By the time Eve and I reached the summit, Vivienne had got the Primus going. She placed the saucepan on the top and tipped in the contents of all our bags, plus two litre bottles of Evian water. Then, from the farthest reaches of her bag she pulled five small notepads and pens.
‘This is most important.’ We all sat cross-legged surrounding her and the Primus. ‘I want each of you to write your wish clearly and toss it into the pan.’ She led by example, scribbling words so hard that her paper actually tore. ‘Voila!’ Her page hit the now bubbling liquid and sank. The smell was evil.
‘Right.’ Megan leaned against her own knee and mouthed her words as she wrote. ‘I … want … to be … worshipped—Is that one P or two?—as a goddess.’ She balled the paper and tossed it in. ‘I think I spelled ‘worshipped’ wrong, will it matter?’
There was a gluggling sound from the pan. I refused to look.
‘To meet the man of my dreams.’ Eve’s page fluttered in.
‘To be the centre of the world to someone.’ Isobel’s paper missed the pan on first throw and then slid beneath the now boiling surface. ‘Your turn, Holly.’
I shrugged. ‘All right.’ I wrote the words ‘to have excitement in my life’, and was about to drop it in when I remembered my promise to Nicholas. ‘And for Nicholas to find a girlfriend. With big knockers,’ I added almost indecipherably. And then I thought of the others’ wishes, their narrow-focussed deliberate man-trap setting and I bit my lip. Something inside me wanted to make sure that, even by association, I didn’t get any of that kind of wish-granting.
‘Hurry up, Holl,’ Megan whispered. ‘My bum’s getting damp.’
‘Ssshh, I’m thinking.’ How to be completely unambiguous, to make sure that I didn’t end up being worshipped, having anyone’s world revolve around me and to make sure that the man of my dreams remained firmly in the world of the night-fantasy. However unlikely the event of Johnny Depp’s declaration of everlasting passion might actually be, I didn’t want to run the risk.
‘Well, think fast then. These pants are new.’
I smoothed my page out along my thigh and began scribbling an amendment. ‘Excitement of the right kind, not anything stupid or shallow. The kind that shows you what life is really all about.’ I was about to add something about ‘with definitely no men in it’, but Megan wrestled the paper from my hand and hurled it into the boisterously rolling water.
‘Sorry, Holl, but I don’t want to get piles, not if there’s some gorgeous man out there with my name on. I really can’t see him getting far with the whole worship thing if I have to sit on a special cushion, can you?’
My page caused the scummy brown fluid to rise several centimetres up the inside. A grey froth overflowed and hit the Primus, causing a round of steam and a smell like the inside of a tramp’s shoe. We all coughed.
‘So that’s it?’ I went to stand up. ‘Ritual over?’
‘Oh no.’ I didn’t like the way Vivienne was looking at me. ‘Now we drink it.’
The chorus of disgust almost drowned out the vague, distant sound that I’d been hearing for the last few minutes. Somewhere, out on the edge of hearing, was a humming. A vibrating, like a nest of wasps. I tipped my head on one side.
‘What’s that noise?’
But the other women were still being revolted, and didn’t hear me. Vivienne had produced a large silver tablespoon which she dipped into the water.
‘It’s fine.’
‘It’s boiled frog!’ Isobel looked horrified. ‘And owl bits. I can’t possibly drink that. I’m a vegetarian!’
It was more the thought of the toenail that bothered me. And that noise, which was beginning to sound familiar.
‘It’s been boiled. It’s sterile. And the animal bits are all roadkill, so it’s not like they died for you.’ Vivienne raised the spoon to her own lips and drank. I stopped being bothered by the noise and stared in horrified revulsion as she swallowed. ‘Tastes a bit like chicken.’
Megan went next, pulling terrible faces and only managing to lick the very tip of the spoon before she drew away. Then Isobel, who at least managed to get a mouthful, then collapsed retching on the grass. Eve and I looked at each other.
‘After you,’ she said.
‘No, I insist. You first.’
Eve’s mouth did its best to get away from the spoon, but she persisted. A drizzle of greasy-looking foam fell from her lips and her eyes went very round, then her throat worked like a python trying to digest a goat. ‘It’s not so bad,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Go on, Holly.’
