Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV takes time from his immensely important life to proffer profound advice to those who still struggle on the aspirational slopes of authorhood…

Howdy again,

It is I, your inspirational instructor in the arcane literary arts, Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV. Again it falls to me to remind you of my impeccable credentials as the author of ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’, once described as ‘amazingly….written….incredible….story’. One comes to you this week, bright-eyed and bushy tailed. If a little physically worn. One comes to you in the full flood of joy. One comes to you in the full knowledge that one is becoming a better and more sensitive writer day on day. One comes to you replete, but still hungering. One comes to you with reluctance but determination. A teacher must teach, I tell myself. A teacher must teach. So teach one shall.

Today’s lesson concerns a literary device about which one has mixed feelings, but one it is unwise to ignore as its usefulness cannot be overstated, although it can be overused. Of what does your beloved pedagogue speak?

Cliffhangers

Ah yes. The cliffhanger. Those little hooks of anticipation one sets in the flesh of one’s besotted readership leaving them like the cocaine addict without his fix, like the lover deprived of an adored one’s skin, like half of a loving pair left suddenly alone. Craving. Craving….

Properly used, the cliffhanger can ensure that one’s readership awaits with baited breath the next instalment. That they turn the page with shaking hands barely able to contain the excitement that one’s literary efforts stir in their innocent breasts.

Improperly used, the cliffhanger becomes as the drumbeat of the music that ends each episode of some trashy soap opera or another. It becomes as the dying fall at the end of a popular melody. As the cawing and rook-like scratching of the comic-book hero who will live to fight another day be it limbless or headless.

Beware the crass and sensational.

Compare and contrast.

• Artimesius lay bound and gagged across the cruel iron of the railway lines and even as he strained and writhed in his bonds the vibration through the unyielding metal to which he was tethered told him that the seventeen-twenty to Euston was on time.

• Arty: tied to the railway, screaming inside, hearing the scream of an approaching express train. Will our hero survive?

I rest my case as I rest my head as on a lover’s breast.

I leave you to consider the use of the cliffhanger with an example from my own literal life.

Last time one left you in the knowledge that some great and cataclysmic occurrence had brought a newness and brightness to one’s life. Now read on.

It was nine of the clock and the front door of Myrtle Villa was flung open with such force as to throw it back against the fading floral print of the wallpaper with a reverberating crash.
“Moons, I’m home…” Mumsie’s voice was slurred almost beyond recognition and I readied myself for either maudlin sentiment or vicious physical attack. But it was neither of those things. It was much worse. “I’ve brought the gang along. We’re going to have a welcome home Moons party.”
One quickly gathered together one’s papers and secreted them in the depths of a cretonne cushioned ottoman before assembling a welcoming smile and turning to face the doorway. The usual gang of halfwits, deadbeats, alcoholics, out-of-work whores, and accountants began to dribble into the room. And each found it necessary to greet one either with loose-lipped and unpleasant kisses or by slapping one painfully about the back and shoulders.
And then IT happened. Just as suddenly as that. One minute one was cringing in the corner. The next instant…

What?

You will find out next time. Perhaps…

Until then. Hasta la vista muchachos!

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound advice in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

The rain is gone, the morning shines
Where I can rest a while
Sheltered from the teasing wind
And by the warmth beguiled
The humans pass and never pause
To smell the first of spring
But sitting by the kindly wall
I hear the robin sing
Here, as I doze I hear the feet
Of ghostly builders pass
As through the earth old voices sing
And I’m at peace at last

©️jane jago 2024

Since Ben and Joss Beckett took over The Fair Maid and Falcon, they have had to deal with ghosts, gangsters and well dodgy goings-on. Despite that they have their own family of twin daughters and dogs, and a fabulous ‘found family’ of friends.

