A Witch In Winter (16 page)

‘I didn’t do anything,’ I muttered.

‘That’s the point.’ He pressed his hand to his eyes. ‘You kept calm and didn’t panic, or do anything stupid, or ask silly questions. You were incredibly brave.’

This was appalling, worse than appalling. My insides curdled and suddenly I had to say something, anything, to stop him.

‘Please, Seth,’ I said desperately, ‘please stop being so nice. You wouldn’t say all this if you knew the truth. I’m not the person you think I am. This is all my fault.’

He’d been frowning as I spoke. Now he snorted and started to laugh in spite of his weariness.

‘Don’t be bloody stupid. What do you mean? The storm?’

‘Yes – the storm – you being here – Caroline – everything.’

‘Anna, you’re talking crap.’

‘I’m not!’ I cried. I wanted to weep. ‘Oh Seth, please believe me, I’m not a good person for you to know.’

‘Anna.’ He took my hand in his. ‘I have no idea what you’re on about, but whatever you’ve done, it can’t be that bad, can it? Look at me. Lots of people in this town would write me off – lots of them
have
written me off already. You know I’ve made mistakes; I’ve done things I’m not proud of. But I’m trying to be a better person, you make me
want
to be a better person.’

‘No, no, no.’ I shook my head, close to tears, ‘Seth, you
are
a good person – you’re a wonderful person. This is completely different. Oh please, won’t you just trust me – forget you ever met me – go back to Caroline.’

‘Why do you keep talking about Caroline? What’s she got to do with anything? Anna, I am never,
never
going back to Caroline.’

I shook my head in mute misery and he gave an exclamation of frustration.

‘How can I convince you? Look, I’ve told you more in one month of knowing you than I told her in a year of going out. You know why? Because she didn’t give a toss about me or my feelings. Maybe she fancied me, but she didn’t
care
about me, she never did. But you do. Or I feel like you do – don’t you?’

‘Yes.’ My throat was tight and ached with the truth of this. ‘Yes I do.’

But I knew that for this to be
really
true, I needed to be honest. I wanted to be the person Seth thought I was, and that meant destroying his illusions about me, destroying whatever friendship we’d built up. It meant telling the truth. I didn’t care about Maya’s warnings. There couldn’t be anything worse than this corrosive guilt.

I took a deep breath.

‘Seth, do you remember that day, when you – when you decided that you
liked
me?’

He nodded, perplexed ced,, I am.

‘And do you remember down at the quay when you—’ I forced myself to continue, ‘when you kissed me?’

He shut his eyes for a moment, and the expression that momentarily crossed his face made my heart wring. But he said nothing, only nodded again, reluctantly this time.

‘Do you remember you said that it was totally out of character – like you were crazy, obsessed?’

Another nod. There was humiliation on his face now, as well as pain. He opened his mouth to say something, but I held out a hand, warding him off.

‘Please, please don’t. Let me finish. There – there was a reason, why you felt like that so suddenly. Why you woke up one morning obsessed with a girl from London you barely knew, and broke up with your gorgeous, long-term girlfriend, and fell for someone completely plain and ordinary and boring, in a totally inexplicable way.’

I swallowed. I couldn’t think of a way to put it that didn’t sound crazy.

‘I – I enchanted you.’

He frowned, confused. I could see he didn’t understand the ambiguity of the phrase. Desperately, I spelled it out.

‘I bewitched you. I made a spell. A love potion. Seth, you don’t love me at all. I
made
you love me.’ I stopped and gulped, then spat out the words like bitter stones. ‘I’m a witch.’

Up until that point he had been silent, his expression flitting between perplexed and downright bewildered. Now he broke out into a shout of laughter.

‘Anna! You had me worried there for a minute. Let me guess – you magicked gullible out of the dictionary as well?’

‘It’s true,’ I said wretchedly. ‘I wish it wasn’t. I know you’ll think it’s mad. I thought so too at first. I never meant for it to happen – I just didn’t know what I was doing.’

‘Hmm, a witch with L-plates, eh?’ He was still grinning, in spite of his tiredness.

‘Seth, please don’t make fun of me. I don’t know what to do – how to convince you …’ I broke off, thinking of Abe and his handful of snow. Could I do something similar? Something to
force
Seth to believe?

My eye fell on a stick beside the road and I had a sudden memory of a magician I’d seen at a party when I was a little girl. He’d made his wand blossom with paper flowers, a pretty hackneyed trick I suppose, but at the time I’d been incredibly impressed. I had no wand, but…

I picked up the stick and held it out to Seth.

‘If c000 ityou don’t believe me, watch.’

I held the end in both hands and concentrated. Seth watched with polite but slightly sarcastic amusement. He didn’t laugh again but I could tell there was a smile hovering at his lips.

This time I didn’t shut my eyes, I didn’t need to. I could feel the tendrils of power inside me rippling down my arms, into my hands, into the dry stick. I thought of sap rising, of leaves, buds, flowers. The wood grew warm and sweaty in my hands. It began to bud.

Tender swellings, furling leaves, blossom – it was like watching freeze-frame photography in real life. Within seconds the stick was heavy in my hands, too heavy to hold, and I dropped it, leaves, fruit and all. It fell to the ground with a thud, and an apple broke off and rolled towards Seth, landing at his feet.

He only stared, open-mouthed. Then he reached down and touched the apple – the lightest, most tentative of touches. He drew back immediately as if burned and, curious, I reached down to pick it up. It felt heavy, ordinary, unutterably real. It was slightly warm, but no warmer than an ordinary apple sitting in the sun. Its weight was the weight of a real apple. There was a slightly soft patch where it had hit the ground and had bruised, just as any other apple would. I sniffed it. It smelled of – apple. Delicious.

