LITMIR.BIZ

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crossed for centuries by means of a Saxon stone footbridge. On one side of the green stood the post office and village shop. On the other was the perfectly preserved Norman church, St Agnes’s, and on the third, the focal point of all village life great and small: The Carpenter’s Arms pub.

      ‘What do you think, darling?’ Tish hugged her son excitedly.

      ‘It’s really pretty!’ Abel grinned. ‘It’s like a picture from my book.’ His sweet, snub nose was now glued to the window. Villages, apparently, were a lot more interesting than fells. ‘Is it a park? When does it close?’

      Tish squeezed his hand. ‘It never closes.’

      ‘Never? Cool! Can we go in that shop? Do they have M & Ms? Do they have Lego?’

      The taxi continued through the village and down a gentle escarpment, Abel chattering excitedly all the while. The lane narrowed to a single car’s width, hemmed in on either side by thick bushes of dog rose and briar, so it was almost like driving through a tunnel. Then suddenly, without warning, the valley opened up again to breathtaking views. A few hundred yards further and the road abruptly stopped in front of a pair of lichened wooden gates, propped open with two stone saddle stools. Through the gates, a wide, sweeping driveway wound its way into the distance, looking for all the world like the entrance to some enchanted land.

      ‘It’s a palace!’ gasped Abel, his eyes on stalks. ‘Who lives up there?’

      ‘We do.’ Tish laughed as the taxi pulled through the gates. ‘For a little while, anyway. The house actually belongs to your Uncle Jago –’ the words stuck in Tish’s craw–‘but he’s away at the moment. Mummy’s friend Mrs Drummond has been looking after it for him while he’s gone, and we’ve come to help her.’

      This seemed to satisfy Abel, who was more interested in the oak trees in the park and which of them might be most suitable for his planned Tarzan treehouse than Loxley’s complex ownership structure. In-ger-land, he had already decided, was infinitely superior to Romania. He hoped his Uncle Jago’s holiday lasted a long, long time.

      He hoped it even more when he saw the house, a turreted, Disney fairytale that was just crying out for someone to play knights in it. While Tish paid the cabbie and struggled to drag her suitcase across the gravel, Abel raced ahead of her, bounding up the stone steps through the open front door.

      A plump, elderly woman, wearing a striped apron over her gardening trousers and sweater, appeared in the hallway.

      ‘Who are you?’ Abel asked bluntly.

      ‘I’m Mrs D,’ said the woman, smiling as she wiped her floury hands on her apron. ‘Who are you?’

      ‘I’m Abel Henry Gunning Crewe,’ said Abel. ‘Do you like dinosaurs?’

      Before she had time to answer, Mrs Drummond saw Tish lugging an enormous suitcase into the hallway. ‘Darling! Let me help you.’ She relieved Tish of the case, plonking it down at the foot of the stairs, and threw her arms around her former charge, enveloping Tish in a bosomy, cinnamon-scented bear hug. ‘I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you.’

      ‘You too, Mrs D,’ said Tish with feeling. ‘You met Abel?’

      ‘I did indeed,’ Mrs Drummond grinned, turning to watch the little boy who was now mountaineering his way up the banisters. ‘He’s gorgeous.’

      ‘Isn’t he?’ Tish grinned back. ‘I thought he’d be tired after the flight and everything, but he hasn’t stopped talking since six o’clock this morning.’

      ‘Not to worry,’ said Mrs Drummond. ‘I’ve made some cinnamon pound cake. A couple of slices of that will take the wind out of his sails. Now, what would you like to do first, lovie? Eat? Have a bath? Unpack?’

      ‘No,’ said Tish resolutely. ‘I’d like to meet our house guests.’

      A cloud of anxiety descended over Mrs Drummond’s kindly features. ‘I don’t think you should do that right away, Letitia. They’re not very nice people. Wait till this afternoon and I’ll get Bill and one of the other farm boys to go in there with you. They mostly keep to the East Wing, so they shouldn’t bother us here.’

      ‘Nonsense,’ said Tish. ‘I don’t need a bloody bodyguard in my own house. If you’d take Abel and get him something to eat, I’ll go and sort them out.’

      ‘I really don’t think you understand, darling …’ Mrs Drummond began. But Tish was already marching off down the hallway towards the East Wing. She always was a stubborn child, thought Mrs Drummond, watching her retreating back. Perhaps she should call Bill Connelly, just in case.

      Walking down the East corridor, past Loxley’s grand, formal rooms, Tish gasped in horror as the extent of the damage wrought by Jago’s ‘friends’ unfolded. Every few feet, dark rectangles of wallpaper revealed the places where paintings had been removed and, according to Mrs Drummond, taken to London to be sold for drugs. In the library, antique bookcases stood with their doors hanging off the hinges and an array of beautifully bound first editions spilling out onto the floor. In the grate, Tish saw torn spines and singed pages: some Barbarian had used her father’s books as kindling! Everywhere there was dirt, Persian runners covered with the imprints of muddy boots, empty mugs and glasses littering every available surface, some of them growing livid green mould on the dregs of whatever vile, stagnant liquid they had once contained. The deeper Tish walked into the East Wing, once the most impressive part of the house, the more the place looked like a squat, littered with empty beer cans and overflowing ashtrays.

      Finally, she approached the drawing room. There was music coming from inside – Jimi Hendrix, if I’m not mistaken – and raucous, male laughter. Her hand was on the door handle, but she hesitated.

      Not yet, she thought. There’s something I have to do first.

      In the kitchen, Mrs Drummond watched in awe as Letitia’s son inhaled his fourth, slab-sized slice of cinnamon pound cake. The child was an eating machine. And he was still talking.

      ‘If you could make dinosaurs un-extinct and have one for a pet, which one would you have?’ he mumbled through a fine spray of cake crumbs.

      ‘My goodness, Abel. I’ve never really thought about it. I don’t suppose I’d have any of them. Would dinosaurs make good pets, do you think?’

      Abel looked at her pityingly. ‘Of course they would. A T-Rex would be the most excellentest pet you could ever have, and do you know why? Because it would kill all the baddies, and eat them, but it wouldn’t kill you because you’d be its owner. Pets’ owners are kind of like their mum or dad. So pets actually love them. Even a T-Rex would love its owner, but you’d have to help it not to fall over, because do you know what happens to dinosaurs when they fall over?’

      Mrs Drummond shook her head.

      ‘They die!’

      ‘Do they really?’

      ‘Uh-huh. And do you know what else?’

      Suddenly the clear, unmistakable crack of a shotgun being fired rang out.

      ‘Good heavens!’ said Mrs Drummond. A few seconds later there was another shot, then another, all of them from the direction of the East Wing.

      ‘Was that a bomb?’ asked Abel cheerfully. ‘Bombs are cool.’

      ‘You stay there my darling. Don’t move.’ Running into the hallway, Mrs Drummond picked up the telephone and dialled 999.

      In the drawing room, a dreadlocked man in his mid-thirties stared at the petite, blonde woman in front of him in terrified astonishment.

      ‘What the fuck?’ he shouted, as his cowering companions scrambled to their feet. ‘You could have killed me!’

      ‘Indeed I could,’ said Tish. She pointed her father’s shotgun slowly and deliberately at the man’s crotch. ‘And if you and your mates aren’t out of this house in the next

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