She did an hour or two of work and then, reluctant to live on whatever she could scavenge in the kitchen, decided to go out. It wasn’t far to the village, especially not in daylight. There had to be somewhere there she could get lunch on a Saturday, after all.
There was not much to Kilfayne. It was a village surrounded by a farming community, hemmed in by mountains. A river ran through it. There was a parish church, a small school, a shop and a pub. Alex parked the car outside the pub where a board promised hot food. She took her chance and went in.
The low, intimate babble of voices instantly went quiet. There were no more than seven people in there, all of them staring at her. That was the way of rural pubs. She made her way up to the bar, ordered a coffee, and asked for a menu.
Then, armed with a laminated sheet with various offerings printed on it, she found a table by the mullioned window.
The coffee wasn’t a patch on the ones Nick made but she drank it as she decided what to eat. How far wrong could she go with lasagne, she figured. Apart from the obligatory side of coleslaw anyway.
‘You’re from the telly, aren’t you? Home after the ghosts, are you?’
Alex froze as the snicker ran around the room. They knew who she was then.
And they expected her to – what? Flinch? Apologise?
Alex gathered the shield of Dr Alex O’Neill, the great debunker, the sceptic’s sceptic, around herself and drew herself up to her full height. Not a great height, especially when sitting down, but the effect was the same. She glared at the young man, wiry, with a terrible haircut and an even worse moustache, lounging against the bar. He had tight jeans and a grubby-looking band t-shirt on. She knew the type, far too well. Ted Sanderson would have loved this one. He would have had him dancing to his tune in no time. The familiar loathing already seethed beneath his skin.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts. And I won’t be staying long.’
‘Oh aye.’ He let out a nasty laugh. ‘Selling it off, are you?’
It was the sneer in his voice that did it. She couldn’t help herself. Fuck him, and everyone in this dead-end village.
‘Yes,’ she replied coldly.
Shock rippled around the pub, and suddenly it was very quiet indeed. Every eye was on her and every ear turned her way. She’d really done it now.
‘What? The house or the land?’ another, older man asked from one of the other tables. He looked aghast.
‘All of it,’ she said, schooling herself to politeness now. She appeared to have gone too far. ‘There’s a hotel chain interested. It’ll be a great opportunity for the area. Employment, tourism…’
For another long, painful moment no one spoke.
‘No good will come of that,’ the old man muttered, crossing himself and turning his attention back to his pint.
‘Oh, enough of that nonsense,’ said the older woman behind the bar. ‘Leave the poor girl alone. She’s just trying to have a meal. Seán, get off with you. You’re meant to be working. And you lot, mind your own business. You’d put anyone off their lunch.’
That seemed to calm things down, or at least shut them up. And Seán, the smarmy little git, shouldered his way out of the door with a backwards glare at Alex which she found chilling.
The lasagne arrived, with a mound of coleslaw which Alex studiously avoided. And chips. What was the obsession with chips?
The pub crowd dispersed while she ate, leaving only the couple of old men nursing their pints by the time she went up to the bar to pay.
‘Don’t mind them,’ said the landlady. ‘Too much time on their hands most of them.’
‘I don’t,’ Alex told her. ‘Mind them, I mean. But thank you all the same.’
‘Are you really selling up? You granda wouldn’t have liked that.’
He wouldn’t have liked being referred to as agrandaeither, Alex thought with a smile.
‘Neither would your brother,’ said one of the old men. ‘Loved that land, he did. And Hennesey’s got grazing rights on the lower pasture. How will that work with a hotel?’
Alex, who had no idea and didn’t care, just gave a dismissive shrug as she tapped her card on the machine to pay. This was not a conversation she wanted to be having in the local pub. She shouldn’t have said anything at all.
‘The walker won’t like it either.’
‘Nick?’ she asked. No, Nick didn’t like it at all.
