Page 21 of The Trouble With Love

Megan sighed. ‘I’ll just have to wait until I’m feeling better then go down and clear up after it. I wish people wouldn’t do this, we had two feral cats down there which used to fight under my window at three in the morning. Turned out that they belonged to the guy in number two, that weird bloke who wore women’s skirts at the weekend.’ She propped herself up again. ‘Will you give my apologies to Vivienne? Even if I’m feeling better, I don’t know if I’m going to be strong enough to make it tomorrow night.’

‘You want me to go on my own?’

‘The others will be there, won’t they?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘You have to report back, Holl. Tell Vivienne about the effects of the spell. Have there been any effects?’ she added, almost wistfully. ‘Anything exciting happening?’

‘About as much as you’ve been worshipped.’

She sighed. ‘Oh dear.’ Big kitten-eyes looked at me over the duvet. ‘I really hope all this hasn’t been for nothing. I mean, it’s such a tiny wish, isn’t it? It’s not like I’ve wished to marry a billionaire.’

‘Have you been reading those Mills & Boons again?’

‘Might have.’

‘I suppose we should think ourselves lucky that you only want to be a goddess then. You could have wished to be carried away by a sheikh. And you’d never get a horse up those steps.’

‘You have no romance, Holly Grey, you know that? Anyway. I tried to ring you this morning but you weren’t answering. Where were you, not with that grandad again?’

‘Kai? Yes, I was, actually.’ I began to blush faintly at the memory of his kiss and I think my eyes might have glazed over.

‘Woah, Holl, you didn’t! You’ve not added some pensioner to your shag-pile? That’s disgusting.’

I slumped on the floor, being careful to avoid the bits where her sick-bucket had sat, and told her about the Kai situation. Or, at least, I told her that I was trying to get the Old Lodge contracted for Guy as a location, and that Kai was thirty-six with a pregnant daughter. I left out all the stuff about gold-coloured eyes and leather-jacketed lean legginess and the kind of disconnected personality that hated personal questions; a woman who’s spent the last three days on the toilet with her head and bum being interchangeable, did not need to know any of that.

‘Oh well, if it’s work,’ Megan lost interest and we spent the rest of my visit discussing daytime television, which she’d had plenty of opportunity to study.

I spent the next day with my laptop and camera at the seaside. A company in London wanted a suitable location for a 1920s detective series, set by the sea, so there I was, huddled in my best down coat and still freezing, sending live-feed pictures down the line to some coked-up executives in a nice, warm city office. Standing in the wind was like being carved and little slivers of hail prodded my cheeks into numbness, while the boys in the production office kept getting me to move another hundred yards along the cliff, to show another angle of Scarborough which they could have got from the tourist brochure.

Finally the light went and they decided to ‘think about it’, so I drove straight to Barndale, where at least Vivienne’s cottage was warm.

Eve was sitting on the sofa already when I got there. Two cats were jockeying for position on her lap and she and Vivienne were indulging in a very unwitchy pot of tea and plate of scones.

‘Ah, Holly.’ Vivienne fetched down another cup, which was nice. I was so frozen that I wasn’t sure I could hold it. ‘Did you bring Isobel?’

‘Was I meant to?’ I folded my hands around the cup for the warmth.

‘Not really. But she lives near you and her car was in getting a service, so I wondered if she might have asked for a lift.’

I shook my head. ‘I’ve not been home since this morning. Working.’

‘She self-harms, you know.’ Eve spoke over Vivienne’s shoulder. ‘Isobel. Because of her skin problems. She says she feels ugly all the time, so she cuts her arms to feel better.’

Now I felt like a shit for not offering someone a lift when I didn’t even know they needed a lift in the first place. ‘I could go back and look for her,’ I offered, reluctantly groping behind me for the still-damp coat.

But then we heard the growl of Isobel’s old Isuzu truck drawing up outside. I sat down again with relief and then wondered what they said about me when I wasn’t there. Did they discuss my great job and lovely home or did they spend their time picking to pieces the fact that I didn’t have a regular boyfriend? Hmm.

‘Sorry I’m late, had to pick the car up.’ Isobel sat beside me. ‘Megan rang, said she’s still feeling poorly.’

Everyone looked at me as though it were my fault. In fact, they eyeballed me as though I was responsible for every act of civic nastiness in the previous fifty years. ‘What?’

‘Have you had any results from the other night?’ Vivienne looked at the scones as she spoke.

‘No, not really. I did feel a bit squitty on Friday, but I think it was the prawn sandwich I had for lunch.’

‘Vivienne means positive results, from our . . . little experiment,’ Eve explained. I looked at her properly for a moment and wondered. She’d wished to meet the man of her dreams, but she’d not done anything practical about it, like getting a good haircut or buying some trendier clothes. No. She’d teamed up with a deserted wife, a girl who cut her arms to escape the miseries of acne and loneliness, a woman who thought love was like the romance novels and me, someone who didn’t believe in Mr Right and was content to shag her way through lots of Mr shut-the-door-on-your-way-out. That was weird behaviour, however you looked at it.

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