A Witch In Winter (6 page)

It was a class discussion of the homework essay, so we had no time to talk, but at the end of the lesson June dragged me aside.

‘What did Seth say?’

‘Nothing,’ I said with difficulty, trying to move my mouth as little as possible. My lip had started to clot and every word cracked the scab painfully. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You mean he didn’t ask you out?’

‘No! What on earth do you mean?’ I was so surprised I forgot to speak cautiously and winced as fresh blood came into my mouth.

‘The story going round, and it’s pretty convincing, is that Seth dumped Caroline on Sunday. For you.’

‘What!’

‘So you don’t know? You’re not going out with him?’

‘No! Of course not.’ My cheeks flamed. ‘It’s complete rubbish; I’m telling you.’

‘Well, rubbish or not, he really has dumped Caroline, and she obviously thinks you had something to do with it.’

‘I didn’t. There must be some misunderstanding.’

‘Anna.’ June narrowed her eyes. ‘Who exactly did you think about when we did that spell?’

Fear curled in my stomach and I felt my face become hard.

‘I didn’t think of anyone. Anyway, what we did on Saturday had
nothing
to do with anything. It was just a silly schoolgirl game.’

‘Hmm. Well, I hate to tell you, but your lip’s bleeding on your shirt.’

‘Oh crap.’ I looked down and sure enough my shirt was stained with drops of blood.

I made my way to the loos, ignoring the stares of people in the corridor. It seemed that from being nobody at Winter High I was suddenly somebody, in a very big way indeed, and I was fast deciding that I’d much preferred being a nobody. I locked myself in a cubicle with a handful of wet loo paper and tried to dab off the worst of the blood, but I just ended up with a wet bloodstained shirt.

I hid in the loos for as long as I could but at lastifd but at the third bell rang and I knew I had to get to Maths. The corridors were almost empty and I slipped into my seat at the back next to Seth, unnoticed by the rest of the class.

Except, of course, Seth. At my arrival his face lit with a mixture of fury and relief.

‘Your face,’ he said as I sat down. His expression was stricken and he reached out a hand to touch me. My heart started thudding, even as I flinched away. ‘Sorry, sorry, is it very painful?’

‘Pretty much, yes.’

‘Anna, I’m so, so sorry. If I’d known—’

‘Quiet everyone,’ called Mr Henderson. ‘Now, any problems with the homework?’

‘Known what?’ I whispered under cover of rustling papers. ‘It’s not your fault, Seth.’

‘But it is,’ Seth began.

‘Silence!’ roared Mr Henderson. ‘Unless you have a comment about the homework, I don’t want to hear from you.’

Seth waited until Mr Henderson was busy answering a question then carried on, under his breath. ‘I wanted to speak to you before you saw Caroline; I didn’t have the chance to explain, you see—’

‘Seth Waters.’ We both jumped. Mr Henderson stood an inch away from our desk, tapping his board ruler menacingly on his open palm. ‘Do you, or do you not have a problem with the homework?’

‘No, Mr Henderson.’

‘Then if I hear from you again, you will be spending the rest of this lesson in the quad. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes, Mr Henderson.’

He turned away, and Seth wrote on a piece of paper:
Meet me at the harbour at lunchtime?

Reluctantly I nodded. I didn’t really want to add fuel to whatever imaginary fire Caroline had concocted by sneaking off with Seth, but I very much wanted to know what was going on.

When I arrived at the harbour Seth was already there, sitting on a small sailing boat tethered to the quayside. He was looking down at something on his lap, and I watched him as I walked along the quay.

His profile was sharp against the grey of the water, his curly dark hair tousled by the sea wind gusting across the bay. Somehow he looked different from the boy I sat next to in Maths – older, more serious, more capable. He belonged with a crew of fishermen hauling oyster pots home in some Greek port, or gutting sardines on a Portuguese quayside. Lots of things about him – his deep tan, his calloused hands, the lean strength of his arms lm.of his and shoulders – suddenly made sense.

