Misty wasn’t the only one who was narked about Robbie casting aspersions on our state of health, I wasn’t too pleased either. The trouble was that I knew he was right. When you’ve lived through a dank, wet Summer followed by a Winter packed full of gale force winds and yet more sodding rain, you’re not going to look the most blooming of God’s creations. So, at the beginning of April, during a brief lull in the Arctic temperatures, I decided to go outside and do a spot of gardening, spurred on by the sound of various gardening appliances ringing out all over the neighbourhood.
I had forgotten what back-breaking work gardening can be, and mine grumbled like hell at being put through this exertion. I was resting it by having a short sit down on a large rock, when I took to speculating abut he other side of the hedge, I.e Henry’s old garden. I had left Misty indoors, doing some housework, so I went for an amble round into the Temples’ garden, thinking that, at least on my own, I might be able to try and get some sense about everything that had happened there.
The workmen had gradually cleared away the entire remains of the old bungalow over the past few months, and now all that remained was a rubble-strewn patch of concrete surrounded by a rickety metal barrier, which was falling down in places. It seemed (mercifully) like a 100 years since I had seen Henry and Jeannette brooding over their grim sardine supper.
I noticed, as I was going round one corner, a hole in the ground that I had never seen before. It was an easy matter to push aside the metal barrier there and have a closer look. It looked like the entrance to an old cellar (minus the trap-door), which would have been in the floor of the kitchen, although I can’t say I had ever noticed it before.
I crouched down and peered closely into it. There seemed to be a very old set of narrow steps, roughly hacked out of stone, leading down into the bowels of the earth. I had no intention of going down them. I had no torch or matches on me for one thing, to light my way, and plus the whole thing looked too narrow for comfort. I had just straightened myself up again when I heard a loud clanging sound coming from below my feet, as if somebody had violently slammed a large metal door.
It may not do wonders for my general image if I report that I legged it pretty sharp-ish at this point!
I don’t know why this should affect me even more than all the other things that had gone on in recent years, but it did. I suppose it might be that some of the other stuff had been so vague and insubstantial, such as sighting a strange figure occasionally, or waking up on the sofa with the front door standing wide open.
That evening we had been watching the news, and some lawyer was commenting on the verdict of the Princess Diana inquest. He said conspiracy theories would always be with us, “a bit like people who claim to have been abducted by aliens”, and put like that, yes, it does sound daft. And so I suppose for that reason my mind had blanked it out. Even after everything that had happened, I still found it hard to believe in.
The following day was an eventful one sin the news. More fall-out from the inquest, the economy continuing to go into freefall, the McCann family being questioned again, as were the odious, depraved family of Shannon Matthews, the Olympic flame had been snatched and extinguished in London, Paris and now San Francisco (protestors had climbed the Golden Gate bridge), and a t.v presenter had gone missing.
I was working my way through all this on Teletext, when Misty came in to tell me that Jason wanted to speak to me on the phone. When I picked it up he was sounding so breathless and excitable that for one bizarre moment I thought he was on the job!
“Yeah look Jason, calm down and start at the beginning”, I said.
“Me and Robbie have been clearing out some paperwork from Al’s caravan”, he said [it was quite astonishing to me that this was only just being done, but I thought it best to say nothing] “He was a busy boy during his last few months. Did you know he’d paid another visit to Clag Heath in Cornwall?”
“How could I have?” I said “I hadn’t seen him since the end of last Summer?!”
“Well he did”, said Jason “He must have gone back there on his own. Anyway, he took some photographs , and there’s one really weird one there. I want you to see it”.
“If you like”, I said.
He obviously didn’t trust me to come round and see it voluntarily, or trust me to look at it in an e-mail, as he said he and Robbie would bring it round themselves.
“If it turns out to be a bloody orb after all this fuss I’ll have a fit!” I said to Misty, when I had put the phone down.
The photograph was brought round with so much ceremony you’d have thought MI5 were delivering papers containing state secrets to us.
