Search Results for 'affair'

Nora Long was dying. She knew she didn’t have long left, and she had some affairs still to attend to before she was no longer able. Nora was a childless spinster, a frugal recluse with an uncanny knack for winning premium bond and lottery prizes; nothing big enough to attract much attention, but more than enough for her needs. Consequently, she had quietly amassed a fortune over the years ~ and she wasn’t about to let the state have it all.

Nora had spent most of her 88 years dreaming, and talking to ghosts and spirits. She wrote all of it down in notebooks, hundreds and hundreds of them, until the advent of the computer in more recent years. She had splashed out and bought one, and gamely taught herself how to use it, keeping her journals online from then on.

Nora discovered how to google one day. Wondering what in the world she might want to search for, a name popped into her head: Yurara Fameliki.

Nora had learned to trust her impulses, and she searched for the unusual name, double checking first with the voice in her head as to the correct spelling.

Nora began to read the story on the websites first page. Three days later, she was still reading it, as it grew day by day. Nora was almost sorry she had already chosen to die. At last she had found some people she could relate to!

But Nora was too weary to change her mind. She did have a plan though, a plan that cheered her greatly. On the websites pages she had noticed a little sign saying ‘Buy a Drink’.

India Louise shivered in the draughty corridor and glanced furtively over her shoulder. Bill! she hissed into the keyhole. She tapped softly on the door again, afraid of waking Manon in the next room. It would be difficult enough to explain to Bill, let alone trying to explain to the nosy and rather batty cook.

She wrapped her dressing gown tightly round her, and felt the weighty key clunk against her thigh. Eugenia and India Louise had been playing ‘let’s pretend’ with the key that Grandad Wrick had thrown on the bonfire (that India found in the ashes the next day and thought would make a super present for Eugenia….. they both loved odd little gifts).

For days they’d been wandering around the many corridors and wings of the Wrick castle, and Eugenia’s ancient rambling Sandlebright Hall. On fine days they’d explored the grounds, the aviaries and stables and hay barns, the meadows and follies, the lodges and farm cottages, through the spinney to the river and the boathouse, and back through the rose arbours… imagining themselves in different times and places, as different people, making up stories and weaving the key into each little story…… the murder at the boathouse and the key to the mystery… the key to the kitchen and the affairs of the cook… the parrots and the key to the bird cage…… the key to the captains trunk in the attic…

Until they found the place where the key didn’t fit into the story…that is to say, the one place that should have needed a key, The Locked Room that only great grandad Wrick ever went in, was unlocked.

India Louise couldn’t wait to tell Bill all about it.