Like Vivienne had said, it was boiled. How bad could it be? I dipped the spoon under the surface to avoid the speckled film forming on the top of the pan, and put it to my lips, trying not to look at it or smell the steam rising. It was hot. I blew on it for a second, then grabbed my nose and tipped the lot down the back of my tongue. ‘Errgh. Delicious.’
For a moment it felt as though someone had hit me on the back of the head, very hard. My thoughts fragmented and the earth shuddered underneath me, shaking itself like a wet dog before my head cleared and I opened my eyes. Isobel was still retching, Megan had her tongue stuck out and Eve was frantically draining the last of the Evian water from the bottles. ‘Wow. Did anyone else feel that?’
‘Fee’ whap?’ Megan looked down at her tongue, grimaced and left it sticking out. ‘Ah dimp fee’ anufin’.’
I looked at Vivienne, who had rather a smug expression on. ‘Did you put drugs in this? Acid? No, that would be destroyed by boiling … there was something, some kind of, I dunno, hallucinogen. Very quick, very short acting.’
Vivienne shrugged. ‘Not of my doing, Holly. Perhaps it was the magic you felt, the spell taking effect.’
‘No, it was more … what the hell is that noise?’
Isobel managed to quell her stomach for long enough to give a short scream. ‘It’s motorbikes! Men on motorbikes, riding around down there at the edge of the wood.’
‘Probably some kind of motocross rally.’
‘Vivienne, it’s dark. No one does motocross in the dark.’ I looked where Isobel was pointing. At least three figures were visible, riding high-framed dirt bikes. Every so often one of them would point our way, but it looked as though they were holding back from approaching us. Scoping us out, maybe?
‘Let’s go.’ I tipped the remains of the liquid onto the grass.
‘But we need to cool the Primus down.’ Vivienne protested.
‘Look. There’s five of us. Three, maybe four of them. They don’t look like they’re up to any good; they could be drunk, they could be high. Now, you might fancy your chances against a possibly armed crackhead, but me, I’m not so sure. Leave the bloody Primus.’ I helped Eve to her feet. ‘And they look like they’re closing in, so I’d hurry, if I were you.’
With a little yelp Vivienne snatched up her bag and pan, and with the rest of us hanging on to one another, we flew down that hill like the witches we weren’t.
Chapter Ten
Megan had to take to her bed with a world-class case of diarrhoea and vomiting for the next two days but the spell seemed to have the opposite effect on me. I felt ridiculously fizzy, like someone had lit an adrenaline fuse deep in my chest, and found it hard to concentrate. Was it really magic? Or had Vivienne slipped something into the brew to make us all believe that it was? I tended towards the latter explanation, even though I couldn’t see how or what, because the idea that a mouthful of papier mâché and incipient typhoid could make magic happen was too ridiculous for anyone less fluffy than Meg to believe. But. Still. Fizzy.
On the third day I went back to the Old Lodge. Guy had couriered over some paperwork and I wanted to pass it by Kai before we signed to anything, and to take a few more outside shots of the place.
‘He’s not here.’ Cerys leaned against the door. ‘Buggered off somewhere, God knows where, and here’s me feeling like I’d better avoid any sharp corners in case I go bang. Please come and talk to me, Holly. I can’t stand up
for long, but that’s all right because I can’t lie down for long either, so it averages out.’
‘I brought some contracts for Kai to see, if he’s really going through with letting a film crew loose around here, and my camera.’
‘So this is a professional visit?’ Cerys gave me a ‘Princess Di’ coy look. ‘You two didn’t … um … get it together when I’d gone to bed the other night? When I woke up your car was still here.’
‘Went home by taxi. Kai brought the car back next morning.’ Not that I’d seen anything of him; he’d shoved the keys through the letter box and, by the time I’d got down from my office to the front door, he’d vanished. ‘And anyway, you’re his daughter. I wouldn’t tell you anything, it would be nasty.’
Cerys slumped on the edge of the kitchen table. ‘He and Mum split up when I was eighteen months old. She married Dad when I was three. So I’ve never known Kai as a father, he’s always been more like a distant family friend. Sometimes really distant.’
