by Shaun Baines
“Who’s going to listen to us?” Holly asked. “Men like you stack the deck long before you play your hand. That’s what this was about. You turn up here, falling out of the sky like the Second Coming and expect us to worship at your feet because we have no other choice. Well, we do.”
“No, you don’t,” Mr Masterly said. His face burned red and his unnatural teeth ground together. The engine of his car growled and Mr Masterly patted the bonnet. The Californian sun was washed from his face and his eyes darkened.
“What if I leave and take my investment with me?” Mr Masterly asked. “The estate will go to ruin and Black Rock Manor will fall down brick by brick. This little village will starve and you’ll starve with it.”
Mr Masterly dropped into the car and the Rover navigated around the debris of the microlight. The villagers watched it disappear around a bend, unsure of themselves, unsure if anything had been resolved.
One by one they drifted away, back to their homes and an uncertain future.
But Derek stayed, staring at the crumpled microlight, idly kicking a buckled wheel.
“This is our home,” Holly said, wandering to his side. “I can’t let him turn it into a bloody log flume. I had to say something.”
“I’m barely hanging on,” Derek said. “I need this.”
Bent over, Derek reached into the cockpit, pulling out a brochure from a pile on the floor. He offered it to Holly who flicked through the pages. It was filled with pictures of theme parks Arcadia Leisure had built. Smiling families enjoyed cable car rides while shiny-faced employees laughed for the camera.
“Everyone has something here worth staying for,” Derek said, “but you’ve taken away my last reason.”
“I can make this better,” Holly said, a lump in her throat.
“I saw you holding hands with the gamekeeper.”
The cloud on the horizon grew into a curling mass promising rain. Holly couldn’t take her eyes off it. The cloud was dense and heavy. If she turned from it and looked into the face of her husband, Holly would cry.
“Me and Callum,” she said quietly. “It’s not what you think.”
“How would you know?” Derek asked. “Whenever we talk, we shout. You don’t know what I think.”
The first drops of rain parachuted to the ground, pinging against the broken aircraft.
“Have you ever wondered about Callum?” Derek continued. “The estate has been empty for years. Who’s paying him to stay? Where is he getting his money from?”
“He works on the estate out of loyalty,” Holly said.
“And who’s bought that loyalty?” Derek asked, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Because we all have to live somehow.”
Kicking his heels, Derek began a slow march back home without looking back.
Holly wrung the glossy brochure in her hands, making the pages squeak. She needed to chase after him, but didn’t move past the wreckage. What would she say if she caught up? That she and Callum were friends? They were. That holding hands was a friendly gesture of solidarity? It was. Holly loved Derek, but the cracks in their marriage were widening.
Callum was there for her. He was kind and supportive. She searched the village green and found him leaning on a lamppost, his arms folded. The crowd had all but gone and he had remained, watching her with careful eyes.
Derek’s questions came back to her and Holly began to wonder.
How had Callum survived all these years?
Chapter Twenty
The cloud that had gathered over Little Belton delivered on its promise. Rain pattered against the windscreen of Holly’s car and her wipers danced left and right to shoo it aside. The road drummed under her rolling wheels. She sat straight, two hands on the wheel, listening to one of Mrs Winnow’s spoken word tapes, but it did little to distract her.
At first, she had looked for Derek, scanning the side of the road, hoping to find him before he got too wet. She’d wanted to give him a lift home, to talk with him over the kitchen table. Her stomach churned as she’d recalled their argument and she’d wondered how to put it right. Deciding they probably needed some space before they commenced Round Two, Holly gave up her search and urged her car down a rugged dirt track.
Derek hadn’t disappeared from her thoughts entirely. His parting shot about Callum still rung in her ears. How had Callum survived without an income? It was a valid question. Holly didn’t feel comfortable contemplating it. The people of Little Belton did what they could to survive and Callum would be no different.
“It’s none of my business,” Holly said, chewing on a fingernail.
