Sophie stared at Leah unwaveringly. “He should be tried for murder,” she said.
LEAH WAS UNHAPPY at the way she and Sophie parted. She was unhappy that the truth was out, because she didn’t want to hurt her erstwhile group mates. She knew she had been a kind of figurehead to them, so for that reason had tried to bow out subtly and slowly. She hadn’t wanted them to know she simply couldn’t believe in what they did any more. Just thinking about them sitting in a circle, with linked hands, believing they could change the world for the better, made her heart contract with love. It was better to be like them than like she was now.
Unlike Sophie, Leah was self-employed and worked from home. She ran a successful catering business that, aside from weddings and other such big events, offered themed evenings for groups of female friends. In the past, this had included Arabian Nights, Egyptian Magic, Celtic Dream, to name a few. This had been Leah’s favourite part of her job. Food and drink had been tailored to the events, which had had a superficially witchy gleam. A friend from her magical group, Ellie, used to come along with merchandise – trinkets, glittering scarves, perfume and jewellery – which the women would browse through and then purchase as they nibbled their exotic treats. As part of the evening’s activities, out would come the Tarot cards, and the women would pay a little extra for that. Most evenings, another friend, Sarah, would be there to offer healing or massage. And with repeat clients, once they realised the three women they invited into their homes to pamper them were witches, rather different commissions appeared in Leah’s in-box. Word spread. She and her friends had been asked to help with sickness, with broken hearts, with money troubles. And to the best of their ability, they did. This was so successful, it got to the point where Leah had had to turn commissions down.
When Brett Lyle had plunged the final knife into her by abruptly exiting her life without chance for discussion or even a decent farewell, the shock of it, never mind the pain, had diminished Leah considerably, and she had taken a break from her work. In fact, she had been unable to concentrate on preparing the food for any events, never mind the special ones where she was required to sit and read the cards, or try to help people magically when their lives had taken a turn for the worse. All she wanted to say to them was, “You shouldn’t be paying me for this. Life is either crap, great or bearable, and Fate takes a swing at us when it likes. If things are good, enjoy them, if they’re bearable, count your luck, if they’re bad, poor you. Find a lawyer, a doctor or a psychiatrist. Nothing I can do will change a thing.” She had this little speech off by heart, practiced as she lay on her couch in the dim afternoons.
Eventually the emails and calls seeking to hire her died off. At this time, she began to drift away from her magical group also.
After a couple of months, realising that life inevitably continues, as do bills, Leah started looking for work again, and also reinvented the special part of the business, which she regarded as her personal indulgence. Now she offered parties having the theme of a genteel life gone by; afternoon tea on delicate china, such as would have been enjoyed by ‘ladies’ in earlier decades. She scoured second hand and charity shops for appropriate crockery and cutlery, eventually building up an impressive collection. She experimented with baking recipes she found in old cooking books, and after some careful promotion and free teas in strategic places, the new business shone like the old. Emulating the ‘extra services’ offered by the previous parties, Leah employed two girls to accompany her and provide facials and manicures. Women of all kinds liked the parties, which proved more successful than Leah had envisaged. But then, she had a gift with preparing food that some would call magical; she invested into her business on more than one level, and paid great attention to detail. It might have been a nice touch if, as part of the events, she’d read the tea leaves for her clients, but Leah firmly refused to let herself offer that.
And yet, despite her scepticism and denial, didn’t magic still nibble at her? When she baked her cakes, working good feeling into the mixture, and sought out the exact special kinds of teas she felt were right, wasn’t she still indulging in ritual?
AFTER HER LUNCH with Sophie, Leah entered her house and, in the hallway, faced the mirror that hung on the wall opposite the door. The glass was faintly smoked, giving a reflection that had always looked to Leah like a scene from a spooky film with a blue filter over it.
“Really, Leah,” she said to herself. “When are you going to forget what happened? You don’t kid me, you know.”
