to whining and the whining to scratching on the auditorium wall. A shout came from the direction of the track. “Tess! Tess! Come back here!”

  “Oh, no!” hissed Hannah, rigid with fear. “Dad’s going to find us!”

  Sam huddled into her side and clutched her arm.

  “What can we do?” asked Lottie. Her eyes darted around the theatre, but there was absolutely nowhere to hide and they all knew it.

  “Go away, Tess, go away!” hissed Jo.

  The whining and scrabbling grew more frantic.

  “Oh, no; oh, no,” whimpered Lottie. “He’s going to kill us!”

  “She can’t get in unless Dad opens the door,” whispered Hannah. “No one say a single word.”

  “Tess! Tess!” It was Dad’s voice from the field. “Come out of there at once! Where is that wretched dog?”

  Then they heard Adam’s voice. “I guess she’s stuck in all those brambles.”

  “Yeah, I’ll go in and see where she’s got to.”

  Frozen like statues, they heard the trampling of nettles and the cracking of brambles. Dad clearly had a stick and he was beating his way to the hen house with it.

  Hannah’s heart thumped against her chest so hard that it hurt.

  There was more slashing of brambles, and then Adam’s voice, much closer now. “Found her?”

  “There she is. You bad dog!” growled Dad. “What do you think you’re playing at?”

  He was right outside, less than an arm’s length from where the children sat. And here was the tramp, tramp, tramp of Adam’s feet too.

  Tess scrabbled at the wall again.

  Hannah held her breath. Please don’t find the door, Dad. Please, please, God, don’t let him come in.

  “What’s up with you?” Dad asked Tess. “Rats?”

  “What is this place?” asked Adam. “I never knew there was a shed here.”

  Dad cleared his throat before he answered. “Used to be a poultry house. Hasn’t been used for years. Come away from there, old girl. What a mess you are. Let’s take those burrs out of your coat, eh?”

  Jasper gave his head a vigorous shake. Jo fixed him with a stern look and put her finger on her lips.

  “So you’re not going to fight the rent review then?” asked Adam.

  “No.”

  “But it’s such a massive increase. I can’t believe he’s allowed to do it.”

  “Well, I’ve spoken to a lawyer and he reckons we wouldn’t win if we fought it. It’s a big increase, but it’s in line with the market. And I’ve no time for a battle. There’s enough to do here. Sit still, Tess, and leave that shed alone! You are a blessed nuisance, girl!”

  “You’re not really going to sell the cows, though, are you?”

  Hannah’s stomach churned. Sell the cows!

  Jo’s face turned white. Sam stared, huge-eyed, at Hannah, and opened his mouth to speak. Hannah put her hand over it and shook her head at him.

  “No choice. Got to pay the rent somehow.”

  “What about next year, though? How are you going to cope without the milk cheques?”

  “We’ll worry about that when we come to it,” said Dad in a tone Hannah knew meant the conversation was over. “Come on, Tess, we’ve got work to do.”

  No one moved or spoke as the footsteps and the rustling grew fainter. At last came the distant crunch, clomp, crunch of boots on tarmac. Hannah dropped her shoulders and breathed again.

  “Oh, my goodness, that was so close,” said Lottie. “I’ve never been so scared in my whole life.”

  “Hannah, Daddy won’t really sell the cows, will he?” asked Sam.

  “Of course not,” said Hannah. But she felt sick inside. Bad enough Dad selling machinery, but selling his animals!

  And when there was nothing left to sell, then what?

  “He can’t sell the cows,” said Jo. “It won’t be a farm without the cows. I don’t believe he really will.”

  “It just shows,” said Hannah, “that we really need to win this competition and give the money to Dad. We just have to make sure our play’s the best, that’s all.”

  “Yes, and wipe the smug smile off Miranda Hathaway’s face,” said Lottie. “It would be worth winning just for that.”

  At the end of the rehearsal Hannah walked up the track with Lottie. Wisps of white cloud laced the bright blue sky. A kestrel hovered overhead and birdsong poured from the hedgerows. Soon the meadows would be a mass of wild flowers again: birds-foot trefoil, clover, cowslips, buttercups. And her mother’s favourite, lady’s smock.

  Hannah took deep breaths of the fresh clean air. Then an image forced its way into her head: a cavalcade of lorries rumbling up the track, disgorging their loads of concrete over the fields, suffocating the grass and the flowers, burying the insects and starving the birds.

  She imagined the cows and pigs and sheep loaded on to trucks and taken off to market, bleating and squealing and groaning in a terrified, trampled mass. And she imagined the demolition ball swinging over her house: crashing through Mum’s bedroom, smashing up the kitchen. She saw it swing through Dad’s office, and the piles and piles of paper whirling and swirling through the yard, the bills and the time sheets and the letters and the journals, like a crazy paper blizzard. She saw the bulldozer crunch through her theatre, ripping up the roof and flattening the walls.

  And she heard in her head the roaring of the chainsaws, and the sickening crash as the ancient trees were felled.