She indicated left and slid her car along the ruts of a waterlogged road. There were bigger questions to consider, Holly thought as she splashed through brackish water. She brought the car to a stop under a sycamore tree, switching off Mrs Winnow mid-sentence. Alone, pressing into her seat, she stared into the face of Black Rock Manor.
It was the Masterlys who commanded the majority of her brain space. They were planning to take over the village. The crashing microlight was a spectacle designed to dazzle the residents, to seduce them into silence. Holly had been there to ask questions and it had quickly become apparent the Masterlys weren’t prepared for them.
Holly folded her arms. She almost felt justified in spying on their new home.
A movement caught her eye and she squinted through the rain-washed windscreen. Unable to see, Holly quietly opened the car door and stepped outside. Water ran in rivulets down her face.
She pulled up the collar of her coat and waited.
There. In the window. A shadow.
She treaded carefully through the overgrown grass. Her boots squelched through the mud as she made her way to the door. Holly paused, her fingers grazing the handle.
Holly needed to find the returning squatter, but what if the Masterlys had decided on an inspection of the manor? She peered around the grounds. There were no vehicles. While Mr Masterly seemed the outdoor type, Mrs Masterly did not. Holly couldn’t imagine her trekking through the rain to spend time in a house without heat or electricity.
Holly straightened. What if it was Nancy who was inside the manor? She could be hurt. She could be trapped. She could have been kidnapped.
Sucking in a breath, Holly slowly turned the handle. It was locked, clunking to a stop. She froze, hoping the noise hadn’t alerted the intruder to her presence. Minutes ticked by to the sound of Holly’s heart thudding in her chest, but no one came to the door.
Callum had returned the keys to Mr Salting. Whoever was in there had used a different means and Holly decided to do the same.
She edged along the wall to the secret entrance Callum had discovered on his last visit. With a shove, the door clicked open and swung toward her on a spring. Holly climbed inside, finding herself in the pantry. Light spilled through a gap in the door at the other side and she inched closer.
The hallway was filled with dust and echoes. Holly entered on her tiptoes, every rustle of her clothing sounding as if they were made from crisp packets. With weather like this, the squatter would have been forced to seek shelter. This could be her chance to find out what had happened Nancy.
Her face froze at the sight of the manor keys hanging from the lock of the main door. The wooden duck keyring was clearly visible. The only people Mr Salting would have given them to was…
Holly heard Mr Masterly’s voice from a room up ahead.
“They don’t want us here,” he shouted.
“They’re scared of change.” It was Mrs Masterly, her voice like silk, warm and soothing.
“Everywhere we go, it’s the same,” her husband said. “We have to drag them kicking and screaming into the future.”
“I’ll take care of it, darling.”
“The wheels have already started spinning,” Mr Masterly said. “They’ll be crushed by them if they get in the way. It will be another Eureka moment.”
Holly’s confusion was matched by the ice in her veins. The Masterlys we
re about to reveal their real intentions in coming to Little Belton. They might even reveal what they did to Nancy. She doubted they’d take kindly to her eavesdropping, but it was up to Holly to find out the truth.
As quietly as she could, Holly rummaged through her coat for a notebook, but her movement attracted attention.
Nancy’s goat appeared from the shadows. It wore a studded leather collar and a lead frayed at one end. The goat wagged its tail, trotting toward her, its gnarled teeth arranged into a smile.
“Not now,” Holly whispered.
The goat cantered in a circle.
“Be quiet,” Holly said, pressing a finger to her lips.
The goat raised its head to bray.
“No, no, no,” Holly said and ran to the pantry. She couldn’t be seen by the new owners, but neither could she leave the goat to wreak further damage. Callum would never forgive her. Searching the shelves, Holly found the last remaining food item. She twisted off the lid from the pickled cucumbers, her eyes watering at the odour. With a finger and thumb, she fished out a grey lump and waved it at the goat, whose nostrils twitched at the tang.