“There’s a note he scrawled in pencil on the back of it”, said Robbie, excitedly “It’s best if you read that first”.
The note said (as far as I could tell in deciphering Al’s handwriting): ’HAD SUPPER IN THE PUB, BUT DIDN’T LIKE THE INTEREST SOME LOCAL LOUTS WERE SHOWING IN WHERE I WAS STAYING. THE HOLIDAY COTTAGE IS QUITE ISOLATED, SO WHEN I GOT BACK I HAD A QUICK LOOK ROUND OUTSIDE AND TOOK SOME PICTURES ON MY DIGITAL CAMERA. THIS IS ONE OF THEM. DON’T KNOW WHAT THIS FIGURE IS. COULD BE SOMEBODY PRATTING ABOUT, OR IT COULD BE A CARRIER BAG CAUGHT ON THE TREE. I DIDN’T SEE ANYTHING THERE AT THE TIME’.
The picture was a shot of some shrubbery taken at night. Peering through the bare branches of a tree was what at first I took to be a dog, with its eyes lit up in the camera glare. But it was too high up for that. On second scrutiny it looked more like someone wearing a Halloween mask to be plausible.
“You can’t rule out the distinct possibility that it was someone mucking about”, I said (talk about the Bleeding Obvious!) “particularly as he had said all that about the yokels”.
“And then again it might not be”, said Jason “Anyway, we’re going to pay a little trip to Clag Heath at some point in the near future”.
I had no idea whether they expected us to go with them, but the fact remained that we couldn’t anyway. Work was pressing. I had no idea how much longer I would have Mr Beresford as my fairy godmother, and I had to keep the production line going for as long as I could. I told Misty that he could go with them if he wanted to, but he simply looked at me as if I was mad.
Soon after this, I had to go and see Mr B in his emporium. Misty stayed at home to wait in for a parcel. It was starting to niggle me quite considerably that Mr Beresford hadn’t given me an update on his future plans in quite some while. In my more paranoid moments I was beginning to think that I wouldn’t find out until one day when I would open the paper to see yet another article on ex-pat Brits living in Spain (probably under the tile of ’THE BRITS WHO HAVE GIVEN UP ON BRITAIN’), and a photograph of Mr Beresford in a Hawaiian shirt smirking at me!
My fears grew when I had to wait in his shop whilst he and a formidable-looking woman had a long and passionate discussion about the demise of companies who made floor-wax, at the end of which they concluded that this was a sure and certain sign that Britain was going down the pan, when nobody could be bothered to wax their kitchen floor anymore.
“As soon as you open my front door”, the woman was saying “You can smell the aroma …”
I was trying to nod and look equally enthusiastic about this when, out of the corner of my eye, I caught somebody walking past the shop window. My heart jumped. All I caught was a quick glimpse of tall, fair-haired man wearing a black trench-coat, but I could have sworn it was Rufus Franklin.
“Are you alright, Gray?” Mr B asked, when the floor wax woman had gone.
“Yes”, I stammered “Just I could have sworn I saw Rufus Franklin just then. Not possible”.
“I often get things like that”, he said “A bus went past recently, and there was a guy sitting at the back of it who looked just like you”.
“So my doppelganger’s at large again”, I said “Are you any nearer knowing what your future plans are?”
“Still weighing up the pros and cons I’m afraid”, he said “Everything is so uncertain at the moment. But I promise you will be one of the first to know”.
And so it seemed I had to make do with that for the time being. Hardly a satisfactory state of affairs.
“I will tell you as soon as I can”, he reiterated “I know it’s a concern to you, and we can’t let little Misty starve now can we?”
As I knew for a fact that “little Misty” had consumed the best part of a packet of biscuit’s the day before, I didn’t think there was much chance of that happening!
