Halloween had arrived, and Burley Bridge was decked out in festive finery: shop windows displayed black cats and cauldrons filled with foil-wrapped sweets, and glowing lanterns and fairy lights were strewn everywhere. If anything, things had ramped up several notches from last year. Lucy couldn’t remember giant glowing pumpkins in clusters in the Red Lion’s garden, or a flock of ghosts (did ghosts flock?) dangling on fine threads in the window of the village hall.
At the request of Marnie and Sam, Lucy was hosting a party this year for the village children. She had ensured that there would be no B&B guests that night; her old college friend Connell had texted a couple of weeks ago to say he would be arriving the day after Halloween so Lucy figured she could let the kids invite twenty or so friends and she would lay on a fabulous feast. She had already made bat biscuits, spider cakes and blood-red jelly, and had a batch of skinny sausage rolls (‘wizened fingers’) and black spaghetti (‘witches’ hair’) to attend to, as well as pinning up strings of doughnuts for the kids to nibble. Another case of helipad madness, definitely.
While the children were busy dressing up, she set about carving an enormous pumpkin for the Halloween table. As she started to hack at it, she turned to see Sam in the kitchen doorway in the Dracula outfit she had resorted to buying online. ‘It’s scratchy,’ he announced.
‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ she said, poking her knife into the pumpkin’s tough flesh. And now another list formed in her mind: Things I took for granted when Ivan was here. Zipping up her party dress. All those little things like changing lightbulbs and fuses, checking her car’s tyre pressure, removing a particularly stubborn cork from a bottle – and carving pumpkins which, she decided now, was a stupid tradition.
‘Ow!’ she yelped.
‘What’s wrong?’ Sam asked.
‘I just cut my hand.’
She stared down at where the knife had slipped and sliced into her flesh, halfway up her index finger.
‘Is it bleeding?’ he asked, clearly more concerned with his costume than her minor injury.
‘Yep. It’ll be okay, though.’ She grabbed at the kitchen roll and wrapped it around as a makeshift bandage.
‘I can’t wear this,’ he added, her wound apparently forgotten now. ‘It’s itchy.’
She frowned at him. ‘It’s just a cape and trousers, Sam. The cape isn’t even touching your skin – you have your own T-shirt on. So how can it be itchy?’
‘It is! I can’t wear it.’
‘Well, what else are you going to wear?’
‘Don’t shout!’ he barked.
‘I’m not shouting. I’m just trying to get the party ready—’ She broke off. ‘Oh, God.’ She ran to the oven, grabbed the oven gloves and yanked open the door to see three neat rows of entirely blackened sausage rolls. ‘Oh, shit.’
‘You swore,’ Sam announced, bristling with self-righteousness as Marnie swished in in her Scooby-Doo costume. Carys’s children were being Velma and Shaggy, but Sam had refused to follow the theme. Bet you wish you had now, Lucy thought darkly as she plonked the burnt offerings on the draining board and wrapped a fresh strip of kitchen roll around her finger.
‘At least it’s seasonal,’ she muttered to herself. ‘A bleeding wound to scare everyone.’
‘Did you hurt yourself, Mum?’ Marnie asked with vague concern.
‘Just a little bit but never mind,’ she said in a clipped voice, wondering now what had possessed her to take on the hosting of a party tonight. But at least the table was laid, with all the food put out and streamers thrown haphazardly around the kitchen. She had to admit, it looked pretty inviting.
With half an hour before everyone was due to arrive, Lucy boiled a vat of spaghetti and managed to transfer it, portion by portion, into a ziplock bag with a little water and black food colouring, only mildly scalding herself in the process. Party food attended to, she figured that she, too, should make an effort to dress the part. Leaving the children watching spooky cartoons in the living room – with Sam still grumbling about his scratchy cape and the fact that Josh would be bound to win the fancy dress prize – she hurried upstairs, stripped off her jeans and sweater and pulled on an ancient, shapeless back maternity dress that had somehow avoided being taken to the charity shop. She had also sourced a scraggy black wig from the newsagent’s meagre selection of Halloween accessories, and pulled it on. Poised at her dressing table mirror now, she started to sponge on the greyish face paint she’d bought for Marnie the previous year.
‘Mum!’ Marnie yelled from downstairs.
‘Just a minute, honey.’ Lucy wedged white plastic fangs over her own teeth (another newsagent purchase) and studied her reflection in her mirror. She looked hideous – just as the occasion required.
‘Mum!’ Marnie yelled again. ‘It’s your phone. It’s ringing again.’
Lucy pulled on a witch’s hat, which Carys had unearthed for her, and hurried downstairs. She took her ringing mobile from Marnie’s outstretched hand. ‘Hello?’ she said briskly.
‘Lucy, hi – it’s Connell.’
‘Oh, hi, Connell.’ She strode through to the kitchen where it was quieter.