I smiled at the idea I was hunting and followed Simeon out of the door into what was now a pale moon-washed night. We formed a sort of loose procession with Simeon in front followed by me, Ben, Neil, Stan and Ollie. The rest fell in behind walking quietly and saying nothing. At the market garden, Jed, Finoula and Clancy joined us, while two hard-handed guys with baseball bats peeled off to guard the gate.
Around the next bend in the lane a scruffy looking Mercedes minibus was parked in the middle of the road. It was facing the other way which prevented them from blinding us with their headlights and Simeon casually opened the driver’s door. The guy who fell out was visibly uncomfortable, but game nonetheless.
“What you wanna go and do that for?”
Simeon gave him a hard stare and he wilted a bit.
“What are you lot doing here?”
“None o’ your business. It’s a public road. We can be here if we want.”
I took two paces forwards.
“It’s not a public road.”
The sliding door at the other side of the van opened and I presumed some person or persons intended to join the argument. However, there was a modest reception committee and the sound of fists meeting flesh was loud in the night air.
“You keep still. Unless you’re up for another smack.”
Finoula stepped into a patch of moonlight. “Bring forward your clairvoyant and let me see if it’s a big a charlatan as it smells like.”
The sound of someone hastily climbing over seats made me think my friend had hit a nerve. In a very short time a youngish man, whose cropped hair was so pale that looked peculiarly greenish in the moonlight, climbed out onto the road surface and glared about him.
“Who dares to name me charlatan?” he demanded.
“Finoula Lovell.”
He obviously knew the name because he flinched visibly. Then he bowed from the waist and stepped closer to Finoula and Jed. Clancy growled, a deep sound in his barrel of a chest, and blondie stepped back a pace.
He said something in Rom to which Finoula replied in a voice that crackled with power. I heard footsteps behind me and Danilo stepped out of the shadows to stand beside me.
“Do you seek to contend with my family, outcast?”
I felt the weight of that and wondered at the necessity, until I heard Grandmother’s voice in my head assuring me that it was both necessary and proportionate.
“How do you judge it right to stand for a gadjo woman against one of your own blood?”
Danilo snapped his fingers. “That for your prejudices lulo bull. She is as a sister to me and to every Lovell that draws breath. Now. I repeat. Do you seek to contend with us?”
“I am not that much a fool.”
Danilo put something in my hand before moving to stand shoulder to shoulder with Finoula.
“Do we believe him?”
“No.” Finoula sounded icy cold. “I will have his blood oath before I trust such a one.”
Jed materialised beside me and bent his head to mine.
“Finoula says this one cares for naught but money, and I would say Danilo thinks the same as he just called him a whore.”
“Oh right. And I have to go into the garden with him don’t I?”
“You don’t have to.” That was Ben from my other side. “Also what did Danilo slip you.”
“A pistol. And I do have to. If we want this farce to end I have to take him into the garden and convince him Cherry isn’t there. Which might have been more difficult next week.”
I heard Grandmother laugh inside my head. The ghosts, it seemed, were perfectly willing to take a hand.
Ben put a big hand on my head. “Will I come with you?”
“No love. You and the dogs need to stay out here.”
“If you didn’t have a gun in your pocket, we might have a row about that.”
I leaned into him. “We wouldn’t, because without a pacifier in my pocket I’d not be going in.”
“I take it that thing in your pocket is loaded.”
“Grandmother says it is.”
“Well I guess she’d know.”
He wrapped me in his arms and we stood quietly. I was taking calming breaths and husbanding my mental resources, while Ben was probably worrying but carefully not mentioning his worry.
The three clairvoyants were deep in low-voiced conversation and I had drifted to a place of inner peace when I felt Ben stiffen. As my ears caught the sound of something being driven quietly up the lane, a crunching in the gravel of the lane also alerted me that someone was coming on foot.
“Only us, Joss.” It was Mark’s voice and he stepped into the moonlight with his brothers at his side. “Morgan called me.”
“Fair enough. But who’s driving up the lane?”
“I don’t know. Though I think we need to fade into the background until we find out.”
They blended back into the deep shadow and I smiled at Jed.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said.
He chuckled. “You’m not much like my idea of Alice.”
“She isn’t indeed,” Neil agreed quietly. “More like the Red Queen.”
“Off with his head.” Ben quipped gently.
Mark grinned and for a couple of seconds his teeth showed strong and white in the shadow of the hedge.
“Cheshire Cat?” I looked at Jed.
“It do so appear.”
Whatever was coming up from the village was being driven quite slowly and with only minimal lights.
“I don’t think whoever this is is necessarily on the side of the angels,” I spoke quietly.
“Me neither,” that was Ben.
The vehicle that rounded the bend was another Mercedes van, though it bore as much relationship to the grubby, dented workhorse at the gateway to the memorial garden as I do to Marilyn Monroe. Blondie hissed through his teeth while the guy Simeon held in one negligent hand looked as if he was about to piss himself.
“What have we here, my friends?” I whispered.
The Merc sighed to a halt and the back of the thing opened up silently and smoothly. A chunky figure in a sort of modified nurse uniform jumped out with something in his hand. I took a careful grip of the pistol in my pocket, but it was unnecessary as the ‘nurse’ pointed what I could now see was a remote control and the van extruded a ramp down which came an electric wheelchair.
The cold moonlight revealed the man in the chair to be worn and beyond thin. He was possessed of a face that looked to have been carved from flint so sharply were the angles cut. He turned his chair to face us.
“I would have speech with Mrs Beckett.”