‘And he’s gone off and left you on your own? With, what, around three weeks before the babies arrive?’ I pulled a face.
‘Yeah, well, I can phone an ambulance like a bitch.’ She got up again. ‘Put the kettle on, Holl, will you? I’m gagging for a coffee but I’m busting for a wee first.’ She waddled off into the downstairs bathroom but carried on our conversation through the closed door. ‘So you can tell me anything about Kai. I won’t judge you. Well, I can’t, I’m the stupid bint who got pregnant with twins by a tosser.’
‘There’s nothing to say, Cerys, honestly.’
The flush sounded and she appeared again. ‘You’re not going to hurt him, are you?’
‘Hurt him? I’m more likely to damage myself.’
‘I’ve never really got what’s going on with Kai, y’know.’ Cerys weebled through the door towards me, hands pressed into the small of her back. ‘I know he and Mum had me very young, but I don’t reckon that’s what’s behind him being so totally weird.’
‘Is he? Totally weird?’ I spooned coffee into two mugs and tried not to think about what form this weirdness might take, whilst disturbing images of various sexual peculiarities tiptoed through my mind. This involved imagining Kai naked and more coffee sprinkled over the worktop than hit the mugs.
Cerys made a dismissive motion with one hand. ‘He’s always a bit … I dunno really … he doesn’t really relate like other people. It’s almost like he’s acting a part instead of living.’ She gave me a shrewd look. ‘Oh he thinks he’s so clever and so straight, but I can see through him like an ultrasound scan. Oh, God, listen to me, I’ve become completely baby-centric. Shoot me now, Holly, please, before I start talking about giving birth to the sounds of whale-song instead of the ninety-decibel screaming I’ve got planned.’
I rested a hand on the top of the kettle switch and fussed with the plug to occupy my hands and give me a reason to avoid her eye. Was that it? Was that why I felt so ambivalent about this yellow-eyed Welshman, because he wasn’t behaving in the ways I expected? ‘Aren’t we all, a bit? Acting a part, I mean, pretending to be normal and ordinary while we’ve all got stuff going on underneath – isn’t that the only way we can carry on without spending all our time in tears or therapy?’ I turned back around to find that Cerys had an eyebrow raised and her mouth twisted into a prematurely motherly expression.
‘Sounds like you and he are going to get along fantastically,’ she said, and the parental tone of irony was noticeable. ‘Just, you know, be careful. Of yourself, not just him. He’s a bit of a … not a bastard, not really, but a bit … careless, I suppose. He had this one girlfriend, Imogen, ’bout a year ago I suppose, and she was lovely, really sweet and she and I got on and everything, but that all fell apart accompanied by some fairly serious yelling.’ She shrugged. ‘She wanted him close, and he doesn’t really do close.’ A hand rubbed the bump in concentric circles. ‘He does screwing though, I’ve heard him.’
‘Shut up. Enough.’ I poured boiling water onto the coffee. The rising steam made me think about the spell and I had to smile at the ridiculousness of it. Yeah, I’d wished for excitement. What had I got? An enormously pregnant young woman telling me about her father’s sex life, and a best friend who could heave for Britain. Oh, how thrilling.
‘Have you seen the weather forecast?’ Cerys took her mug. ‘Storms and snow and all kinds of stuff on its way, apparently.’
‘Oh, that’ll be my excitement for the year then. Nothing like getting trapped in your house for four days and then flooded out when all the pipes burst. Wonderful.’ I hadn’t, after all, specified good excitement, had I?
‘Yep. These babies had better hang in there, otherwise they’ll have to airlift me out. With a jumbo jet. Does it often snow up here? In Peterborough we really like snow because we don’t get much of it, but everything grinds to a halt if we get so much as a sprinkling.’
‘It does snow, but we’re used to it. And it’s not usually feet of the stuff, just enough to make life bloody awkward. Talking of which, I’d better pop outside now and do the pictures Guy wants.’
‘I’ll stay here. I’m drip-filling my bladder.’
