Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered (13 page)

I giggled.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That was her.’

I stopped laughing.

‘What if she remembers what happened, H?’ I said. ‘What if she tells everyone?’

‘She won’t,’ Harry said. I wished I could share her confidence. She looked at her coffee mug.

‘We need a drink,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to the pub.’

For once, I didn’t argue.

Chapter 23

‘My tummy hurts,’ I complained as Harry put another drink in front of me later. I clutched my stomach dramatically and giggled.

She squeezed on to the bench beside me.

‘Go on, move up,’ she said, scooching along and squishing me into the wall. I shoved her back. Harry put her hand on my stomach and furrowed her brow. ‘What seems to be the problem?’ she asked in a pretend-serious voice.

I tried to look serious back. ‘I think,’ I said, swallowing a bubble of laughter, ‘I think I’ve had too much vodka.’ I hiccupped loudly and Harry dissolved in giggles again.

‘Is this what your doctor boyfriend used to do?’ she asked slyly.

I tried to frown at her, which was hard because I was having trouble controlling my eyebrows.

‘He wasn’t a doctor then,’ I said. ‘He was just a boy.’

‘Awww,’ Harry said. ‘Just a boy, standing in front of a girl…’

‘Shush,’ I said urgently. ‘I really need a wee.’

Sniggering, Harry moved over to let me out. I stood up, a bit shakily admittedly, and tried to walk in a straight line to the ladies. I could feel the regulars’ eyes on me as I walked, so I attempted to look sober as I swayed towards the loo.

‘Oof!’ Suddenly I was face down on the floor with a mouthful of carpet. I blinked in surprise and spat out some fluff, luckily I was far too drunk to feel any sort of embarrassment.

Hmm. It was quite nice to lie down. Maybe I could just stay where I was? I sniffed. Nope. The carpet smelled of old beer and mouldy shoes. I definitely had to get up. Right. Any minute now.

‘Need a hand?’

At last! I grasped the large hand that was being offered and yanked myself upright. It was Jamie. I grinned at him.

‘Helloooo!’ I tried to give him a hug and toppled into him. He put his arm around me to steady me and I snuggled into his chest. Jamie picked a bottle top out of my hair.

‘Having fun?’

‘I am. I’m drunk.’

‘I can see that.’ Jamie waved at Harry over my head. ‘Is that your cousin you’re with? She looks a bit worse for wear, too.’ Harry was slumping lower and lower in her chair, and her eyes were closing, but she was still laughing.

‘Are you?’ I looked up at Jamie. He was swaying slightly. No, that was me.

Jamie gently pushed me off his chest.

‘No, I’m driving. I just popped in to see Maria.’

‘Who’s Maria?’ I said crossly. I’d enjoyed resting against Jamie’s wide chest.

Jamie pointed to the barmaid. ‘That’s Maria.’

I squinted at her. She had long glossy hair and she was very pretty. And very young.

‘Why do you want to see her?’

‘Why not?’ Jamie shrugged. ‘We’re pals, that’s all. She sometimes comes to rugby with me.’

I heaved myself up on to a bar stool and rested my elbows on the bar. At least I did eventually – they just kept slipping off.

‘What does your fiancée think about you going to rugby with pretty ladies?’ I asked, when I was finally stable. I took Jamie’s coke out of his hand and drained the glass. ‘I’m really thirsty.’

Jamie – very patiently – signalled to Maria to bring us another two drinks.

‘I don’t have a fiancée,’ he said.

I frowned in confusion and patted his hand reassuringly.

‘You do,’ I explained earnestly. ‘She’s a doctor. Like you.’

Jamie rolled his eyes.

‘I did have a fiancée. But we broke up last year.’

I was overcome with sorrow for poor lonely Jamie. My eyes filled with drunken tears.

‘That’s so sad,’ I wailed. ‘What happened?’

Jamie gave me a thin-lipped smile.

‘Oh the usual. We grew apart. She wanted to work abroad and I wanted to come home. She’s still working with the Red Cross as far as I know – think she’s in Africa at the moment.’

I was impressed.

‘Africa? That’s very far away.’

Jamie nodded.

‘She’s in Tanzania, working with children…’

I’d lost interest because I’d just been struck with the most brilliant idea.

‘Jamie!’ I cried. ‘I know what you need to do!’ I leaned closer to him and lowered my voice to a loud whisper.

