Free Five Go Glamping by Liz Tipping

notebook.
    ‘Come on Fiona – how about, just for this holiday, you let go of your planning and see what happens?’
    While I didn’t like the idea of not having a plan, I suppose she had a point. Maybe I could do without planning for one long weekend away and see what happened. There was nothing I could do about the job thing until I got back anyway. I put the notebook back into my bag but I held onto it once it was inside. I wasn’t prepared to let it go yet.
    ‘Look,’ chirped Sinead. ‘Pub’s open.’ It wasn’t lunchtime yet but our holiday rule was, if we see an open pub we are permitted to start drinking. It was the law. So I reached around into the boot of the car and rummaged in the cool bag for a couple of bottles of Crabbie’s. Sinead said she didn’t want one. Steph obviously did but couldn’t as she was driving and she was scowling at us in the rear view. I cracked them open with Kirk’s key ring bottle opener, clinked bottles with Kirk and started to drink. It was the only thing so far that had stopped Kirk crying.
    I looked out of the window, enjoying this new silence that spread over the car and with the help of the ginger beer, I started to relax and feel in holiday mode. The further we got away from home, the more my problems seemed to dissolve. Brian Harvey sat on my lap and snuggled up to go to sleep. I patted him on the head. This was much nicer than being stuck on a hot bus on my way to work. I’d worry about being jobless when I got home, and I was sure I could meet up with Connor at some point and sort things out, maybe tell him what had happened at work.
    Plus now that Kirk had finally shut up, I looked round at my friends and felt like everything would be okay. Sinead was right, it would be good to get away and have some lovely fresh air and I was also into Steph’s enthusiasm for having a good time and maybe when I got to see Connor, he’d understand about the job thing.
    I wound down the windows and took a huge deep breath in through my nose. I took another deep breath in and then it hit me. Manure. Not any manure, some kind of all powerful super stench manure that stung my eyes and made me gag. It created ripples of panic around the rest of the car with everyone shouting at me to close the window. Kirk declared it was ‘an ominous start to the holiday.’
    *
    The motion of Steph braking sharply jolted me awake. My leg was sore from where a bottle of Crabbie’s was wedged between me and Kirk and it looked like some of it had spilled onto my skirt. At least I had hoped it was that and Brian Harvey hadn’t had an accident. I picked him up and eye-balled him but he seemed innocent enough, tongue hanging out, and it looked like he was smiling at me. He was so adorable. I was most definitely a dog person and not a mad cat lady.
    ‘What’s happened? Why have we stopped…’ I said, blearily.
    ‘Bloody car has broken down, when we are nearly there.’ Steph said, banging on the steering wheel in frustration. ‘Everybody out,’ she ordered. That was rather tricky, especially holding two bottles of ginger beer and Brian Harvey.
    ‘Oh my God,’ said Steph, ‘what a stroke of luck – a pub.’
    ‘Oh yeah,’ said Kirk. ‘Breaking down on the moors, outside a creepy looking pub, that’s handy isn’t it? There’s actually nothing scary about that is there? Oh no.’
    I let myself out of the car and put Brian Harvey down on the ground while Steph opened the bonnet and started pulling wires out of it.
    I turned to look at the pub. It didn’t look creepy at all to me, just a little bit neglected. A dilapidated sign above the door told us it was called The Creech Inn. It was a grey stone building with a porch at the front, like the kind you see on an old chapel. Outside there was a couple of benches on a little patch of lawn behind a stone wall that had seen better days. I thought it all looked quite pretty.
    ‘It’s not scary, it’s a nice little pub,’ I said to