I nod, and smile at George, and find myself lost in the sparkliest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. He must be 80 if he’s a day, but those eyes…well, all I can say is he’d give Daniel Craig a run for his money. He has a thick head of pure white hair, and a weathered face lined with laughter lines.
“This is the bit where you tell me your name too,” he goes on. “Unless you want to be all mysterious, like?”
“Oh! No! No, I’m not mysterious, I’m just…tired, I suppose. My name’s Ella. And this is…well, this is the dog with no name.”
Connie ushers me over to a chair, and as soon as I sit down, I am provided with a glass of lemonade and a plate filled with raspberry cheesecake. As welcomes go, it’s not a bad one.
Within seconds, I am surrounded – there are more children, and two women who look to be in their 70s, and a middle-aged man who looks like Gandalf complete with long beard, and a small gaggle of teenagers, and even more people heading over from the green itself. Some of them are carrying bats, but I assume they’re for playing cricket, not beating strangers with.
“So,” I say, trying to maintain a confident smile, “what’s with the weresheep thing?”
“Ah,” replies Connie, wiping cake crumbs from her face, “well, the little ones have been telling us for a while that there’s a strange lamb loose in the woods. Plenty of lambs around here, but none of them were missing, so we weren’t really sure what they meant. So their dad, Archie, went out with them to look, and got the briefest of glimpses of this creature here – he realised it was a dog, but to be fair, if you were little and had a vivid imagination, it could be a small sheep, couldn’t it?”
I glance down at the dog, who is still on my lap but starting to look around with more confidence. We have so much in common.
He is the right colour – a kind of off-white – and he is very fluffy. I suppose I can see what they mean.
“Nobody could get near him,” Connie continues, “even when we tried to tempt him out with food, he was just too scared. We’ve called around local rescues, the police pound in town, checked if anyone has reported him missing in the hope we could find his owners – but sadly not. We were starting to think we’d never be able to help him until you came along. You must have the magic touch.”
“I don’t know about that,” I reply quickly. “I had a bag of crisps, and I got a thorn out of his paw is all.”
“There you go then!” George pipes up, nodding wisely from across the table. “It’ll be like Androcles and the Lion during ancient Roman times!”
“If you say so,” I reply, wondering who Androcles was, and if he also had a bag of crisps.
“Forgive George,” Connie says, grinning at him mischievously, “not only did he used to be a teacher, he’s actually as old as Androcles…”
George snorts in amusement and calls her a ‘cheeky young whipper-snapper’. Connie looks to me like she’s in her 50s somewhere, but I suppose to George, she could indeed be classed as a whipper-snapper.
“Try the cake, dear,” one of the older ladies says, leaning towards me. “Fresh made this afternoon, it was. I’m Little Betty, by the way.”
I obediently try the cake, as it gives me some time to ponder the name. Little Betty is, in fact, very large – I’m guessing she’ll be touching six foot when she stands up, and she also looks like a woman who knows her way around a cake. Sitting next to her is, by contrast, a tiny wisp of a woman with a steel-grey pixie haircut.
“And I’m Big Betty,” she says, looking amused.
I’m guessing this is a well-rehearsed routine, and I reply: “Nice to meet you, Betties. The cake is amazing, by the way.”
“So, how did you end up here, Ella?” Connie says, topping up my lemonade.
“Oh. Well. My car broke down, top of the hill back there. About 20 miles away, it felt like. And I couldn’t get a signal on my phone, so I thought I’d head here and try and find civilisation.”
“And instead, you found us!” Connie replies, gesturing around her and laughing. “Where were you on your way to?”
“Um…I don’t know, really. Nowhere. Maybe Cornwall. Not at all sure. I’m kind of…on a break.”
“From what?”
“Everything.”
I don’t know what I’ve said, but it triggers a round of exchanged looks that pretty much everyone around me shares. It’s like a Mexican wave of eyes and nods and meaningful ‘hmmms’.
“In that case,” Connie announces, “you’ve come to the right place. A lot of us were like that when we first landed in Starshine Cove. For me, it was 23 years ago – found it completely by accident and never left. Three kids later, I’m still here.”
“Right. Well. I’m sure I won’t be here that long,” I reply, feeling slightly nervous, unsettled by all their knowing gazes.
“Don’t worry, Ella,” George tells me, “we’re not planning on holding you captive or sacrificing you to some ancient fertility god to ensure a good harvest.”
I force a laugh, but he’s nailed it – both of those thoughts had indeed flickered across my mind.