I heard from Mrs Jackson that Tara Mitchell’s much-vaunted conversion to Catholicism had finally taken place. She had had her baptism at Easter. It would seem since then though that all had not gone well. Once the excitement of it all, the revelling in being the centre of attention was over, Tara had reverted to type. Religion for her wouldn’t be a private thing, a spiritual solace, it would be just another means of getting people to notice her. And so, once the baptism, with nice, gentle people being kind to her, was over, she wouldn’t be able to cope with simply settling down to being an ordinary everyday Catholic.
I had developed a very jaundiced view of human nature since having been exposed to the Temples, and one thing I had learnt was that stupid people never change. People with anything to them, any true solidity, any inner core, can change - simply because they can learn from life, and adapt to it accordingly. Stupid, shallow people can’t. No matter what happens to them, they will always carry on being greedy and self-centred, recklessly lurching from one quick-fix solution to the next, and raging petulantly when it doesn’t work. And the reason it doesn’t work is because the solution has to come from within themselves, and that is something they can’t cope with.
Here endeth the lesson.
The trip to Clag Heath happened much sooner than I had expected. For some daft reason I had thought they might wait until the weather got warmer, but as there seemed little likelihood that this would EVER happen, I suppose there didn’t seem much point in delaying it.
Misty had wanted to watch a programme about New Forest ponies and I, nursing a monstrously stubbed toe, joined him. We were in the middle of being captivated by shots of Autumn mist rising through the trees, when the Three Muskateers turned up, on their way back from Cornwall.
“So how was it?” I asked “As weird as Al always made out it was?”
“Very Cornish”, said Robbie (whether you take that as a confirmation or a denial of its weirdness is entirely up to you).
“Very beautiful”, said Xanthe “And parts of it were posher than I was expecting from what Al had said”.
“Perhaps it’s got posher in the past couple of years”, I said “A lot of places have. Even ’The Ship’ takes credit cards now”.
“There’s a lovely hotel overlooking the coast”, said Xanthe “Really quaint and old-fashioned. They even have an artist-in-residence there. Perhaps you should get a job like that”.
Deliciously idyllic though it sounds, I just couldn’t picture myself as Artist In Residence. I have images of some sweet, well-spoken woman gliding around in beads and a straw hat, being very fey and charming to everyone … not a bad-tempered old scrote in a ripped t-shirt who resents being made to be polite to people!
“Did you stay in the hotel then?” I said.
“You must be joking!” said Jason “It costs an arm and a leg to stay there! No, we camped up on the scrubland”.
“Bloody cold it was too”, said Robbie “Even worse than here!”
“And did weird things happen there?” said Misty.
“I don’t even know where to begin”, Jason enthused, for whom the trip had clearly been one orgasmic delight from beginning to end.
“The strange animal”, Xanthe prodded him, excitedly.
“Yeah, apparently some kind of strange wild beast has been seen in the area”, said Jason “All covered in fur and standing up on its hind legs. We didn’t see it, but we’ve been told it’s there”.
“And a ghostly grey van derives along the main village street”, said Robbie.
(Which sounded a bit of a letdown after the hairy wild beast standing on its hind legs).
“And I caught some weird figure on my camcorder one night”, said Jason “I was filming in the scrubland, and I noticed this figure in the distance. Looked like somebody wearing white waterproofs. I called out to them, but they just walked away. It don’t sound much when I say it like that, but it really freaked me out at the time, particularly after everything Al had told us about that area”.
“We were only there for 2 nights”, said Robbie “So there was a limit to how much we could do, but we’re definitely going back again”.
“Perhaps try and stay in the cottage that Al rented last time”, said Xanthe “We were told that it’s haunted”.
(I couldn’t help feeling that the locals had been having a field day with them!).
“You have to come next time though”, Xanthe continued “You really must. We’d like your input on everything. There’s so much to take in”.
“It would make a nice break sometime”, I said (sometime when, if ever, our financial future looks more stable).
“There’s some more news too”, said Jason “Al’s friend, the journalist …”
“That horrid, vicious man”, said Xanthe.