‘Ask Maria out,’ I bellowed.

‘No.’

‘Go on!’

‘No.’

I was outraged.

‘Why not?’ I squinted at Maria across the bar. She was serving another customer and was trying very hard to ignore my interest.

‘Look,’ I pointed at her. ‘She’s lovely!’

‘She is, as you say, lovely.’

‘She’s got nice hair, she’s thin, she’s very, very pretty…’

Maria turned round to face me and I gasped.

‘And she’s Maria MacKenzie from school!’

Jamie laughed loudly.

‘Do you know her?’

‘Know her? No! But I know her big sister!’ Once again I lowered my voice to what I thought was a quiet holler.

‘She’s very young you know.’

I gave Jamie a stern look.

‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think she’s too young for you. What on earth were you thinking, asking her out?’

Jamie had given up and was snorting into his glass of coke, while Maria giggled nearby. I sensed it was time to leave. I felt unreasonably grumpy that Jamie was thinking about other women and I gave Maria an evil look across the bar. Now what had I been doing before Jamie so rudely interrupted me? Ah yes.

I staggered to the loo – what a relief – then back to Harry. She was curled up in the corner of the seat, snoring gently. I shoved her and she opened her eyes.

‘I think we should go home,’ she said.

‘You’re right.’ I said. I pulled her upright and, with our arms wrapped round each other, we swayed, staggered and generally weaved our way back up the hill to the house. As we walked, my phone beeped with a message from Dom.

‘Working late no fun without u,’ it read. Pah. I threw my phone back into my bag.

‘Who was that?’ Harry asked as we let ourselves into the house, tiptoeing towards the kitchen in an over-exaggerated fashion.

Perhaps it was the vodka, or the fact that I’d spent more time with Harry in the last week than I had in the last decade, but I suddenly decided to tell her the truth.

I pulled out a chair and sat down heavily. Harry poured two pint glasses of water and handed me one, then she sat down too.

‘It was Dom,’ I said, guzzling my water. ‘He’s my boyfriend. And he’s married to someone else.’

‘Ouch,’ said Harry. ‘What are you going to do about it?’

I shrugged.

‘What can I do? It’s his decision, isn’t it?’

Harry slumped across the table dramatically.

‘For heavensh shake,’ she said. ‘What do I keep telling you?’

‘To shut up?’ I suggested.

Harry shook her head.

‘No, no, no, no,’ she said. ‘I keep telling you you’re a witch.’

She looked serious for a minute.

‘You’re a really good witch, Ez,’ she said. ‘Use it to help you.’

She put her head on to her outstretched arm and started to snore.

‘H,’ I said. I shook her. There was no response. Ah well, she could stay where she was.

Chapter 24

I climbed the stairs to bed, thinking about what she’d said. Could I use witchcraft to force a resolution between me and Dom? I was wary about it, knowing what a disaster it had been when Mum cast her love spell, but I could sort of see that Harry was right. Without using magic I was doomed to sit around and wait for Dom to decide who he wanted to be with. Perhaps I could hurry him along a bit…

I had intended to be up with first light the next day, to read my spell book and see what I could find to help my Dom situation. As it was, I slept right through Mum and Suky going to hospital with Brent. I only woke up when Harry stuck her head round my bedroom door.

‘It smells like a brewery in here,’ she said cheerfully. Too cheerfully, when I considered the state she’d been in last night. ‘I’m off to the café to help Eva. See you later.’

She slammed the front door so loudly the whole house shook and I forced my sorry self out of bed. Harry must have done some sort of sneaky anti-hangover spell, because I did not feel as perky as she had sounded. I made myself a bacon sandwich and a huge mug of tea, ignoring how tight my jeans were getting, then I thought about what to do about Dom.

Idly, I leafed through my spell book. Pretty much everything was covered – except how to turn a frog back into a person – and I was sure I’d find what I was looking for.

And I did. Quite near the back, in old-fashioned typeface and stuck in with yellowing Sellotape, was a charm.

‘How to encourage a lover to commit,’ it said. That sounded about right. If I could restore Dom’s love for me, he might just decide it was time to leave Rebecca. Then we could be together and that was just what I wanted, wasn’t it?

At the bottom of the sheet of paper were lots of notes written in a tiny, cramped hand. I squinted at them, but my aching head couldn’t process the writing. At least the bit I needed was all typed.

