The Language of Spells (21 page)

Gwen pulled into the driveway and sat for a moment, looking at the stone building with its messy and forbidding garden and missing roof tiles and felt an ache in her solar plexus so strong it made her double over, her head brushing the steering wheel. She felt as if she’d just come home.

Ruby called on Friday to say that she’d spoken to someone at Bath’s craft market and there had been a late cancellation. ‘It’s a really good one. Loads of rich people in Bath. More money than sense; I bet you’d sell a ton.’

‘Thank you,’ Gwen said.

‘I didn’t mean it that way,’ Ruby said quickly.

‘No, that’s fine. Thank you. Really.’ Gwen put the phone down, feeling slightly dazed at the interest Ruby was taking.

She was even more surprised on Saturday morning, when Ruby and Katie arrived at the house before the Pendleford craft market. Katie was fizzing with excitement. ‘We brought you something. A present.’

‘It’s for work,’ Ruby said, ‘don’t get too excited.’

‘I’ve got to go soon,’ Gwen said. She’d packed Nanette and was just filling a flask with coffee.

‘We decided you need a new look.’ Katie thrust a carrier bag across. ‘To go with your stall.’

‘No one is looking at me,’ Gwen said, more crossly than she had intended.

‘You’re a one-woman company. You’re part of the brand,’ Ruby said. ‘It’s like…you wouldn’t go to a hairdresser who had rubbish hair.’

‘Mum’s right,’ Katie said, earning a stunned look from Ruby. ‘You don’t look right at the moment.’ She held her hands up as if framing a photograph. ‘It jars.’

‘Thank you, oh, favourite niece of mine. Remind me not to bake you any more cupcakes.’

‘I’m not being mean. You look fine for everyday stuff like going to the supermarket or whatever.’

‘Not helping,’ Gwen said.

‘But you’ve got to look like you wear this stuff. Like it’s part of your life,’ Katie said, her brow crinkled.

‘It is part of my life,’ Gwen said.

‘Exactly.’ Katie’s frown cleared as if she’d won the argument. Her forehead smoothed out like plasticine.
Youth
.

‘Don’t even try and argue with her. She’s stubborn,’ Ruby said.

‘Well, I wonder where she gets that from,’ Gwen muttered.

‘Dad,’ Katie said.

At the same time, Ruby said, ‘Her father.’ And then they laughed.

Which would’ve been a beautiful family moment if they weren’t conspiring to get her out of her beloved jeans. Gwen opened the bag and looked inside. Something very red and floral was inside. Her heart sank.

‘It’s a dress. I wanted to get a prom dress but Mum said you’d never wear it.’

‘She was dead right.’

‘So it’s a tea dress. Look, it’s perfect.’ Katie said with all the certainty of a fourteen- year-old.

Gwen pulled it from the bag and held it up. ‘Is it made from a pair of curtains?’

‘No. It’s beautiful,’ Katie said severely. ‘It’s made from angel’s hair and butterfly wings and … and … beauty!’

Gwen laughed despite herself. ‘Fine, fine. I’ll try on the damn dress.’ She made a show of stomping upstairs, making Katie and Ruby tut .

The dress was a bit long, but it fitted well on the bust and cinched in her waist. She had a quick look in the full length mirror in Iris’s wardrobe and tried not to wince. At least the sleeves were long.

Back downstairs, Ruby and Katie considered her. Ruby tipped her head to one side and put a finger to her lips. ‘Not bad at all.’

‘It’s an improvement,’ Katie said. ‘You’ll need some heels, though.’

‘I’m not standing in heels all day,’ Gwen said.

‘No pain, no gain,’ Ruby said. She produced a pair of red shoes from her handbag.

‘Oh, Christ,’ Gwen said and squeezed them on.

‘You know, it didn’t strike me as weird until Katie said something, but don’t you think it’s odd?’

The seams of the dress were cutting into Gwen’s side and the shoes pinched. She felt hot and bothered and slightly ridiculous. ‘What?’

‘You sell all that gorgeous stuff,’ Ruby said, ‘and none of it’s for you.’

Gwen stared dumbly at her sister. It wasn’t just that she was right or that Gwen had no idea why that was.
Do I think so little of myself?
But it was that Ruby had called something of hers ‘gorgeous’.