Shaking her head, she turned to her answerphone on the table beneath the mirror to listen to messages from clients wanting to hire her. She wrote down the details on the pad by the phone. Then came the last one, the third, the fateful knocking upon the door.
“Hello, this is Carol Lyle. I’d like to book a tea party, please, for my birthday in three weeks’ time, the 7th. I hope this isn’t too short notice, but a friend recommended you. My address is number 8, The Ashes and if you’d like to return my call, my number is...”
At first, Leah didn’t realise who it was; she merely wrote down the address and phone number, thinking she might not be able to fit this woman in. And then, as if her reflection was still displayed in the smoky mirror and calling to her, she thought, Wait... wait a minute! She went quickly to her office in what was supposed to be the dining room and looked at her cloth-bound appointment book, which lay on the desk. In this she wrote down her appointments in a neat curling script. 7th March. She flicked to the relevant page. As she thought, someone had already booked her for that day; one of her regulars.
Looking at the page, she picked up the phone on the desk, stabbed in a number. “Hello, is that Shannon? Hi, it’s Leah Metcalfe here, I’m really sorry but I’m going to have to cancel our appointment for the 7th. Something unavoidable and rather serious has cropped up... I’m more than happy to give you a free party on another date if you’d like one...”
Leah ended the call, punched in another number. “Hello, is this Carol Lyle? This is Leah Metcalfe from ‘Tea Cakes’. You called me earlier about a party...”
LEAH HAD NO idea what was urging her on, but decided simply to go with it. It was a coincidence beyond all fathomable coincidences that Brett Lyle’s wife had called her on the very day that Sophie had told her about Cassy. You don’t believe, but just go with it... If you’re being thrown a bone by Fate, snatch it up...
Leah had never met Carol Lyle, and only knew what she looked like from when she had once investigated Lyle’s Facebook page where he displayed ‘jolly’ photos of family get togethers. Leah had seen a rather plump, short but attractive brunette, with a wide and innocent smile. She had been smiling in every photo. On the phone, Carol sounded chatty and rather nervous. She laughed a lot.
“I know it is rather short notice,” she said.
“That’s no problem,” Leah replied in her smoothest, most comforting tone. “As luck would have it, there’s been a cancellation for the 7th. You must be sure to have all men folk out of the way!” Leah added one of her smokiest laughs. “My parties are girls only.”
“Of course, of course,” said Carol Lyle. “I wouldn’t be getting anything for my birthday if I wasn’t doing this myself. Just some girlfriends and my Mum and sister.”
“Great,” said Leah. “Shall we discuss the menu?”
LEAH CONSIDERED NOT taking her assistants along, but then decided she should not alter her habitual ritual. (There it was again.) The party was set for 6.00 pm – an odd time, really. Clients usually opted for an afternoon event or an evening one; not this in between time when people normally ate dinner and then did something else.
Leah prepared the food with especial care. As she conjured her mixtures, she found she had much sympathetic feeling for Carol Lyle. That nervous laugh, that trusting smile. It seemed particularly cruel for the vampire Brett Lyle to be married to someone like that. But I suppose she’s malleable, Leah thought. She won’t make a fuss, even when she suspects... she was chosen precisely.
As she was standing at the door to number 8, The Ashes, (new housing estate, pricey), on a fairly mild March evening, with her assistants behind her, Leah knew why she was doing this. She had to see. And when she had seen, she might act.
While they waited for Carol to answer the door, Leah remembered Brett Lyle taking her in his arms, enfolding her as if with wings. “This is how we are,” he had murmured. She had felt like a mortal woman seduced by a dark angel. But their kisses had always been chaste. His gaze, however, had never been that.
Leah dismissed the memory, pulled herself together. The door was opening, light spilling out.
Carol Lyle bounced onto the front step. “Hi, hi. Do you need any help with your stuff?”
