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‘Listen up, everyone. Sorry for the short notice but I wanted to get you all together to put something to you.’

Callie Chase – new owner of our village, Rowan Vale, and by extension, my landlady – smiled nervously round at us all from her position on the stage.

‘It’s just… Well, I’ve had this great idea.’

There was some shuffling and exchanging of glances.

A few of the older members of our community weren’t yet entirely convinced that Callie was old enough or experienced enough to run the Harling Estate, which included Rowan Vale, and there had been some mutterings in certain quarters that the previous owner, Sir Lawrence Davenport, or Lawrie as we knew him, should be consulted on all matters.

The fact that Callie had said this was her idea clearly didn’t fill them with optimism.

Call me a cynic, but I couldn’t help wondering if part of the problem was that she was a woman.

As far as I was aware, there’d never been a female owner of Rowan Vale before.

What would the oldies’ reaction be if it had been Lawrie’s grandson, Brodie, who’d had the idea, I wondered.

Maybe that was why Callie had brought him with her to this impromptu meeting at The Magic Lantern, the village’s vintage cinema.

‘Here we go,’ said a familiar, cheerful voice in my ear. ‘All them old codgers will pour cold water on this before they’ve even heard what she has to say. You mark my words.’

‘Aunt Polly,’ I said, beaming at the attractive, dark-haired woman who’d slipped into the empty seat behind me. ‘You came!’

‘Course I came! You know me, lovey. I like to know what’s going on round here.’ She gave me a cheeky wink. ‘How are you, Shona? How’s them grandkiddies of yours? Our Jimmy not with you?’

‘They’re fine, thanks. Dad’s having a lazy day in the garden,’ I told her. ‘Making the most of the sunshine, not to mention the peace and quiet.’

‘Ooh, I don’t blame him.’ She closed her eyes briefly and sighed.

‘How I’d love to feel the sun on my skin again.

’ Then her eyes flew open and she grinned.

‘Ah well, can’t have everything in life, can we?

Or afterlife, as the case may be.’ She giggled and I felt the familiar tug of love for my great-aunt, and thought, once again, how much fun she must have been when she was alive.

‘Go on then,’ someone at the front said, rather grouchily. ‘We haven’t got all day. What’s this so-called big idea?’

‘Have you ever heard the like?’ Aunt Polly said, shocked. ‘Fancy talking to young Callie like that! They wouldn’t talk to Lawrie that way, would they? Brodie ought to say something.’

Brodie certainly looked as if he wanted to. Sitting on a chair next to Callie’s on the stage, he was glaring at the heckler, his brows knitted together quite alarmingly.

‘There’s no need to be rude, Mr Thwaite,’ Callie said firmly. ‘If you’d all stop muttering and fidgeting, I’d be able to tell you, wouldn’t I?’

‘Ha!’ Aunt Polly nodded in satisfaction. ‘Quite right, too. Who needs Brodie? You go, girl.’

‘I don’t think Callie needs Brodie to stand up for her,’ I said. ‘But it’s nice he’s here to support her.’

Brodie was Callie’s boyfriend, and by rights, he and his father should have been in line to own Rowan Vale: a beautiful little village nestling on the Harling Estate in the Cotswolds countryside.

Instead, however, the whole shebang had been sold to Callie Chase back in May, even though she was a complete outsider.

Of course, we’d all known a sale was inevitable.

This wasn’t just any old village in any old estate.

Rowan Vale was run as a living history museum, and we had beautiful woodland and parkland surrounding us, as well as some historic standing stones and a stone-age barrow.

All these things made our home special. But what set it apart from most other places was that, for some inexplicable reason, we had an abundance of ghosts sharing the estate with us.

There was an unwritten rule that the owner of the Harling Estate must have the ability to see and communicate with them all.

Sir Lawrence could. Unfortunately, neither his son nor his grandson had inherited his ability, hence the sale of the estate to Callie, who, although not from around this area, had somehow been born with the gift, as had her eleven-year-old daughter, Imogen.

Some of the residents of the village came from families who’d lived here for generations and had their very own ancestral ghost. My family had Aunt Polly. I could see her all right, but I couldn’t see the other ghosts.

That was the way it had always worked in Rowan Vale.

Gifted ones like Callie were few and far between.

The rest of us could only see our own dearly departed blood relatives, and not everyone could even do that.

And, of course, some of the ghosts had no relatives left here at all and no way of communicating with the living.

That was why it was so important that the owner of the estate could see them all and give them a voice.

