Disenchanted Read online

  The Avenant family residence was called The Bumbles. It sat in the rolling fields of the prettiest bit of Warwickshire, almost at the dead centre of England and as far from the sea as it was generally possible to get. The land had been gifted to the first lord of the manor in the middle ages, probably for doing something nasty to the French with the pointy end of a sword. The Bumbles was a ridiculously modest and twee name for a farmhouse that was only a couple of bedrooms and a peacock short of being a stately home. Roy’s family owned not only the house and the garden centre, but also every bit of farmland in sight.

  Buster trotted obediently alongside Ella and Roy as they walked up past the yew that bordered the rear gardens, every inch of him a good and obedient dog, with no sign of his earlier silliness. She slipped Buster one of the bone-shaped dog biscuits she always kept in her pockets and he snaffled it up.

  “Crikey O’Reilly, Ella. It’s just a seating plan, isn’t it?” said Roy.

  “Ha!” scoffed Ella. “Just a seating plan? As in ‘just the bubonic plague’ or ‘just a nuclear meltdown.’

  Roy held open the door to the orangery, a stunningly light and spacious glasshouse and, thanks to Roy’s generosity, the reception venue for the forthcoming wedding of Mr Gavin Hannaford to Ms Myra Whuppie.

  “It’s the one thing everyone will moan about if I get it wrong,” said Ella.

  “Really?” said Roy. “Look, they’re having the ceremony and disco in the marquee. They’re only coming in here for the meal and speeches. What can they possibly complain about?”

  “Who sits with who and where and how close to the top table…”

  “Well, yes.” Roy followed Ella in, “I can imagine it’s a particular problem when your side of the family’s so thin on the ground.”

  “Tell me about it. The Hannafords are an endangered species. Friends of the family aside, it’s just the pair of us now. It’s a good job dad’s not precious about such things.”

  “No, he’ll just be thrilled that you’re there to give him away,” said Roy, settling into an easy chair while Ella wove through the dining tables that had already been placed in the room.

  “Give him away?” Ella looked at him askance.

  Roy gave her a raffishly charming grin and, for a moment, she remembered how attractive he was — as attractive as a gun-toting hedgerow-demolishing member of the landed gentry could be.

  “You know, as the responsible adult in the family,” he said.

  Ella laughed. “It’s not quite that bad, honestly!”

  Roy fixed her with a serious look.

  “Don’t forget, I’ve known you for a long time. I know how things have been for you two. It’s not easy. Single dad. Growing up without a mum.”

  “She died when I was five. I’ve not known any different.”

  “But that experience is what’s made you the formidable adult that you are now.”

  Ella started to count chairs and tables, slightly embarrassed. There was a scratching sound off to one side. She looked round, expecting to find Buster as the source of the noise but Buster was sat at Roy’s feet and gazing lovingly up at his master.

  “Don’t you still have a grandma somewhere?”

  Ella stopped and creased her brow. “Yes, as far as I know. Mum’s mum actually. Rose. Nobody ever mentions her.”

  “Black sheep of the family, was she?”

  “I think she was some sort of hippy or something. Does that qualify as a black sheep? She lives in some place called Rushy Glen.”

  “Is that like a commune or a kibbutz?” Roy asked.

  Ella shrugged. “It might be. I don’t remember. Dad sounded a bit wary of it, wherever it is.”

  “Well even if you are going to be horribly outnumbered by the ugly sisters and the rest of the —”

  “Shh, you can’t call them that!”

  “Sorry. I meant one ugly stepsister and her piggish best mate —”

  “Roy!”

  “I can’t believe you convinced me to employ those two. Now, what was I saying?”

  “You were insulting my future family, Roy Avenant.”

  “Right,” he grinned. “I was saying that despite being the last of your line I hope that you’ll make some time to enjoy yourself at this wedding, and not just end up in the background, being their lackey.”

  “Enjoy is a strong word.” Ella inspected the azure satin of one of the chair covers. “For weddings generally, I mean. Surely we just endure them, you know? We hope that they go well for the bride and groom and that nobody will actually throw up on us.” Ella’s mind went back to her office. Was there really a puddle of vomit on the floor? She half expected to go back there and find that she had imagined the whole thing.

