Much fuss and hullabaloo here last evening, as the toddler from the farmhouse had gone missing. I could hear them calling, and I must admit at first I thought they were looking for a dog. The woman arrived here in a panic to ask whether he had slipped in here, and when she described him I realised it was a boy they had lost. They were worried he had fallen into the pond in the dark.
It didn't seem like a good time to question why you would have an unfenced pond if you had toddlers.
We put the car headlamps on to shine them across the pond. The baby was hysterical, frightened from all the shouting I expect, so I volunteered to hold her while they went to check. I didn't want to go with them to check the pond. I was too scared. Don't look now.
Turns out the lad had felt tired after a major bout of trampolining, and had put himself to bed. How he didn't waken in all the yelling and upset is a cause for wonder.
My adrenaline was up a bit, so I worked late into the night as my time is my own here. To be honest, that's such a novelty in itself, it's tempting not to do anything at all other than simply - luxuriate.
My long and lovely lie-in was one of the first I've had in absolutely years. However I was rudely awakened by an enormously loud noise and the whole structure of the building vibrating voilently. Rubbing my eyes, I watched a police helicopter land right outside my door.
I looked in horror towards the pond, but they were headed next door to the barn. I'd seen the people arrive there yesterday, doddering out from their cars with zimmer frames. It seemed extremely unlikely they could be doing anything illegal, but perhaps they were on the run? Perhaps one of the old boys was a Sicilian Mafia don, or an East End gangster?
I come from a town where we have a natural suspicion of the police, having grown up with the the experience that coppers are all nasty southerners who will ride a horse through your garden and club you on the head with a truncheon just for being a local lad. I didn't want to get fitted up for anything, so I stayed inside and watched through the slats of the venetian blind, feeling like someone in a movie.
Lo and behold, another helicopter was landing! I wasn't sure that the agricultural timbers of my funky granary conversion could stand that much turbulence. This time it was the air ambulance. Maybe the old folks had been having a sex game that had gone wrong, and one of them had killed the others? Or perhaps someone was ill.
Frustratingly, I never found out. It seemed a little tactless to lurk around watching, when I was the only person here. A crowd of lurkers, or even a small knot, that would have been OK. But just standing by myself, staring: that seemed rude, even for me.
The medics were in there for quite a while. The couple that run the farm sneaked out at that point to take photos of the helicopters. Then all the helicopter people came out and flew away. No one was brought out on a stretcher, no one was taken away later in a hearse. A few hours later the 2 cars had gone and the place was all in darkness again, so we'll never know.
Writing my novel, I'm concerned that my characters, my events, will be believable. Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.
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