Page 16 of The Trouble With Love

‘Please.’ Vivienne’s voice was stern. ‘We must keep our minds on the matter in hand. Now. What did you all bring?’

I confessed to the contents of my bag. There was a moment of hushed admiration. ‘What, you got everything?’ Isobel stared at me. ‘The thing about the demon as well?’

‘Yep.’

‘I got an owl’s eye from roadkill,’ Eve confessed. ‘Cut a picture of a frog’s head and the nail from a demon out of some old Reader’s Digests, and I printed out Edward the Eighth’s abdication speech from Wikipedia. Couldn’t think what to do about the hidden treasure thing.’

It turned out that Megan and Vivienne had also googled Edward the Eighth. Isobel had cut some pages from a Bible and was rotating with paranoia in case this affected the spell. ‘I mean, some people believe Jesus was King of the Jews, don’t they? But it won’t be, sort of, counterproductive, will it? We’re not evil, after all, are we?’ Vivienne had found an article on Tutankhamun’s tomb, and seemed a little bit put out that any of us had an alternative approach to the rich man and his hidden treasure.

‘I got pictures of owls as well,’ Megan pointed to her bag, ‘And I found a dead frog in the pond in the park, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut off the head, so it’s all in there. No treasure though, or demon’s nails.’

Vivienne rolled her eyes. ‘So only Holly found all the ingredients?’ I tried to look unassuming. ‘Hmm. The spell will work best for her,’ Vivienne sounded disappointed that it had been me. I think she would rather have Isobel or Megan strike gold; these two appeared to be her most devoted disciples. ‘As a matter of interest, Holly, where did you collect your things?’

‘Most of it came from a friend of mine who lives on the other side of the woods,’ I said, trying not to sound smug or as though I was implying that the others had no friends. ‘In the Old Lodge.’

She hissed in a breath and the ginger cat shot from between my legs into the kitchen. Isobel lowered the handkerchief. ‘The warlock’s place?’

‘Well, he wears a lot of black, but he’s a journalist, really.’

But Vivienne had started to smile. At least, I think that’s what she was doing — her mouth went an alarming shape and previously unnoticed wrinkles began to manifest alongside her eyes. ‘Oh, Holly.’ She sounded almost orgasmic. ‘Now I know the spell will work for sure.’

‘What did you do?’ Megan whispered to me.

‘I don’t know,’ I whispered back. ‘But whatever it was, it must have been good.’ Vivienne was now groaning ecstatically, cradling my small bag to her chest.

‘Just think, these are the real thing! Oh, girls, we are going to have such results tonight!’

‘Looks like she’s getting results already. If her knickers start smoking, get ready to run.’ Only Eve smiled at that.

A bit more chanting, a few more esoteric shapes drawn in coloured chalk — which non-esoterically came from a primary-coloured bucket with kindergarten pictures on — and we were ready to hit the hill. Vivienne was carrying a Primus stove and a large saucepan; I had high hopes of mulled wine when we got there. The rest of us carried our bags and Megan also carried Vivienne’s hessian tote bag containing her offerings. Apart from King Tut, Vivienne had, apparently, a real owl’s eye (I didn’t dare ask if it had been parted from its owner pre- or post-mortem). Her ‘demon’s nail’ turned out to be one of her ex’s toenail clippings — yeah, she looked like the kind of woman who’d hang on to that sort of stuff. She hadn’t struck lucky in the frog department though; maybe she’d been too busy trying to kiss them, and had driven them all away . . .

So, carrying the results of the world’s oddest treasure hunt, we plodded up the sticky track to the open-topped hill. I carried Eve’s bag, to give her a bit of a start; she struggled quite badly with the incline, even with the stick. ‘You all right?’ I walked alongside her, giving Vivienne a chance to go on with the Suck-Up Twins. ‘It’s a bit of an odd choice for a hobby this, isn’t it?’

Eve smiled at me, as we paused for a moment for her to get her breath back. ‘It beats watching reality TV,’ she puffed. ‘Or getting cats.’ She inclined her head towards the toiling shape of Vivienne, today draped in wafty, floating tie-dye and looking like a woman who’s fallen into a vat of handkerchiefs.

‘Do you think she’s mad?’

Eve considered. ‘I think she’s very sad. But, mad? Well, as long as no one is getting hurt. And, although it’s not exactly a reading group, we’ve all met new people and we’re getting out and doing new things, so does it matter?’

‘I guess not.’ I could even manage to muster warm thoughts about Isobel now. She was shy and allergic to everything and I really wanted to introduce her to a skin care regime, but she was cutely naïve and fun to be with in the same way as a puppy. I didn’t know if I’d ever come around to Vivienne, but the woman had organising abilities coming out of every orifice. It struck me that she was wasted on this little ‘Women’s Group’ as we’d agreed to call it. She should have been on Dragons’ Den, giving them nightmares instead of us.

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.

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