Page 24 of The Village of Lost and Found

Josh went around the counter and took Amber into his arms, obviously needing the support. Over her shoulder, Josh looked at Tom, who could see the worry etched on his face.

‘They’ll need planning permission first,’ said Tom, his brain finally getting its act together. ‘Who’s sold the land? How much? What are the exact plans? There must be some legal channels that they have to go through first.’

Josh nodded. ‘You’ll look into it for us?’ he asked. ‘I mean, you’re good at this kind of thing and know where to start.’

Tom nodded. ‘Of course. You’d better get me another coffee,’ he told Amber. ‘Sounds like I’m going to need it.’

She gave him a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

But despite Tom’s default jokey stance, he was seriously concerned about what the arrival of a quarry next to the village meant for all of them. None of it would be any good, he suspected. Because it would also mean a fight between the villagers and big business and, as Tom had discovered many times over the years, the good guys didn’t always finish first. And then what would happen to lovely Cranbridge and the place that had been his sanctuary for the past two years?

13

After her late start to work on Monday morning, Lucy had been determined to do better on Tuesday. So she was up early and flung the curtains open to find a beautiful day outside.

The gorgeous view certainly made a welcome change from her bedroom in her parents’ house back in London which had overlooked the cramped urban landscape of the city.

Here the early sun sparkled on the river, which had slowed right down due to a lack of rain. It was now so shallow that a few birds were having their early-morning bath in the clear water.

Lucy’s eye automatically went upstream to the row of bungalows where Uncle Frank lived. She had eaten dinner with him the previous evening after his doctor’s appointment, glad to see that he had a little more colour in his cheeks now that he was home and feeling better. But she still had a feeling that he was a little low in spirits. She made a mental note to herself to have a proper chat with him later when she drove him to his nurse’s appointment for a blood check.

She was up and about so early that she left the apartment before she even heard Molly start to move around. Her flatmate had looked a little better the previous evening when Lucy had returned to the apartment, but she wasn’t convinced that Molly would be well enough to go back to work quite yet.

Outside, the air was warm and she felt in a positive mood. She was certain that it was being back in Cranbridge. It held such happy memories for her that it would always feel like her refuge from the harsher realities of the world.

Although the front door to the newspaper office was open, there didn’t appear to be anyone in there when she went inside.

‘Hello?’ she called out, putting down her handbag.

Hearing someone come in behind her, she turned around to find Tom standing there. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Were you looking for me?’

‘Only to say good morning,’ she told him.

‘Right. I see. Unfortunately, there’s not too much good about it from what I’ve just heard,’ he told her in a grim tone. To her surprise, he held out a coffee for her to take. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Any more caffeine and I’ll be bouncing off the walls.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, taking the coffee from him. He actually looked like he could do with another coffee to take away the large bags under his blue eyes. ‘So what’s the bad news that you’ve just heard?’ she asked.

He sighed as he sank down on the edge of a nearby desk. ‘Josh thinks there might be a large quarry opening up next to the village,’ he told her.

‘What kind of quarry?’ she asked.

‘There’s no good kind,’ he told her, with a grimace. ‘It could be fatal for the village.’

‘What do you mean?’ Lucy was confused. ‘Isn’t any kind of business good for local jobs and the community?’

Tom shook his head. ‘This is the smelly, land-pillaging, dusty, dirty kind of business. It wrecks the environment and the wildlife. It’ll be noisy and fill all our country lanes with heavy machinery. It’s bad. Really bad.’

Lucy was shocked. ‘This is awful,’ she said, looking out at the sparkling river once more. ‘It’ll ruin Cranbridge.’

Tom nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

‘So what can be done about it?’ she asked.

‘I’m going to find out as much as I can in the first instance,’ he told her. ‘Who’s funding this and who owns the land, for starters.’

‘How can I help?’ she asked, although she immediately realised that she had absolutely no experience with that kind of thing.

Tom looked surprised but pleased at her offer. ‘I’m not sure yet. Let me spend a few hours having a dig around and I’ll let you know.’