[Churchminster #3] Wild Things Read Online Free PDF

replies, and people expected her to attend all these things. It was what she did. ‘
Duty first
,’ she thought, and sat back down behind her desk.

Chapter 6
    THE COMMITTEE DECIDED to call themselves the ‘Garden Party’. ‘It does have a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?’ declared Angie Fox-Titt, who’d come up with the name herself. Clementine had been appointed chairperson, and she had wasted no time in assigning committee members their duties. Litter-picking, hedge-trimming and fly-tipping duty were just a few of the things that needed to be done, and Clementine organized the whole thing with her usual military precision.
    That morning, she was at Hollyhocks Cottage, Brenda and Ted Briggs’s house. It was the first of three little cottages that sat on the Bedlington Road. The floods had affected all the houses along that particular stretch especially badly. As Clementine pulled up outside, she could still see the aftermath of the devastation. Brenda’s beloved garden – which probably housed the biggest gnome collection in the whole of South West England – was still a muddy brown patch, while a tidemark ran across the front of the cottage, a permanent reminder of that dreadful week last summer.
    Clementine could still remember turning up in the early hours of the morning to find the stricken Briggses coping with three feet of raw sewage and their neighbours’ used toilet paper swirling through their cottage. All Brenda’s family heirlooms, furniture and her new three-piece suite had been destroyed. The couple had literally been left with nothing. Brenda, who was the village gossip and could normally talk the hind legs off a racehorse, hadn’t been the same since.
    As Clementine made her way down the path to the front door, she looked up at the roof of Hollyhocks Cottage and frowned. Brenda loved Christmas decorations as much as her garden ornaments, and the garish Santa and Rudolph were still up there from Christmas. Brenda had said it cheered her up and, ‘Lord knows I need it,’ and Clementine hadn’t had the heart to disagree up until now. But a ten-foot flashing Santa whipping Rudolph while the words ‘Ho ho ho!’ came out of his mouth in a speech bubble was not going to win them Britain’s Best Village.
    Brenda took a few moments to answer the door. ‘Sorry I didn’t hear you, Mrs S-F!’ she said. ‘I’ve been giving the place a good Hoover. The insurance money finally came through, and we got the new carpets in last week.’
    Clementine followed Brenda into the kitchen. The cottage still had a bare, desolate feel to it, and one room was piled up with odd bits of furniture.
    ‘The place isn’t how I want, but we’re getting there,’ said Brenda. She gave Clementine a weary smile.
    ‘Any word from Pearl?’ asked Clementine sympathetically. Pearl Potts was a sprightly pensioner who lived in the middle cottage. Her elderly terrier, Kenny, had died of a heart attack the day they were flooded. Pearl had moved out soon after, and not been back since.
    Brenda’s face dropped. ‘Still at her son’s in Gloucester. Says she can’t face coming back yet, not without the four-legged little fella here. I went to see her a few weeks ago, she’s aged something terrible, you know, Mrs S-F. Says the whole thing’s put twenty years on her.’
    Clementine was upset to hear that. Pearl was a longstanding member of the village, and her cleaning and gardening skills could match those of a person half her age.
    ‘Anyway!’ said Brenda trying to lighten the mood. ‘Can I offer you a brew?’
    Clementine declined. ‘I’m just making my rounds, and I thought I’d pop in and see how you’re getting on.’
    Brenda already ran a weekly bingo evening for local pensioners in the village hall once a week, and now she was starting a coffee morning for mums and babies in the café area of the village shop. This last had been Clementine’s idea: not only did it tick the ‘community spirit’ box in the BBV