  And then the silence. The silence of nothingness. Nothing but the silent screams of the fields as they lay buried alive under the hardening mass of concrete.

  She imagined what her father must be going through right now.

  And she felt the matchbox in her coat pocket.

  She could just tell him it was Jack’s matchbox, couldn’t she? She didn’t need to mention why the boys had been at the farm.

  Telling Dad who might have caused the fire wouldn’t save the farm. But it might just give him one less thing to worry about.

  And she owed him that, at least.

  Wednesday, two o’clock. The antiquated bus rattled and lurched towards Massingham. Hannah leaned across Lottie and rubbed the steamed-up window with the back of her hand.

  Still miles to go. She looked at her watch. “We’ll never make it by two thirty. We should have left earlier.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Lottie. “Antique dealers can’t be that busy. I’m sure it won’t matter if we’re ten minutes late.”

  The bus hiccuped to a stop again. An old man shuffled on, water dripping from his umbrella, and, behind him, two Year Ten boys from their school, heads down, saturated hoodies clinging to their backs. Hannah clutched the plastic bag on her lap more
tightly.

  Lottie was telling her something about Esmeralda’s last-act costume, which she had finished that morning, but Hannah had far too much on her mind to be able to pay attention.

  It was the right decision, wasn’t it? If Dad was planning to sell the cows at the next market – and Jo said the next market was in two weeks’ time – then they couldn’t wait for Sotheby’s to take four weeks to reply, could they? And that would only be the valuation. It might be weeks after that before the candlesticks were actually sold.

  No, they needed the money now. It was cows or candlesticks.

  And Dad surely wouldn’t be angry with them when he realised they had saved his cows.

  Lottie was still talking but Hannah had to lay her worries to rest. “Are you really sure this guy is honest? I mean, what if he gives us five hundred pounds for them and then he sells them for fifty thousand?”

  Lottie sighed. “Hannah, my mum’s known him for years. She’s bought and sold loads of stuff with him. She said his valuations are spot on.”

  “You didn’t tell her anything?”

  “Of course I didn’t. I just had to pretend to be really interested in antiques all yesterday evening.”

  “Thanks, Lottie. I am grateful.”

  “That’s OK. It was actually quite interesting. Did you know that…”

  Hannah tried to concentrate but Lottie’s mention of yesterday evening had sent her mind flashing back. How was she ever going to pluck up the courage to tell Lottie what she had done yesterday evening?

  If Lottie found out that Jack and Danny had burned the barn down, she would loathe Jack more than ever.

  If that was possible.

  And what if she started asking awkward questions? Lottie was all too capable of asking awkward questions.

  When they got off the bus in Massingham the weather had settled into a damp grey sulk. They walked down the high street under a low, leaden sky.

  As they crossed the bridge over the river, Lottie grabbed Hannah’s arm.

  “There it is!”

  She pointed at a black sign with curly gold lettering. It swung on an iron bracket above a pretty bay window. The sign said “Hugh Featherstone Antiques”.

  Hannah’s heart started to thump against her ribcage. Was it possible? Were they really going to walk out of this little shop with tens of thousands of pounds stuffed into their pockets? Oh, my goodness, what if they got mugged on the way home?

  Don’t be stupid. It would be a cheque, wouldn’t it?

  But what if the cheque got stolen? Or fell in a puddle?

  Lottie tugged at her arm. “Come on. Isn’t this exciting!”

  The first thing Hannah saw as they walked through the door was an enormous vase of lilies sitting in the middle of a huge polished table. Her nose filled with the smell of them.

  A wave of nausea swept over her. She turned and ran out of the door. She stood on the pavement, leaning against the wall of the shop, blinking back tears and breathing in the kind, anonymous smells of bus diesel, river water and hops from the brewery.

  Lottie followed her out. “What’s up? You’ve gone white. Are you ill?” She took a sharp breath. “Oh, lord, it’s the lilies, isn’t it?”

  The fact that Lottie remembered tipped Hannah over the edge.

  Everyone had sent lilies when her mother died. For weeks, the house had been full of that smell.

  Lottie hugged her until the sobs turned into gulps.

  “Are you OK now?”

  Hannah wiped her eyes with her sleeves. “I can’t go back in there.”

  “We’ve got to. We have to sell the candlesticks, don’t we? Imagine, we could walk out of here with a cheque for fifty thousand pounds! Look, I’ll go in and ask them to take the lilies away. I’ll get them to spray some air freshener around instead.”

  “How will you get them to do that?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  A few minutes later Lottie returned, grinning. “It reeks of Pledge in there now.” She lowered her voice. “I told him we’re the people with the valuable candlesticks, but we can’t come in because you’re massively allergic to lilies. One sniff and you go into catatonic shock.”

  Hannah smiled.

  “Come on,” said Lottie. “Let’s go.”

  This time it was the ticking of the clocks that Hannah noticed first. There were clocks everywhere. Grandfather clocks, wall clocks, mantelpiece clocks. Clocks with wooden cases, silver cases, black and gilt cases. Big clocks, small clocks, clocks with pendulums and clocks with pillars. Clocks with low, sonorous ticks and clocks with frantic staccato ticks, all ticking over each other, each with a different pitch and pace, all clamouring for attention like toddlers in a nursery school. How could anyone work here and not be driven mad?

