16
Memories
Emily hadn’t noticed Cottonwood Village Hall before, but after her conversation the night before with Kelly Chambers, she walked up through the village, past Veronica’s café and found it down a lane almost missable between two overgrown hedgerows.
At the end of the lane, a gravel car park was strewn with weeds. The hall was a ramshackle barn of a building with a faded sign hung from patchy walls desperately in need of a coat of paint. Overgrown hedgerows hemmed it in on three sides, but on the fourth a grassy field dotted with decrepit children’s play apparatus sloped down to a low stone wall separating it from a pasture field. A view opened out of the valley below, the buildings of a neighbouring village visible in the distance, as though to taunt the village hall of better