“No, we’ll carry everything,” Leah said. “Can you just show us to the kitchen? Amber and Rachel will need somewhere to set up, too, if that’s all right.”
“Come in, come in...”
Leah stepped over the threshold. This was Brett Lyle’s front, this middle class life on an ordinary if upmarket housing estate. This was his lair, to which he always returned; his coffin full of native soil.
It was a comfortable home, although everything was new as if it had only just arrived from a furnishing warehouse. Anyone would have thought the Lyles had recently moved in, except Leah had known 8 The Ashes as Lyle’s address when she’d been seeing him. It hadn’t been that difficult to discover.
A group of women were sitting in the front room, drinking wine. Leah nodded and smiled at them as she followed Carol Lyle through to the kitchen. Here Carol thrust a huge glass of Shiraz at Leah, even before Leah had set down her crates. “I have white too if you prefer,” she said. “Or... juice or something?”
Leah took the glass and swigged. “This is great, thanks.”
She set the glass down on the counter and began to remove her cakes and sandwiches reverently from their packaging. Carol, meanwhile directed Amber and Rachel to two of the spare bedrooms where they could work. Then she returned to the kitchen as Leah was arranging an array of heavily iced, liqueur-laced cup cakes on a tiered stand.
“They look so beautiful,” said Carol Lyle. “I love the decorations.”
Leah removed her piece de résistance from the crate at her feet. “This is a present for you,” she said. “A birthday cake.” It was immense, robed in dark chocolate butter icing, fortified with Tia Maria and a lavish pinch of chilli. A mass of black and white fondant roses spilled across its surface in a tangled trail. On each stem, the dark green leaves and thorns had been carefully formed. And the tips of the thorns were red. Half hidden among the petals and foliage was a silvered plaque – again edible – with the words ‘For Carol, her birthday’ engraved upon it.
Carol’s eyes misted up. “Oh, that’s... oh, I really won’t want to eat it and spoil it.”
Leah laughed. “Take some photos, then eat it. That way you’ll have the appearance and the taste. Trust me, it’s scrumptious.”
“Later, then,” Carole said. “Thank you, Leah. I didn’t expect that.”
“My pleasure.”
AS WELL AS the array of teas, the cakes, the exquisite sandwiches, wine continued to flow. Leah later blamed this for what happened. When the birthday cake was carried ceremonially from the kitchen, now lit with tiny green candles, the women in the room gasped. One of them said, perhaps the mother, “It’s amazing, Carol, but rather like a funeral cake! That thing in the middle looks like a gravestone. And whatever made you choose those colours?”
Carol cast an embarrassed glance at Leah. “I... I didn’t. The cake was a present.”
The other woman laughed. “Really? I hope nobody wants you dead, love!”
“That was a horrible thing to say!” Carol snapped. “No one wants me dead. How could you say that?”
“It was just a joke,” the woman said.
“I made the cake,” Leah said smoothly, “and my taste veers towards the Gothic. I assure you there’s no bad intention in it.”
“It’s beautiful, and I love it, Leah,” Carol said hotly. “Now I’m going to eat a massive piece of it.” She brandished the cake knife with a humorous evil leer.
Everyone laughed and Carol cut the cake. Its innards were a dark treacly brown, plump with dates, spiced with cinnamon. Carol quickly dispensed portions round the room, even handed one to Leah. Then, after a moment’s silence, all the guests bit into their slice of cake. Leah left hers untouched.
“Oh my god, it’s amazing!” Carol cried. “What’s in it, Leah?”
One of the other women laughed, wiping crumbs from her lips. “Ah, she’s not going to reveal her secret ingredients!”
“On the contrary,” Leah said, smiling. “I can tell you that the main ingredients are strength and love.”
Everyone laughed again, clearly thinking she was joking.
PERHAPS IT WAS mention of the Gothic, the appearance of the cake, or the woman’s clumsy joke that instigated it, but somehow the conversation in the room veered towards the occult. Someone started talking about a friend of a friend who’d visited a fortune teller. “She was accurate to a tee,” the woman said. “Knew stuff she couldn’t possibly know.”