Right. It was time. I put my spell book into a big canvas bag, then I sneaked into mum’s ‘special’ cupboard at home and raided it. Into my bag I piled candles, crystals, incense and soft, white feathers. I even found a bottle of bubble mixture, so I threw that in as well along with assorted other things I thought would come in handy. All the kinds of things witches have in their storecupboards, and which, of course, I didn’t have. Then I headed into town where I went to a sweet little nick-nack shop, and stocked up on tea lights and a pretty mirror with mosaic tiles round the edge.

My mind was swirling with ideas. I’d learned so much about my own abilities in the last few days and I was confident the spell would force a conclusion to my relationship with Dom. And then who knew what I could do? I thought about Brent and what he’d said about the Housewives’ Guild and the rumours they were spreading. Maybe I could fend them off magically? In fact, it seemed there was no problem I couldn’t solve with magic. Except for Suky’s cancer, of course. Even the most powerful witch had to ask doctors for help sometimes.

I was bubbling with excitement, and oddly calm about my decision to start doing magic for myself. Maybe it wasn’t magic I objected to, I thought with a flash of insight, but using it to benefit other people and not myself. Anyway, selfish or not I’d made my choice and now I couldn’t wait to get started.

I hoisted my bag on to my back and headed towards the beach. I needed to go somewhere quiet, where I wouldn’t be disturbed and I could get on with casting my spells in peace. I knew exactly where to go – the cave where Jamie and I had met all those years before.

Yesterday’s storm had cleared and though it was still freezing cold, the air was crisp and sharp – just like it had been on the day I first found the cave. Pulling my heavy bag across my shoulder I strode across the sand and was overjoyed when I saw the boulder hiding the cave’s entrance was still there. Clambering over it I dropped into the cave – it was exactly as I remembered it. Musty-smelling and dim, but cosy, dry and protected from the wind.

I settled down with my spell book, and found the page I’d marked. I scanned the spell again. It wasn’t overly complicated.

I smoothed down the sand where I sat. Then I scrolled through the photos on my phone until I found a rare one of Dom and me together. Carefully I positioned it on the mirror, then scattered a box of drawing pins over the top. I arranged a circle of tea lights round the edge and lit them. The candlelight danced on the rocky walls of the cave and made the shadows twist and turn like ribbons in a breeze. It was beautiful.

Breathing deeply, I closed my eyes and re-captured the feeling I’d had at the beginning of things with Dom. That squirmy, butterfly sensation in my stomach, the thrill when I caught a glimpse of his head over the crowds on the street, and the warm rush of lust I felt when he kissed me. Then, I took a magnet and picked up all the pins. I stashed the magnet carefully in my bag. Later, I’d put it on the window ledge in my room to soak up the moonlight, but it seemed to be working already. The cave was filled with an ethereal glow that didn’t come from the candles. My face was warm and my fingers tingled, despite the cold day and I felt scared and happy all at once.

On a roll now, I carried on. I lit a red candle and burned dried rose petals – picked out of a bag of pot pourri – in the flame. As the petals singed at the edges and curled up into wisps, I collected the ash in a silk hanky, and whispered: ‘Commit your love to me.’

‘What are you doing?’

I shrieked in surprise, burned my fingers, knocked over the candle and trod the petals into the dirt as I leapt to my feet. It was Jamie. Of course it was Jamie. No one else knew about the cave.

I whirled round to look at him. He was perched on a rock at the entrance of the cave wearing a quizzical look and a Scotland rugby shirt – just like the day we’d met. And – oh horror – above his head, the air was shimmering as the spell I’d just cast, hovered.

‘Erm,’ I gasped. ‘Yoga!’

Shakily I balanced on one leg.

‘I find it very relaxing.’ I let out my breath in a long, wobbly wheeze and flailed at the wall of the cave, desperately trying to stay upright.

Jamie looked at me as though I was very odd.

‘I saw the candlelight from the beach,’ he said. ‘Thought I’d come and see who’d discovered our hideout.’

I put my foot back down on the ground and clasped my hands together in what I thought might be a Zen-like pose.

‘Just me,’ I said, trying – and failing – to smile as I watched the shimmers softly come to a rest on the tips of Jamie’s hair, the end of his nose and his broad shoulders.

‘Crap,’ I said softly.

Jamie raised an eyebrow.

‘Sorry to disturb your workout,’ he said, an amused glint in his eye. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’