Ben responded . “Who demands to speak to my wife?”
“My name would mean nothing to you.”
“Meaningless or not, we do not speak to those who hide in darkness and anonymity.” I could hear the berserker that lurked just under the surface of Ben’s cool demeanour and I hoped nobody poked a stick in his ear.
It seemed that the man in the wheelchair heard it too because he inclined his head.
“Lantern,” he barked.
His nurse reached into the van, producing a large electric lamp which he placed on the ground beside the wheelchair and switched on. The light was bright, shadowless, and pitiless, revealing our visitor to be a man not far from death if I wasn’t mistaken.
I walked forward into the circle of brightness and said the first thing that came into my head.
“Will you please put your oxygen back on?”
He laughed, though it was a sound without much underlying amusement, and lifted a skinny claw. The nurse charged up the ramp returning with a small cylinder and an arrangement of tubes. Once life-giving oxygen was being gently pumped through his nostrils the man in the wheelchair looked in less immediate danger of death.
“What is so important that you come here in the dead of night?” I kept my voice neutral.
“You know what,” he snapped.
I stood straight and still in the pitiless lantern light. “I do not. I may have a suspicion, but that isn’t knowing. And you are close enough to the veil to know the truth when you hear it.”
His dark fathomless eyes bored into mine before he smiled.
“Cherry had eyes like yours.”
I took a chance. “Who is Cherry?”
“Cherry was my wife. I am given to understand that her bones, and those of our unborn child are buried here. And I would visit her while I can.”
Of course that didn’t come close to explaining a visit in the dark of night, but I thought I’d let that one go.
“If Cherry’s were the bones uncovered in our orchard, then she is not buried here. The police took her away and I have no knowledge of where she is now.”
He sagged in his chair and I felt a stab of pity before he dragged himself back into his habit of command.
“Do you swear this is the truth?”
“I do. And if I knew where her bones were today I’d tell you.”
I felt the spirits of the girls who were buried in the garden as they clustered about him. Esme came into my head. ‘Beware the white-haired one.’ I reassured her that I had my eye on him.
“Perhaps if I could visit the place where her bones were found.”
“You could, but not in the dark and not until the ground dries a bit.”
“Why not? I’m here now.” He waved a hand towards the memorial garden. “It looks like there’s a proper pathway.”
“If the bones were found in the memorial garden there would be no problem. Only they weren’t. When I said uncovered in our orchard that was precisely what I meant. The orchard is down at the bottom of the lane bordering on the pub car park it’s grassy and bumpy and currently boggy.”
He seemed to understand that I spoke the simple truth because he turned his attention to the blond clairvoyant.
“Why have you been telling me that Cherry is here?”
“Because she is. The woman lies.”
“I don’t think so.” The man in the wheelchair carried an aura of real menace. “I think those who told me you were a charlatan were saying nothing more than the truth. Now. What do you think the reward for lying to me might be?”
Finoula’s voice broke into what had become an icy silence.
“He’s not entirely a charlatan, he just magnifies what is truthfully a tiny talent for gain.”
“What should I do with him, then?”
“That’s your decision. I am not permitted to make it for you. But what I can do is call your wife and ask if she has words for you from beyond the veil.”
“Why would you do that for me?”
“I would do it in the name of love, and to ease your passage to the light.”
“Will you then. Please.”
Finoula nodded. “I will.”
She lifted her face and the moonlight sparkled in the pale blue depths of her sightless eyes. Jed went to be as a bulwark at her back, and Danilo walked soft-footed to stand and face her. Finoula’s started to sing a wordless eerie tune.
Danilo joined his voice to hers. “Come forward if you have any words for your grieving husband.”
I felt the other spirits forming a sort of guard of honour and then the scent of orchard fruits filled the air.
The voice that spoke was soft and carried with it a sweetness that even her death and the death of her unborn child hadn’t eroded. But she was angry too, with forty years of anger to get out and she let him have it all. She berated her husband in Irish and he replied humbly in the same language. It felt as if we were eavesdropping, and I was very glad to only understand tone, not words. Everything about this was too naked and too painful so l looked about for something to distract me, which was when I noticed that Blondie was definitely up to something.
Moving very slowly he put one hand inside his leather waistcoat and drew out an object he sought to hide in his left hand. Unfortunately for him I have very good eyesight and the moon glinted on what I determined must be a knife. As Finoula’s song reached its crescendo he slithered towards her. He looked truly reptilian in the moonlight and something hardened inside me. There was no way he was going to hurt my friend while I had it in my power to protect her. I took the pistol out of my pocket and, as he punched an awkwardly curled fist towards her face, I shot him through the wrist.
He made a noise the like of which I had never heard before, and I’d rather not hear it again. But even as he screamed he dropped the knife and Jed put a big foot on it. Simeon grabbed Blondie, with one huge hand around his skinny neck, and stopped the noise by the simple expedient of holding the other huge hand over his mouth. Ben was at my side in two enormous strides, gathering me into the security of his embrace. I leaned against his strength, but I was surprisingly unmoved by having shot a human.
In a matter of seconds it was all over and Finoula closed the door between the worlds.
The man in the wheelchair sat bolt upright.
“He is a naughty little albino isn’t he? Will I take him off your hands?”
“I’m not sure he was ever on my hands,” I was proud of how steady was my voice.

