The Various Read Free Page B

the hallway where Phoebe lay. The old spaniel raised her head slowly and gazed at Uncle Brian half expectantly. Midge thought that she hardly looked capable of a daily two-hour hike.
    ‘Well, to be honest,’ said Uncle Brian, rather sheepishly, ‘I usually stroll over the fields to the Crown at Withney Ham with the old gal. Have a couple of games of crib and head for home around three, half-three . Keeps us both sane. Of course,’ he added, a rather alarming thought coming into his head, ‘if you’re likely to be worried – about being here on your own for a couple of hours I mean – then I can always scrub round it. We only go for the company, don’t we, Phoebs?’ The dog raised herself into a half sitting position, waiting for a more definite signal than simply the mention of her name.
    ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Midge, for what seemed like the umpteenth time that morning. ‘I feel really safe here. Anyway, I’ve got my mobile. I could always ring if I needed to.’
    Uncle Brian looked relieved, if slightly guilty. ‘Well, come and have a look at your room anyway,’ he said. He stepped around Phoebe and led the way up the narrow wooden stairs, turning right at the landing when he reached the top.
    The room was a revelation. In keeping with the rest of the property, Midge had expected bare walls, bare floorboards and maybe an old iron bed. This room looked as if it belonged in a hotel brochure. There was an en suite shower and loo, matching materials on the quilt and curtains (which were swagged and fastened back to the walls with silk cords), a jug-kettle and teapot on the bedside cabinet – which also had its own little curtains. Everything looked clean, neat and impersonal. Midge was so surprised, she wanted to laugh.
    ‘It looks like a motel or something,’ she couldn’t help saying.
    ‘Thank you,’ said Uncle Brian, taking that as a compliment . ‘I was going into the bed-and-breakfast business at one stage.’ He chuckled. ‘This room was as far as I got.’
    Midge dumped her carrier bags on the divan bed (pink velour headboard and frilly-edged pillows) and decided she liked the room after all. It looked so silly and frivolous, plonked in the middle of the tumbledown chaos which was the rest of Mill Farm – like a wedding hat on a scarecrow – and Uncle Brian was obviously so proud of it, that she made up her mind to love it. ‘It makes me feel like I’m really on holiday,’ she said.
    ‘Good,’ said Uncle Brian. He pulled open the wardrobe door. ‘Look. Coat hangers and everything.’
    Midge wandered over to the window and looked out over the ravaged farm buildings to the sunny landscape beyond. To her left, the land climbed steeply up to a ridge, a long hill crested with a dense mass of trees. The hill was separate from the area of woodland they had driven through on their way to Mill Farm. It rose from the surrounding Levels like an island, or the humped back of some great beast, the thick forestation growing like tufted fur along its spine.
    Uncle Brian stooped slightly and looked over her shoulder as she gazed at the tangled horizon. ‘Ah yes, The Wild Wood,’ he said, and glanced at her. ‘We river-bankers don’t go there very much, you know.’
    Midge laughed, recognizing her cue instantly, ‘Aren’t they very
nice
people there, then?’ she said.
    ‘I
thought
you’d have probably read that one,’ said Uncle Brian. He looked up at the dark dense trees. ‘You’ll find this hard to believe, but I’ve never actually been in there. It was impossibly overgrown, even when we were children. The brambles and nettles are so thick around the edge – and all the way in, for all I know – that you’d need a bulldozer to get through it. I remember Chris and I making a pretty determined effort on one particular occasion. Or rather, I was determined and I’d dragged Chris along with me. We . . . well, we managed to get about three yards in, I think. Scratched, stung, ripped to