Nearly Almost Somebody (7 page)

‘It’s just different.’ She forced a smile. ‘Were you and Maggie close?’

‘When my husband had an affair with a woman from the butchers – they live in Haverton now – Maggie got me through it. A true friend.’ She stared at her glass for a moment, as she tucked a wayward strand of dark grey hair behind her ear.

‘You must miss her.’

Sheila nodded. ‘I saw Hyssop came back. I thought he would.’

‘He’s made himself right at home.’ Libby sipped her wine. ‘What was she like?’

‘Hasn’t Zoë told you anything?’

‘I don’t think they got along too well.’

‘It’s funny because Zoë’s like Maggie. Doesn’t fit in around here, too glamorous by half.’

‘Maggie was glamorous too?’ Libby’s mental image of the little old lady disintegrated.

‘Oh aye. I mean she was in her sixties when she died, and a bit stooped, but when she moved here, oh, she’d have been about thirty-five. A real looker. Mind you, even in her sixties she still turned heads. Long beautiful wavy hair, steel grey it was.’

‘Stan from the pub said she was a siren.’

Sheila laughed. ‘Well I don’t know about that, but she had one or two men chasing her.’

‘Stan?’

‘He was just a passing fancy when she had a leaky tap. He’s a plumber. Her heart belonged elsewhere.’

Libby leant forwards, smiling, eager for details. ‘Really? Who?’

Sheila gently laughed. ‘She never talked about him. Just said she’d loved him since the day she met him and she’d love him ’til the day she died. I expect she did.’

‘What happened to him? Did he die?’

‘No. He’s married. Lives in Windermere. Some rich bloke. He’s the one that gave her the pendant.’

‘What pendant?’

‘The emerald pendant. Worth a bob or two. Twenty grand, Maggie reckoned.’

‘Crikey, I hope Zoë didn’t throw it away with the rest of her stuff.’

‘Yes, I saw the skip.’ Sheila’s accusatory tone had Libby’s cheeks flushing.

‘So, I heard Maggie was a witch. Grace said you and Maggie put a spell on the cottage.’

‘What nonsense.’ Sheila laughed, but as she glanced up to her right and scratched her wrist, Libby’s mouth gaped. Sheila was lying.

‘Oh my god. It’s true?’

Sheila paused, looking Libby in the eye before chuckling. ‘Now I don’t really go for all that mumbo jumbo and it might be real or it might be one of them placebo effects, but I saw some odd things with my own eyes.’

‘Did you hear anything the night she died?’

‘That night?’ Sheila shook her head. ‘Not a peep. She wasn’t home when I went to bed. That was at eleven.’

‘Why was she out so late?’

‘Well, it was Ostara.’

Libby raised her eyebrows.

‘It’s where they celebrate the Goddess of Spring. Poor Maggie. There she was, celebrating new life when hers was about to end.’

Libby sipped her wine. Dare she ask? ‘I heard a rumour she was murdered.’

‘That’ll be Becky.’ Sheila waved a dismissive hand. ‘I have Maggie’s things. Her Wicca things. The day after she died, after Patrick found her–’

‘Patrick?’

‘The vet. He lives in the corner house next to yours. I went in, after they’d you know, taken her away. The police said it was okay. I just had a tidy up. Hyssop had made a bit of a mess, knocking things off the dresser and I didn’t want just anybody to come across her book and whatnot. Maggie wouldn’t have liked that.’

‘Her book? What, like a spell book?’ Libby couldn’t help grinning, imagining some ornate leather-bound tome.

Sheila nodded and delved into the cupboard under the stairs, pulling out a large plastic storage box. ‘It’s her book and a few herbs. They’re... well, I didn’t think just anyone should come across them. No matter what you believe in, they can be dangerous.’

Libby lifted the lid, frowning with disappointment at the royal blue lever arch file. That was Maggie’s spell book? A little bottle marked Belladonna peeked from under the folder.

‘Do you want to take it?’ Sheila asked quietly. ‘I meant to throw it away but I just couldn’t. And it gives me the creeps having it in the house.’

After two small glasses of wine, Libby left Sheila’s armed with a box of witchcraft and a half-empty bottle of Shiraz. She devoured the Moroccan salad as she studied the multitude of jars, vials and bottles lining the bottom of the box. Each had a neat label: Coltsfoot, Hibiscus flower, White Willow bark. Several of the names she recognised as deadly, the rest she’d never heard of. All she needed now was a cauldron.

