AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I think it was in the twelfth century. Two children, a boy and a girl, suddenly appeared in a village called Woolpit, in Suffolk. They spoke a strange language and they were bright green. They said they’d come from an underground land. They were herding their father’s cows– also green, apparently– when they heard a bell ring and found themselves in Woolpit.’
‘Gosh,’ says Tony. ‘What happened to them?’
‘I think the boy died but the girl grew up and got married.’
‘Was she still green?’
‘I’m not sure. Maybe the green wore off. My dad loved that story. That’s why he gave the café that name.’
‘Do you remember Emily Pickering coming to the café?’
‘Yes,’ says Freya and her face suddenly becomes quite different, softer but also more wary. ‘She used to come for the Folklore Fridays. It was a pet project of Dad’s. People would come to the café and talk about Norfolk myths and legends, read short stories and poems. Sometimes there’d be a singer. Dad loved all that stuff. Black Shuck, the Lantern Men, the Fairy Cow, the Southwood Pond.’
‘Sounds fascinating,’ says Tony. Did Freya really say ‘fairy cow’?
‘Dad thought so,’ says Freya, pleating the cotton of the beanbag. ‘Some of the stories are quite horrible, though. There’s a church in East Somerton where a witch was buried alive. Her wooden leg grew into an oak tree that eventually destroyed the church. According to the legend, if you walk round the tree three times saying her name, the witch will appear.’
‘There’s a lot of that, isn’t there?’ says Tony. ‘Saying someone’s name three times and them appearing. Like in the filmCandyman.’
‘Yes,’ says Freya. ‘If you say “Bloody Mary” three times at St George’s in Yarmouth, Mary Tudor’s face appears in the window.’
‘You remember the stories very well,’ says Tony.
‘Dad used to tell them to us at bedtime,’ says Freya.
Tony’s police senses are on full alert now. But, then again, Tony’s mother used to tell her children Chinese ghost stories and they all thought it was a great treat. But something in Freya’s tone implies this wasn’t the case with her.
‘Tell me about Emily,’ he says.
‘She hardly ever missed a Folklore Friday,’ says Freya. ‘She used to come with a friend of hers from university. Thomas, I think his name was.’
‘Did you know Emily well?’ asks Tony. ‘Were you friends?’ They were the same age, after all.
Freya’s face changes again. Her voice sounds younger. You can hear the hurt in it. ‘Emily wouldn’t be friends with me. She was clever. She was at university. I’d left school at sixteen and was working in the café. A waitress, that’s what I was to Emily. She talked about archaeology and history, all the books she’d read. Dad thought she was marvellous.’
‘She sounds annoying,’ says Tony. Meaning it.
‘Oh no,’ says Freya, with another shift in tone. ‘She wasn’t. She was lovely. Everyone liked her.’
‘Did your dad like her?’ Tony is aware that he is now treading on dangerous ground, the treacherous marshes of Norfolk folklore, in fact.
‘He liked her,’ says Freya. ‘But there was nothing odd in that. He liked everyone.’
‘Did Emily’s lecturer, Leo Ballard, ever come to the café?’ asks Tony.
‘No,’ says Freya. ‘But Emily and Thomas talked about him all the time. Especially Emily. Leo this. Leo that. I got quite sick of the name, to be honest.’
‘We know that Emily travelled to Ely on Monday twenty-fifth of March, the day she disappeared,’ says Tony. ‘She was seen walking up from the station towards the high street and caught on camera looking in a bookshop window. Do you have any idea why she would be in Ely?’
‘No. Unless. . . I think she might have been at school there,’ says Freya. ‘I think she mentioned it once.’
Tony makes a note. It occurs to him that Freya remembers a lot about Emily.
‘Could Emily have been on her way to King’s Lynn that day?’ he asks. ‘On her way to the café?’ It would have been a rather roundabout route but still possible.
‘No,’ says Freya. ‘She couldn’t have.’
Tony is surprised at her certainty. ‘Why?’