  “Nonsense!” said Roy, lolling in his chair. “Where else can you bust crazy dance moves with small children into the small hours? Eating and drinking too much is more or less expected and everybody gets to dress up nicely.”

  “Exactly my point,” said Ella. “Absolute hell and utterly frivolous.”

  “Ella, you are a practical woman to the point of masochism.”

  “Oh, I just live in the real world, Roy.”

  The scratching noise came again, and this time she placed it. Two birds perched on the outside of a window pane and knocked the glass, tapping and twittering as though trying to gain entrance.

  “Blimey!” exclaimed Roy. “Would you look at those birds?”

  “I’m just surprised that you can see them too,” said Ella.

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s been that sort of day. Signs and portents. Bird stalkers were bound to happen sooner or later.”

  “They’re entirely blue.”

  “Bluebirds?” suggested Ella.

  “In the UK?”

  “Well, what are they then?”

  I have no idea.” Roy was already on his feet. “Never saw anything like it. We’ll soon look them up once I’ve got ‘em though.”

  “Got them?” said Ella and then, “You are not shooting them, Roy.”

  “Back in a jiffy.”

  Ella approached the glass as Roy went off. The two birds fluttered into the air, about six inches above their previous position. They were indeed bright blue, and even more remarkably, they held between them something the size and shape of a paper napkin. On it was scrawled a message:

  Go! she wont to kil yo

  It was written in lettering that might very well have been executed by a bird, or some other creature lacking opposable thumbs.

  “She? Who?” she said.

  The birds began a bizarre and involved pantomime that conveyed absolutely no meaning whatsoever. Ella heard the sound of Roy returning with his gun, so she tapped the glass and gave the birds a thumbs-up.

  “Go away,” she hissed, “or it’s a trip to the taxidermist for you.”

  They dropped the note and flew off just as Roy re-entered with a break-action shotgun open over his arm.

  “Gone have they?” he said, disappointed.

  “Maybe that’s for the best,” said Ella. “Roy, can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot,” he said.

  “What would you say if I told you that those birds were trying to tell me that my life is in danger?”

  Roy had the decency to give it some thought.

  “I’d say, you ought to go home, Ella, and have a bit of a lie down.”

  “Good answer,” said Ella.

  Ella did go home with every intention of having a lie down.

  Home was a detached house in nearby Nether-cum-Studley on a patch of land that didn’t belong to the Avenants but was fairly surrounded by land that did.

  She didn’t expect to find her dad in the kitchen, making a hamper lunch.

  The kitchen was a mixture of modern equipment and antique kitchenalia, much of which hung down from an old fashioned wooden clothes airer, suspended from the ceiling. An inexperienced guest had multiple opportunities to give themselves a concussion, but Gavin ducked expertly between them
as he prepared his food.

  “Myra said you had gone again,” said Ella.

  “Not gone, but going,” he told her with a smile that made his little red cheeks all the redder.

  Gavin Hannaford considered himself a bon viveur and took the life of a bon viveur very seriously, so his packed lunch used several different types of bread, and he carefully filled a set of small storage boxes with olives, pate and a hardboiled egg. He folded a linen napkin onto the top and made sure that he had a china plate and silver cutlery as well. She didn’t need to ask him about salt and pepper, as he always carried a tiny Edwardian cruet set with him, in case of emergencies.

  “You’re back at Mr Dainty’s again?” she asked, popping an olive into her mouth.

  “Again,” he agreed.

  “That man’s taking all of your time.”

  “It does seem that way, but there’s a lot to do,” he replied. “More antiques to value and catalogue than you could imagine. And he’s a difficult man to please.”

  “Myra thinks he’s Yugoslav mafia or something.”

  “No, but he likes it that people think he is. I need to build his trust. He’s a tricky client. You know about tricky clients.”