Another woman had just come back into the room, holding her hands out in front of her, since Amber had painted her nails. “I went to one,” she said. “Had the cards read. She told me about how I’d have Harry, although I’d no intention of having kids at that point. Was taking every precaution too!”
“I’d love to have my cards read,” Carol said wistfully. “I never have.”
“Hoping they’ll say kids for you too, Carol?” someone asked, giggling.
Carol pulled a sour face. “Fat chance of that.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“I can read the cards,” Leah said. She could have bitten off her tongue, but the words simply came out. Nothing could have prevented them. “I have a deck in my bag.” She had never removed them, since the days she’d carried them with her always on purpose.
“Ooh, do me!” someone said.
“And me!” cried another.
Leah glanced at Carol. “The hostess first, I think. Yes?”
Carol nodded. She wasn’t smiling now. “In the kitchen?”
“If you like.”
DON’T THINK ABOUT it, just do it, Leah told herself as she seated herself opposite Carol Lyle at the breakfast bar. She took the dog-eared cards out of their silk wrap and began to shuffle them. They felt familiar, like old friends. A musty scent of the rose oil with which she’d once perfumed the silk drifted around both women. Even though faintly spoiled, the smell wasn’t unpleasant.
Carol was leaning on her crossed forearms on the bar. “They look really old,” she said.
“They are getting on a bit,” Leah said, “seen a lot of use. Here, will you shuffle them too? Just empty your mind of everyday thoughts while you do. Do you have a particular question you’d like to ask the cards?”
“Yes,” Carol replied.
“You don’t have to tell me of it, just think about it.”
“I will.” Carol took the cards and closed her eyes. The cards slipped through her fingers obediently.
After a minute or so of silence, Carol opened her eyes and handed the cards back to Leah, who began to lay them out in a simple spread.
“Will you say if it’s bad?” Carol asked. “I mean, it must be awkward for you if what they say is bad.”
“I’ll tell you what I see,” Leah said, “but the cards are only a snapshot of now, really. Nothing they say is written in stone. If you like, they are sign posts on the road of life. You have the power to change your destiny, but sometimes the cards can help you clarify things in your head, make decisions.”
“That sounds like a get out clause to me!” Carol said, laughing. “What if I get the Death one?”
“That card means change,” Leah said. “Quite radical change, yes, a rebirth perhaps, but it does not mean you’re going to get run over tomorrow.”
>
The cards were laid out, face down. Now Leah was nervous of turning over the first one. Her hand hovered over it.
“Let me,” Carol said, and turned the card face up. “The Moon. What does that mean?”
As the cards revealed their story, one by one, Leah wondered whether she was impartial enough to read them accurately. Was she seeing what she wanted to see? A woman deluded, occluded, befuddled? A faithless man? She struggled to voice her interpretation. “You feel you are lacking facts...”
Leah was conscious of Carol staring at her. She knew she wasn’t reading very well; it was stilted.
Then Carol announced. “You must know why I hired you?”
“What?”
Carol rolled her eyes, took a swig of the wine by her left elbow. “Come on. I do know, Leah. At least... My question was, and is, what happened between you and my husband?”
Leah felt her face colour up. This was the last thing she’d expected. “I...”
“And why did you take the job, Leah? You knew it was me too.”
Leah made a helpless gesture.
Carol reached out and touched one of Leah’s hands. “It’s OK, I’m not mad at you. I just want to know.”
Leah sighed deeply. “I honestly don’t know. Curiosity... A compulsion...” She paused. “Why contact me now, after all these years?”
Carol shrugged. “I just always wondered, that’s all. I saw you, this glamorous older woman, and he told me you were just a friend. I always wondered. It didn’t seem likely.”
The Future of Horror Page 55