‘Have you started using eBay yet?’ Katie asked. She had a vintage feather boa draped around her neck and was twirling one end.

‘It’s on my list,’ Gwen assured her. ‘Thanks for the dress and the shoes and the…you know…assassination of my fashion sense, but I’m afraid I have to go.’

‘Can I help you today?’ Katie said, the words coming out in a rush.

‘Really?’ Gwen said. ‘I mean, of course you can if you want to. As long as your mum says it’s okay.’

Ruby shrugged. ‘Fine with me. You need the help.’

Katie was a trouper, helping Gwen unpack Nanette and set up the stall.

‘That’s everything,’ Gwen said. ‘Now we put our feet up and wait for the punters.’ She realised that she should’ve brought another folding chair. ‘You can have first go in the chair.’

‘What about these?’ Katie climbed out of the van with a Clarks shoe box.

‘They’re spare bits waiting for homes in my boxes.’

‘You have a lot of bits.’ Katie lifted the lid and raked through. ‘How many guns do you need? Or anchors?’

Gwen shrugged. ‘I’ve been collecting for a while.’

‘You don’t say.’ Katie held up a small apple charm on a silver jump ring with a couple of silver leaves attached. ‘I like this.’

‘You have a good eye. That’s Murano glass. Hold it up to the light.’

Katie did so and the swirls of red and green glowed. ‘Pretty.’

‘It’s been too big for my boxes so far, wrong scale, but I’m glad I picked it up. Apart from anything else, the guy didn’t know what it was. He had it in with a load of plastic bracelets and a Sindy doll.’ Gwen shook her head at the memory. ‘I mean, it’s Murano glass.’

Katie squinched her face. ‘Is it valuable?’

‘Oh, yeah, but more than that it’s beautiful. And unusual.’ Gwen stared at the apple, remembering vividly the day she’d found it. It was like that with all her best finds: the feeling tingling, the moment caught in Technicolor, surround-sound detail. Caught and filed.

‘What are you going to do with it, then?’ Katie was asking.

Gwen blinked and looked at her niece. ‘Give it to you.’

‘Cool.’ Katie held up the apple to the light. ‘Can I put it on a leather thong or a ribbon or something?’

Gwen suppressed a shudder. ‘I’ll get you a silver chain. Hang on.’ A few minutes’ work with a pair of needle-nose pliers and a jump ring and the apple was a pendant.

‘Can I make something else?’ Katie said. ‘With this.’ She held up a dark grey charm in the shape of a revolver.

‘If you like,’ Gwen said. ‘Have whatever you fancy.’

Katie took her time, selecting a tiny white bone die, a dark blue crystal and a silver feather to go with the gun. Gwen showed her how to attach jump rings to make a cluster and how to attach the whole lot to another length of silver chain. By the time they’d finished, the market had opened and was getting busy.

Two hours later, Gwen sat on her folding chair and watched Katie. She was a natural. She smiled hello, but then faded unobtrusively into the background, rearranging part of the display in a relaxed way while the punter browsed. She sensed when they were looking for her to interact too, and made eye contact, offering help or encouragement or making a joke to put them at their ease.

A girl not much older than Katie leaned over to look at a bracelet that was draped over a statue of Dionysus. Without the slightest prompting, Katie plucked it off the bronze and put it straight into the girl’s hands and said, ‘Try it on if you like. And then, in a voice so completely genuine Gwen could hardly believe she’d heard the same line, delivered the same way to the previous twenty customers, Katie said, ‘It looks so good on you.’

‘You should have a break. You must be knackered,’ Gwen said when Katie turned to give her a victorious smile.

‘I sold it! That last one wasn’t going to buy anything, I could tell, but then she saw that bracelet and it was just perfect for her and she bought it!’

‘I know,’ Gwen said, smiling at her enthusiasm. ‘You’re my ace sales assistant, but you still need to take a break. I think this counts as slave labour otherwise.’

Katie’s face fell. ‘I hope she likes it.’

‘What?’

‘The bracelet.’ Then, just as quickly, her expression cleared. ‘Of course she likes it. She definitely did.’

