It was Thursday.
She opened the studded door of the former inn known once as The Eight Bells. Stiff and warped with age, it scraped fleetingly across the quarry tiles before moving more freely.
As she crossed the threshold, she blinked. The dark foreground was interrupted by a shaft of sunlight streaming from a small window high in the far wall. Beaming onto the long dining table, it had transmuted the dull weekday cutlery into Sunday best.
Out of the silence a purring body of fur, glorious in white and ginger, pushed against her shins as she turned to place the unused black umbrella into the brolly stand behind her.
She laughed a warm deep bass that crackled with love and decades of smoking.
‘It’s not suppertime yet Charley. You’ll have to go hunting for a fieldmouse’
He answered with a series of loud mews as if to reprimand her for suspicion at his intentions.
Meanwhile, in an adjoining room, either side of the fireplace and with painted smiles, sat the mute china cats. A discerning observer may have reported a slight wince as the sound struck their porcelain ears.
Continued…read Silas in the Window next.