“Let’s take you back to Old Jack, eh?” Holly said through gritted teeth. “Maybe find a chain to keep you from wandering off.”
The hum of conversation in the far room stopped and Holly worried at her lip. Backing further into the pantry, she wiggled the cucumber enticingly.
“Come on, you stupid thing,” she said. “I’ll see you in a pie if you get us caught.”
Holly counted the goat’s hesitant steps toward her.
The smell from the pickle jar was over-powering and Holly wished she’d closed the lid, but Nancy’s goat seemed to like it. Its lower jaw worked in circles, anticipating its ugly meal.
The goat wedged its head into the dark room.
One more step, Holly thought. Just one more.
The goat scuttled inside and Holly yanked the door closed. The goat hollered, kicking out its hind legs, banging on the door. Holly launched forward, snatching the frayed lead as the goat thundered past her. It threw itself through the secret entrance and she staggered after it.
A gloom had settled over the manor grounds. Holly and the goat froze at the sight of the Rover. The Masterlys’ driver was hidden behind tinted windows, but the Rover’s headlights illuminated the grounds in a cutting arc.
Hurrying to the undergrowth, Holly and the goat crawled through the waxy leaves of a rhododendron, finding a space to hide.
The Masterlys left the manor, jogging to the warmth of their car. Their faces were stern and Mr Masterly spoke rapidly into his mobile phone. He jumped inside, but Mrs Masterly hovered by the door. Raindrops flattened her hair and soaked her designer clothes, but she seemed in no mood to rush. Her eyes scanned the overgrown garden, settling briefly on Holly’s hiding spot.
There was no way Mrs Masterly could see her, but Holly eased further into the darkness just in case.
With a flick of her hair, Mrs Masterly abandoned her search and climbed into the car.
Holly waited until they had driven out of sight before she broke cover, dragging the goat with her. The mud was sodden and treacherous, and she was careful not to fall. The goat put up no resistance and Holly secured it on the back seat.
The goat settled immediately, closing its yellow eyes to sleep.
Holly jumped behind the wheel and reversed out of her hiding spot by the tree.
There was something about how Mrs Masterly had consoled her husband that made Holly want to speak to Callum. The Lady of the Manor appeared as cool as a pickled cucumber and Holly wondered where the true power lay. Mr Masterly lacked the unwavering presence of his wife and his wife worried Holly.
Spinning the car into the right direction, she ploughed it through a puddled ditch and onto a tarmacked road, running the Masterlys’ conversation through her head.
One part stood out.
They’ll be crushed if they get in the way, Mr Masterly had said and Holly’s knuckles blanched white on the steering wheel.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Why are we heading to Amble?” Holly asked from the passenger seat.
“You’ll see,” Callum said.
Holly had recounted her adventure at the manor the moment she’d leapt into Callum’s Defender. He’d listened patiently, but aside from the odd nod, there was no indication the words were sinking in.
He was driving with narrowed eyes fixed to the road.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Holly asked.
“You know what I’m going to say,” Callum said. “I’m going to say, you shouldn’t have gone on your own. That you should have waited for me and then, you’re going to say, I don’t need a chaperone and I’ll say, there are unknown dangers and then we’ll bicker about it for the next five miles. So why don’t we pretend we’ve already had the argument and simply enjoy our journey?”
Holly glanced at Callum from the corner of her eye. “Spoilsport. At least say something about what I discovered.”
Callum steered them around a tractor, holding his nose against the smell. “That goat keeps on showing up, doesn’t it?”
“I took it back to Old Jack,” Holly said. “He’s in a bad way. His outburst at the village green was so out of character.”
A road sign told them Amble was three miles away, seemingly galvanising Callum’s thoughts.
“When Nancy takes her goat for a walk,” he said, “I think she takes it to the manor. As dumb as goats are, they can be pretty smart. It’s learned how to get there through repetition.”
