Page 3 of The Trouble With Love

‘So, then.’ My brother leaned in close across the table, one elbow in the beer pool. ‘What would you wish for? What’s your . . .’

Chapter Three

‘. . . greatest wish?’ The redheaded woman hunched towards me again and I nearly hit Megan in the forehead in my attempts to lean back out of the way. But then it was her fault I was here, so the odd black eye would be payment.

‘I don’t think I have one, Vivienne.’

She looked away from me now, round the crowded little room. I hadn’t been able to stop myself assessing her house on a professional basis when I arrived, but there was nothing that could have featured in anything other than a sitcom based on the antics of a rural witch-wannabe. Heavy velvet curtains, incense, crystal just-about-everything and a deep, layered smell of cats, damp and sage. And as if all that wasn’t enough, it was a cottage in the woods. If anyone offered me gingerbread, I’d be violent.

‘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.’

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