Then I tripped over a coil of rope and he looked up, and his expression changed to one of open delight.

‘Anna! You came.’

‘Of course.’

He folded up the chart he’d been reading and leapt easily off the boat onto the quay.

‘Have you already got lunch? I should have warned you there aren’t any cafés open yet, they don’t open up until a bit later in the season.’

I shook my head.

‘I’m not very hungry, I don’t really want to eat much with my mouth like this.’

‘Of course.’ He looked stricken. ‘Here.’ He threw down a parcel of rolled up sails. ‘Sit on this. It’ll be a bit cleaner than the quay.’

‘Seth, what’s going on?’

Seth bit his lip and looked out to sea. For the first time I noticed that his eyes were not brown, as I’d thought, but very dark grey, like the chalky channel sea on a thundery day. There was silence for a while and then he sighed.

‘Well, you know I broke up with Caroline.’

‘I heard. I’m really sorry.’

‘I’m not. But I am sorry that I said something stupid to her.’

I waited and he continued slowly, ‘I said it was because of you.’

‘I see,’ I said. My throat suddenly closed and I found it impossible to say any more. I wanted to say, ‘Don’t be silly, it doesn’t matter if you used me as an excuse, you don’t have to apologize for anything, just set everything straight’. But I couldn’t seem to get the words out.

‘And Caroline got hold of the wrong end of the stick,’ he continued heavily. ‘She thought there was something going on between us.’

‘Which there’s not, obviously,’ I said painfully. My lip had cracked again and I tasted blood.

Seth shook his head. ‘No.’ Then he reached and took both my hands in his. I felt the shocking warmth of his skin and the roughness of his fingers and palms. There was a deep welt, like a rope burn, along the underside of his wrist, and I had to fight the urge to run my thumb along the scar. His face was pale, in spite of his deep tan, and there were shadows under his eyes. He looked exhausted yet wired, and there was a frightening intensity in his expression that I couldn’t understand. Then he took a breath. ‘But I would like it if there was.’

‘What?’ I was so surprised that I stood up, pulling my hands away. He stood too, his words tumbling over one another.

‘I know, I know this is sudden and we’ve only just met, and I don’t want to freak you out – but Anna, I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re wonderful, and amazing, and clever and witty and beautiful. I woke up on Sunday and – I can’t explain it – I suddenly realized that you were what’s been missing in my life. I don’t know how it took me so long.’

‘So long!’ I gasped. ‘You’ve only known me a week!’

‘I feel like I’ve known you all my life – I’m completely obsessed with you – with the way you look, the way you move, the way your skin smells, the way the sun brings out the little red glints in your hair. I’ve thought about nothing else since.’ I was so shocked I couldn’t speak, and he pressed on, ‘I know this is probably all too much, too soon, but I couldn’t carry on with Caroline feeling the way I do about you. Please, I’m not expecting anything in return, but I had to say something. I’ve never felt like this before. The girls in Winter – they’re just so, so
ordinary
, and then you came along and it was like, like nothing else mattered any more.’

He stopped, touched my lip with his warm, calloused thumb, and swallowed.

‘Anna, I know this sounds crazy but – I love you.’

For a minute I was mesmerized by it all – the sound of the sea crashing on the quay, the feel of his touch, the intensity of his slate-grey eyes. Then sanity broke through and I pushed his hand away violently.

‘Seth, stop it! This is ridiculous.’ My voice was shaking.

‘I know.’ He looked bewildered. ‘I know it is, and I don’t expect you to feel the way I do. I don’t expect anything of you. I just want … I don’t know. I want you to know I love you, and I always will.’

‘Stop it!’ I cried, putting my hands over my ears and closing my eyes. This was terrible – it was so right and yet so, so wrong.

‘I’m sorry,’ Seth said. There was a catch in his voice. ‘I know this is ridiculously sudden. I won’t say any more if it’s upsetting you.’