“It’s an empty house,” Holly said, keen to discuss what had happened at the manor. “I don’t see the appeal.”
Callum shrugged. “It’s beautiful in its own way and it has a lot of history.”
Holly remembered her parents talking about the manor when she was a child. There had been midnight dances and fundraising raffles. It had hosted the annual Burning of the Dancing Man, a local tradition similar to Guy Fawkes night with fewer fireworks and more flat beer. The manor had been a focal point for the village, but when the Wentworths left, it wasn’t theirs any more. It was a painful reminder of what they once had.
“There’s a link between Nancy and Black Rock Manor,” Holly said, watching the scenery shrink into town buildings, “but I don’t know what. Amble seems like a day trip we don’t need right now.”
“It’s the closest library to Little Belton. If there’s any kind of link to be found, we’ll find it there.”
Amble had grown around a port in the North Sea where the region’s coal had been shipped to the rest of the UK. When that died, Amble reinvented itself. A few fishing boats remained to stock Amble’s seafood restaurants and by sheer willpower, a tourist industry was born.
Holly stood outside of the Defender by a wind-swept beach. A family of three were being sandblasted as they ate a picnic on the dunes. The mother protected her young child under a Visit Britain beach towel while the father gamely picked grit out of his ham sandwiches.
“It’s no wonder Mr Masterly is as rich as he is,” Holly said, folding her arms. “If you can persuade tourists to a place like this, imagine what you can do with a rollercoaster?”
Holly and Callum walked along the town’s narrow pavements, stepping into the road whenever the path became blocked. The air tasted of salt from the sea and vinegar from the fish shops. They passed a wool shop with yellow cellophane over the window. A man stood in the doorway of an empty ironmongers, smoking a cigarette, watching them through puffs of blue smoke.
Holly nodded at him as they passed and he gave her a wave.
The Amble Library and Salon were on Haddock Street. It was a red brick building with a glass revolving door as an entrance. Inside the foyer, Holly stood with her hands on her hips, reading the signs taped to the wall. One arrow pointed to the library.
The other pointed in the opposite direction.
“Why is there a hairdresser in a library building?” she asked.
<
br /> “Because the sandwich shop went bust,” Callum said. “It’s a way of generating enough money to keep the library open.”
The smell of peroxide made Holly’s nose twitch. “Maybe it’s time you got all that hair cut off,” she said.
Callum’s hands went to his head in fright and he scurried into the library. Holly picked up a price list for later.
The library was as quiet as she expected. An elderly librarian was bent over a desk, half-moon glasses perched on his bulbous nose. He was too engrossed in a book to acknowledge their presence, but pointedly turned a page at their entrance. There were no other books in the library and no shelves to put them on. They were greeted by a circular room edged with computers capable of accessing the internet.
“Where are all the books?” Holly asked.
“This is the new library,” Callum said. “The old library is at the wool shop on Grafton Street.”
Holly and Callum nudged their chairs together.
“I guess we start looking?” Callum asked.
Holly double clicked the mouse. “Yes, but for what?”
For the next hour, their heads buzzed with the hum of the computer. It appeared Black Rock Manor had yet to enter the digital age. There was nothing on its history they couldn’t have found by asking the Little Belton residents. Created with coal money, the manor had been standing for over a century and a half. Generations of Wentworths had passed through its doors, living there and governing the mines.
“I knew that,” Callum said.
Holly chewed the inside of her cheek and searched the Wentworth name. She found them all over the globe, from the Wentworths of Kent who ran a costume hire business to a Wentworth in Melbourne, Australia whose Twitter handle was CrazyCatfish.
“Not much of a journalist, am I?” Holly typed on the keyboard, her fingers striking the keys so loudly, the librarian silenced her with a tut.
“You are a journalist,” Callum said.
Holly held her head in her hands. “You don’t have to try and make me feel better.”
“No, I mean, you write for a newspaper,” Callum said. “You must be able to search for old stories from the Herald.”
