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  ‘Oh, come now, Holly! Everyone has something they wish for.’ Vivienne tried to rally support from the other women. Apart from Megan, and to a much lesser extent me, the advert had gathered two others. None of them looked like witches, apart from Vivienne, who, with her bony chin and slightly-too-large nose, looked like a starter-hag. ‘Isobel, what about you? What do you want?’

  Isobel gave a squeak and vanished further into her brown handbag, where she’d started scrabbling the moment she’d entered the room. ‘… hanky …’

  ‘No.’ Vivienne laid a long-fingered hand on Isobel’s knitted sleeve. ‘When you saw my little charm in the paper. What was the wish that came to your mind?’

  Isobel’s immediate wish came true as she finally emerged from the satchel carrying a scrunched-up bit of tissue. ‘Sorry, sorry. Allergies,’ she snuffled, trying to avoid looking at the cats which were lined up along the top of an oversized piano like a collection of malevolent tea cosies. ‘Sorry, what was it you asked me?’

  Vivienne sighed and repeated her question. She had the sculpted face of someone with no body fat and the slightly sunken eyes of someone who worked hard to keep it that way. Her hair was the wrong side of red to be real and she wore an amazing amount of jewellery even for someone who is convinced about witchcraft. She rattled like a rain stick. ‘What is the wish that came to your mind when you read my advertisement?’

  ‘Oh.’ Isobel looked at us from under her straight, brown fringe. ‘I can’t say.’ She had skin pebble-dashed with acne and a thin, unshaped body which made her look like a teenager, although I knew she was twenty-seven because she’d said so. Twenty-seven, shy to the bone and dressed like a sixty-year-old – I knew what I’d wish if I’d been her.

  Vivienne sighed again and I had a moment of sympathy. She’d obviously thought all her potential witch-trainees would be outgoing, bubbly ‘Bewitched’ girls with sparky wishes at their black-varnished fingertips. We looked like the Asperger’s version. But then, when you think about it, if we’d been bubbly and outgoing, would we have been sitting here in this over-furnished room with a bunch of strangers, being ogled by cats? No, we’d be out there getting things to happen.

  ‘All right,’ I piped up, to spare us all the embarrassment. ‘I’ve thought of something. I’d wish for some excitement in my life.’

  ‘But your life is exciting.’ Megan dodged round in front of me. ‘You’ve got your job …’ I pinched her hand to stop her mentioning what it was. I’d got so sick of people trying to use me to get their script in front of Peter Jackson, who wouldn’t know me from a crate of peas. ‘… and your house, and your family.’

  ‘Holly obviously feels that her life lacks a certain spark.’ Vivienne leaned in again. ‘Would that excitement include – a man?’ When I shook my head she subsided back.

  ‘Holly doesn’t like men.’ Megan piped up, and I felt the bristling interest of the group rest on me for a second. ‘She only keeps them around for sex.’

  The group interest deepened. ‘Like, locked up?’ Isobel asked tentatively, but with a prurient gleam in her eye.

  Oh good God.

  ‘No. And that’s rubbish, Meg, as you well know. I’ve had … I mean, there are …’

  ‘Wankers,’ she supplied helpfully.

  ‘I’m not all that good at being a girlfriend. I have a, um, difficult family situation.’

  ‘The last one called her brother a retard.’

  He’d actually called him a ‘fucking retarded jizz-monkey’, if memory served, but that had simply been a symptom of his wanker-hood. I’d dumped him very shortly afterwards and although he’d left my heart intact he took my mobile phone and forty quid from the kitchen drawer. It didn’t exactly fill me with confidence in my ability to attract caring men.

  ‘Um, excuse me?’ The final member of our quintet put up her hand. She was a plump older lady with greying hair and ill-advised orange lipstick.

  ‘Yes, Eve?’

  ‘Does that mean we’re going to do, you know, proper magic? Dancing round a cauldron and spells and so on? Only, I don’t really do dancing. Was never allowed when I was younger, and I just can’t seem to get the hang of it now. Can’t really get my head around drum ’n’ bass, or whatever they call it. All sounds like saucepan lids to me. Besides’—she waggled an ankle—‘I’ve got a touch of sciatica, so I’m not supposed to dance. Especially not nude. My doctor was quite specific about that.’