Utterly absorbed, she flicked through the pages in the folder. Some of the A4 sheets were handwritten in an elaborate cursive style, others digitally printed, but many were photocopies of photocopies of ancient books. They detailed tinctures for headaches and prayers to goddesses but most enticing were the spells: love, prosperity, luck.

A Good Luck Spell? She could totally do with a healthy dose of that.

Libby poured the last of the red wine and picked four candles from the box – white to represent her, plus grey, black and orange. The spell ought to be performed when the moon was waxing. Well it was crescent-shaped, but waxing or waning, who knew?

She lit the white candle.

‘This is me.’

She lit the black candle.

‘This is the bad luck that has haunted my footsteps. Trouble, disappointment and tears are here. This bad luck now leaves me forever.’

She lit the grey candle.

‘All that was bad is neutralized. All my bad luck is dissolved.’

She lit the orange candle.

‘This is the energy coming my way, to invigorate my life and speed up change.’

Closing her eyes, she sat, as instructed and visualised the negative energies being whisked into the grey candle and dissolving into nothingness. She tried to imagine the orange candle drawing good energy towards her and the air around her stir with opportunity.

As the stubs of candles finally fluttered out, Libby smiled at Hyssop. ‘You believe in this?’ She rubbed under his chin. ‘Me neither. But the way things are going, I need all the luck I can get.’

The next day, Libby headed down the same track she’d run on her first morning, determined to discover where she’d got lost. For fifteen minutes, she pounded along the track, regretting the previous evening’s four glasses of wine, but smiling at her daft little dabble with witchcraft.

Or was it daft? She’d thought Jack was cute and then he’d started flirting.
Any girl who slept there would become irresistible to the man she desired.

Up ahead, the roofs of several houses and barns came into view and Libby slowed. That had to be Gosthwaite Mills, the hamlet to the north-west of the village. She shouldn’t be here. How had she missed the bridleway that went off to the north-east, taking her to the common? And where the hell did this track go?

She had to be the biggest failure in the world. She couldn’t even navigate the bridleways around the village. She slumped against a dry-stone wall. Obviously, the good luck spell hadn’t worked.

But with impeccable timing, a small dog came bounding towards her, a blur of black, brown and white fur. Libby’s frustration evaporated as the Spaniel-cross scampered around her, its tail wagging furiously.

‘Dylan, heel!’ shouted a male voice ahead of her. ‘Sorry, but he’s harmless.’

Libby crouched down to pet the dog, smiling at the guy jogging towards her pushing a baby in a three-wheel pushchair.

‘You must be the new girl in the Green, one of them anyway,’ he said before flashing a Colgate-sponsored smile. ‘I’m Xander.’

Xander? He was Tallulah’s uncle, the
fittest bloke ever
. Chloe hadn’t been exaggerating. Tall, with dark blond hair, he had the same fabulous brown eyes as Tallulah.

‘Libby,’ she said, shaking his hand.

‘And this is Evie,’ he said, tucking the blanket around the smiling baby.

‘Um... hi, Evie.’ Libby tentatively wiggled her fingers at the tot, clueless what to say to a child who couldn’t talk back.

‘My wife Daisy and I live over there.’ He pointed to the house behind her on the left. ‘No doubt, we’ll see you around.’

‘Actually,’ she said, cringing, ‘I’m a little lost. I need to get back to the village but I’ve gone wrong somewhere.’

‘It’s easy done, believe me. You’ve missed the shorter track back to the village. It’s about half a mile back the way you came. This track goes back to the village too.’

‘Thanks.’

He tipped his head to the side. ‘Do you run every day?’

‘Usually.’

‘I’ll pick you up at half-six tomorrow and show you around, if you like?’

She hesitated. After already upsetting Jack and Grace’s relationship through no fault of her own, she shouldn’t get too friendly with a married man. What if Maggie’s spell were real? On the other hand, he wasn’t acting remotely flirtatious and she’d be nuts to turn down a tour guide.

‘Yes, please.’

Libby jogged away, unable to stop smiling. A running buddy, she had a potential new running buddy. Her first piece of good fortune – was this was the spell at work? She knew for sure when her second piece arrived a few hours later.

Kim had gone to some show with Michael the feed merchant and Libby rattled through the morning jobs, singing along to the radio. With the horses turned out and the yard immaculate, she’d barely sat down with a cup of tea and an illicit cigarette when her phone rang. She half-expected it to be Kim, scolding her for smoking on the yard. It wasn’t.

