The spirits of Samhain have provoked chaos in Ambridge. Helen Archer has jilted her partner Lee, which she claims is nothing, nothing at all, to do with the continued mind games of her ex-husband Rob Titchener, who has returned, like Glenn Close in the final scene of Fatal Attraction, to cause havoc just when you thought he was safely on his deathbed. “He’s playing you, Alan,” hissed the vicar’s more intelligent wife, Usha. Evil Rob, you see, has found God. Or so he says. Jesus would’ve given him the benefit of the doubt, protested Alan. Jesus didn’t have to live in Ambridge, averred Usha.
Adil, the manager of Grey Gables, has lost his marbles, and his gables for that matter. As the refurbishment of the hotel span out of his control, he disappeared from his digs in Ambridge Hall ostensibly on a mini-break, but clearing the joint of all his worldly goods. Oliver and Lynda were weirdly understanding of the fake “family emergency” of which he left word in a note they found concealed in his room. Personally, I’ve never known a family emergency so grave that a WhatsApp to a colleague didn’t get sent, nor grasped the efficacy of hiding dissembling notes in drawers in B&B bedrooms. But, as in so many things, Ambridge goes its own way. It turns out that Adil is more fragile than he looks, having lost his fiancee in a hit-and-run car accident. The inhabitants of Borsetshire are so terribly prone to these tragedies. The shadowy “Owners” of Grey Gables were oddly silent on the disappearance of their most senior employee.