Gwen could vaguely remember what she’d been like at Katie’s age: her moods changing at the speed of light and energy and enthusiasm set at either zero or one hundred million billion and nothing in between. She smiled. Cam would probably say that was still the case. ‘And you sold all your necklaces,’ she said to Katie. ‘You’re really onto something with those.’

‘I need to pay you for the materials, though; I used your stuff.’

‘That’s okay. Take it as part-payment for helping me out today.’

Katie brightened even further as she calculated her profits.

Gwen smiled, allowing herself to imagine Katie helping her out regularly. She’d always thought that she preferred to run the stall on her own, but now she wasn’t so sure. It was nice to be part of a team for once.

It wasn’t until she was at home, making a well-earned cup of coffee when she realised something: Katie had been
too
good on the stall.

Back at End House, the air was still and a crow sat on the wall watching her calmly. Lily was at the back door.

‘I had the locks changed,’ Gwen said, by way of greeting.

‘I brought you something,’ Lily said. ‘Thought you might be interested.’ She looked altogether too cheerful for Gwen’s liking.

‘Come in,’ Gwen said. She flipped on the lights. ‘Would you like to sit down?’ She was determined to be polite, to show Lily that she wasn’t frightened by her.

‘You’re a dark horse,’ Lily said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘This.’ Lily reached into her handbag and put a stack of papers onto the table. Clippings. ‘I had Ryan do a little bit of research for me.’

Gwen touched the topmost paper. A grainy black and white picture of a smiling boy. Sixteen years old, his whole life ahead of him. She still felt guilty that she didn’t remember him from school. Whatever the papers had said, she hadn’t known him at all. He’d been two years below her and that was like another species at that age, but still, she would’ve felt better if she could’ve pictured him alive. Or perhaps not.

‘That was very sad,’ Gwen said, pleased with how steady her voice sounded.

Lily smiled widely and Gwen suddenly realised why her teeth looked so oddly childlike. There were tiny gaps between her front teeth.

‘This is my favourite bit.’ Lily spread out the clippings and pointed to a piece that Gwen didn’t remember seeing before. Despite herself, she leaned in for a closer look.
Schoolgirl held in connection with river boy death.

She straightened up quickly. ‘What do you want, Lily?’

‘I want everyone in this town to know exactly who you are.’

‘What have I ever done to you?’

Lily’s smile faltered and something altogether more frightening bubbled up in its place. ‘You think you’re so clever, but you’re not. I belong here and these are my people, my town. I look after them. They need me in the same way they needed Iris.’

‘Fine.’ Gwen waved her hands. ‘You carry on. I’m not stopping you.’

‘It’s the Harper name. It confuses them. I want you gone.’

‘I’ve got every right to live here.’
And nowhere else to go
.

‘And I want Iris’s journals. All of them. I need them.’

‘I can’t give you those; I’m sorry,’ Gwen said. ‘They’re private.’

Lily shook her head. ‘You think I’m so stupid.’

‘Look. You can’t threaten me with this. I didn’t do anything wrong then, and I’m not doing anything wrong now. Stephen Knight killed himself thirteen years ago. It’s very sad, but it had nothing to do with me.’

‘No smoke without fire,’ Lily said. ‘People in this town love that expression. They’ll hang you with it.’

‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ Gwen said.

‘We’ll see. Happy reading.’ Lily gave a final, chilling look and left.

At Imogen’s house on the outskirts of Bath, Katie was wishing that Imogen would take a breath. She hadn’t stopped talking since Katie had arrived at three o’clock that afternoon, and she was exhausted.

‘I know what we could do,’ Imogen said. They’d painted their toenails peacock-blue, dissected the dress sense of every girl at school and played ‘would you rather’ until they were down to the super-obvious choices like: ‘Would you rather snog Mr Wheaton (physics and chemistry) or dry kiss a dog’?

‘What?’ Katie was cosy under a double duvet on the blow-up mattress and was half-asleep. She kept her voice quiet and dreamy and added a fake yawn, hoping Imogen would take the hint.

‘We should do a spell,’ Imogen said.

Suddenly Katie was wide awake. She stayed silent.

Imogen’s head bent over the side of the bed and she reached out an arm to poke Katie.

‘Come on,’ Imogen said. ‘You must know loads.’

‘No.’ Katie had been going to say
I’m not allowed
, but she stopped herself in time. Nothing would fix Imogen on the idea faster.