  Vivienne’s attention switched instantly to her. Perhaps my non-man-related wish hadn’t been interesting enough. ‘No, we won’t have to dance. My magic is different to that you might have heard of as being practised. When I feel that we are all, how shall I put it, sympathetic, we shall begin work on our wishes. My working area is over there.’ She swept a long arm at the curtains.

  ‘Behind the sofa?’

  ‘In the woods, Holly.’ Her voice went all breathy. ‘Behind this cottage lies Barndale Woods, one of the last stretches of the Wild Wood, relics of trees that were growing here before man ever came to these shores.’ She sounded like a voice-over from Most Haunted. ‘Merely being in those woods makes one more connected to the earth-energies and that is what makes the spells more efficient, the age of the woodland and of the ground beneath.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said and nodded slowly. ‘Let’s just go, Meg,’ I whispered out of the corner of my mouth. ‘She’s barking.’

  ‘No.’ To my surprise Megan stood up. ‘There has to be more in this world than we understand, there has to.’ Too late I remembered that Megan’s mother had died when she was six. Meg swore that she’d seen her Mum several times since her death, sitting on the end of Meg’s bed and stroking her hair, which had given her a profound belief in all matters paranormal. Personally I’d rather not be watched over by my deceased relations when I was, say, on the toilet or partaking in some kinky shag-work, but I didn’t suppose that you could choose. ‘Science can’t explain everything, and maybe there is something to magic that we don’t get yet.’

  The other women were nodding. Isobel’s ironed-smooth hair tossed up and down like a horse’s mane. ‘I believe that too,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not certain,’ Eve rested her forearms on her comfortably round thighs. ‘But I’d like to believe. I’d love to think that we can make amends for wrongs we’ve committed in this life, in the next.’

  ‘And what is your wish?’ Vivienne’s eyes were suddenly bright. If she’d had prickable ears, I’d take bets they would have gone up as though she’d smelled dinner.

  ‘I want to meet the man of my dreams,’ Eve said simply. She gave an apologetic shrug. ‘I’m fifty-seven. I’m lonely. What can I say?’

  Isobel raised her hand. Her knitted sleeve rolled back to reveal what looked like cat-scratch marks on her arm. ‘My wish is to be someone’s whole world.’ It was a whisper, as though she was ashamed. ‘That’s all. To have someone unable to live without me.’ She drew down her arm and self-consciously tugged her cardigan down to her wrist again. ‘That’s all,’ she repeated.

  ‘And what about you, Vivienne?’ Everyone’s new-found confessional status made me twitchy. ‘I’m guessing you’ve already made your wishes come true? How did that work out for you?’

  Vivienne moved across to the piano and began stroking the heads of the cats in sequence as though she was trying to get a tune out of them. ‘Ah. Well, I’m … my advertisement may have been just a touch misleading …’ A general air of incipient disappointment descended over the group and even the cats drooped a bit. ‘Oh, nothing terrible, just that … I’m not actually an established practitioner of the Arts. As such. More … working on broadening my theoretical knowledge with like-minded souls.’

  ‘She means she read a book once,’ I hissed at Meg, who was sitting back next to me again, her eyes still frighteningly shiny, but she ignored me.

  ‘I am perfectly grounded in the conjectural and academic uses of magic.’ Vivienne was obviously avoiding my gaze.

  ‘She read a thick book,�
�� I muttered, but was still soundly ignored.

  ‘And my wish is a little different.’ She turned her back to us. ‘My husband left me last month.’ Her voice wavered a little. ‘Twenty years of marriage, three children, and it all went for nothing.’

  All four of us exchanged a look. No one knew what to say.

  ‘He’s gone to “find himself” apparently. Said that he needed to “question his life”. To find answers.’ There was a momentary savagery in her words, and the cat beneath her hand stretched its eyes in alarm. ‘I suspect that top of the list of questions was “has that girl in accounts had enlargement surgery or are they natural”, but he says there’s no one else. Just him and his questions.’ She almost spat the word. ‘So, my wish.’ Now she turned to face the room and the prominent bones of her face were highlighted by the random beams from the crystal lampshade, making her look slightly evil. ‘It’s that his life becomes full of real questions. None of this poncing about with the “where is my life going?” midlife crisis rubbish, all that “I have to look into my soul and find the eternal answer”. Proper questions. And when he’s been called upon to find those answers, I want him put out of his misery.’

