Creature Comforts. Trisha Ashley

as one or two latecomers arrived and slipped into the back row, and when I turned round for a quick peek, I spotted a familiar dark chestnut head that could only belong to Rufus Carlyle. Dan Clew was sitting next to him.

      Lulu walked to the front of the hall, looking horribly nervous. Her ex really had dented her self-confidence and I wasn’t sure the old Lulu would ever totally bounce back, but I hoped she would. If someone tells you for years that you’re useless and ugly and no other man would look at you, it must be like water dripping onto a stone and wearing it away.

      Everyone was still chatting, but Tom Tamblyn, who was sitting at the end of the front row, rose to his feet, his shock of once-flaxen hair framing his face like a silvery halo, and held up his hands for silence.

      ‘Quieten down, you lot,’ he shouted without ceremony. ‘Let’s give the lass a chance to speak her piece.’

      ‘Thanks, Tom,’ she said gratefully.

      ‘Yay! Go, Lulu!’ I called and she gave me an uncertain half-smile, then stepped forward in front of the flip chart.

       Chapter 8: Haunting

      ‘First of all, a warm welcome, everyone, and especially to our newcomers,’ Lulu said, looking round the Hut, and then I think she must have caught Rufus’s eye, because she blinked and seemed to lose the thread for a moment.

      Then she turned and flipped back the top sheet of the chart on the stand to reveal, in large print, ‘POINT ONE: INCREASED VISITOR ATTRACTIONS’.

      ‘Right, I’ll begin by outlining my plan, which I’ve already discussed individually with those it would most directly affect. Basically, it’s a scheme to bring greatly increased visitor numbers to the whole valley and, with them, more money and employment. Once I’ve finished, I’ll be very interested to hear any suggestions, or answer questions, and there’ll be refreshments.’

      ‘Our Myra’s marmalade cake,’ I heard Jonas pipe up with satisfaction, and someone shouted, ‘Hurray!’

      ‘As most of you know,’ Lulu carried on, ignoring these asides, ‘the village was once much more prosperous, especially during the Victorian era, when there was a great enthusiasm for spas and that kind of thing. Day trippers travelled for miles to Halfhidden, to drink the waters. That’s why the pub was called the Spa Hotel until recently, and I’ve discovered there was once a tea garden further up from the Green, at the Old Mill.’

      ‘That’s right,’ called Hannah Blackwell, who lived there. ‘The old open-fronted glass veranda is still as it was then, but they had tables all over the lawn, too, when it was fine.’

      ‘Yes, there’s a picture of people taking tea on the Mill lawn among the copies of early photographs I’ve pinned to the board near the door, and others showing crowds of visitors walking up the path to the Spring from what was then the Spa Hotel, or picnicking by the waterfall near the alpine nursery.’

      ‘My father put a gate across the path to the falls after the Saxon Hoard was discovered, to keep away people trying to dig for more, so it’s much more overgrown than in the photos,’ said Brandon Benbow, who with his family ran the Summit Alpine Nursery. ‘The gorse and brambles soon take over.’

      ‘There are still plenty of visitors to the Lady Spring in the summer, including some of the people staying at the pub on Haunted Weekend breaks,’ Lulu said. ‘I think they’re mostly looking for Howling Hetty, after seeing the skull behind the bar and hearing the story. And it was while I was trying to think of a way of extending those Haunted Weekends into complete week-long Haunted Holidays that I suddenly saw how that could potentially benefit the whole community.’

      ‘I don’t really see how,’ said Tom Tamblyn, ‘though I’m all for it if you can.’

      Lulu flipped another page on the chart to reveal, ‘POINT TWO: MORE GHOSTS’.

      ‘We already have enough spectral goings-on at the pub to keep our visitors happy for a weekend,’ Lulu said. ‘Howling Hetty’s skull behind the bar, three haunted bedchambers and the ghostly footsteps on the backstairs.’