‘Hello, Olivia? This is Andrea Golding, from Low Wood Farm.’

* * *

The photos on a full screen were even better than on the phone.

‘It’s me. I got her.’

‘The new girl?’ Michael Wray sucked in a slow breath. ‘Who with?’

‘You’re going to love this.’

The expectant pause hovered between them.

‘Alexander Golding.’

* * *

As she wandered up the High Street in Haverton, Zoë turned her little silver pine cone key ring over and over between her fingers. Superstitious nonsense.

‘It’s supposed to bring you good luck,’ Libby had explained, blushing as if she’d been caught stealing.

‘And I need luck because...’

‘You’re meeting your new boss. He’ll be in your office today, won’t he?’

He would be, but Zoë wouldn’t need luck to handle him – although, it was nice that her hair had dried like a glossy curtain that morning, which meant she could leave the house on time and not risk the speed camera between Gosthwaite and Haverton for a change. Better still, she’d managed to find a parking spot in the first street she tried so she wasn’t running to get to the office on time.

Just superstition, right? She glanced at the pine cone.

‘Oh,’ Libby had added, ‘but be careful. It might boost your sexual power. Like you need it.’

Like I need it?
Zoë could live with that risk.

‘You’re early.’ The man’s voice came from her left, from the coffee-come-book shop she passed twice a day.

Oh hello. It was the guy she’d bumped into on her first day at work. The fit guy. The fit guy who called her
beautiful
.

Zoë stopped. ‘Excuse me?’

‘The last two mornings you’ve dashed past, your heels hitting out this killer staccato beat.’ He stepped from the doorway, one hand holding a tiny espresso cup, the other a hand-rolled cigarette. ‘But today... you’re a chill out tune. You’re early. You have time for a coffee.’

His eyes really were stupidly blue, too blue for the dark hair that flopped over his forehead, but Zoë didn’t drop contact with them as she slowly walked towards him. Or as she took his coffee, downing it in one. To his credit he merely raised his eyebrows.

‘I’m not that early.’ And she carried on her way.

‘See you tomorrow, beautiful.’

It wasn’t even a question. And he’d still never once glanced down at her tits. A girl had to love that.

‘Tomorrow?’ Zoë glanced at the pine cone key ring. Sexual power? ‘Okay. But put more sugar in. I’m not that sweet.’

Five minutes later, she opened the glass door into the Carr & Young Estate Agency, still grinning, still clutching her new key ring.

‘Miss Horton?’

Zoë stalled, her effervescence after meeting Mr Coffee Shop subsiding as she clocked the guy standing beside her desk. Tall, grey and devastatingly hot. Oh, please say this serious piece of ass was her boss. Wrapping him around her little finger wouldn’t be a hardship, at all. Shedding her mac, Zoë stalked over, not missing the gold band glinting on his left hand. Or that his eyes dropped momentarily to the lowest undone button on her blouse. Married men were always easy prey. Surreptitiously, she pocketed the pine cone.

‘It’s Zoë, please.’

Sexual power? Thank you, Libby.

* * *

The next day, with the sun sitting in a cloudless sky, Libby wandered along Market Street, falling ever more in love with Gosthwaite. The butchers specialised in locally-reared meat, the baker’s offered to slice their freshly made wholemeal bread and the multi-coloured array of veg outside the grocer’s looked like an advert for organic living. It didn’t stop there. The café overlooked the River Lum, the village hall had a second-hand book sale complete with honesty box, and the post office sold everything from boiled sweets to Herdwick wool blankets. And more importantly, everyone she passed said hello. This was why she’d left Manchester. This was the idyllic rural dream.

After four days of working with Kim Langton-Browne and a morning sanding skirting boards, Libby decided she deserved the afternoon off. A roast chicken sandwich, a punnet of strawberries and a jug of iced-tea would accompany her in the garden as she soaked up the sun and read a fifty pence copy of
Chocolat
. Or maybe more of the spell book – her top secret, guilty pleasure.

Libby hadn’t mentioned the box of Wicca goodies in case Zoë threw it away like the rest of Maggie’s belongings. And she certainly hadn’t mentioned performing the Good Luck spell. In the cold light of day, she knew there was no such thing as magic but when she lay in bed at night, she couldn’t deny her life had significantly improved.

