The Cheesemaker's House Read Online Free Page A

then worry a spider might have attached itself to the fabric, so I give it a shake and stuff it into my bag.
    At last the village green is ahead of me, the lights from the farm re-appearing to my right. From the opposite direction a tractor lumbers along, and as I reach New Cottage its headlamps illuminate a figure sitting under one of the trees on the green. With a start I realise it is Owen. I turn to look again, but that part of the green is in darkness for a moment or two until the lights from a second tractor swing round. There is no-one there.
    My hand is frozen to the metal latch on the gate. If Owen had been sitting under the tree then he couldn’t possibly have jumped up and hidden so quickly. The tractors rumble on to the farmyard and there isn’t enough light to see anything on the green now, however hard I peer.
    I stand motionless for an age, watching for a movement among the shadows. In the distance the tractor engine cuts out and I hear voices, and a metallic sound as a barn door grates open. My hand is stiff from clinging to the latch and on the village green all is quiet and still. I open my gate and crunch up the drive.

Chapter Five
    My legs catch in the sheet that has somehow wound itself around me. I close my eyes but all I see is every last detail of the way the tractor lights picked out the paleness of Owen’s face and hair and the baggy cream shirt he was wearing. I sit up in the darkness and plump my hot little pillow, but that doesn’t work either.
    There’s something else, too. In that strange way your mind hops about when it refuses to sleep I remember the woman by the freshly filled grave in the churchyard. And Christopher telling me there have been no funerals in Great Fencote for over a year. The inconsistency looms over me at three in the morning and I am still awake when sky loses its blackness and the first red-grey streaks of dawn appear.
    In the sunny light of day, however, it seems a relatively simple matter to clear up so I attach William to his lead and make my way up the village to the church. It is still early but there are signs of life from a few of the other houses; an open curtain here, the sound of the radio there. I find myself wondering if Owen lives in one of them.
    William and I walk straight past the church porch and around the back of the building, but there I stop; there are a few old gravestones near the path, but by and large the area is an overgrown meadow, long grass dotted with buttercups and the occasional poppy.
    I am standing exactly where I was when I came across the grieving woman but this morning it’s brighter and my eyes aren’t swimming with tears. I scan the churchyard for anything which could look different. Close to the far boundary is a lumpy patch of brambles even now deep in the shadow of a tall fir tree. Could I have mistaken it for someone kneeling? I narrow my eyes, squint at it, and decide it is entirely possible.
    Having solved one mystery I return to the village green. It is a long, narrow triangle of grass with Ravenswood Farm at its apex and New Cottage (among other properties) at its base. About half way up a metalled track cuts across it, and between my house and the track is the tree where I thought I saw Owen.
    My confidence in my detection skills is boosted by my trip to the churchyard but I still can’t work out whether someone has been sitting under the tree recently or not. William sniffs around for a bit then cocks his leg. He isn’t exactly helping.
    â€œYou’re not much of a snoop dog,” I murmur, and he looks up at me, big brown eyes trusting and completely uncomprehending.
    I make a circuit of the tree wondering how Owen could have seen me and jumped up to hide behind it before the second tractor came. But why would he have done that? Why would he have been there at all? It is the ‘why’ that’s been making me feel so uneasy for most of the night. Time and time again