There will be more from Joss, Ben and their friends, courtesy of Jane Jago, next week, or you can catch up with their earlier adventures in Who Put Her In and Who Pulled Her Out.

Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is a whodunit set in an alternative modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules.

Dai pulled the man out of the computer chair. Njord might be big-boned but he clearly was not one to keep himself much in shape.
“The domina is asking you a polite question, Torkel. I am not quite so polite. I want to know how a virus that affects your security surveillance on two separate occasions could have got onto your system without you knowing about it.”
The blond man’s face had turned red as Dai’s grip tightened.
“I don’t know,” he gasped. “I told you. I didn’t even know it was a virus the first time. Even your people didn’t find that. I only found it after the second outage.”
Dai decided that as he was getting some degree of cooperation he could be generous and let go. Njord dropped back onto his chair again.
“So how could it happen?”
The blond man started pulling up information in streams that meant very little to Dai, but he could see Julia scanning it rapidly, her expression focused.
“Here,” Njord said and pushed a finger at a line of random numerals.
Dai tried to look as though he had some idea what it meant, but it was Julia who asked:
“So where is that? Have you a plan of the arena – a schematic to show where that is geographically?”
Dai saw the refusal form on the blond man’s lips.
“Torkel,” he cautioned, “I don’t need to remind you to be polite to the domina, do I?”
The blue eyes glared at him with hatred, but Njord pulled up a 3D schemata for the complex and stabbed his finger at a small flashing pixel on the lowest below-ground level. 
“It’s there,” he said.
“What’s there?”
“Absolutely nothing. It’s a blank wall.”
“So someone uploaded this whilst standing in that corridor,” Dai pointed to two clearly marked cameras even he could identify as such. “If we have the recordings from these for that time we -”
“You misunderstand,” Njord said. “If I am right and this is the signal that did it, then it was not uploaded from somewhere beside the wall – it was uploaded from somewhere inside the wall.”

The tunnel was an old one, dating back to the days they had fed people to the lions in the arena for denying the godhood of the divine Diocletian. When that had ceased to be a crime during the Enlightenment, the menagerie had become a place for keeping all the exotic animals a lanista might desire to put on interesting displays. But the animal fights had finally been outlawed throughout the Empire, along with slavery and discrimination on grounds of race or gender, a few years before Dai had been born. At which point the menagerie became a place to take your children to see the animals. The only deliberate deaths you could expect to witness in the arena nowadays were the public executions of traitors and murderers.
There was a popular joke that made much of the fact it was easier to get yourself accused of treason than murder. Even if you killed someone in front of witnesses you could get away with your life. But the slightest hint you might be involved in any anti-Roman activities and you would be arrested, tried and executed within the week. That was the usual job of the men Decimus had allocated to work with Julia and Dai, uncovering and arresting potential anti-Roman agitators, and Dai found it gave him an uncomfortable feeling between his shoulder blades every time he turned his back on them.
But it was their technology and their brawn which first found and then broke into the tunnel behind the wall and tracked along it in one direction to a manhole cover on the edge of the arena’s playing field and in the other to the menagerie.
At the menagerie end, it finished in a solid metal door. Whilst the Praetorians sent out for the appropriate equipment to break through. Dai and Julia left them to it and headed to the menagerie overground.

Part IX will be here next week. If you can’t wait to find what happens next you can snag the full novella here.