“Wants to come and film a t.v series here”, said Jason “He’s written some drama serial, sort of ’Torchwood’ kind of thing, all about weird goings-on in a small village, and now he’s making a t.v series of it. They want to film it round here”.
“Well it’s certainly the right place”, I said “Though I can’t say I’m in any hurry to meet him, not after everything you’ve told me about him!”
I did catch a glimpse of him a few days later, going into ’The Ship’ with Jason and Robbie. I know one should be fair and not judge people on first appearances (yeah right), but he was hardly the most alluring of God’s creations. Aged 50-ish, and with greasy hair worn too long (for a man of his age), and combed back off a craggy face. The whole vision “enhanced” (if that’s the word) by a repulsive set of yellow smoker’s gnashers.
So much for the glamour and sophistication of Telly-land.
I don’t know whether it’s a nervous trait or what, but I seemed to have got into the habit of compulsively arranging and rearranging my working tools. It seemed to soothe me anyway. I was in the middle of this again one afternoon when Misty burst in excitedly, to tell me that Mrs Jackson had told him that Aleck had gone back to his mother. My first thoughts were of Magda, and I said I’d give her a call.
“No point”, said Misty “Well not if you want to go up to the bungalow anyway. She’s left as well, gone to a hotel in Hastings”.
It’s weird how when things happen, they always seem to happen just like that. I gave her a call on her mobile anyway, even though I had a niggling suspicion she might not want to see me, not after our recent altercations together. I was surprised when she did.
Misty tactfully stayed at home, and I did the hour’s drive to Hastings on a stormy April day. Hastings was looking uncharacteristically spruce, presumably having just been given it’s beginning of season wash-and-brush-up. I was also pleasantly surprised how busy it was. The big Italian restaurant on the prom was packed, and trying to find a parking space wasn’t easy.
Magda was staying in one of those gloomy, tall, narrow old hotels, which at first glimpse don’t seem to have changed in decades. There seemed to be no one else staying there at all. There was a small restaurant on the first floor, which was completely empty, but which had a CD players incongruously blaring out cheery bossanova-style music at full throttle to an empty room.
“I can’t imagine I’m going to be staying here for long”, she said, taking me up to her room on the penultimate floor “There’s a nightclub nearby, and it was blaring out Kylie Minogue at full volume until gone 2 o’clock in the morning”.
“Seaside hotels can be a bit grim”, I said.
And hers certainly lived down to their reputation. Her room had a violently sloping floor, very dark heavy furniture, and thick grimy net-curtains at the window.
“I won’t be coming back to Shinglesea”, she said, busying herself at the hostility tray.
“I can understand that”, I said.
“I now it had been on the cards for a long time”, she said “Even though he did suddenly drop it on me one morning that he was leaving. But I wasn’t expecting him to go back to Suzanne, his mother. I was hoping I had rescued him from that awful house for good”.
“His life has to be of his own choosing”, I said “But what about you? What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet”, she said “At the moment I feel like one of those middle-aged women you read about in novels, suddenly abandoned and having to start life all over again. A friend from my old prison days is trying to organise a girls’ only sailing trip to Tenerife. I thought I might tag along”.
“It sounds like just the sort of thing you need2, I said “Dare I ask what’s going to happen to the bungalow?”
“You can ask, but I don’t give a sod about it”, she sighed “I shall leave it be. The others can keep an eye on it for the time being. They can contact me anytime”.
There didn’t seem to be anything else to say after this. There was no point alluding to our conversation in the pub garden last month. I’m simply not made the way she requires and that’s all there is to it.
“I just want to say though”, she said “That I’ve had a lot of fun with you there. It’s just a pity we couldn’t keep up the optimism we started with when we first came back from Scotland”.
“The world has been determined to put the kibosh on optimism since then”, I said.
She suddenly stuck out her hand and I realised I was supposed to shake it. It seemed a strangely stilted way to call time on the past 2 years, but I guess that’s the way life is sometimes. When you’ve reached the end of the road with any kind of relationship there’s nowhere else to go but call it quits.
