Page 31 of The Trouble With Love

Of course everyone then looked at me as though I was about a hundred. ‘Late night,’ I explained.

‘Torrid sex,’ Vivienne put in, with a face that seemed to indicate that torrid sex was only one step up from ritualised buggery. ‘Holly has been complaining about the results of the spell.’

The other two piled in, talking simultaneously. ‘Results? You think there’s been results?’

‘What sort of results? I’ve not had anything yet. You are lucky, Holly.’

‘Why would you complain? I’d settle for the milkman smiling at me.’

‘I’d settle for the milkman’s horse smiling at me.’

I waved a feeble hand. ‘Let’s just say that excitement isn’t as exciting as you might think.’

There was a sudden commotion outside the cottage, and cats went flying round the room with their ears flat to their heads, like furry bullets. The cat flap rattled like a saloon door, and Megan entered, being dragged along by a grey panting creature with more teeth than I’d ever seen on display in a mouth that didn’t belong to something in the Winners’ Enclosure at Ascot.

‘Oh my God, Little Red Riding Hood’s gone native.’

‘Don’t, Holl. I didn’t like to leave him all cooped up on his own. He needs a walk, and I thought, if we were going up the hill anyway . . .’ The big grey dog sat in the middle of the room, scratched, and looked pleased with himself. ‘I’m calling him Rufus.’

A lone cat, less adept at reading an atmosphere than the others, wandered in. There was a brief moment of total confusion and when it sorted itself out, I was standing on the sofa holding the teapot above my head. Isobel had a cat clinging to her shoulder like a Halloween witch costume, Eve had been shunted into a corner and Meg and Rufus were hurtling around outside the front door with her shouting ‘Stop it! Down, boy!’ ineffectually. Rufus, I noticed, was grinning. ‘I’ll keep him out here for a while,’ she shouted, completing another circuit of the small front garden. ‘Try to tire him out a bit.’

Isobel sneezed and the cat fell off. ‘Perhaps . . . some fresh air?’ she snuffled.

‘Wait, I need to collect our workshop ingredients,’ Vivienne bustled about looking as though she was doing something really important. Maybe she was, but I wasn’t really convinced, after all, the spell seemed to have worked big time and we’d used some decidedly unorthodox make-dos for that. It hardly seemed necessary at this stage to have exactly the right shade of red for our broom handles.

Eventually, when Vivienne was satisfied, we set out for the hill. Eve stayed behind to keep the fire banked up for our return, pleading sciatica. I wasn’t convinced. Her breathlessness seemed more than mere unfitness and her limp didn’t look entirely sciatic either, but if she wanted to keep to her story, who was I to blow it out of the water?

Megan went first, dog-propelled. Isobel and I wandered up through the snow more slowly. There was no track, other than the double-skid marked out by Megan and Rufus, and the snow was deep enough to cascade over the tops of our boots.

‘So, nothing happening for you on the “centre of the world” thing?’ I asked.

She shook her long, chestnut hair. She had lovely hair, I noticed. If only she’d get a prescription for some antibiotics for the acne and wear something that didn’t look hand-knitted by an elderly spinster, she’d be quite pretty. ‘Nope. I did think that a man was looking at me in the library the other day.’ She sighed.

‘Well, that’s a start.’

‘No, it turned out he’d lost his glasses and thought I was his mother.’ Another sigh. ‘Maybe nothing will happen. Ever. And I’ll stay here, living in Malton and working in the hospital, and spending every evening with Mum and Dad telling me how I should join a club to meet more people . . .’ She sounded angry. Or as angry as she ever sounded, which was not very.

‘Look, the spell seems to be working for me and I wish it wasn’t. So don’t worry too much if nothing happens, it looks like nothing is the better option.’

Isobel shrugged under her ugly knitted coat. ‘I’d just like something to compare nothing to. I’ve never even . . . you know, with a man. I’ve only been kissed once, and that was by mistake.’

‘By mistake? How can you get kissed by mistake? Did he fall onto your face?’

She smiled. ‘It was dark. He thought I was someone else. Story of my life, I suppose.’ She looked around the hill top. ‘I hope those men on bikes won’t come back.’

‘It’s broad daylight and there’s two feet of snow. I don’t even think you can ride a motorbike in snow, can you? And we’ll see them coming for miles, the air is so clear.’

It was, clear and ringing with cold. The distant moors stood like white shoulders shrugging into the bright blue sky and a circle of rooks blew above the hill like a smoke ring. ‘Are we bonkers do you think?’ Isobel asked in a quiet voice. ‘Doing magic and wishing for things we’ll never have?’

I gave her a quick, awkward hug. ‘At least we’re doing something. Oh look, Megan is slowing down. She’s going to be really fit by the time she finds that dog’s owner.’

Meg and Rufus bounced to a collective halt at our usual spot. She looked sweaty and breathless, her top had come untucked and she’d had to start carrying her hat. Her gloves were scattered with snow where she’d kept tripping over and the snowline was somewhere up near her thighs. ‘Sit,’ she insisted. Rufus grinned again and started digging. ‘I think he’s part lurcher.’

‘More like part wobbler.’ I patted the grey head and then had to wipe my hand on my jeans.

‘He’s a bit sticky. I don’t know why. But he’s very good natured.’

‘I can see that.’

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