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She gave a little snigger and glanced to the side, as though to clarify her opinion with someone invisible sitting alongside her.

After the profiteroles, Kelly helped Glynnis clear away the plates and wash up, after which Glynnis insisted on returning to her summer house—now shrouded in darkness beneath a cloudy sky—for some aperitifs. Kelly, by this time a little tipsy, felt that now was the moment she had been waiting for.

As she sat down, she said, ‘I don’t suppose you know anything about Clive Dawkins?’

‘Oh, Edward’s father?’ she said. ‘You mean the man that disappeared, don’t you?’

‘Yes, that’s the one.’

Glynnis flapped a hand. ‘I wouldn’t worry too much about him,’ she said. ‘I heard he had a lady friend overseas. One of these online things. And most likely, he’s gone over to see her, taking the opportunity to leverage a return to Briar Speckles for his son.’

‘That seems like a strange thing to do,’ Kelly said.

‘Well, you know they don’t get along, don’t you? Clive and Edward? There’s some bad blood under that bridge, I can tell you that for nothing.’

‘Is there really?’ Kelly said. ‘I had no idea.’

‘Let’s just put it this way: Edward moved away to work for a reason, and it would have taken a very big reason to bring him back again—a reason, for example, such as his father’s mysterious disappearance. It’s quite likely that Clive will make a sudden reappearance at some point, hopefully in order to try and patch things up with his estranged son.’

‘That sounds like a complicated way of doing things.’

‘Well, you know how they say absence makes the heart grow fonder? Well, disappearance makes the heart forget. At least, when you think that your parent might be dead, all the grudges that you held tend to be overlooked, and you wish you’d made amends before they passed. So maybe Clive is giving Edward a chance to do just that.’

‘What’s the problem between them?’

‘I’ll let Edward tell you that,’ Glynnis said. ‘I don’t like to gossip. Plus, it’ll give you a chance to get to know him. After all, he does resemble your supposed perfect man. Maybe if you get to know his personality, you might forgive his lack of a mullet and handlebar moustache.’ Glynnis smiled and gave Kelly a wink.

But Kelly wasn’t about to let her get away without a bit of gossip. ‘It seems,’ she said, ‘that lots of people disappear around here. I mean, there was the old mayor in that cave, and then, of course, Howling Gail, whom no one has ever found. And how about that journalist that came to report on the very first Halloween parade? What was his name … Jack Mellion?’

At the mention of Jack Mellion, Glynnis, who had been nodding and smiling along to the other names, looked up. ‘What is it you know about him?’ she said.

‘To be honest, not very much,’ Kelly said. ‘I do know that he showed up to report on the very first parade for The Times, and he never went back. No one knows what happened to him, but there is a picture of him in that book you lent me.’

‘Is there indeed?’ Glynnis said.

‘Yes,’ Kelly answered. ‘And I don’t know if it’s anything to do with him being a journalist, but when I spoke to Edward, he suggested that it might be a good idea for me to leave the village before the parade. As he said, bad things tended to happen to journalists.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about that,’ Glynnis said. ‘He’s probably just flirting with you.’

‘I don’t think so. Telling someone to leave the village is hardly flirting.’

Glynnis fell quiet. She took a sip of a rather unpleasant-looking, bright green drink that reminded Kelly of a radioactive pond she’d seen on a television documentary.

‘Well, I think we’ll worry about that later,’ she said. ‘Now seems like it might be the right time for me to tell your fortune. It’s always interesting to know what the stones have to say.’

‘What stones?’ Kelly said.

Glynnis reached under the table and lifted up a little cardboard box. She removed the lid to reveal a handful of pebbles inside.

‘The stones,’ she said. ‘The Stones of Mayhem, dredged from the Bottomless Well right here in Briar Speckles. And they’ve been telling the fortune of local people ever since.’

‘I’m not sure if I’m into all that,’ Kelly said.

‘Don’t be afraid, dear. Of course you are,’ Glynnis said. ‘Now just give that box a little shake, and we’ll see what the stones have to say.’

Kelly probably would have refused had she not been a little tipsy. But, thinking the night couldn’t get any stranger, she gave the box a good, hard rattle and then handed it back to Glynnis, who looked at it, eyes wide and mouth agape.

‘Oh my goodness,’ she said. ‘Well, that is unexpected. Perhaps Mr Dawkins was right.’