Though the biggers never see it, there is much going on in their own backyard where the ‘nomes make their home…

The glazier was a buffly handsome young man with no shirt and some tattoos. Female teenage bigger exerted herself sufficiently to make him a cup of tea.
Bertha watched over her spectacles.
“Trouble brewing,” she muttered to herself when the young people wandered off in the direction of the summerhouse.
Mother Bigger emerged from the house ten minutes later. She found a half-finished window and no glazier.
Sprinting down the garden she was in time to interrupt a romantic tryst, leading her daughter away by the ear.
The man who came to finish the work was a leathery sixty.

Jane Jago

A dictionary for the bemused by Jane Jago…

ahde (noun) – marsupial with a very short memory

blubbly (noun) – the colour of belly button fluff

borwn (verb) – to drone on endlessly about one’s prostate, or the bowls club, or any of the other preoccupations of men of a certain age

cahmring (noun) – cock ring for mechanical beloved

desret (noun) – what’s left on the sweet trolley by the time it gets to your table 

dulcking (noun) – monarch with little personal charm 

fukle (verb) – to play folk music on a home-constructed instrument 

grmmra (noun) – ancient language akin to Ogham with very strict linguistic rules

liek (noun) – floppy vegetable, used a lot in BDSM

mayrt (noun) – type of country dance heavily reliant on pink sweaty farmers wearing big boots and very little else

muthaflic (exclamation) – word from bowdlerised swearing thesaurus beloved of yummy mummies

nomral (adjective) – small, pink and plasticy 

omifok (exclamation) – see muthaflic

practive (adverb) of motion crabwise but very fast

qwen (noun) – specialist stick with beer tops nailed to it, used only in the performance of the infamous stick and sharpened clogs dance

syutable (noun) – surface on which fortune teller lays out tarot cards

talkign (verb) – moving mouth but making meaningless noises

tochis (noun) – stuff found between unwashed toes

uncommen (noun/adjective combo) – uncouth males

vrgni (noun) – goat of indeterminate years and such evil temper that no human has ever been able to get close enough to even attempt a guess at gender

winnim (group noun) – the ladies of the WI after ‘bring in your homemade hooch’ night

znorin’ – (verb) what the winnim are likely to be doing well into the morning after BYHMH night 

Disclaimer: all these words are genuine typos defined by Jane Jago. The source of each is withheld to protect the guilty.

It was one of those moments when he knew whatever decision he made could affect the entirety of the rest of his life. 

This was it.

There was no way to avoid making a choice and no way to prevent the cascading consequences reaching down through the years ahead. He could be losing a chance at a lifetime of happiness or maybe committing to the first step of something that was doomed to fail.

For a moment that awareness paralysed him completely. Even his thoughts. Then he looked at the screen in front of him and carefully swiped the picture.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV takes time from his immensely important life to proffer profound advice to those who still struggle on the aspirational slopes of authorhood…

Howdy y’all.

It is one. Your perspicacious pedagogue. Your towering tutor. Your world-travelling writer. Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV, author of the speculative fiction classic ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’. Man of means. Man of moods.  Man of delicious madness (of which more later).

One is, needless to say, back chez maman – that muscular and impressively moustachioed female of uncertain age and equally uncertain temperament – who was nonetheless flatteringly pleased to see one, and absolutely thrilled to learn that the guns of one’s skinny, wrinkled, orange sperm donor have been so carefully and completely spiked courtesy of a small man with a Bronx accent and hairy earlobes. The woman even went so far as to throw her arms around one and blow draconically alcohol-laden breath in one’s face. However, I digress and I know my adoring students will be agog to know the wellspring of their beloved maestro’s ecstatic madness. Learn patience my children

One’s distaff parent. Having fed one a lucillan repast of gammon, oven chips and corns (which always evacuate in precisely the same state as that in which one ingested them), mater took her increasingly humongous hips and breasts to the  Bear and Bare Breast to celebrate the safe return of her ewe lamb. One declined the kind invitation to accompany her, having very little taste for darts, cribbage and warm beer, preferring to sit snuggled beside a roaring fire with an improving volume and a small glass of Tia Maria penning your latest lesson in the epistolary art.