  Now we all felt uncomfortable. Vivienne had clearly been working on her wish, carefully phrasing it so that the word ‘death’ never featured, but it backfilled the gaps in her sentences as though her ex’s corpse was already buried there.

  ‘Not sure I’m joining up for that one.’ I stood up alongside Megan. ‘This is all getting a bit too focussed for me. I mean, I don’t believe that leaping about in some ancient woodland is going to bring me one iota closer to any excitement anyway. Other than that briefly afforded by a visit to hospital suffering from the respiratory illness of my choice.’

  Eve looked at me from under her greying fringe. ‘But doesn’t one tiny part of you want to believe that science doesn’t know everything? That we might, just might, be able to influence things, if we want something enough?’

  I shrugged again.

  Vivienne narrowed her eyes at me. ‘It should be an uneven number. If you drop out, we shall have to find someone else.’ The anxious way she plucked at the cat’s head led me to believe that this might be tricky.

  ‘And what if it does work?’ That was Isobel. With her feet tucked up under the hem of her librarian-type pinafore and her hands invisible up the sleeves of her knitwear, she looked like a string puppet, waiting to be bounced along the carpet. ‘If it does, you’ve got excitement, if it doesn’t, well, you’ve lost nothing, have you?’

  Except entire swathes of my life, I thought. But then I caught sight of Megan’s bright, drawn-in expression. Oh bloody buggery, she’d gone for it, hook, line and sodding great big goldfish, and before we knew it Vivienne might be trying to part her from fifty per cent of her income or whatever con artists thought they could get out of a woman who worked behind the counter in British Home Stores. More crystal lampshades, possibly.

  ‘Okay. I’ll play.’ And, just for a blink of a second I wished my disbelief would allow itself to be suspended, let me throw myself whole-heartedly into magic and spells and life being transformed beyond recognition … And then I thought about Nicholas and the need to persuade him to get his hair cut and have a shave and the absolute, down-to-earth necessities of my life, and I embraced my cynicism with both arms again.

  Megan hugged me, Eve patted me on the shoulder and even Isobel smiled at me from under the pony-like forelock. ‘It’ll be fun, the five of us. It’ll be like that knitting group.’

  I stared at Meg. Even taking into account Isobel’s wool-based idea of fashion and Vivienne’s obvious addiction to pointy things, I couldn’t see one similarity between us and a knitting group.

  ‘In that novel,’ she went on, ‘they share their problems and it’s homespun wisdom and friendship that wins the day. That could be us.’

  I really had to get her reading more erotic romance.

  Chapter Four

  It’s been a long time since I wrote to you. Wrote real words, instead of an article about Botox or the pharmaceutical industry or some overambitious starlet on the make. How long? When Imogen finally got the message? That long ago, yeah, probably. Whenever my life changes I feel this need, this … I dunno what you call it, an urge to put it down on paper for you to read. So you can know who I am. Know what drives me forward, what makes me the man I am – and this is what makes me crazy, the need to communicate with you. A woman who never knew me, never wanted to know me – and yet, there’s still this soul-deep longing in me for some kind of contact. So. Here I am. Again. Putting it down, scribbling these unconsidered words on scraps of paper in the hope … no. Not hope. Not now. In the madness, yes. In the mad belief that one day I’ll get to hand them all over to you, to push them into your face and say, ‘Here. This is what you did. This is the man you made.’ So that you can read about the vicious highs, where I’d run as far as I could to the top of the mountain, to where the air was so thin that I couldn’t breathe it any more. And then the come-down, those abseils into the dark. The pit, the abyss, where you should have been waiting. Bringing the light in.

  But you weren’t. Never there. No hand to hold, no comfort. So I found it where I could, and who can blame me? We all need something, we all need something to lean on, and if I pitched my desires wrong, if I made myself into something reckless and wild and put my love in a box that wouldn’t open … well, who’s going to blame me?