  “Tell me about them,” laughed Ella. “I had a voicemail from Mrs Jubert in Little Wangford, the one where I replaced all the rendering on her cottage.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “She says it’s gone soft. I can’t understand how she can think that, it dried perfectly and it’s completely weatherproof, but she insists it’s gone so soft that the local kids are pulling it off. She’s pretty angry, so I need to go out there and check it out.”

  Her father gave her a sympathetic smile.

  “We must keep our customers happy, Ella. Here.”

  He pulled a book out from under his hamper, a battered thing bound in red leather which he opened to an obviously well-viewed page. There was a picture, a Victorian woodcut image of a multi-layered and turreted monstrosity built onto and into a rocky cliff. Waves pounded the cliffs and the lower levels.

  “Thornbeard House,” said Gavin Hannaford.

  “House? That’s a castle.”

  “It’s Dainty’s place on the south Devon coast. Imagine having to do the rendering on that behemoth. Our clients might be wrong or crazy — Mr Dainty thinks I’ve been moving his furniture round for goodness sake — but we must do our best to put their minds at rest. Happy clients pay their bills on time. Crazy clients…”

  “Yeah, crazy,” said Ella and, at that moment, heard a small voice. It sounded as if it was coming from the pantry.

  “Have you got a radio on somewhere?” she asked him.

  Her father shook his head and gathered up his book and hamper.

  “I’m going to load up the car.”

  “Sure,” she said and then, once he was gone, went to the pantry to investigate. She stopped outside the door.

  “Pickled herring. Would you place it under p or h?” a voice said.

  “I wouldn’t,” said a different, throatier voice.

  “Or shall we have pickles as a special category, organised alphabetically within that category?”

  “There’s no point,” said the second voice, accompanied by a flatulent squeak.

  “No point? Where would we be without some order?”

  “I mean I’ve eaten them.”

  “All of them?”

  Ella whisked the door open and looked inside to see two more dwarfs.

  “What are you doing here? Do I have an actual dwarf infestation? You’re not the same ones I saw already are you? They had yellow and red hats.”

  “Colour co-ordination,” said the one wearing the green hat and holding an antique Filofax. “That was my idea. Simple code for fast recognition. Nobody else has my organisational skills.”

  Ella rolled her eyes. “And you are?”

  “Oh. I’m the Judicious Application of Systems and Measures,” said the dwarf. “This here is Uncontrollably Flatulent.”

  The dwarf in the brown hat looked up guiltily from the jar of gherkins that he was guzzling. He looked as though he was searching for the correct words of greeting, but, failing to find them, he farted instead.

  “I’m Windy,” he said, stifling a belch. “He’s OCD.”

  “I don’t care,” snapped Ella. “I want to know what you’re doing in my house.”

  “Eating your pickles,” said Windy.

  “Saving your life,” said OCD.

  “By eating your pickles.” Windy looked into the now empty jar.

  “Not by eating your pickles,” said OCD, “although they were perilously close to being out of date.”

  “Shut up!” said Ella. “I’ve got enough going on in my life without having to deal with a pair of pint-sized pickle inspectors. I’ve got a hen do that I don’t want to go to, an irate customer with soft rendering and a wedding reception plan that —. What’s this?”

  OCD had presented her with a sharply folded rectangle of paper. Ella opened it up.

  “I did notice that your seating plan for the wedding was not properly symmetrical and did not conform to Vitruvius’s dictums on harmony, proportion and ratio,” said OCD. “This is a proposed layout that I knocked up.”

  “You were snooping in my office!”

  “For your own good,” belched Windy.

  “Your life is in danger and we’re here to warn you,” confirmed OCD.

  “Ignoring the fact that this is an infuriatingly perfect seating plan, why is my life in danger?”

  “Stepmother.” Windy swigged the remaining vinegar from the pickle jar. “She’s planning to kill you.”

  Ella pulled the pantry door shut behind her.

  “Right. Words of one syllable. I don’t know why my life is now filled with weird stuff like dwarfs, but now you’re here you can explain to me, why do you think Myra’s going to kill me?”

  “Myra?” said Windy.

  “That’s her name,” said Ella.

  “Or that’s what she told you her name was,” said OCD.