Adjectives

Adjectives. How beloved of the sane and how abused by the unimaginative. Let us consider for a moment something as prosaic as grass. One could say grass is green, but how unimaginative. How much better to wax lyrical about its verdant and virtuous viridiannness. Or it’s sleek, sensuous, smooth coolness. Or how its tiny saw teeth can lacerate the delicate soles of a loved one’s feet. Or how laying in its lush greenness can leave a delicate tracery of greenish lines on the pale goldenness of a lover’s skin. Or how its fragrance can fill one’s nostrils as one is laid face-down under the delicious firmness of a lover’s hand. Or… But I need say no more, need I. Adjectives are called add-jectives for a reason. That reason being that you add them in order to add texture, colour and sensuality to your otherwise stagnant prose…

And this was as far as one had progressed when it happened. IT – that thing which has changed forever the heart which beats in the breast of your beloved teacher. IT – that light that has shone into the darkest corners of one’s psyche. IT – …

I think I shall leave you there waiting with puttering heart and wetted lips and damp little palms to learn what may have occurred to stir the heart and loins of your beloved tutor. And wondering why he should chose to greet you in the parlance of our transatlantic cousins.

Thou shalt wait and see…

Gold skin
Eyes like amber beads
Voice that
Uplifts
Understands one’s needs
Sighs and
Skin
Eye to eye
Thigh to thigh
Is this madness?
Or reality at last?

One can tarry no more. Dream of amore…

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound advice in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Dewdrops shyly shining
Reflect the early day
And spread a silver blanket
As we walk our weary way
When night becomes the morning
And ourselves are homeward bound
The dewdrops and the sunrise
In beauty wrap us round

©️jane jago 2024

Since Ben and Joss Beckett took over The Fair Maid and Falcon, they have had to deal with ghosts, gangsters and well dodgy goings-on. Despite that they have their own family of twin daughters and dogs, and a fabulous ‘found family’ of friends.

