LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 5: Hounded

      ‘Shut up, Cara – I want Izzy,’ Harry snapped, before turning back to me with the smile that always made my heart beat faster.

       ‘Dad’s away, so all our college friends are coming over to Sweetwell for a party. Come with us?’

      After dinner everything suddenly caught up with me – the whistle-stop visit to the two workshops in India that were making the clothes for my new business, the increasingly acrimonious arguments with Kieran, the long flight home, and then Douglas’s accident. It wasn’t surprising that exhaustion hit me like an express train. When Judy ordered me off to bed, I slept right through until almost lunchtime next day.

      I had so much to do, what with the Desperate Dogs paperwork, a business to set up and, sandwiched somewhere between the two, interviews with the remaining people on my list – but I also longed to go down for a dip in the healing pool below the Lady Spring, which was something I usually did most mornings when I was home and the weather wasn’t totally freezing.

      The source of the Spring lay in a little cave set back in the rocky outcrop above it and then the water fell into what was once a natural pool. According to old Jonas Tamblyn, who wrote the pamphlet about the local legends that they sold in the entrance hut, it was for centuries a pagan site, and various objects have been found nearby, or washed into the lower pool, including a very pregnant clay figurine. I expect that’s where the local belief that the water is good for fertility came from.

      It had always been called the Lady Spring, though the identity of the Lady in question has changed with the centuries, as the old pagan goddess was first absorbed into a Roman deity, and then later became identified with the Virgin Mary and Christianity. It was no wonder the clearing around it always felt heavy with history.

      I jumped out of bed, put on jeans and one of the vintage Indian cotton tops from my extensive collection, on which I’d modelled some of my new range, and went down to find Judy already laying the kitchen table for lunch. There was a heavy, sullen-looking loaf of bread cooling on a wire rack. It was odd how brilliant she was at baking almost anything but bread …

      ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘We thought we’d let you have your sleep out and then you’d feel all caught up and yourself again.’

      ‘It worked, because I do, and I’m ravenous. Has anyone rung me?’

      I’d already checked my mobile and there were no messages from Kieran, though of course he might still have been asleep.

      ‘Lulu rang earlier to say she’d be out all day, but she’d see you at the Hut a little before the meeting and catch up with you then.’

      ‘Right, and I’m sure she said Cam was off teaching a watercolour group today, so he may not be around either, but I think I’d just like a quiet afternoon anyway.’

      Debo came in then, with Vic and Ginger frolicking round her feet, and Judy dished up bowls of delicious thick mulligatawny soup, then broke the heel of the old loaf (not without some difficulty) and tossed it to the dogs under the table, before cutting into the new one.

      After lunch we toured the kennels so I could visit permanent residents and meet some of the latest arrivals.

      Most of them were the big breeds of dogs and over half were some kind of bull terrier, several permanently scarred from being used for fighting. Debo told me their sad histories, where she knew them, but really, you could read a lot of it in their eyes. The ones who timidly crept up and begged for love were the most heartbreaking.

      The more recent kennels and runs had been roughly knocked together for free by Tom Tamblyn, out of materials he’d found in skips, and I could see why the new owner of Sweetwell might not like his customers seeing them as they drove up to his garden antiques centre.

      Judy had been quite right about some of the inmates not being Desperate Dogs at all, but eminently rehomable, including the cute little white mongrel I’d seen when I’d arrived. I said as much to Debo and suggested that her friend Lucy, who was in charge of a large dog rescue centre in Cheshire, had a much better chance of quickly finding them a forever home.

      When I also added persuasively that then she would have a little more room for the really desperate cases, Sandy, who’d been following us round, supported me and said she’d draw up a list of all the ones that could be moved right away, like Babybelle.

      ‘Yes, she’s perfectly friendly, just too fat and lazy and costs us a fortune in dog food,’ Judy agreed.

      ‘Oh, but I think she’s already quite attached to Izzy,’ Debo protested. ‘Look at her little face pressed up against the wire!’

      ‘Big face,’ I amended. Babybelle had indeed plodded up to the front of the pen when she spotted us and was now staring intently, though I suspected that was probably from the hope of food, rather than from any new-found affection. I pushed a hand through the mesh and stroked her and her tail thumped heavily a couple of times.

      ‘I think she ought to be rehomed too,’ I said, hardening my heart, and Babybelle looked at me reproachfully.

      ‘We’ll see,’ Debo said. ‘Meanwhile I’ll have to have a look at Sandy’s list. What are you going to do now, darling?’

      ‘I think I’ll go down to the Lady Spring and take a little dip in the pool before any visitors turn up.’

      At that time of year the Lady Spring and the healing pool below it were only open to the public from two till four, and it wasn’t much after half-past one now. Often, Tom didn’t even see a visitor at all on weekdays in early spring, so he might be pottering about in his garden, or round his beehives. There’s a big brass bell visitors can ring by the turnstile if they do turn up and he’s not in his hut.

      ‘It’s a bit chilly for swimming,’ Judy objected, shivering at the thought.

      ‘I know, but the water’s always OK once I’m in – not warm, but not unbearably cold, either.’

      I went in to fetch my things and Babybelle set up a howling the minute I turned my back that continued until my return. Then she instantly stopped and instead barked at me imperatively.

      ‘She wants to go with you,’ Debo said, elegantly resting her arms on top of her yard brush and looking as if she was posing for a magazine picture, rather than cleaning an empty dog run. If anyone could make dungarees and wellies fashionable, it would be Debo.

      ‘No way,’ I said. ‘Tom won’t allow a dog into the enclosure, and anyway, she’d probably take a year to plod down there.’

      ‘Pity, because she does need the exercise and she’s definitely taken to you.’

      ‘But we don’t want her to get attached to me, because I’m sure she could find a good home with someone else,’ I said. ‘If she’s costing a fortune in dog food, the sooner, the better.’

      ‘Perhaps Tom might like her,’ Judy suggested. ‘He rang to say he might pop in sometime later today to see if any of the dogs took his fancy. He lost Duke recently, you know.’

      Tom and his father, Jonas, had now rehomed two of Debo’s Desperate Dogs and they’d both reached a good age. They always seemed to give them regal names, too.

      ‘If they took Babybelle, she could find herself a Princess or a Queenie,’ I said, with a grin.

      ‘I don’t think she’s his kind of dog,’ Debo said doubtfully. ‘Jonas, now he’s living with Lottie behind the shop, says he wouldn’t mind a little dog to keep him company, only we mostly

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