Al dead, and now Magda sailing off (literally) into the sunset. Of course it was sad, it was melancholy, and yet, as I emerged out onto the rain-swept prom, I fell curiously cleansed. There were shifting sands beneath our feet, and that was very unsettling, but at the same time life did seem to be getting simpler. And I welcomed that with open arms.
When I got back to Shinglesea, it was early evening. Before going home I parked up by the sea-wall, so that I could have a few moments to myself, looking out over the water. The feeling that I had had in Hastings, that I was shedding parts of my life that had gone past their usefulness, struck me anew all over again. With the benefit of glorious hindsight I should have seen what was happening with Magda, and her feelings towards me. But when you are friends with someone, you don’t always notice anything extra creeping in ... or at least I didn’t anyway.
I could see now that I had been ridiculously naïve. But I am in many ways. A fact which, when I consider some of the things that have happened in my life, is quite startling. I know women often think men are a bit dense when it comes to emotional feelings, and I seem to be living proof of it! Oh well, I guess I’m just going to have to live with it, and I hope that nobody else takes me so seriously again in the future.
Shortly before the May Day bank holiday I got a personal visitation from one of Henry’s old church. Her timing was particularly unfortunate as Misty had gone to the shops, and I was bogged down in work. When I opened the front door there was a woman standing there who had to be quite the most frumpy, sexless female I have seen in a long while. She was shapeless, with greasy, cropped hair, unflattering Olive-From-On-The-Buses spectacles, and a baggy tracksuit. Boy, she was some minger! (If this was their pathetic attempt at Flirty Fishing they were going to have to try a damn sight harder).
“Hello!” she instantly beamed at me.
“No thanks”, I said, and I began to close the front door.
“Why?” she cried, in a hurt voice “What’s the matter?”
“No thank you”, I repeated, very firmly.
“Fish-monger with a difference!” she chirruped, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet and flapping her arms like a demented penguin trying to rev itself up for lift-off.
“Definitely no thanks”, I said.
“Henry always said he could forgive”, she said “But that he never forgets“.
“Like an elephant you mean?” I said, and this time I finally managed to shut the door.
Of course the sensible grown-up thing to do would have been to have found out what she meant, but I had no interest in hearing Henry’s opinions (whether he be dead or still alive) on anything. When Misty came home a few minutes later, he said that she was still standing out in the lane, staring confusedly down at her feet, as though her batteries had been removed. If she had been a bit more sightly we could have had her as a garden ornament!
The bank holiday weekend was warm and sunny. Some of the days were almost oppressive. I don’t know why but we became more and more aware of the site of Henry’s old house next door, like a malignant brooding presence. One morning Misty went outside to empty the coffee-pot, and flung the contents aggressively over the hedge that separated our garden from what had once been theirs.
“If there is something coming out from under there”, he said “They might get cold coffee all over them!”
One evening we went up to the pub for a drink, and found Robbie in there talking to the journalist friend of Al’s. There seems to be a type of middle-aged male journalist in this country who takes Richard Littlejohn as their idol. Boorish, opinionated, completely lacking in any kind of sensitivity, and all utterly convinced (contrary to all the evidence pointing the other way) that civilisation will take a marked turn for the better if everyone would start listening to them.
He had a sidekick with him, a young lad who was on the production team of the t.v drama he was producing. He unfortunately was no better, being one of the sort of spoilt, smug little sod I want to smack round the head as soon as I see them. Just think my nephew Arthur and you get the general idea.
“Our show’s gonna be seminal”, said the Arthur clone “Apart from ‘Skins’ there’s nothing on t.v at the moment that’s really aimed at my age group.
(The older I get - and the more of a cranky old fart I get - the more it never ceases to amaze me that the younger generation think EVERYTHING in the known Universe has to be for their general amusement. Were we like that at their age? God knows, I honestly can’t remember).