It was almost seven o’clock before the sound of small bare feet announced the arrival of Roz and Allie. They came quietly into the room, but seeing I was home ran to me bubbling joyously.
“Hello Mummy Beckett. We thought you might have gone back to work.”
“No. I’m having a sneaky half day.”
“How do you have half a day?”
“You work until lunch service is over, then you don’t work until the next day.”
“Like a Sunday?”
“Yes. Except everyone gets a half day on a Sunday. Today it was only me.”
Roz nodded wisely. “Grandmother says the bad man was very vexatious to your spirit. And Esme kept watch but she says he was very impressed by our mother.”
I laughed.
“Esme is biased.”
“What’s biased?”
“Biased means that you love somebody and that makes you think they are special.”
“They might still be special then?” That was Allie who is inclined to pick at loose ends.
Sian stepped briskly into the fray. “They might indeed. But they might also be embarrassed if people make big thing about how special they are.”
Both twins nodded solemnly. Their daddy having made a bit of a stand about being careful not to embarrass people it was something they understood well.
“Anyway,” I said. “You two have a decision to make.”
They swivelled their blonde heads to face me. “Why do we have a decision to make?”
“Because later on there will be adults having supper here. You pair can have your tea now and be in bed just before the people arrive. Or you can have a snack and then get your baths so you can have supper in your jammies and be off to bed quickly once supper is over.”
Roz narrowed her eyes. “Who will be eating supper?”
“Aunty Stella, Uncle Neil, Ellen, Sian, Morgan, Simeon, Daddy and me.”
“That is a lot of our favourite people. What is for food?”
I barely managed to keep a straight face. “There is chicken cooked in red wine with salad, new potatoes and focaccia.”
“And will there be pudding?”
“Yes. There will be lemon pudding with clotted cream or vegan ice cream.”
“Or both?”
Allie looked so hopeful that I had to grin.
“Or both.” I conceded.
They looked into each other’s eyes. “May we stay up please?”
“You may, but you must promise to go straight to bed when you have had your supper and no bratty behaviour.”
“We promise.”
I held out my arms and they came for a hug. Sian stood up.
“Cheese toasties?”
“Oh yes please.”
The twins packed themselves into my lap and began telling me all about the fascinating storm. After a while the inevitable questions started.
“Mummy. Is the electricity still off?”
“What do you think?”
“We think we doesn’t know.”
“How could you begin to know?”
They thought for a minute then Roz piped up. “We could look out of the window beside the front door and see if the street lights are on.”
“And we could listen for the generator.” Allie sounded pleased to have an idea of her own.
“Why don’t you do both and then let me know what you think.”
They scooted out into the passageway becoming very quiet before walking back in on soft feet.
“There is no street lights and we can hear the generators purring so we think the electricity is still off.”
“And you would be right. The last message from the electric company said it may be back tomorrow.”
They looked at me with round eyes. “When our friends doesn’t have electricity they has to use torches and eat jam sammiches. How come we has generators?”
“How could we run the pub if we couldn’t pump beer or cook food?”
“That is a very good question Mummy Beckett.”
Sian set two plates on the table. “People wanting to eat should wash their hands right now.”
The love of food trumps everything else and the smalls rushed to their bathroom. Sian brought me a glass of deeply rich red wine. She grinned wickedly.
“You look to me to be a woman in need of fortification and I’ve had this open to chambray. It’s even burgundy to match the colour.”
I toasted her with my upraised glass.
“What are you drinking?”
“Ginger beer. As are the littles, and Dad when he gets here.”
I made to get up and she motioned me to sit still.
“I’m the person who gets well paid to mind the gruesomes, you need to sit down and let me earn my crust.”
I sat and she gave me an earnest look.
“Joss. Will you be needing me to wrangle small people after the summer holidays are over?”
“I would like you to continue with the job. But it’s your call.”
“What would you want me for?”
“Weekends. Half term breaks. Holidays. But. Not all of the time. You will need some breaks for yourself.”
Her smile was a mile wide. “I hoped for something like that. But I wasn’t sure if I’m doing a good enough job.”
I held out my arms and she came for a hug.
“That’s on me and Ben. We think you are doing great. But we haven’t got round to telling you. Sorry love.”
“That’s okay. It’s been a bit of a weird summer.”
“Hasn’t it just. And I’ve a worm in my gut thinks it’s not over yet.”
The twins erupted into the room and clambered onto their chairs.
“Oh look,” Ali exclaimed, “there’s faces on our toasties.”
I went to look and saw that there were indeed faces on their sandwiches.
“How did Sian do that?”
“Don’t you know, Mummy Beckett?”
“I do not. So we’d better ask her.”
Sian ambled over and opened the panini press to disclose a wire frame with faces outlined in wire.
“Saw this on TikTok and Dad made it.”
The twins eyes were as round as saucers. “You and Uncle Neil are very clever.”
“They are indeed. But you’d better eat your sandwiches before they go cold.”
Needing no second bidding they dived in.
“I wonder if we could have lettering made so the pub toasties…”
Sian giggled and I poked her in the biceps.
“What’s so funny miss.”
“Dad owes me a tenner. I bet him you’d be after having Fair Maid and Falcon branded sandwiches as soon as you saw this. He reckoned it’d take a couple of days.”
I couldn’t help laughing, even if it was slightly reprehensible that the family was betting on my reactions. While I was trying to drum up a disapproving comment, Ali looked up from her plate.
“Uncle Neil is a idiot to bet against Mummy Beckett working things out very fast.”
Roz nodded wisely. “It’s what she does.”
Once toasties had been absorbed we had a happy giggly bath hour. Things went a bit pear-shaped when they were back in the family room, wrapped in their dressing gowns, and discussing which jammies were most suitable as party wear. Roz wanted pink with kittens and Ali pale green with bunnies. Before they could start one of their rare, but exhausting, shouting matches I held up a hand for quiet.
