She came back to herself with a shake and a shiver. Viggo was licking her hand and whining.
‘I’m okay,’ she told him, and scratched him between the ears. ‘Just wool-gathering, that’s all.’
She checked her watch. Ten minutes lost. Not so bad this time.
She clicked her fingers and Viggo fell to heel as she headed for the Pavilion to talk to Angie.
* * *
The largest and only permanent structure on Briar Hill Allotments had been given its ironic nickname because of its total lack of any similarity to a quaint old-fashioned cricketing pavilion. It was low and squat, its roof mostly moss and its panels sorely in need of a new paint job, and despite being made from a pair of old demountable portacabins joined together which housed the committee meeting room and a members-only bar one side and the allotments offices on the other, gave the impression that it had sprouted out of the earth like a large rectangular fungus and was going nowhere. Over the years efforts had been made to replace it with something more substantial – or at least hygienic – all of which had been resisted by the committee members who loved their ramshackle clubhouse and didn’t see the need to replace it just because the wiring was a bit dodgy and it tended to wobble in a strong wind.
Dennie found Angela Robotham in her office doing the accounts. Angie was almost a decade younger than Dennie, though her hair was iron grey and her face lined and tanned with years of working as a grounds team manager for the National Forest. Like most of the allotment holders, her work for Briar Hill was voluntary and part-time, undertaken on weekends and holidays. This being a Saturday, Angie was in early to catch up on the admin that nobody else wanted to do. She was sitting at her desk with a laptop open in front of her and wearing a heavy fleece jacket, since she also had a cigarette on and the window open next to her. A small electric heater whirred away on the other side, making a brave but doomed effort to alleviate the chill.
Dennie shivered. ‘You know it’s warmer in my shed,’ she pointed out.
‘Stinkier too,’ Angie replied without looking up. ‘With that great farting animal in there. Not to mention the dog.’
‘Ouch. At least he doesn’t smoke like a French soldier.’
Angie darted a bright blue eye at her. ‘Does he do anything else like a French soldier?’
Dennie laughed. ‘God, you’re foul!’
Angie grinned, a topography of contour lines shifting in her cheeks and around her eyes. ‘Morning, Dennie.’
‘Morning, Angie.’
‘Cup of tea?’
‘No thanks, I’m swilling.’
‘So, what can I do for you then? You haven’t come here for the dazzling repartee.’
Pinned to a noticeboard beside her desk was a large map of the allotments, most of the plots labelled with the name of their tenants with the exception of a few blank spaces such as the one where the Neary plot lay. Dennie tapped it. ‘I think we might have had a burglar last night.’
Angie closed the laptop and stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’
Dennie gave her an edited version of her encounter with the strange figure, leaving out some of the more problematic details such as its abnormal size and the way it had seemed to be eating handfuls of the soil – details which would have made it sound like nothing more than the nightmare of a senile old woman. Angie listened with mounting anxiety, but not for the reasons that Dennie had hoped.
‘And you thought you’d just go out and, what? Confront him? Jesus, Dennie, what if he’d had a knife? Or a gun?’
‘I had Viggo with me,’ she protested, scratching Viggo’s head. He thumped the floor with his tail, pleased to be part of the conversation.
‘Oh, so now he’s bulletproof, is he? Why didn’t you call the police?’
Now it was Dennie’s turn to be scornful. ‘Oh, come on, Angie, you know better than that. The police don’t bother with places like this. Remember when the Whites had that break-in? The buggers were in their home with their baby asleep upstairs and the best the police could do was tell them to lock themselves in the bathroom while it took them half an hour to get a patrol car out to them. You think they’re going to send anyone to help us? We have to look after ourselves, because nobody else will. Let’s face it, I’m the closest thing we’ve got to a security guard.’
Angie hmphed. ‘That scares me more than the idea of burglars. You need to look after yourself. You can’t be sleeping in your shed, Dennie. We’ve spoken about this. It’s against the by-laws, for one thing – and don’t start with me,’ she added, as Dennie opened her mouth to interrupt, ‘because I know exactly what you think of the by-laws. Besides, it’s just not safe. You’d have either set fire to yourself or been carried out with hypothermia long before now if it weren’t for that big hairy lump there.’
Viggo thumped the floor again and grinned, tongue lolling.
Dennie sighed, and the sigh turned into a yawn. ‘Look, Angie, I