I held it out to Seth, with an attempt at a smile.

‘Want to see what it tastes like?’

‘No!’ He recoiled, his face suddenly shocked out of its stupor into an expression of fear and something close to revulsion. ‘No! Make it go away!’

I hung my head.

‘I don’t think I can – I mean, I don’t know how. I seem to be good at magic, but not so good at undoing it.’

In truth I didn’t want to try. Making a stick bud seemed comparatively harmless, but once I started wishing things into oblivion, where would it end? Might I accidentally obliterate the grass? Or the earth we were standing on? Or even Seth?

‘My God, it’s true,’ he whispered, talking almost to himself. ‘It’s true. What else have you done? When you said the storm was your fault … ?’

I shut my eyes and only nodded, too shamed to find the words.

‘And … me?’

I could not even nod, but a tear squeezed out from under my lashes. I felt it roll down my cheek.

‘Why?’ His voice was bewildered. ‘What did I ever do to you?’

‘Nothing,’ I managed, though my throat was tight and sore. ‘I’m so sorry …’

‘Sorry? Sorry?’

It was as if the words had triggered something long suppressed.

‘
Sorry!
’ he shouted. Veins stood out on his neck and temples. I took a step back.

I’d seen his anger before, and it had been horrible, but at the same time exciting, because it had always been directed at others in my defence. Now his fury was directed at me. Bleak. Terrifying. Soul-destroying.

‘I defended you to Caroline. I kissed you. I told you …’ His face contorted as he remembered the things he’d said, and he tore his hands through his hair in an agony of self-reproach, ‘Oh how could I, the things I said! How could
you
? I’ll never trust anyone – I’ll never even trust
myself
again.’

‘Please, Seth …’ I tried not to sob, but I’m not sure he even heard me.

‘I said I
loved
you!’ he yelled. His fingers clutched at his hair – he was almost sobbing himself. ‘I bared my soul to you. You – you …’ He stopped, unable, I thought, to think of a word vicious enough.

‘Seth,’ I sobbed, not caring now that tears were running down my face.

‘Anna, just go,’ he said stonily. ‘Get away before I do something I regret.’ His face made me quail, but I tried once more.

‘Seth—’

‘Just
go
!’ He almost spat the words, but his voice was low. The red hot fury had vanished, replaced by a bleak calm that was even more terrifying. He spoke quite softly now, but the words were very clear.

‘I never want to speak to you again. I never want to
see
you again. How could I ever have thought I loved you? You’re the worst, most despicable person I’ve ever met.’

CHAPTER TEN

I
 opened the front door to the smell of cooking, and it made me feel sick. Dad was in the kitchen, stirring herbs into fragrant bubbling pots and humming tunelessly to himself. I couldn’t face a fake-cheerful conversation and tried to sneak upstairs to my room unnoticed, but the wind caught the door, slamming it shut, and he called out, ‘Anna, is that you?’

‘Yes.’ I swallowed the lump in my throat and managed to yell back, ‘Just going upstairs to change.’

‘Well come down and chat to me in a sec.’ He put his head around the kitchen door, staring at me over steam-misted glasses. ‘I feel like I haven’t seen you for a week.’

‘Yeah, OK,’ I said wearily, but when I got upstairs I didn ft="’t change. I didn’t do anything. I just lay on my front on my bed with my face buried in my pillow, feeling every bone in my body throb with tiredness.

I should have felt relieved that I’d done the right thing and told Seth. Judging by his anger I wouldn’t have much to worry about in terms of unwanted affection. Problem solved – just like Simon had predicted. But I didn’t feel any relief, only a deep, gnawing sadness.

If only I’d never started messing with that stupid spell. Without it, Seth would probably never have looked at me romantically, but perhaps I could have been his friend. Now I’d lost even that chance, and hurt Seth so badly he would never forgive me. And it was all my own stupid fault.

There was a perfunctory rap at the door, breaking in on my self-pity. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dad standing in the doorway.

‘I thought you were coming down?’ he said, a touch of irritation in his voice.

I shook my head into the pillow and he sighed, and sat on the foot of the bed.

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing.’ My voice was muffled by the pillow.

‘How was Seth?’

‘I don’t really want to talk about it – sorry, Dad.’

‘Well at least tell me how your trip out to Castle Spit went? I’m quite keen to hear what Mr Fisher had to say, it might be useful for my book.’

‘Not much to tell.’ I sat up wearily.

‘Anna …’ he said warningly, in the voice that meant:
You’re trying my patience
.

‘I don’t. Want. To talk about it.’ I didn’t mean to sound so childish, but I felt close to tears, and I knew that if I started to discuss any of this with Dad it would all come spilling out, and I couldn’t, I just couldn’t bear it. My heart was too raw for Dad’s blundering sympathy.

‘For heaven’s sake, Anna!’ Dad exploded. ‘I’ve really had enough of all these theatrics. What’s got into you since we moved? You’re secretive, you won’t tell me about your friends, you won’t answer simple questions about your day. I know that moving has been a big adjustment for you. It’s been a big change for me too. But enough is enough. I don’t expect you to tell me everything – you’ve a right to your privacy – but I do expect basic politeness and the bare facts about your life.’

The unfairness of this struck me dumb for a second. Then something snapped inside me.

‘You’re one to talk!’ I screamed. ‘How
dare
you lecture me about secrecy? You haven’t told me
anything
about myself, about mum, kf, "0em" about what happened between you. I was so desperate I even bloody
googled
her. Do you have any idea what that feels like? Don’t I have a right to know about stuff too?’

‘That’s different.’ Dad was shaking his head.