“You don’t have to wear the same as each other, you know. Is there any reason why Roz can’t wear pink and Ali green?”
They stared at me. And Ali squinted her eyes. “Is this like Roz being able to hear Grandmother in her head, and me not?”
“A bit. And I sometimes wonder if Daddy and I have done wrong by buying you identical clothes.”
They thought about that for a minute then swarmed into my lap.
“No. You and Daddy Beckett got us what we likes. But maybe it would be fun to not always be identical.”
“You aren’t identical twins,” Sian put in. “You are what they call fraternal.”
“What do that mean?”
“Literally brotherly twins. But the science is easy to explain. When twins are identical, they start out as one egg, which splits into two babies. Fraternal, like you two, comes about when two eggs get fertilised at the same time.”
“How can you tell if twins is one egg or two eggs?”
“Identical twins are the same gender. You can’t be identical if you are a boy and a girl.”
“But we is both girls so we could be.”
Sian wagged a finger. “You two are very much alike. But you aren’t identical, are you?”
Ali pressed the palm of her hand against her forehead in a wonderfully theatrical gesture. “Of course not. We have different eyes. Mine are brown and Roz’s are blue.”
“Which proves my point. And I have a suggestion for you to consider.”
“Which might be what?”
I was behind them, but I could imagine the stink eye accompanying that comment. Sian laughed.
“You pair can stop looking at me like that, or I won’t tell you.”
The twins climbed down and went to stand in front of her.
“Was we giving you a glare?”
Sian crouched down to their level.
“You were. And you know you were. Now arrange your faces into a suitably attentive expression and I’ll explain.”
“Is this better?”
“Yes. It is. So. You can either wear different jammies like Mummy suggested. Or…”
“Or what?”
“Or let me choose a set.”
They barely hesitated.
“You choose.”
“Okay. You wait here.”
Roz and Ali came and huddled against my legs. Sian didn’t keep them in suspense for long, returning with pale blue pyjamas with a frieze of small forest creatures under umbrellas. The girls clapped their hands.
“Rainstorm babies. Oh you are clever, Sian.”
“She is. Isn’t she? Now you go and sit by the wood burner. I’ll bring you your iPads and you can look at a couple of cartoons while we make supper ready.”
They went happily.
Sian and I laid the table, prepared salad, put tiny new potatoes on to boil, and placed bread rolls in the warming oven. Once the gruesome twosome were fully occupied I beckoned Sian out to the boot room where I gave her the biggest hug. She hugged back, then looked at me questioningly.
“Just a thank you for averting a screaming match.”
“Them two are so close that when they do disagree it’s a very big thing,” she said wisely. “If it’s a daytime disagreement I just let them have at it, but when they need to be calm I step in firmly.”
“You do. But without swinging your authority.”
“Course not. I save that for intentional naughtiness. And I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t work when they get past themselves. Distraction is the thing then.”
“You really are good with children.”
She grinned, then sobered. “I hope so, because I’d like to be a teacher.”
“You’ll be brilliant.”
Her eyes sparkled and I understood how important this was to her.
“Me and Ben will help if you need.”
She burrowed in for another hug only to be interrupted by Allie’s voice.
“What are Mummy and Sian talking about?”
“How horrible small girls are…”
We were saved from retribution by the arrival of our supper guests.
We all enjoyed our meals, and had just reached the coffee stage when I felt Esme very close, and Ben’s phone rang. Esme put her cold little hand in mine and Ben took the brief call.
“There’s a minibus full of muscle parked outside the memorial garden. Finoula says they are screwing up their courage to go in.”
“We don’t want that, do we?” I felt my hackles rising.
“No. We don’t.”
Simeon stood up and bunched his shoulders. “I’ll just pop across to the bothy and collect some reinforcements.”
Morgan looked at me and her eyes were fierce. “Us girls will stay here shall we?”
“Please.”
Ben opened his mouth and I held up my hand. “No, love. I have to come and talk to them.”
For a second he looked mutinous, but then he grinned. “I have,” he said, “just been put in my place by an indomitable spirit.”
“Did Grandmother tell you off?” the twins asked.
“She did. And what did she say to you pair?”
“We has to stay here and not be worried because Mummy Beckett will send the men home with a flea in their ear. Which we doesn’t understand.”
Sian smiled. “It just means they will feel like you feel when your mummy is really cross.”
“Oh good. They will be very sorry.”
I was just absorbing that when Simeon returned. He had half a dozen brawny lads with him. And four of the hard handed Smith men.
“Security in the pub beefed up. Two will stay here with the family.”
“Right. We’ll leave the staffies here guarding Roz and Allie, but Stan and Ollie come with us.”
“Okay.”
“How hard is it raining?”
“It’s not. The sky is clearing and the moon is coming out.”
“That’s a help then.”
Grandmother spoke quietly in my head. ‘They search for Cherry’s resting place. Their clairvoyant will know she is not there. They will ask where she is.’ This cleared the way for me, I thought.
“Listen up,” I said. “These people have bought a clairvoyant with them.”
Allie nodded. “Yes. They want to steal Cherry’s bones.”
“I know. But she isn’t there. And I’m not prepared to have them stomping in and out of that peaceful place with their entitled ways.”
Roz smiled at me. “Are you going to spank their bottoms?”
“More or less. You two be quiet and good. We won’t be long.”
They smiled at me and nodded.
Ben’s phone chirped again. He listened briefly then showed his teeth in a sharp sort of smile.
“Jed and Finoula and Clancy are waiting for us at the gate of the market garden.”
“Okay. Let’s do this. Are you willing to leave the talking to me?”
They all nodded, and we made our way out into the boot room. We shrugged our way into fleeces and stamped our feet into wellies. Just as my hand touched the back door two small pyjama clad figures appeared behind us.
“Good hunting, Mummy.”

There will be more from Joss, Ben and their friends, courtesy of Jane Jago, next week, or you can catch up with their earlier adventures in Who Put Her In and Who Pulled Her Out.