“Why are you setting it in Shinglesea?” Misty was asking.
“W wanted to pick a no-hoper sort of place”, the younger idiot replied “I wasn’t too keen at first. I thought places like this had already had too much publicity in the floods last year, all those posh Southern types getting their wine cellars flooded out, and we‘re all mean to be so sympathetic. But then I heard about some of the weird shit that had happened here, and I thought why not. It’s kind of cool in a weird sort of way. I noticed that there are too many pensioners around here though”.
“Yeah sorry about that”, I said “They’re getting out of control. We’ll have to have a cull sometime”.
(Robbie was looking at very strangely at this point).
“Too many wrinkles everywhere”, the young idiot was STILL going on “I mean I can’t believe they’re still showing repeats of ‘Dad’s Army’ on the telly!”
“A lot of people must still watch it I suppose”, said Robbie, with admirable tact.
“You wait till ours gets shown”, said the young idiot “It’s gonna be like ‘Torchwood’ on speed”.
(Interesting. I had once heard somebody define taking speed as like standing in a very slow-moving bus queue for hours on end).
About the only good thing about all this was that the younger idiot prattled on so much that the older one didn’t get much of a word in! After a bout half-an-hour of this Misty and me exchanged The Look that always signifies that we are both ready to go home.
So we did. We went to bed and watched ’A Room With A View’ on dvd. As Sir Michael Caine once remarked in ’Little Voice’, it was like burying my face in flowers by comparison.
The following day I was painting some flower-pot holders in the back garden. Not for any artistic reason, but to simply make them look marginally less tawdry. I had pegged them on the washing-line, and I was coating them gently with glossy black paint when Robbie appeared.
“Have your friends gone home?” I asked (make sure they’re not still around).
“For the time being”, he said “Jace and me are going to drive up to Avebury in a couple of days time. Wanted to know if you and Misty wanted to come along for the ride? No special reason, we just fancied an outing“.
I was very tempted. Work was pressing, but the weather forecast for the next few days looked unexpectedly good, and it seemed a shame not to take advantage of it. It was at that moment, as if to clinch to the deal, that Misty came out of the house to say that Jasmine the Rottweiler was on the phone. I hadn’t heard sight nor sound of her and Frank Spencer since last Summer, and I had blissfully forgotten their existence.
“She wants to know if they can come down for a couple of days”, he said, and he glared at me as if daring me (on pain of death) to say yes.
“Tell them we’re going to Wiltshire”, I replied.
We set off early one morning, so early in fact that the mist was still rising from the fields. There was a very pleasing holiday feel to the day. We noticed some of the old haunts. The small deserted industrial estate, just outside Newbourne, where we had camped for a short while last Summer, had been pulled down, and an row of cramped terraced houses was being built in its place.
Marlborough was as busy as ever. All the yellow ribbons and photographs of Madeleine McCann that had been hung all over the church railings had long since gone though. Over a year on from her disappearance though, and it seemed that no one had a clue as to what had happened to her. Life doesn’t always have those nice, comforting endings that you get in films, where all the loose ends are so very neatly tied up.
We drove on out of the town, and the weather changed, going from the warm sunny day it had been, to a somewhat stormy and overcast one. We had a quick lunch in ’The Red Lion’ at Avebury. As we emerged it began to rain softly, and the four of us took shelter in the covered gateway that led into the churchyard.
“People are disappearing all over the place”, said Jason, as we talked about Madeleine “Off ships, aircraft missing. Sometimes it’s a tragedy, sometimes it’s really mundane, like the guy who faked his own death so that his wife could get at the insurance money, and sometimes people NEVER find out what happened. I don’t think anyone’s gonna get anywhere with the Madeleine case whilst so many people seem afraid to go into it properly”.
“And sometimes stories come up that can still really shock the crap out of you”, said Robbie “Like that Austrian cellar. That was like something out of a horror film. No, worse than any horror film”.
“Magda’s found a tenant for the bungalow by the way”, said Jason.