Xander had been good as his word and for the last two mornings, he’d shown her new running routes, threatening to take her up to Lum Crag on Sunday. Libby looked up, frowning at the rocky outcrop to the north of the village. Even on a sunny day, it looked dark, menacing and a long way up, but if Xander thought it was worth it, she’d go. She didn’t fancy him, no matter what Zoë’s psychoanalysis diagnosed, but a serious case of hero-worship was definitely building.

Better still, Kim hadn’t set foot on the yard since Wednesday morning so work had even become bearable. Three days off lay before her, and the forecast said the sun would shine on every one of them. Now, all she needed was for the good luck to spread to the interview at Low Wood Farm in the morning. Libby whistled as she passed the church, swinging her shopping bag and reading the front page of the local newspaper. No gunshot crime, no aggravated burglaries... just a little girl showing a prize-winning pig at a local show. Bliss.

Back at the Green, she spotted a car parked outside Maggie’s cottage, a woman with white blonde curls sitting on the bonnet, her scowl worse than Kim’s.

‘So,’ the girl said, standing up, ‘you’re the one trying to run off with my husband.’

Was that Daisy? Libby’s mouth gaped open, but any words fell away as the woman held up a copy of the
Haverton Gazette
.

Running Around
, the headline on page twelve screamed and underneath were three photos of her and Xander, one of them running, another showing them chatting in Maggie’s garden. The third was the blurriest but largest and in it he was kissing her head.

‘Oh my god...’ Libby clamped a hand over her own mouth as she skimmed the accompanying words.

Trophy hunting new-comer, Libby Wilde, bags Gosthwaite celebrity. Local girl Grace Newton, confirmed Wilde and Golding run together most mornings. ‘I’m not saying they’re up to anything, but they do seem very close, and he’s not the first man she’s tried to lure away from his girlfriend. But I’m sure her and Xander just like running together.’

How could Grace say those things? How on earth could she persuade Daisy that the last thing on earth Libby would ever conceive of doing was having an affair with a married man?

‘We’re not... this isn’t true.’ Desperately, she beseeched Daisy. ‘I swear we–’

But Daisy laughed, her face breaking into a huge smile as she held out her hand. ‘Oh relax. I’m teasing.’

What? Libby blinked, utterly thrown. ‘Teasing?’

She nodded. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I’m Daisy, fab to meet you at last.’

‘But you know it’s not true?’ Libby asked, tentatively shaking Daisy’s hand.

‘Of course. Besides, I trust my husband implicitly.’ Then, as blatantly as Tallulah had, Daisy looked Libby up and down, taking in the bangles, the purple streaks, the aubergine nails. ‘But OMG, you’re so not what I was expecting. I thought you’d be all sporty because of the running, but you look like… a Bratz doll.’

Libby laughed. ‘Um... thank you?’

‘You know Xander thinks you’re ace. You’ve been upgraded to
Wilde
.’

‘Yes, I’d noticed.’ That morning he’d called her nothing else. ‘But seriously, I wouldn’t. Have an affair with a married man, I mean. I wouldn’t even consider it.’

Daisy waved her protestations away. ‘So he said you weren’t working today. I’m meeting my friend Clara for lunch. Join us? We’ll go as we are.’

Daisy, in a denim mini-skirt, faded black t-shirt and silver Havaiana flip flops, was hardly an example of sartorial style, but Libby glanced down at her own clothes and shook her head.

Daisy waved her towards the house. ‘Okay, but don’t you dare dress up.’

Fifteen minutes later, Libby walked through the huge glass entrance doors of the Bobbin Mill. A good-looking, dark-haired guy in an immaculate pale blue shirt and dark trousers wandered to meet them – from his rich brown eyes, he had to be Tallulah’s dad, the guy she had an interview with in the morning. To her amazement, he looked Libby over with a smile playing at the corners of his mouth and she didn’t know if she should be offended or flutter her eyelashes. Thank god she’d changed into Zoë’s purple dress.

Finally, he turned to Daisy, frowning at her feet. ‘You’re lowering the tone of the place.’

But Daisy kissed his cheek, laughing. ‘We’re young, blonde and sexy. We make the place look cool. Rob, this is Libby. Libby, this is my fabulous brother-in-law, Robbie.’

‘Ah,’ Robbie said, ‘my little brother’s running friend.’

Under his very direct eye contact, Libby used every gram of self-control not to blush as they shook hands. Okay, he had the tall and ridiculously good-looking boxes firmly ticked, but this guy had something else and it wasn’t just dark hair. But how odd that he hadn’t mentioned her interview. Should she?