could have a quick look now.’
Rhodri wanted to pay for everything but we insisted on going thirds, and I took the money up to the till. I emerged from the teashop five minutes later rather sheepishly holding a paper bag.
Being the smallest one, I sat crammed into the back of Rhodri’s impractical old Spyder sports car. ‘Have to swap this for something more useful, Rhodri, like an old Land Rover,’ Nia said, and he winced. I don’t think she will divorce him from his car; that’s one bridge too far.
Halfway up the drive we met his cousin Dottie (whose name is quite apt) riding towards us on a large bay horse with three white socks.
She halted next to the car and looked down at us disapprovingly, especially me with a half-eaten gingerbread dragon in one hand. ‘Came to see you, Roddy – didn’t think you’d be out gallivantin’ with gels when the house is falling to rack and ruin around you. And you the last of the Gwyn-Whatmires!’
‘Did you want anything in particular, Dottie?’ he asked, wincing again.
‘Cup of tea,’ she said. ‘Made it myself. Come on, Rollover!’
Fortunately she seemed to be addressing the horse, for it moved off skittishly sideways, was gathered in and trotted briskly off.
I was glad the drive was short, because I was starting to feel a bit queasy, and tossed the dragon’s tail out into the bushes for the squirrels. Come to that, this last couple of weeks I’ve felt odder and odder. Am I coming down with something? It’s that sort of brink-of-illness feeling – or maybe brink-of-overdue-period feeling? I’m so erratic, and it always makes me feel bloated and strange.
Yes, come to think of it, I’m sure that’s what it is, because I’m Emotionally Weird, always a sign.
Plas Gwyn is a collection of mossy, ancient grey stones that evolved haphazardly round three sides of a paved courtyard. The oldest part is the three-storeyed hall, with the solar tower poking up above the roof and Zéphirine Drouhin and the knotty trunks of old wisteria entwined around its nether regions; then there is the seventeenth-century wing where Rhodri would have his private apartments, and the stables and outbuildings of various kinds, ripe, as Nia pointed out, for conversion into studios, gift shop and refreshment room.
The cast-off furnishings of centuries were stored on the top floor of the hall, which opened right into the roof and was accessible by a twisty stair that made you wonder how they carried some of the larger pieces of redundant furniture up there – and how some of them were to be got down again.
‘The thing is,’ Nia said, as we finished our tour of the main house and passed through a low door and down two well-worn stone steps into what was once the kitchen, ‘you need to channel the visitors around so that they have to exit through here into a gift shop. Then they step out into the courtyard and there will be the tearoom and the workshops in the old stables – more lovely spending opportunities! And in the summer you could put little iron tables and chairs outside here.’
‘I’d need to employ people, though – there’d be wages to pay,’ Rhodri pointed out gloomily.
‘You already have Mrs Jones and her team of local ladies to come in and clean, and open it to the public on summer weekends,’ I pointed out. ‘They would probably be happy to work more hours.’
‘Yes, and Carrie will staff the tearoom,’ Nia agreed, ‘so you would just need to find someone to run the gift shop, and, if you made it the entrance to the house as well as the exit, they could sell the tickets too.’
‘He’d need signs along the drive to direct cars to a parking area,’ I said. ‘You could rope off that flat bit next to the paddock. And people could come to the workshops in winter even when the house wasn’t open, so that would work well.’
Rhodri was looking dubious about becoming the area’s major employer – in fact, apart from the hotel, pretty nearly the only employer – but as we went around and Nia enthused, he began to look more relaxed.
I thought it all sounded possible too, with hard work, and Rhodri would be able to keep his family home, scrape a living and still be comfortable in the new wing with the family ghost. (The Grey Lady is a quiet, benign female presence who closes the great oaken doors gently from time to time and tiptoes across the dark wooden floors so as not to disturb the living occupants.)
Rhodri is going to get some plans drawn up for the gift shop, tearoom and studios, and Nia volunteered to help him to sticker the furniture that is being consigned to the attic, the new wing or the old hall, so that strong removal men can come and change it all about.
She was having fun, I could tell by the bright colour in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes, so after a while I left them to it and walked off home to feed the hens and do a bit of work before driving into town.
The work didn’t get done, though; instead, I drew a cartoon of Rhodri as a sort of amiable heraldic lion with the caption ‘Come to Plas Gwyn for a roaring good time!’
When I checked for emails later there was one from Mal, which I’d expected, but also another blast from the past from Bigblondsurfdude, which I nearly deleted unread with the spam, except that it said ‘Thanks!’ and curiosity got the better of me. Just as well it did.
Hi Fran!
Thanks for your message. No, I’m not married. I was in a long-term relationship but we broke up before Christmas. Your daughter sounds great – almost made me wish I had kids! Yes, you’re right, we’ve got a lot of catching-up to do. Hope to call in and see you sometime soon.
All the best,
Tom.
My message? For a minute I thought I really had flipped and emailed him back … until the truth dawned and I realised where my missing email printout had gone. It comes to something when your children plot against you.
I opened Mal’s message expecting it to be a soothingly mundane list of instructions or fascinating details of how clever he was being, but it was far from that: more an accusation, really, though I’m not quite sure of what. Enjoying myself in his absence, maybe?
Apparently Owen Wevill emailed him after he and Mona spotted an intruder in our garden the other night, when they couldn’t sleep due to the sound of my late-night party. Of course they weren’t complaining about the noise – on the contrary, they were glad to know I could enjoy myself while my husband was away, and were sure that my old friend Rhodri would do his best to keep me entertained, now he was back living in the village!
I was livid and sent a reply off straight away.
Dear Mal,
I hadn’t realised the Wevills had such over-active imaginations – or that they were sending you bulletins on my movements. If they had really thought there was an intruder, surely they should have phoned the police?
Of course, what they actually saw was me going up the garden with the torch, as I thought I’d heard a fox trying to get at the hens. This was several hours after Carrie and Nia had been around for an absolute orgy of pizza eating and the riotously noisy watching of a gardening DVD. The Wevills must have ears like bats if that kept them awake.
If
