The Secret of Crickley Hall

river, they came upon a shop whose broad sign above two large plate-glass windows proclaimed it T. Longmarsh, General Store/Newsagent, and Eve, her arm linked through Gabe's, brought them to a halt.

'I need to get something for tonight's dinner,' she told Gabe. 'And for tomorrow's lunch.'

Gabe peered through the window. 'Okay, let's see what they got. S'all freezer-packs by the look of it.'

Cally had taken time to stand in the kerbside gutter and stamp her Wellington boots into the stream of water that rushed towards a storm drain further along. Loren jumped away to avoid being splashed.

'Hey, Cally, quit it,' Gabe warned. 'You can look at the books in the store while we shop.'

'Bummer,' Cally complained as she stepped back onto the kerb and Gabe had to hide his grin as Eve frowned at her.

Loren giggled, but knew better than to encourage her sister's take on Bart Simpson, so turned away as if honestly interested in the window display. Eve mounted the step into the store's porched entrance and the wood- framed glass display cabinet next to the door caught her eye. Inside it were cards of various sizes and colours, each bearing handwritten or typed messages advertising second-hand goods or services for purchase or hire. She glanced over them with casual interest. There were plumbers, gardeners and garden tools for hire, a pram, used cars and kittens for sale. There were ads for a veterinary service, estate agents and local dentist on view, and more items for sale such as an 'almost new' Apple computer and a Singer sewing machine, cottages to rent, and a church jumble sale announced for a date long since passed. There were faded cards for a psychic reading, an undertaker, speckled pullets, a lime distributor and a reconditioned tractor.

'We going in, hon?' Gabe prompted from the rain-soaked pavement.

Eve had been lost for a moment—such moments were becoming more and more frequent lately—taking in the cards without registering any in particular. A bell tinkled above the door when she pushed through.

The shop was crowded with small freezer units and shelves loaded with confectionery and tinned food, alongside stationery, the smaller kind of DIY products—glues, picture hooks, nails, saws and hammers—with stand-alone magazine and book racks taking up much of the floor space. Jars of sweets, miniature displays of mints and chewing gums, and local and national newspapers shared space with a cash machine on the counter, behind which a plump woman of middle years and severe countenance had become alert to her new customers.

Eve, Gabe, Loren and Cally piled in, dripping wet, a fresh breeze blowing in with them, carrying rain through the porch and over the threshold. Gabe hastily closed the door behind them to preserve the warmth inside.

'Pretty nasty out there,' he said half apologetically to the woman behind the counter, who merely stared back at them through horn-rimmed glasses. 'Yep,' he answered himself under his breath, 'it's pretty wild.'

Eve nudged him with an elbow and he feigned interest in a bookrack close by. Eve immediately went to one of the two freezer units, smiling hello to the shopkeeper as she passed by her. Shrugging off her hood, Cally trotted over to the shelves of sweets and chocolate bars, while Loren went to the magazine carousel.

Gabe, standing by his own book carousel, glanced around the store and wondered at the cornucopia of goods on offer. Bags of dog food leaned against one wall, the shelves above filled with lemonade, Coke and Fanta bottles; affixed to card displays on the walls were combs, hairgrips, packs of women's tights, hairbrushes and cheap digital watches. More shelves were stacked with soap powders and detergents, dusters and mops, firelighters and sunglasses, loaves and bread rolls. The place seemed to cater for all needs and, judging by the abundance of stock, did a brisk trade, although at that particular moment there were only three other customers: a stockily built old lady wearing a pink see-through ankle-length mac, who was ambling over to the counter clutching a ready-sliced loaf in one arm and a pack of PG Tips in the other, while behind the magazine carousel where Loren was studying teen magazine titles there lurked a girl of about Loren's age and height but stocky, and a taller, older boy. They were taking peeks round the carousel at Loren, ducking back whenever she looked their way.