“Good God, who?” I said. (I had hoped she would be able to get a tenant for it, but I had had grave doubts about it).
“Some woman who’s just got a job as a nurse at Fairlane [our local mental hospital]”, said Jason “She needed somewhere in the area, and I suppose Magda’s rent was cheap enough”.
I had an almost psychic suspicion that this probably wasn’t going to turn out to be the best choice ever, but I didn’t want to be a wet blanket, so I said nowt.
“I hope she’s alright”, said Robbie “Seeing as we’re going to be camping right near her”.
“The rain’s stopped”, said Misty.
So it had. We had a cup of tea at the café in the middle of the village, and then went for a short drive round the area, looking at some of the crop circles that had appeared in the oil seed rape fields on the hills overlooking the village. One of them looked like a tractor driver had had a bit too much of the local scrumpy, and had decided to go careering round in ever decreasing circles.
I wish I had something deeply profound to say at the end of this day, but there is nothing.
Back in Shinglesea though, things seemed to move thick and fast. Mrs Jackson’s lengthy surveillance on the suspected drug dealers over the road from her paid off. They did in fact turn out to be what they had seemed to be (which makes a change). The crunch came when she saw large amounts of pots and soil being carried into the house (I, in my innocence, would have just assumed they were keen on gardening!). When the cops raided they found a thriving cannabis factory.
Mrs J hadn’t just confined her observations to drug-dealers though. She had also spotted an ambulance outside Rowland Richard’s house early one morning. The silly sod had finally gone and done it. Topped himself. And had made the dreadful mistake of trying to change his mind at the last minute.
If I sound unsympathetic to suicides I suppose it’s because I am. I’m no stranger to suicidal thoughts, I used to get them myself when I was a lot younger (in my teens). But I reserve my more charitable feelings nowadays for all the vast hordes of people who somehow (at times against great odds) find the courage to carry on living.
Here endeth another lesson.
Robbie and Jason came to spend the evening at our house. Xanthe would have come too, but she was busy doing Magda’s job of showing the new tenant around the bungalow. I had a sneaking curiosity to know how the new tenant would find it, after our experiences up there at Easter, but I reasoned that, working in a mental hospital, she must be well-used to odd occurrences. In many ways she might be just the sort of tenant that wretched place needs.
Meanwhile, we four put the world to rights, or tried to anyway. The Burma Cyclone, Gordon Brown (texture like sun), the Zimbabwe elections, the Beijing Olympics, even Amy Winehouse , all got our undivided attention. Unsurprisingly, we felt a bit glum after talking about all this, and in the deepening twilight we decided to go up onto the sea-wall and have a look at the view.
The light was strange but beautiful, very other-worldly. And there seemed to be lights glimmering from underneath the surface of the water. Thousands of lights all twinkling, like Christmas tree lights submerged. I have never seen anything like this before, and I have no idea what it was.
“If we’re meant to be scared by this”, Robbie whispered “Then I’m afraid I’m not”.
Suddenly I think I knew what Al had been referring to in that oblique message he had put in his Christmas card to us, about treasures being found in the deep. Had he seen all this? And if he had, I was glad for him.
I finally got round to asking Jason what all that stuff about Mole Valley UFOs he had mentioned in the e-mail he had sent me several weeks ago. He said he had never sent such an e-mail. I didn’t see any point in arguing about this, so I let it go. Jason went on to say that we should try and write down all our odd experiences in the Shinglesea area for a paranormal forum he contributed to on a regular basis. I was reluctant to do this, mainly because I found it very hard to describe what we had seen from the sea-wall that evening. Not only that, but it had been a beautiful experience (sinister, but beautiful), and not really one I wanted to share with the outside world. Somehow he coaxed me into doing it though, and to also describe my experiences up at the bungalow during Easter week.
We got one response.
An obnoxious little baggage with a charm bypass demanded to know: ’IS THIS A JOKE?’
Oh … shove it up your arse.