Basket Case (Sentient Object Adventures #7)

Chapter 1

ONE

Icame to the Highlands hoping to reconnect with my roots. I'd hoped for photo albums, stories, some kind of inner feeling of 'home' as soon as I set foot into the village my mother had grown up in.

Gran gave me a wicker basket.

It sat in the middle of her kitchen table, large enough to hold a week’s shopping and ugly enough to discourage anyone from stealing it. A folded note had been tied to the handle with pink wool.

I recognised Gran’s handwriting immediately.

I leave my best creel for my granddaughter. May it bring you much joy.

P.S. Don’t you dare throw it away.

That sounded like a will, but Gran wasn't dead. She was in a care home half an hour down the road, where she was playing darts and lusting after the male nurses.

I turned the basket around, looking for any clue as to why Gran considered it her best. The wicker had darkened with age, and several rods stuck out at angles that posed a safety hazard.

It was too big for shopping and too battered for decoration.

Calling it a creel didn’t make it any better.

Maybe I could plant some flowers inside, set it in the garden and hope that it would become part of nature again.

I had been in the cottage for all of twelve minutes. My suitcase was still beside the front door, my coat was dripping onto Gran’s flagstones and I had already checked my work emails twice.

The top message was from my headteacher. A parent had complained that I’d embarrassed her son by asking him to stop licking the classroom glue sticks. She wanted a meeting to discuss why I had stopped her child from making his own decisions. I was so done with it all.

I put my phone face down.

One week.

I had promised myself one week without school or small children putting objects in their mouths. By the following Monday, I would know whether I wanted Gran’s cottage or whether I was going back to Glasgow and my tiny yet central little flat with its unreliable boiler.

Gran had moved into the care home because she was tired of chopping firewood. The presence of “several surprisingly fit widowers” had confirmed her decision. She’d offered me the cottage before contacting an estate agent.

“Try it for half term,” she’d said. “You might remember that life exists outside a classroom.”

So far, life outside the classroom appeared to involve rain coming sideways and no mobile signal unless I stood beside the toaster.

The cottage felt larger without Gran in it. Most of her belongings had gone with her, but the china sheep still watched me from the mantelpiece. A framed photograph of me wearing fairy wings and no front teeth stood beside a bottle of whisky that had already been opened.

I carried the basket to the pantry and shoved it onto the lowest shelf. Then I retrieved my phone, stood beside the toaster and called Gran.

She answered on the fourth ring. Music and several loud voices filled the background.

“Did you find the basket?” she asked.

“Hello to you too.”

“Hello, darling. Did you?”

“Yes. Why does your note make it sound as if you’ve died?”

She laughed. “What?”

“You wrote, ‘I leave my best creel for my granddaughter.’”

“Well, I have left it for you. I’m not there, am I?”

There was no arguing with that.

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

She sighed as if she the answer was obvious. “Use it.”

“For what?”

“It’s a basket, Kathleen. You’re a university-educated woman. I’m sure you’ll work it out.”

I looked towards the pantry. “Can I put it in the shed?”

“No.”

“Why?”

Her voice was firm. “The damp will ruin it.”

“It looks older than the cottage.”

“All the more reason to take care of it. Are you going to the opening night of the festival tonight?”

I glanced at the orange flyer she’d left on the fridge.

The words Samhain Celebration, 30-31 October curled above a drawing of a bonfire.

In other places, they celebrated Halloween and went trick-or-treating.

In this village, they still followed the old tradition of celebrating Samhain and going guising.

I didn't feel in the mood for standing around a bonfire with strangers.

“I’ve just driven three hours through the rain.”

Gran chuckled. “You’ll survive.”

“I don’t know anyone.”

“They know you. Moira from across the road is coming to collect you at six.”

I checked the clock. “That’s in twenty minutes.”

“You’d better get changed.”

“Gran!”

This was so typical. She organised the lives of others and regularly forgot to tell us about it until it was almost too late. I’d planned to read a book tonight, curled up under a blanket, avoiding the rain at all costs. Instead, I’d have to take part in village life.

“I have to go. Douglas has accused me of cheating at darts.”

“Did you?”

“Of course. I’m eighty-two. I need every advantage I can get.”

She hung up.

That was so very like Gran that I couldn't suppress a soppy smile.

