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The next couple of days were spent cleaning and scrubbing every room, but by the time Willow had dinner with Beth she was satisfied the years of dirt were dealt with. OK, the place needed serious attention, but the roof was sound and she’d keep to her original plan and do a job at a time as the money dictated. Buying furniture had taken every spare penny but she could work on the garden for the rest of her holiday.
She drove home without mishap after an enjoyable evening with Beth and Peter, and the next day began the assault on the garden. By the weekend she was scratched and sore and aching in muscles she hadn’t known she had, but she’d cleared a good-sized section of land. Sunday afternoon the sun was still shining and she decided to have a bonfire. That was what people did in the country, after all.
At some time there must have been a small picket fence separating part of the garden. This had long since rotted, but the remains were useful as a base for the bonfire, along with armfuls of other pieces of wood she had found and old newspapers. When she’d opened the door of the dilapidated pottingshed a couple of days earlier, she had found it stacked from floor to ceiling with old newspapers, magazines, cardboard egg boxes and food wrappers. The old lady must have deposited her paper and cardboard there for years before the garden became too overgrown for her to reach it.
Willow piled the brambles and nettles and other vegetation she’d cleared as high as she could. It would take ages to burn the contents of the potting shed alone, but she had until it got dark. She had positioned the bonfire at the end of the garden some feet from the high stone wall. Beyond this, she understood from the estate agent, was the garden of a larger manor house. The house in question was set in extensive grounds and obscured from view by massive old trees, but the landscaped gardens visible from the lane spoke of considerable wealth. It had been the country residence of the local squire who had owned most of the village set in a dip below Willow’s cottage in the old days, apparently, and her cottage had been the gatekeeper’s property before the cottage and garden had been sold off. These days the manor house was the weekend home of a successful businessman, according to the estate agent.
Once the bonfire was well and truly alight, Willow began to enjoy herself. There was something immensely satisfying in burning all the rubbish and she fetched more piles of newspapers from the potting shed, throwing them into the crackling flames with gay abandon. This would save a good few trips to the local refuse site if nothing else.
Quite when a sense of slowly mounting unease turned into panic, Willow wasn’t sure. Her gung-ho approach with the newspapers had resulted in a large quantity of pieces being picked up by the breeze—still merrily burning—and sailing over the wall in ever-increasing numbers. She tried to knock a pile that was smouldering off the fire with a big stick, but only succeeded in fanning the flames.
She had followed a tip of Peter’s and drenched the wood at the bottom of the bonfire in petrol before she’d piled the rubbish on it; now there was no stopping the blaze. Increasingly alarmed by the power of the monster she’d created, she retreated to the cottage to fetch a bucket of water to throw on the flames now leaping into the sky with ever-increasing ferocity and strength.
She was still filling the bucket in the kitchen when she heard shouting. Turning off the tap, she picked up the half-full pail and hurried into the garden in time to see the figure of a man hoisting himself astride the stone wall, his curses mingling with the roaring fire and the wild frenzied barking of what sounded like a pack of rabid dogs.
‘What the hell are you playing at?’ he snarled at her as she approached. ‘Have you lost your reason, woman?’
How rude. The abject apology she’d been about to make died on her lips. She stared into a pair of eyes so blue they were dazzling—which wasn’t helpful in the circumstances—and stopped dead in her tracks, which caused a good portion of the water in the bucket to slop over onto her grubby work trainers. ‘This is my property,’ she said coldly. ‘And this isn’t a smoke-free zone.’
‘I’ve got nothing against the smoke,’ he bit back, his tone acid. ‘It’s your determination to start fires all over the neighborhood I’m objecting to, and the danger to life and limb. One of my dogs has had its fur singed as it is.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, equally acidly.
‘You sound it.’ He ducked as a particularly large piece of burning paper wafted past his left ear. ‘There’s bits of this stuff floating in my swimming pool and all over the grounds, and my dogs are playing a game of Russian roulette as we speak. Damp it down, for crying out loud.’
