Summary: In which Nightingale calls on an old friend to even the odds.
Thursday is a useless day. Nothing ever happens on a Thursday. It is, in fact, the calendar equivalent of no-man's land; it just hovers there somewhat uncertainly between Wednesday and Friday – somehow managing to avoid belonging to either the mid-week rush or the wind down to the weekend and nowhere is this truer than in a small west country town. The early week special deals to entice customers to spend money after the weekend have all finished, the mid-week farmers market has been and gone and all that can be said for Thursday is that at least it's heading in the right direction towards Friday and the mirage like weekend that at this point in the week seems a distant and tantalising pool of respite.
But all rules, as they say, have an exception and the exception to this particular unwritten natural law was an otherwise unremarkable Thursday during August.
The first sign that this Thursday was not following the usual weekly plan was a beautiful vintage Jaguar Mark II parked neatly in front of the gate to a house with a sign in the front garden informing those curious enough to decipher its worn lettering that "anyone blocking the gates will be shot; survivors will be shot again or sold to the circus".
The precise rat-a-tat-tat knock on the door at exactly 7:30am was the second sign that something unusual was occurring. No one ever knocked on number 36 Winifrith drive that early in the morning – not after the unfortunate incident with Kevin Withelwaite and the raffle tickets anyway.
It was well known in the local community that the person who lived there was most certainly not fond of mornings, early morning visitors – or visitors in general, for that matter. Only the most foolish (or those who didn't know better) would even attempt to visit this particular house in the morning. A nosy next door neighbour at number 34 cackled with glee as she waited for the entertaining reaction of number 36s young owner to being prodded awake at this hour.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl, even the bird song grew quieter, as inside the house there was an audible thump followed by a moan of pain and the sound of a large dog barking behind the front door. Mrs McMannis at number 34 rubbed her hands together and wished she had mastered the use of the camera function on that smart phone doo-hicky her son had given her recently.
The barking grew quieter as an irritable voice called out, audible through the open upstairs window, "alright, alright, I'm coming. Bloody Hell! I've already told you four times – I DO NOT want any more god forsaken cookies, I have no interest in adopting a sad faced Camel – they ALL have sad faces - and I don't give a damn about sponsoring the bloody village fete".
Mrs McMannis crept towards the edge of her front garden to get a better view of number 36 just in time to witness the third sign that this particular Thursday was not going to follow the usual pattern. Opening the door was a yawning young woman in her mid to late twenties with brown-red hair pulled back into two plaits and odd violet eyes.
"Hello Gwen," said the Jaguar driving stranger "I need a favour".
"Not the Girl Guides then," the young woman stated in evident surprise before saying, "I think I'd best put the kettle on". And to Mrs McMannis' considerable surprise, rather than the familiar spectacle of the visitor dazedly drifting away from number 36 with no clear recollection of why they had gone there in the first place, their hair turning blue, or a spontaneous shower erupting over the neighbourhood, as frequently happened with unexpected guests at that house, the young woman stepped aside before pulling the smartly dressed man into the house by his suit jacket and shutting the door with a loud clang.
Mrs McMannis turned away, disappointed, to go back to her own house. There had been a number of odd occurrences since the new owner of number 36 had moved in nearly two years ago. It wasn't uncommon for the residents of Winifrith Drive to have to take delivery of parcels or walk the delivery driver to the door of number 36 before they could seem to find it; even with the aid of the very latest SatNav. The flowers seemed to bloom more brightly and for longer in the garden of 36 than in any of the others nearby no matter what the owners tried, and it didn't bare thinking about why all the cats in a three road radius seemed to have mysteriously vanished since that dog had arrived.
But this was very unusual. Despite the concerted efforts of most of the neighbourly matrons in the area never in the two years that the young woman had lived at number 36 had a visitor been invited inside.