Read The Ghost Fields for Free Online

the farm?’ he asks after a pause.
    â€˜Thirteen acres,’ says Chaz. ‘Small but perfectly formed.’He smiles rather charmingly, revealing a gap between his front teeth. ‘You know, it’s always been my dream to own a place like this.’
    That was what his mother had said. ‘Chaz was never interested in school work. Oh, he was bright enough but he just wasn’t motivated. All he ever wanted to do was run his own farm.’
    â€˜Well, he’s achieved his ambition,’ Nelson had replied. ‘Not many people do that.’
    â€˜Yes,’ Sally had said. But Nelson thought that she sounded unconvinced. Chaz’s sister, Cassandra, is apparently an actress, ‘doing experimental plays in Lincoln’. Nelson thought that Sally didn’t sound too delighted about that either.
    But now Chaz shows an almost touching pride in his windswept collection of farm buildings. The house too, a sixties bungalow in urgent need of painting and repair, is presented as if it’s a palace. As if it’s Blackstock Hall, in fact.
    â€˜Here’s the old homestead. Let’s go into the kitchen. It’s cosy in there.’
    Cosy isn’t quite the word Nelson would use to describe the sagging cabinets, rusting cooker and motley collection of chairs, but at least they are out of the wind. Chaz puts on the kettle and Clough tries surreptitiously to scrape mud (or worse) off his shoe.
    â€˜So . . . Chaz,’ says Nelson. He has been invited to use this name but it still seems wrong somehow. ‘You’ve heard that the body in the plane has been positively identified as your great-uncle Frederick Blackstock?’
    â€˜I thought you were going to do some DNA tests on Dad?’
    â€˜Yes. That’s just to confirm the family link but the dental records were fairly conclusive.’
    â€˜None of us can understand how he got in that plane,’ says Chaz, getting out a selection of mismatched mugs. ‘We all thought that his plane went down over the sea.’
    â€˜Who told you that?’
    Chaz frowns. ‘Dad, I suppose. Or maybe Grandpa. He used to talk about the war sometimes.’
    Nelson hasn’t heard from Old George since the initial complaint about police harassment. In Nelson’s view this was a pretty extreme reaction to some gentle questioning. He wonders why the old man feels so threatened.
    â€˜Your granddad mentioned to us that you were against the sale of the field where the plane was found.’
    Chaz hesitates before replying, or maybe he is just occupied with pouring the tea. As he puts the mugs in front of them, he says, with no change in his hesitantly charming manner, ‘I was against it, yes. I mean, I know the old dears needed the money, but it’s breaking up the estate.’
    â€˜Breaking up the estate.’ An old-school phrase if there ever was one. Of course Chaz will be in line to inherit the estate. Or is Cassandra older? In any case, there’s probably some feudal principle that favours the son over the daughter.
    â€˜And that ghastly man, Edward Spens,’ says Chaz, sitting down at the table. He has taken off his jacket and there are holes in both elbows of his jumper. ‘He wants to build houses on the site. Hundreds of horrid little hen houses.’
    Pig houses would presumably be perfectly acceptable, thinks Nelson.
    â€˜Would be better than fracking though, wouldn’t it?’ says Clough. Nelson is glad to see that he’s been reading up on the issues.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Chaz runs his hands through his hair. However much he rumples it, his thick dark hair always ends up falling across his face in a perfect Hugh Grant fringe. ‘At least with fracking you wouldn’t get hundreds of people living in what’s practically our front garden.’
    Nelson thinks that there are a couple of interesting things about this statement. Firstly, for all the holes in his