‘Nothing bad.’ Imogen giggled. ‘We could do a love spell on Luke Taylor.’

Katie felt herself blush and was glad it was dark. ‘I don’t know any love spells.’ She felt the tugging sensation behind her left ear and ignored it.

‘You must know something.’

Katie sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees. She was torn between wanting to tell Imogen as much as she could – to show off a little – and hearing her aunt’s voice:
‘It’s not a game, this stuff. It’s serious.’
She’d trusted Katie. Not like her mum. ‘I don’t. It’s my aunt. And my gran. She reads tarot cards.’

‘Fortune-telling. That’s a good idea.’ Imogen slid out of the end of her bed and began rummaging underneath. ‘I’ve got ordinary playing cards.’ Imogen held up a pack. ‘They’re Annabel’s Disney Princess ones. Does that matter?’

‘I don’t think you can use playing cards. I think you need special ones.’ Katie wasn’t about to repeat what her aunt had told her. Anything worked, if you knew how to read it. And if you had the power of intention, whatever that was. Personally, Katie had intended to do things many times and nothing had happened, least of all any magic.

Imogen clicked on her lamp. It had a blue shade and cast a ghostly glow around the room. ‘Come on; it’s just a laugh. Don’t be so boring.’

‘Okay,’ Katie said. If she didn’t tell Imogen anything, and didn’t really try, then she wasn’t breaking any promises. Not really. She climbed out of her sleeping bag and joined Imogen on the bed. She was shuffling the cards inexpertly, her eyes lit up with excitement.

‘What do you want to find out, anyway?’

‘My future, dummy.’

‘Yes, but specifically what? We’ll be here all night otherwise.’

‘Let’s ask if Dan fancies me.’ Imogen was going out with Matthew from their chemistry class, but had her eye on a year eleven.

‘Okay,’ Katie said. ‘Think really hard about your question and then deal out three cards face down.’

Imogen shuffled a bit more, then dealt the cards. One of them was dog-eared at the corner, as if a toddler had chewed it.

‘What now?’

Katie kind of liked the way Imogen was hanging on her every word. It made her feel powerful. ‘You turn over the first card,’ she tapped the card on the left, ‘and it tells you what’s behind you.’

Imogen flipped the card and they both leaned forwards. It was the nine of clubs. In this deck, the clubs were represented by little apple trees. Imogen looked disappointed.

Katie had read her tarot book back to front several times, but was still vaguely surprised to hear herself saying, ‘Clubs are like wands in the tarot, so I think this is about beginnings, change, maybe creativity.’

Imogen perked up. ‘And that’s my past, right?’

‘Yeah. But it’s specific to your question. Not, like, your general past. Not everything.’

‘This one next?’ Imogen flipped the middle card before Katie had a chance to agree.

‘Queen of Hearts.’ Princess Jasmine gazed coyly up from behind her sweep of black hair.

Imogen was staring open-mouthed. ‘Hearts. I can’t believe it. I asked about love and the card is a heart.’

‘A quarter of the pack is hearts. One in four chance,’ Katie said.

‘But the queen. That’s so weird.’ Imogen looked thrilled. ‘What does it mean?’

Katie felt a cold breeze and she looked instinctively to the window. It was still shut tightly. Her hair lifted from her cheeks – the draught was very real. She shivered.

‘What?’ Imogen was frowning, her face pale in the half-light.

‘I’m not sure…’ Katie started. The breeze grew stronger, her hair was flying now and she was amazed that Imogen hadn’t noticed. Her eyes began to water, her ears were numb. ‘I don’t—’

‘Come on.’ Imogen tapped the Queen of Hearts. ‘I want to know whether Dan is in love with me. Whether he dreams about me every night. Whether he’s going to ask me out.’

Katie stood up, letting the pack of cards in her lap scatter over the floor. ‘I’m starving. Let’s raid the kitchen.’ She looked at Imogen and, trying to mean her words with every fibre of her being, trying to make them perfectly and utterly true, said, ‘You look really pale, Imogen. You must be very hungry.’

Imogen got to her feet so quickly that Katie had to step back to avoid a collision.

Imogen’s eyes looked unfocused and she said, ‘God, I really want some salt and vinegar crisps.’

Well, that was interesting, Katie thought.