‘I’m sorry,’ he started, his voice echoing, ‘but I think there’s something wrong with my sat nav.’
She frowned. Much as she was looking forward to seeing Connell after all these years, she wasn’t entirely sure why he was telling her this.
‘And I’m not getting GPS on my phone,’ he added. ‘Maybe I’m out of data.’
She pulled out her fangs and slipped them into the pocket of the dress. It was impossible to concentrate with them in. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she started, ‘but I’m actually just about to—’ She broke off at the sound of a sharp rap on the front door.
‘Pretty sure I’m only three or four miles away,’ Connell went on. ‘I’ve turned off the main dual carriageway and the road was signposted to Burley Bridge, but then it forked and I think maybe I took the wrong—’
‘But, Connell—’
‘Mum! Someone’s at the door!’ Marnie shouted from the living room.
‘Could someone answer it please?’ Lucy yelled back. Her request was ignored. She gripped her phone and strode through to the hall. ‘You mean you’re on your way here now?’ she exclaimed.
‘Yes! I’ve just pulled over to call you.’
Panic rose in her chest as she opened the front door, pulling an apologetic face as she beckoned in Roseanne, one of the school-gate mums, and her three little boys who were dressed as a trio of wizards. Marnie and Sam ran through to greet them, leaving the TV blaring. ‘Come in, come in,’ she said distractedly. ‘I won’t be a minute. There’s food in the kitchen.’ She waved a hand towards it and raked her wig back from her already clammy forehead.
‘Sorry, Connell – some friends have just arrived. Um, look, I don’t know what’s happened but it’s actually tomorrow night you’re booked in for. You’ve made a mistake.’ As she said it, doubt started to creep into her consciousness. Had it been tomorrow, or had she been the one to mess up? Certainly, she’d been prone to forgetfulness since Ivan died. Too many demands on her time, too many plates to keep spinning, coupled with broken sleep and general mental woolliness. She wasn’t proud of the fact that she had sent Marnie and Sam on a school archaeology trip to Ilkley Moor without packed lunches and they’d had to settle for ‘a dry cracker and some grapes’ (as reported by Marnie) donated by a friend. She had missed her own doctor’s and dentist’s appointments – but so far, she had never messed up a guest’s booking.
‘I really don’t think so,’ Connell said.
‘Okay. Just hang on a sec.’ She tried to exude calm as she marched through to the living room and flipped open her laptop to check her spreadsheet of bookings. There he was. ‘No, it was definitely November the first and second,’ she said firmly. There was another knock at the door, and Lucy hurried through and waved in the new arrivals, still making apologetic gestures for being on the phone.
‘Everything okay?’ Carys mouthed.
Lucy grimaced and nodded. As everyone surged into the kitchen, and the noise levels rose, she stepped into the downstairs bathroom and shut the door.
‘Connell,’ she said, ‘I’ve checked my bookings diary. You’re definitely in there for tomorrow night.’
‘Oh, Christ,’ he groaned. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I messed up.’
She held the phone to her ear, remembering again how scatty and chaotic he’d been at college. ‘Could I possibly stay tonight?’ he asked. ‘The head teacher’s expecting me first thing tomorrow. I reckon I’m literally five, six miles away.’
‘But … my whole house is full of people right now.’ Another mum had arrived with her offspring (why was it always the women out trooping the streets in the wind and the rain with gangs of hyped-up children?).
‘Look, I won’t really need anything from you,’ Connell went on. ‘Just a bed to sleep in, basically. I won’t even need breakfast. I’m sure I can get something in the village.’
‘Tomorrow morning’s not the problem,’ she said. ‘It’s tonight. It’s Halloween.’
‘Christ, is it?’
‘Yes! And I’m having a party and then I’m going to be out with the children till God knows when. I really can’t have any guests tonight.’
‘Well, look – I could help.’
‘What with?’
‘Um, anything really. Anything you need me to do. I could, er … clear up after the party?’
Despite the fact that this situation was far from ideal, she couldn’t help smiling at that. ‘I don’t expect my guests to wipe jelly off the floor.’
Connell chuckled. ‘I don’t mind, honestly. If you just could tell me how to get to you?’
Wearily, Lucy lowered herself onto the toilet lid. ‘You mentioned a fork in the road, once you’d taken the Burley Bridge turn-off?’
‘Yep. I turned right.’
‘Well, go back to the junction and take the other fork and carry on for a couple of miles …’ She broke off. ‘But please take that road carefully. It’s been raining, there are sharp bends and it’s quite skiddy.’
‘Hey, I’ll be fine,’ he said jovially.
She cleared her throat. ‘And when you get to the village, go right along the high street until the end of the shops, then turn left up the lane and that’s our cottage on the left. You should be here in ten minutes. Oh, and there’s one other thing …’
‘Yes?’
She stepped out of the tiny bathroom and made her way down the hall and into the melee of the kitchen. ‘I don’t suppose you’re any good at carving pumpkins?’