Shy kids, Gabe thought, browsing himself. One of the titles before him caught his eye. The Great Hollow Bay Flood the title said and, curious, he picked out the front copy. It was a slim, soft-covered edition and he flicked through the first few pages. It seemed the harbour village had suffered a devastating flood during the Second World War, when buildings had been destroyed and many lives lost. He became more interested and thumbed through to the pages of black-and-white photographs that showed the village in the flood's aftermath. The images were grim: houses totally demolished, vehicles turned over onto their backs in the main street, workmen clearing rubble, giant boulders in the streets, broken walls, debris of wrecked homes and buildings littering the mud of the foreshore along with overturned fishing boats. Later photographs depicted excavators and cranes clearing the wreckage, military vehicles bringing in troops (as there was a war on at the time, Gabe assumed that these were drawn from the reserves), diggers bearing loads of rubble and wood, and fresh scaffolding being erected. It must have been one hell of a night, he thought.

Loren was aware of the two customers on the other side of the carousel—she'd glimpsed a hefty-looking girl, probably around her own age, but who dressed a lot older, and a taller boy with stick-up hair and a harsh case of acne—and tried to ignore them, even when she felt the magazine rack held firmly from the other side as she tried to turn it. Forced to move round the rack instead of spinning it, she soon came within proper sight of the two and she gave them a hesitant smile of greeting. She had half pulled a Shout from its rack between Cosmogirl and Pop Star when the big-built girl spun the carousel and the bottom corner of the magazine was caught and pulled from Loren's grasp. It fell to the floor, its contents of special offers and other junk literature spilling out.

Loren flushed and immediately went down on her haunches to retrieve the magazine and its colourful detritus, growing even redder when she heard the other girl say, 'Geek.' Sniggers followed.

Feeling embarrassed, humiliated even, such was her sensitivity, Loren gathered up the gaudy adverts for teenage skincare cream, panty liners and hair gel, and stuffed them back inside the magazine.

Just then, Cally came trotting round a floor shelf clutching a tube of Smarties in one hand (she guessed her mother would refuse to let her have them so, even at that tender age aware that daddies were much easier to manipulate, she was bringing them to Gabe). She came to a stop when she saw the big girl and boy glaring at Loren and heard them call her a silly name. Cally poked her tongue out at them.

'Spazzie,' the big girl called her.

'Bite my shorts,' Cally replied.

Loren put a hand to her mouth to suppress a giggle. She took her sister's hand and led her away. 'It's not bite my shorts, Cally,' she whispered, leaning close to Cally's ear. 'Bart always says eat my shorts.'

Gabe had witnessed the minor encounter from behind the bookrack, reluctant to interfere: Loren had to learn to stand up for herself. Sure, if the situation had got serious, if the girl and boy had tried physically to bully his daughter, then he would have stepped in, but instead Cally's response had made him wince, then grin. They really had to wean their youngest daughter off The Simpsons.

'What are you two up to back there?' came a stern voice from the other side of the shop. It was the shopkeeper, whose broad upper body was angled over the counter as she stood on tiptoe to see round the magazine racks. 'Is that you acting the maggot, Seraphina Blaney? Come on out and bring yer daft brother Quentin with yer. Yer've spent too long already moochin' around. Are yer buyin' or not?'

Reluctantly, the girl sidled out from behind the magazines, the boy, who must have been about fourteen, slouching after her, and Loren got a good look at them both as they deliberately brushed by her.

'Saddo,' the girl slyly said to Loren as she passed; the acne-cursed youth sneered a grin.

'Come on now, what yer got there to buy?' It sounded like to boiy. The shopkeeper had evidently lost patience with them, for she added: 'It's taken yer half the day to choose.'

The sturdy-looking girl offered up a can of Diet Coke while the spotty boy grasped a Twix in his fist. Seraphina wore her hair scraped back over her scalp in sink-estate style, a rubber band holding it together at the back of her neck so that it hung down in a lank ponytail. There was a hardness to her features despite the pudginess of her flesh: her eyes were mean and narrow anyway, but were made even meaner and narrower by the surrounding plumpness, and even the shortness of her nose failed to soften her looks, for the lips below were thin, almost a gash in her face.

It would have been hard to tell they were brother and sister, for the boy had large doleful eyes and, although stocky, he was tall as well, with slouched shoulders and a concave chest that made him appear slightly paunchy. His tufty hair was slick with gel and his mouth hung gormlessly half open. His face and neck were tortured by angry-looking pimples and pustules, but such was his bearing—he somehow walked with an arrogant but hunched swagger—it was almost impossible to feel any sympathy.