Sorry for the lack of update-age but I feel like this episode doesn't flow very well, as i'm trying to introduce characters and stuff. Hope you all enjoy, and thanks for all the comments.
5.
Gwensi Howell was sitting in the kitchen, a pile of papers overflowed across the ancient old scratched table. The rustic range was lit, more as a method of warming the room, and as a useful incinerator for such writing's as she declared 'utter rubbish', than because she had any intention of cooking anything. The room was clean but decididly messy. A stack of shoes and wellies overflowed into the kitchen from the dilapidated porch, and discarded coats and bags lay across chairs where they had been carelessly flung when people had entered the house.
It would not do for a stranger or potential guest to arrive just now thought Gwensi ruefully. They still hadn't been able to unstick the front door, and the back door here was the only other entrance that involved an actual door and not a french window to be leaped through. This room was at least warm though she thought thankfully, and the chances of someone actually wanting to come and stay were as always slim to none. Which of course made the fact that they had indeed gotten a guest today curious even without Kate's overly dramatic ideas of where exactly their guest had come from.
She wondered briefly what life would have been like if she had kept all her hard earned money and her inheritance, instead of using it, and every other ploy she could think of to get her home back from the National Trust. When Plas Howell had finally come back to the family who had lived in it for some many generations, (even if she was only the half sister of the nephew and godson of the man who had been the last of the direct father-to-son line) she had been apalled at the state of the place. There was rot in the walls and in some of the wood, the wallpaper was often peeling, the upholstery in some cases ruined. Her own front door did not open, the wood swollen, and there she was without a penny to her name anymore after all the trouble of getting the dear old place back. She could understand that there had probably been little budget for a house in the middle of nowhere, big and pretty but with none of the regal charm of Ealing Castle only a few miles away. Beautiful old Plas Howell had never opened to the public, and Gwensi could only hope that her lack of money would be overcame by the love and tenderness of her feelings of this her home. For however large, and empty and cold the place was it was home, filled with the memories of her youth: dearest Ernest, and kind Meghan, her first friends, her first love, her first heartbreak, even her first book, never to see the light of day, had been written here.
If Gwensi ever had the time she might perhaps finish the book that lay in scrawled sheets over her kitchen table, but she was on the old side of forty and if it came down to a choice, of plastering a bit of ceiling, or writing another hit bestseller, well she had written enough of those, and before long she would be too old to crouch for eight hours solid varnishing table and chair legs, maybe when she was eighty she would settle down and properly finish this book, but she was not old yet, and she was going to make use of what youth she had left. With a sigh she pushed the sheet of closely written handwriting away. She really must invest in a type writer or perhaps even a computer. Betsy would know where to get one she was sure.
Absentmindedly she let her attention wander back to the two girls sitting in the kitchen. Their heads were bent together as their vivid imaginations went into overdrive speculating on their new guest.
"It was a wedding dress i'm sure of that" maintained Kate. She was a sturdy nineteen year old, with a mop of unruly, dirty blonde curls that were pulled away from her face.
"Did it have blood on it?" asked Betsy eagerly, "Perhaps she killed the husband to be and had to flee the scene of the crime."
Gwensi raised her eyebrows at this. What had the girl been reading? Although now that she thought about it it was an interesting premise for a novel...
"I didn't see any blood" said Kate musingly, who rather to Gwens surprise appeared to be taking Betsys suggestion seriously, "but she was wearing a coat, and this is a gloriously out of the way place.The perfect place to hide from the law."
"I wasn't being serious Kate," said Betsy rolling her eyes.
"I know but wouldn't it have been thrilling. I mean I know she's only here because Mr Carruthers sent her, which is admittedly weird in itself, but just think if..."
"What did you just say Kate?" asked Gwensi somewhat harshly.
"That it would be thrilling?" asked Kate confused.
"Did you say that Carruthers, Carruthers from the post office sent her here?"
"Yeah" said Kate slowly, "I mean I thought it was a bit weird but in the scheme of things it didn't seem like a big deal."
"Are you ever going to tell us why you two hate each other?" asked Betsy.
Betsy considered Gwensi practically a part of her large, and scattered family. Gwensi's childhood best friend Beth was Betsy's aunt and namesake, and she felt quite calm about asking things that Kate would never have dreamed of asking their landlady. She had moved to Armiford at sixteen determined to get away from her rather drab background and do something she actually enjoyed. She had been rescued from her dreary digs by Betsy, and was eternally grateful. Gwensi rather thought she loved Plas Howell almost as much as she herself did, and whilst Betsy was often off home, and away seeing various relations, Kate lived at Plas Howell all year round.
"It's just a mutual dislike." said Gwensi brushing off the question. "But I wonder..."
"Do you think she's eaten yet?" asked Betsy, not at all surprised that her question had gone largely unanswered, "We should really feed her if not."
"You mean so you can interrogate her and see just what you can find out?" asked Kate laughingly.
"We should invite her down here," said Gwensi, to the surprise of her young lodgers, "It sounds like she has had a long day."
"The place is a bit of a mess." pointed out Kate timidly
Betsy snorted at this, "You mean it's a complete riot, and as much as we all want to be nosey we'll scare her away if we invite her down into this madness."
Gwensi looked around her, before examining the two girls critically, they were much of the same age, but Betsy with her petite frame, unnaturally dark locks and her eyebrow piercing danced with a confidence that Kate lacked despite only being dressed in a baggy guns n roses t-shirt and a pair of leggings.
|
I have about five posts of this written, and hopefully they will give me some time to get some more written. I hope you enjoy. 