  “Evil stepmothers can be tricksy beasts,” said Windy. “Silent but deadly.”

  Windy gave her a crafty smile and Ella recoiled, gasping, as his flatulent stink reached her nose.

  “There’s plenty of evidence she means you harm, if you’d care to open your eyes,” said OCD. “I believe she took you out for lunch last week?”

  “Yes, but what does that mean?”

  OCD consulted his Filofax.

  “Do you have any idea how many people die during lunch in an average week?” he said. “Heart attacks, choking, cocktail stick accidents — oh, I can see you’re not impressed.” Ella fixed him with a stony stare. “Well what about these then?” OCD waved a sheaf of papers at her.

  “What are those?” Ella asked.

  “Your evil stepmother’s plans for remodelling this house.” OCD pointed to a pencil drawn diagram. “Apart from showing a shocking disregard for accuracy and scale, you’ll notice that there is a new dressing room planned for the place your bedroom currently occupies.”

  Ella grabbed the paper and scanned it.

  “Well, this clearly shows that Myra doesn’t want me living here, but that doesn’t mean she wants me dead.”

  OCD opened the door a crack and peered out.

  “Looks like your dad’s about to go. You’ll want to say goodbye. One last time.”

  “One last time?”

  OCD nodded sagely. Windy farted loudly for emphasis and Ella wrinkled her nose as she edged out.

  “Stay here. I’ve still got questions for you two. You, Gusty-pants —”

  “Windy.”

  “Whatever. Find a way of communicating that doesn’t involve gas. Farts are not punctuation.”

  Windy looked crestfallen and gave a sad bottom toot.

  “Does he do that instead of actually speaking?” Ella asked OCD.

  “Oh he does. With relish,” said OCD.

  “He should be ashamed, not enjoying it.�
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  “No, I mean he’s eaten the relish. You can make it out in those fruity top notes.”

  Ella tried to put dwarfs from her mind as she waved her father off and hurried upstairs to get showered and changed. She was due at Myra’s hen do and doomsaying dwarfs or no doomsaying dwarfs, Ella hated to let people down.

  She opened her wardrobe and a hand shot out from between the hangers, holding out a pair of trousers.

  “Reckon you’ll want these. Practical but still fun. See they’ve got a shimmer of Lurex.”

  “I thought I told you to stay in the pantry!”

  “The smell’s pretty bad down there.” OCD, emerged sheepishly from the wardrobe. “Windy’s found the pickled eggs.”

  “Where’s my dress?” Ella flicked through the rack. “I bought a new dress for tonight. I hate dresses so the only time I buy one I bloody well expect to wear it.”

  “You can’t run for your life in a dress if someone’s after you! That’s why I’ve picked you out another outfit. Layers, trousers, that sort of thing.”

  “You hid my dress?” yelled Ella. “Smaller than me or not, you’re going to feel the toe of my —”

  “Flat shoes?” said OCD. He offered up some practical footwear, and made a hasty exit.

  Ella eventually gave up hunting for her dress and pulled on the outfit that OCD had suggested. If this was all in her mind, she’d done a convincing job of forgetting where that new dress was. Could the human subconscious do such a thing? She had no doubt that it was possible.

  As a child, she’d possessed an imagination that defied adult logic. Her father had never understood her flights of fancy. Maybe it was Roy’s mentioning of family but she found herself recalling one of her few memories of her mum’s mum, Granny Rose.

  Ella’s memory of her was faded and faint, but she was certain that Granny had always taken her childish ramblings seriously. She recalled one time when she had told her Granny about a fairy that she’d met in the garden (which garden or whose, Ella wasn’t sure) and Granny had stopped peeling the potatoes or coring apples or whatever it was she had been doing and crouched down.

  “How does tha know it’s a fairy?” Granny had asked her.

  “It’s a pretty little lady with wings,” Ella had replied.

  “I see,” Granny had said, stubbed out her cigarette, went to the cleaning cupboard and got out a bucket and a bottle of bleach and then went out into the garden to carry out some sort of exorcism featuring lots of hot soapy water and swearing.