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new owners of the adjoining property had put in objections to the plans.
    ‘English weekenders!’ she snarled angrily, with the sort of expression that should have told her neighbours to head for the border, fast. ‘Here half a dozen times a year, contribute nothing to the village, think they own the place!’
    Most fortunately, she has ceased to be – and now denies she ever was – one of the Daughters of Glendower, keeping the home fires burning in the weekenders’ cottages, or it might have been a case of ‘frying tonight’.
    Sometimes I wonder if Fairy Glen only escaped because Ma is half Welsh and it would be terribly difficult just to burn half of a house (though it is a miracle that Ma herself has not set fire to the whole place with carelessly discarded fag ends by now).
    ‘Have you tried
talking
to your neighbours about your plans for the pottery,’ I suggested to Nia, ‘as opposed to just glowering over the wall at them?’
    Nia does a good Frida Kahlo glower, due to having those thick straight eyebrows that meet in the middle when she frowns. ‘I mean, they might see your point of view if you explained.’
    ‘I did speak to them. They said they didn’t want to have drinks in the garden to a background thump of me wedging clay, and in any case I was a health hazard!’
    ‘You’ll have to find a workshop nearby if you can’t get planning permission. I’m sure there must be somewhere.’
    ‘Rhodri’s back again,’ she said, seemingly at random. ‘That’s the good news. And do you
know
you’re singing “There’s a Place for Us”?’
    I hadn’t, but I stopped. ‘Rhodri? Have you seen him?’
    ‘No, Carrie told me – he’d been into Teapots to buy honey and a bag of doughnuts, and stayed for coffee and a chat. His divorce is going through and his ex-wife’s got the Surrey house, the London flat and seemingly most of the money.
And
she’s got a rich French count in tow too. I think poor old Rhodri’s number was up once he went from Lloyd’s Name to Lloyd’s loser.’
    ‘Oh, no, poor Rhodri! He always was weak as water when it came to the crunch. What’s he going to do? Hasn’t he already lost most of his money?’
    ‘Yes, and now he’s losing most of what he’s got left. But he says it’s a clean-break divorce so he won’t have to pay maintenance, and the daughter’s sort of a model-cum-socialite engaged to someone wealthy and nearly off his hands. So now he’s going to live permanently at Plas Gwyn, and Carrie says he’s thinking of opening it up all season to the public instead of just summer Sundays, to make some money. And he might hire the Great Hall out for weddings and stuff like that. She said he had lots of ideas.’
    ‘It will be lovely to have him back living in St Ceridwen’s, but I don’t think making money is his forte,’ I said doubtfully. Rhodri had been a handsome boy, but even then an air of sweet bewilderment had lurked behind his hopeful, trusting blue eyes, and the few times we’d met since I’d been married to Mal he hadn’t seemed much different.
    ‘No, it certainly isn’t. But I thought I might go up to Plas Gwyn and talk to him, now there’s no chance of running into that vile, stuck-up bitch he married, because there’s the whole stable wing doing nothing, and he could turn it into little craft workshops and studios as an extra tourist attraction – and rent one to
me
!’
    ‘Brilliant!’ I said, and brilliant it might prove to be for Rhodri too, for if Nia was one thing it was bossy, and if he looked pathetic enough she might just supply the backbone he needed to get Plas Gwyn off the ground as a paying proposition.
    She needed some outlet for her powerful energy in addition to beating the hell out of lumps of clay, and possibly, if they pushed her too far, the neighbours. And it might even distract her from whatever strange rites I had twice caught her performing up at the ancient stones above the fairy glen, which I sincerely hoped