  Hannah had expected the shop to be a kind of glorified jumble sale, but this was more like a miniature stately home. Elegant, ornate cupboards stood against the walls. The centrepiece of the shop was a very grand dining table where the lilies had stood. The surface, so highly polished that it shone like a mirror, reflected a vast crowd of silver: candlesticks, teapots, sugar bowls, cutlery, platters, photograph frames, all jostling for position, all taunting each other: I’m more important than you. I’m more valuable than you.

  “Told you he was a silver expert,” said Lottie.

  Hannah clutched the plastic bag more tightly to her chest. Suddenly she didn’t want to abandon her great-great-grandmother’s candlesticks, which had sat in pride of place on the sitting-room mantelpiece for all these years, to this ambitious, snooty throng of orphaned silver, valued for nothing more than their price tags.

  “What’s wrong?” whispered Lottie. “Can you still smell the … you know?”

  Hannah shook her head. Lottie would think she was mad if she told her what was going on in her mind. She turned away, towards the window. And then she gave a start.

  Oh, no.

  Not here. Not now. Not with Lottie there.

  Maybe they wouldn’t see her.

  Head down, Hannah moved away from the window towards the back of the shop. She pretended to be studying a chest of drawers, but she couldn’t resist a glance back out of the window.

  Through the misty panes, Danny Carr’s eyes met hers.

  Oh, no; oh, no. Why on earth had she turned round? Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  “I believe you have some candlesticks you’d like me to value?”

  Hannah looked up.

  A man had appeared behind the counter. A middle-aged man, slightly stooped, with faded, papery skin, dry, faded hair and a faded yellow jumper. He looked like he needed a good dusting and an airing in the sunshine.

  Maybe they had moved on. Hannah glanced out of the window again.

  No, they were still there. It was hard to tell through the steamed-up window, but it looked as though they were having some kind of argument.

  Please don’t let them come into the shop. Please.

  Lottie nudged Hannah hard. When Hannah looked at her, Lottie raised her eyebrows with a look that clearly said: snap out of it and let’s get down to business.

  Hannah cleared her throat and held out the plastic bag. It’s to save the cows, she made herself think.

  The man took the bag and disappeared into a back room.

  The shop door clattered open. Hannah’s stomach clenched into a ball.

  Lottie whipped her head around. From the look on her face Hannah knew it was them.

  She turned round.

  It was just Danny. And he looked murderous.

  Where was Jack? Hannah looked out of the window again. But there was no one there.

  “What are you—” Lottie started to say.

  But Danny pushed past her and planted himself squarely in front of Hannah.

  “You stinking grass,” he spat. His face was centimetres from hers. His breath stank of garlic. Hannah kept her head down and took a step backwards, her heart beating fiercely.

  “Hey!” said Lottie. “What’s
going on?”

  He ignored her. “You little grass,” he hissed at Hannah again. His hands were clenched into fists. “You stinking little grass.”

  “What on earth—” said Lottie.

  He shot his head round and thrust his jaw towards her face. “Back off, loser.”

  “Get lost, Danny,” said Lottie. “Or I’ll call the shopkeeper.”

  “Yeah, course you will. You’re both the same, aren’t you?”

  Lottie strode over to the counter.

  “Watch it,” Danny hissed into Hannah’s face. “We’ll get you back for this.”

  “Sure you will,” said Hannah, her heart thumping. “Like I’m scared of you, Danny Carr.”

  Danny contorted his mouth and spat at her. Hannah flinched and screwed her eyes shut. A gob of spit landed on her chin and saliva sprayed over her cheeks.

  “Ugh, you’re disgusting!” shrieked Lottie. “Get out!” She pulled a tissue from her coat pocket and handed it to Hannah. Hannah scrubbed at her face.

  Danny turned, wrenched the door open and walked out of the shop. Lottie watched him go. She turned to Hannah, wide-eyed. “What was that about? What have you done?”

  Hannah’s legs felt wobbly. She plonked herself down on an antique chair. She couldn’t tell Lottie. She couldn’t face another person going crazy at her.

  “Hannah, say something! What on earth is going on?”

  Hannah shook her head.

  “Tell me! What have you grassed Danny up about?”

  Hannah took a deep breath. “If I tell you, you have to promise not to say ‘I told you so’.”

  “OK. Just tell me.”

  “I found a matchbox outside the barn,” said Hannah, trying to keep her voice even. “It had Miranda’s name and phone number written on it. And when I was with Jack at the bus stop that day, he was holding the same matchbox.”

  Lottie gasped. “Jack set the barn on fire?”

  “I told Dad last night and he rang the police. The policewoman went round to their houses this morning.”

  Lottie was staring at Hannah, open-mouthed. “I can’t believe he burned your dad’s barn down. Why didn’t you tell me? That is unbelievable. What an evil thing to do. What’s going to happen to him?”