I went outside and did some close-up shots of the front porch and some of the general location, then wandered out along the track until I could fit the whole of the Old Lodge in a single frame. As I locked off the last picture, someone spoke close to my shoulder.
‘You’ve been hanging around Dodman’s Copse haven’t you?’
Instinct increased my grip on the camera, but I turned around. ‘What?’
‘Hill on the far side. We’ve seen you.’
It was the ginger-headed bloke, this time seconded by a thin man with what looked like a joke moustache. They were both carrying shotguns, and the thin man had a brace of pheasants, dripping blood, by the feet.
‘It’s a free country.’ I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the dead birds. Their eyes were bleeding, surely shot birds don’t drip blood from the eyes? ‘And we’re not doing any harm or anything.’
Joke-moustache looked me up and down. ‘Depends what you are doing,’ he said. His voice was less classy-twit and more gravelly-bastard. ‘We seen you, all of you, sitting up there, chanting.’
‘Oh bollocks. Chanting’s not against the law. We’re a women’s support group,’ I added, keeping one eye on those guns.
The men exchanged a smile. ‘That’s what you’re calling it these days, is it?’ Ginger-hair took a step closer to me and I took an involuntary step back, which made him smile even more. ‘Look. She’s scared.’
‘She should be.’ Joke-moustache raised his gun, clicked it closed and fired into the sky. I’d never been so close to a discharged firearm; the noise was tremendous and I covered my ears, albeit too late. When I managed to unscrew my eyes and lower my hands, the men had gone. Melted away into the woods, leaving only the smell of cordite and a tiny patch of dripped blood staining the brown and yellow leaves of the trackway.
Cerys was at the door. ‘Holly? What’s happened? I heard shooting, are you all right?’
‘Yes.’ To my horror I felt the tears of shock begin to prick my eyes. ‘It was …’
‘Oh, Kai’s back.’ The Jeep jounced into view coming down the track towards us. I couldn’t hear the engine of the Land Rover and I could only hope that ginge and his skanky friend weren’t standing behind an oak tree watching his arrival.
‘Hi.’ The long legs unfolded onto the forest floor. ‘Holly? What’s happened?’
I managed to breathe through the desire to throw myself at him and blurt that I’d been scared of the big men with guns – it was a little too romance-heroine for me.
‘Someone fired a gun,’ Cerys supplied.
I could have mistaken the quick look Kai gave me, but I didn’t think so. ‘Was it our auburn-headed friend?’
I nodded. ‘And a thin guy with a moustache that looked like it came out of a cracker.’
‘Fuck.’ Kai turned to go into the Old Lodge, slamming hi
s hand down on the porch rail. ‘Thought I told you to stay clear of him.’
‘No. If you remember, you were staying clear of him, and I said that was all right with me. You’ve warned me off just about everything else, but you never mentioned him.’
‘Well he … what do you mean “just about everything else”?’ He turned back to face me, rolling his hand along the rail so that his rings tapped.
‘I’m going for a lie-down. This is all getting way too heavy for me, and being that I weigh roughly the same as Albania, that is going some.’ Cerys hauled herself into the hallway, pausing to give me a quick wink over her shoulder as she went.
‘Holly? What did you mean?’ Kai stayed where he was.
‘Well, the woods and stuff.’ My voice sounded a bit feeble and my eyes still stung.
‘Stuff?’
‘You.’
He dipped his head slowly and looked at me. It was like being stuck in a binary system, those twin-sun eyes. The stubble had renewed itself, but looked artful, as though by a freak of nature his beard had some kind of designer pattern. ‘Get in the Jeep.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
He twitched his head towards the olive-grey vehicle. ‘In.’
‘What, get into a car with a bloke who seems to think ordering women around is the way forward for polite society? I don’t think so.’ The shock was draining from my system, leaving me feeling a weakness I would never show. The anger covered it up nicely.
Kai closed in. Put a hand on my elbow. ‘Look. My daughter is up there.’ Eyes traced a way through the open door and up the stairs, then returned to mine. ‘And if I know Cerys, she’s listening to every word we say. You don’t want to have this conversation thrown back at you any more than I do. So get in the Jeep.’
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