Free Village Secrets by Rebecca Shaw Page B

and burnt branches and twigs.
    ‘Look, Mummy, bonfire.’
    ‘So there is.’ She felt the ash. ‘It’s cold. Fancy having a fire in the woods in the middle of winter.’
    Sylvia looked down at the ash, and poked it about with her boot. ‘Could have been in the summer. It’s difficult to tell when it was.’
    Alex rushed to Caroline. ‘There’s a glove – look, Mummy. Man lost a glove.’ It was a large, thick black-woollen glove with a big hole in the thumb, a kind of burnt hole as though the owner had been wearing it while tending the fire. But it wasn’t wet or dirty or going rotten. It had been left quite recently.
    ‘Throw it down, Alex, there’s a good boy. How odd!’ Caroline shivered with the cold.
    Sylvia persuaded herself she knew the answer. ‘It’ll be the Scouts on one of their midnight hikes. Cooking sausages and things, you know what they’re like.’
    ‘Of course, you’re quite right. It will have been them. Beth, what have you found? What is it?’
    ‘A stick, a big stick.’ She dragged the stick along the ground. The end was burnt as though it had been used for poking the fire. As she dragged it along, some rags from just under the surface of the ground became entangled with it. There’d been a half-hearted attempt to bury them.
    ‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ Caroline bent down to look at the rags, which turned out to consist of an old shirt and a woman’s blouse, dirty and wet.
    Sylvia, still poking about with her boot in the soft loamy soil close to the ashes, suddenly glanced at Caroline to make sure she wasn’t looking, and bent down to pick up something and put it in her pocket. She said, ‘Let’s go. It’s nothing to do with us. Come on, Dr Harris, let’s leave it be. I don’t like it here. We shouldn’t go any further. Let’s turn back.’
    ‘Very well. Come along, children, we’ll go home. Mummy’s cold and I’m sure you must be too. We’ll have to forget looking for Mimi today.’
    Sylvia was shuddering. ‘There’s something unpleasant here and no mistake. Hurry up, children, please. Come on, Dr Harris, let’s get away from this place!’
    ‘Why, you’re shaking!’
    ‘I am. There’s things here not for the likes of us.’
    ‘You mean it wasn’t the Scouts?’
    ‘I hope not. Baden Powell will be spinning in his grave if it was.’
    ‘Are you psychic or something?’
    ‘No, but there’s a funny feeling here I don’t like.’
    ‘Now I’m frightened. Two grown women getting the wind up, this is ridiculous.’ Nevertheless Caroline took the hands of Alex and Beth and hastened them along. Both she and Sylvia breathed a sigh of relief when they had climbed the stile and were standing out in the road. Then, they both burst out laughing.
    ‘We are stupid, really we are!’ Caroline kept tight hold of the children as Barry Jones hurtled by in his van. He waved, slammed on his brakes, came to a screeching halt, and then reversed dangerously up to them.
    ‘Morning! What’s up?’
    ‘Oh, nothing. We just talked ourselves into being frightened in the wood back there. Sylvia reckons there’s something there not for the likes of us. We’re searching for my cat Mimi – she’s been missing for three days now, and she’s the smallest of my Siamese, so I’m worried. Don’t suppose you’ve seen her on your travels?’
    ‘Sorry, no I haven’t. I’ll keep a look out for her though. Bye, Dr Harris, keep smiling. Bye, Sylvia, bye kids!’
    ‘There’s no two ways about it. I’m going to have to accept that my Mimi is gone for ever. It’s one whole week today since I last saw her.’
    Jimbo offered his sympathy. ‘I’m really sorry. It’s downright awful not knowing, isn’t it?’
    ‘It is. Leave the card on the Village Voice noticeboard a little longer will you, Jimbo, please? Just in case. I’ve been round Rector’s Meadow twice and once into Sykes Wood but no luck. You never know, someone might have found her though and given her a home. They