  Been here before. How many times have I written all that – tried to explain why I want … why I need these letters? Words I have to write because no one is there to hear me say them.

  I’ve pushed everyone too far, you see. Pushed and pushed and taken everything I could from them, the women who wanted to give me their lives and their hearts, and I took their bodies and their beds, and gave them nothing back. Then I took their dignity, their loyalties and screwed them all up so tight that it’s a wonder any of them had a life left when I’d finished. Oh, I still see them looking, women. Giving me the once-over, checking it out, this body that you gave me. Or did you? Was it you that bequeathed me the height to look down on them all? Or the eyes that they look into and see whatever they want to, reflections, nothing true, nothing real …

  Because you gave me the looks of a romantic, and ain’t that an irony?

  Chapter Five

  ‘I’ve had a look through the pictures and there’s nothing suitable, Holl.’

  I cradled the phone under my chin and flicked through the albums on my laptop. ‘Are you sure, Guy? What about number 576? That little white place? People who own it are dead friendly, there’s masses of room for the lorries, and the neighbours even let you use their loo when it gets busy.’

  Guy sighed down the phone, and I could picture his face. He ran a small production company on a shoestring out of Newcastle and looked exactly like someone who ran a production company on a shoestring, all cutting-edge hair design and thin-cheeked fret. ‘Nah. Like I said, Holl. Looking for something different. Doesn’t have to be for long; external stuff only is what I need here, establishing shots, bit of close work. Couple of days should see it finished, but the place has to be right. We’re talking more … I dunno, gothic.’

  ‘Gothic.’ Vivienne’s ‘Seven Dwarves’ Holiday Cottage’ came briefly to mind but was dismissed. Then I remembered Nicholas’s friend Kai, and his unlikely offer. ‘Hold on. There is somewhere that I had described to me as Gothic Cottage. I’ll go take a look, mail the pics to you if I think it’ll work.’

  ‘Thanks babe, you’re a star.’

  I put the phone down and located the card in my Rolodex. Just ‘Kai Rhys’ and a mobile number, which took me straight through to answerphone. As I put the phone down it rang again. Megan.

  ‘Well, what about last night? What about Isobel, isn’t she nice? And Eve? And that Vivienne, isn’t she a scream – do you think she really does do magic in the woods? We won’t have to take our clothes off, Holl, will we, I mean, it’s okay for you
what with you being size twelve all over, but … no one really appreciates how hard it is to dance topless with big boobs. All that slapping, it sounds like I come with my own applause.’

  Bless her. Fifteen years I’d known Megan and the only thing that really took the shine off her incessant Angelina Ballerina cuteness was period pain and heartbreak. ‘You do know that I don’t believe a word of what she said, don’t you?’ I wandered through to my kitchen carrying the phone. ‘Vivienne is deluded at best.’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘… what if.’ I finished for her. ‘It’s okay, Meg. I’ve said I’ll go along with it.’ And it could have been worse, she could have discovered the French cinema …

  ‘Great! Only she rang me this morning, we’re having another meeting tomorrow evening at six. In the woods this time. She said to bring a blanket and a warm coat. Apparently we’re going to do some visualisation exercises.’ Her voice went up in a little squeak. ‘Isn’t it exciting!’

  ‘I thought you said it was going to be like a knitting group.’

  ‘But you can’t knit, Holl, can you?’

  No, but I can bloody well visualise, and if I’d been feeling really cynical I would have told Megan what it was I could visualise, i.e. a bunch of gullible women getting duped into helping some nutjob of a deserted wife slice up her ex’s designer suits. But I was taking a day off from pessimism. ‘No, I can’t knit. I’ll be there. Six o’clock, Barndale Woods. Anywhere in particular, or do I roam the whole hundred acres, like Eeyore on a really bad day?’

  In my hand the phone buzzed.

  ‘Text me, Meg, got another call coming in.’ I switched to the new caller.

  ‘Rhys.’

  ‘Sorry, I think you have the wrong number.’ I was about to put the phone down when I recognised the accent. ‘Oh.’