A dreadful thought suddenly struck me and I opened my eyes.

‘Is this a wind-up? Did June put you up to it?’

‘What?’ He looked horrified. ‘No! What’s June got to do with it? How could you think I would joke about something like this?’

For a moment I considered telling him about Saturday night and the incantation and the whole ridiculous childish business – then sanity returned. I couldn’t. I couldn’t possibly. And it couldn’t possibly be true anyway. There must be some othrot be soher explanation – a rush of hormones – or some monumentally awful misunderstanding.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said at last. My voice shook. ‘I can’t do this. Please – please just forget it. Tomorrow you’ll think better of all this and you’ll be really embarrassed and so will I. Let’s just pretend you never said any of this – it’ll be better for both of us.’

‘OK. But it won’t change the way I feel. I love you. I’ll feel the same way tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. But I don’t want to hurt you, Anna – I won’t mention this again if it’s making you unhappy.’

‘It is,’ I said, and felt tears rolling down my cheeks in spite of everything I could do to prevent them. And then I was in his arms, and he was stroking my hair.

‘Please, please, Anna, don’t cry. Oh love, please don’t cry.’

I could feel the beat of his heart and the heat of his skin through the thin T-shirt. For a moment I considered staying there, resting my cheek against his chest and folding into his warmth. It would be so easy, so tempting, so right…

I stopped myself. This was wrong. However I felt about him, his feeling for me was nothing but some inexplicable mistake, a passing illusion. I was making a fool out of myself and, even if he didn’t realize it, so was Seth.

‘Please stop this,’ I said as coldly as I could, trying to struggle out of his arms. ‘You don’t love me, and I don’t want to hear anything more about this. Just leave me alone, and we’ll both be happier.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said. His arms imprisoned me without effort, but it was the look in his intense dark eyes that made me stop fighting. ‘I don’t believe you. Tell me that you don’t feel anything.’

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t speak. I only stood, trembling, my heart beating painfully, as he leaned down towards me. Then he kissed me.

For a long, long moment I did nothing, only melted into the kiss, my head spinning with desire, my arms twining up to his shoulders, feeling his muscles tremble and flex beneath the thin material of his T-shirt as he gripped me tighter. The sounds and scents of the port ebbed far away. The roar of the sea was drowned by the roar of blood in my head, the sound of Seth’s heart, and our panting, gasping breaths as we locked closer and closer.

But even as I began to kiss him back, in the back of my mind a tiny voice was still insisting
This is wrong
.

‘No!’ I tore away and, not trusting myself any further, I ran. I ran up the quay, panting and blinded by tears, and on to the main road, where I half walked, half stumbled home, crying all the way.

CHAPTER FIVE

T
he whole business was obviously either a prank or some kind of mass hallucination – after a good night’s sleep that much was obvious. I walked to school on Tuesday certain that Seth would have realized overnight what a tit he’d been – either that or there would be a massive sign at the school gates saying: ‘ANNA WINTERSON – YOU JUST GOT PUNK’D!’

Whatever it was, no one could keep this up for two days. One way or another, everything had to be back to normal – didn’t it?

The hope was dashed as soon as I entered the school grounds. Approximately three million eyes turned to stare at me – or at least that was what it felt like.

I walked slowly across the quad, trying to keep my gaze down, away from the curious faces, until a large group of girls barred the way. I stepped left, so did they. I stepped right, so did they.

‘Excuse me,’ I said. The middle one, who I recognized as a friend of Caroline, folded her arms and put her head on one side, her long earrings jangling in the breeze.

‘It looks like there’s not enough room on this path for everyone, doesn’t it? I suggest you go the long way round.’

I sighed. The long way round was a ten-minute walk.

‘Isn’t this a bit childish?’

‘Look at it how you want. But this path is too small for all of us. And, frankly, so is this school. I don’t know what they’re like in
London
,’ her voice dripped sarcasm, ‘but in Winter we don’t have much time for boyfriend-stealing bitches.’