[Churchminster #3] Wild Things by Jo Carnegie

saddo. For God’s sake, I’m not a teenager any more. I can do what I like!’
    But Jack’s grip held fast. ‘Not on my watch you can’t.’
    Depositing Stacey in the arms of her mother, he marched Trilby-Man through the pub. Everyone scattered out the way, as Jack ripped open the front door and threw the unfortunate man out. ‘Don’t come back until you can keep your grubby little paws off my daughter!’ He shut the door and turned round, a charming landlord once more. ‘Sorry about that, folks! You just all carry on having a good time.’
    The room started to fill up with chatter again. In the melee, Rafe Wolfe had disappeared, much to the evident disappointment of his hangers-on. All eyes were now on a drunken Lucinda Reinard, who was chasing the jester round with his own lute, and trying to spank his bottom with it.
    ‘Are you OK?’ Camilla asked Dan kindly. The locations manager had gone rather white, as if he wasn’t quite sure what the film company had taken on. Muttering his excuses, he fled outside for a cigarette.
    Two hours later, and the local ale and free-flowing champagne were beginning to have an effect. Jack had gone ballistic when he’d found yet another crew member chatting up Stacey in the corridor with one hand on her bottom, promising to make her a star. ‘He’s got bleedin’ “security” written on the back of his jacket, what’s he going to do, make you head doorwoman?’ he hissed, bundling Stacey into the kitchen and relegating her to washing-up duty for the rest of the night. The door slammed and Stacey defiantly stuck two fingers up after her dad. As she wobbled round, she suddenly noticed Marco, the new junior chef, standing at the oven.
    ‘
Bon soir, mademoiselle
,’ he murmured.
    Stacey swayed and looked at the young Frenchman. She hadn’t realized before quite how
fit
he was. ‘You and me are gonna get pished, hot stuff,’ she told him, and went to dig out the cooking sherry.
    In the bar, things had degenerated into chaos. The whole room was filled with inebriated people talking too loudly and repeating themselves. Outside the ladies’ loo one of the make-up artists was snogging Brenda Briggs’s uncouth nephew from Bedlington, who’d announced to anyone who’d listen he’d come to get ‘some film fanny’. Jack had tried to pull them apart, but they were stuck together like a pair of encrusted limpets, so he’d given up and gone back behind the bar. In another corner, Lucinda Reinard was now sitting behind the drums trying to play ‘Paradise City’ by Guns N’ Roses, while the entire band had retired to the bar to do shots of flaming sambucas.
    At 1 a.m., Calypso decided she’d had enough. She had to get up early to see a client. Leaving a drunken Camilla telling tales of her travels to the enraptured Fox-Titts, she wove her way out through the swinging melee.

Chapter 12
    ‘ ERROL FLYNN! GET back here now!’ Camilla vainly tugged on the lead, but the black Labrador was on the trail of something irresistible. Nose pressed to the grass, he dragged Camilla behind him over the green, before coming to an abrupt stop at the gate to St Bartholomew’s. Camilla almost went flying over it after him; when she’d mentioned to her grandmother that she planned a nice relaxing day off, this wasn’t what she’d envisaged doing. Clementine was at the opening of a nearby garden centre and had asked Camilla to take Errol Flynn out for his morning walk. He’d been banned from attending public events because of ‘unruly behaviour’ and after ten minutes in his company, Camilla could see why.
    As the dog snuffled around, Camilla stared up at the church. So much of her family’s history and life were to be found between its four walls. Her great-grandparents, grandparents, and her own parents, Johnnie and Tink, had been married here. Clementine had buried Bertie here , his gravestone standing stoically under the yew tree in the corner. Camilla and both of her sisters had