Callie had been a godsend, whatever some of the oldies thought of her. Brodie obviously thought so, too, I mused with a wry smile. She’d only moved here less than two months ago, and they were already a couple. Fast work!

As Callie got to her feet, Brodie shuffled uncomfortably in his chair, and I could tell he was dying to intervene but was wisely allowing her to deal with things in her own way. Not only a fast worker but a fast learner then!

‘Right,’ Callie said, holding up her hands. ‘I want you to know that I really appreciate you coming to this meeting at such short notice, and I’d like to thank Robyn and Curtis for allowing us to use the cinema in between today’s showings of Passport to Pimlico. ’

She cleared her throat.

‘Okay, so what I wanted to put to you is this: I want to host a 1940s weekend in the village.’

She waited for our response, and I saw some puzzled looks, some shrugs, some excited nods, and a lot of widened eyes.

I remembered Aunt Polly sitting behind me and held my breath.

What would she think to this? After all, she’d died in 1948.

Would it bring back painful memories? Or would she be delighted to be taken back to her final decade, when she’d been young, vibrant, and gloriously alive?

‘Well,’ she said softly. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

Before I could work out whether she thought it a good or a bad thing, Callie continued.

‘I know we already get lots of visitors to Rowan Vale, but I’ve been thinking that we could attract even more of them by staging a series of events throughout the year, and this could be the first of them.

We have this wonderful vintage cinema here,’ she said enthusiastically, ‘and there’s the farm, of course, with the land girls and the prisoners of war.

And we have Blighty’s Bakery and Mrs Herron’s Teashop.

I thought it would be nice to celebrate the forties properly by holding a weekend event, where visitors could also dress up in vintage clothes. It could be an awful lot of fun…’

Her voice trailed off as she looked around us. There was momentary silence.

‘We have the Swinging Sixties street,’ someone called, ‘and a Victorian area. Why the forties? Surely,’ she added, standing up to appeal to the audience, ‘the sixties would be more fun?’

Aunt Polly tutted. ‘That’s Sheila Wood. Her daughter works in the hairdressing salon. No wonder she’s pushing the sixties.’

‘As I said, the forties weekend would simply be one event of the year,’ Callie replied. ‘I’m sure we could hold other events in due course, where we focus on other eras.’

Brodie had clearly had enough. He got to his feet and, miraculously, Sheila Wood immediately sat down.

‘From what Callie’s told me of her plans, I think the 1940s event would be a lot of fun,’ he said firmly.

‘You should have been there. You wouldn’t have thought it much fun then,’ said old Mr Baldwin, nodding furiously.

‘Blooming cheek!’ Aunt Polly gasped. ‘Ernie Baldwin was only born in 1945! Like he remembers any of it anyway!’

‘But you do,’ I said gently. ‘Are you okay with this?’

She smiled at me. ‘Me, love? Don’t you worry about me. I’m long past the wallowing stage, believe me. Besides, I’m always up for a party, and I reckon with a bit of help, Callie could give this village a proper good do. I’m all for it.’

‘Right,’ I said, relieved. I stood up. ‘Sounds great, Callie,’ I called. ‘What do you want us to do?’

I was rewarded with huge smiles from Callie and Brodie.

‘Well, Mrs Herron’s Teashop is always busy, and I’ve no doubt you’ll get extra traffic coming your way over the weekend. Just keep being your usual wonderful selves,’ she said.

‘ That we can do,’ I assured her and sat back down to some laughter.

‘That’s all very well,’ said Kerry Chesterton, who ran the Victorian sweet shop with her husband, Derek. ‘But where does that leave the rest of us? If the event’s going to be focused on the forties, what happens to the Victorian shops on the green? And the Swinging Sixties street?’

Behind me, I heard Aunt Polly tut. ‘You’re not kidding, Walter,’ she muttered. ‘I don’t know how you can stand living with her.’

I gathered she was talking to Walter Tasker, a ghost who shared the Chestertons’ flat above the sweet shop. I wondered how many more of the ghosts were present at the meeting. Were they heckling poor Callie, too?

‘Are we expected to close up that weekend?’ asked Jasper Edgecumbe, the ‘Victorian’ photographer. ‘I shall want compensation if that’s the case.’

‘Good grief, give her a chance!’ Clara Milsom, a local who was already good friends with Callie, glared fiercely at him. She saw me looking at her and rolled her eyes. I grinned back. We were definitely of one mind about all this.