Six o'clock on the dot, Moira knocked on the door. She hugged me before I could offer a hand and pushed a metal cup of whisky into my fingers. I dimly remembered her from previous visits, but she treated me like a long-lost niece.

Half an hour later, I was standing beside a bonfire at the edge of the village while rain hissed against the flames. Turnip lanterns glowed along the stone wall, their carved faces far more threatening than a pumpkin could ever be.

Children in costumes chased one another through the mud, and a fiddle player had set up beneath a canvas shelter.

Everyone knew who I was.

They remembered me visiting Gran during school holidays and the time I’d fallen into the burn. One woman remembered changing my nappy, information she shared before asking whether I had a husband.

And this was why I lived in a city where I could hide in anonymity and nobody could tell me about my childhood nappy rash.

By my second whisky, the village knew I was single and trying out village life for the first time. But only for a week, which they all found hilarious.

By my third, I had agreed to pull up a vegetable in search of a man. Go figure that one out.

“It’s an old courtship divination,” Moira explained as she led me towards the vegetable patch behind the village hall. “You close your eyes, pull the first kale stalk you touch and discover the shape of your future husband.”

“And if I don’t like the look of him?”

“Then you’ve saved yourself the trouble of a first date.”

A group had gathered to watch. Most of them were women, several holding muddy stalks of their own. One had pulled a short, knobbly specimen that bent sharply to the left.

She did not look pleased in the slightest.

I was starting to realise this wasn't about the shape of the whole man. Just one part of him.

The whisky-addled part of my brain started to giggle.

Moira positioned me at the edge of the patch. “Close your eyes.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“You’re the one who wants to reconnect with her roots.”

“I meant family history.”

“Kale has roots.”

I didn't know what to say to that.

I closed my eyes, reached down and wrapped my fingers around the first stalk I found. It was thicker than I’d expected. I tightened my grip and pulled.

Nothing happened.

“Use both hands,” Moira advised.

Laughter broke out behind me.

I grabbed it lower down, bent my knees and heaved. The stalk tore free with a wet rip, spraying mud across my boots. Its weight almost pulled me forwards.

When I opened my eyes, I was holding the most obscene vegetable in Scotland.

The root was pale, thick and nearly as long as my forearm. Two smaller roots branched from its base beneath a heavy purple-green stalk. Mud dripped from the swollen tip.

The women around me went silent.

Then Moira choked on her whisky. “Oh, you lucky cow.”

Heat rushed into my face. “It’s kale.”

"It's tradition. You better get practising. This stalk won't just fit without some stretching."

Ewwww. I wanted to run away from these women.

I should have dropped it back into the mud. Instead, I stared at the thick root while warmth gathered low in my belly.

It had been a long time since I’d had sex. Months. That wasn’t helping.

“You have to take it home,” Moira said.

“I absolutely do not.”

“You pulled it. It’s yours.”

“I don’t want it.”

A cheer went up when I said that. Some women were clearly very interested in taking it for themselves.

Moira wiped tears from her eyes. “Keep it beside your bed until morning. You asked the old magic to show you what’s coming.”

“I didn’t ask. You handed me whisky and pushed me into a field.”

“And look how well that turned out.”

The cottage was dark when I returned. I kicked off my muddy boots and went straight to the pantry before the root could drip over Gran’s floor. Maybe I had a use for that wicker basket after all.

I dropped the kale inside. It fitted at an angle, its thick root jutting over the rim.

There. Gran could hardly complain that I hadn’t tried. I'd taken part in a village tradition and now I was using her ugly basket. If only my head was a little less foggy.

I shut the pantry door and went in search of water.

A crack came from behind me.

I stopped beside the sink.

The pantry door swung open. The basket sat on the shelf with the kale caught tightly between its woven sides. As I watched, the wicker contracted.

Leaves tore from the kale stalk. Thin rods wound around it, twisting with quick, dry snaps. The root sank deeper into the basket until only the swollen end remained visible above the rim.

I gripped the edge of the sink. The whisky had been strong, but it hadn't been strong enough for this.

A fresh length of wicker pushed through the basket’s side. It curled upwards, growing thicker as more strands wrapped around it. The tip flexed towards me.

My mouth went dry. I knew what it resembled. My body did too.

A deep male voice spoke inside my head.

You need not settle for that.

That's it. I was never going to drink whisky ever again.