Page 33 of The Trouble With Love

‘Don’t.’ Megan had managed to grab Rufus by the collar and was using all her bodyweight to drag him along. ‘Don’t antagonise them Holly. Let’s go.’

‘Yeah, you listen to your playmate,’ sneered one of the balaclavas. ‘Even the wog has more sense than you.’

I’d faced down all sorts of people in the past. People who’d made wisecracks about Nicholas’s behaviour, about my procession of men, there wasn’t an insult I hadn’t heard. ‘They’re bullies. How dare they try to drive us out, we’re not doing anything wrong.’

I looked over at Vivienne and Isobel. Vivienne was shocked a blueish pale and her make-up stood out on her skin. Isobel looked frozen in mid-flight, half turned to head down the hill but obviously not wanting to leave us alone.

Then the Land Rover door opened. The guy with the gun jumped lightly down onto the snow, gun still held forward, fingers still wound near the trigger. Rufus growled but didn’t bark; I think that was because Megan had him in a headlock.

‘Do you want us to show you what happens to girls who don’t do as they’re told?’ His voice was soft, but it wasn’t only the fact he was wearing a mask that made him threatening, it was his whole body. The way he stood as though he had absolute control of the situation. ‘Naughty girls get punished,’ and he swung the gun up casually to hip level, pointing at Rufus. ‘And the Devil’s whores get what whores deserve.’

Now was so not the time to give him a lecture on the rights of women. I leaped away from him and ran, heading down the hill and hoping the others were following. Rufus took his cue from me and broke into a gallop, Megan overtook me half way down the hill on a bow-wave of snow. Isobel and Vivienne slipped and slithered behind me, I could hear their silent panic in the way they refused to let the snow impede their progress and leaped through drifts that had been detoured on the way up.

‘Ring the police,’ I gasped as we broke through Vivienne’s door and huddled together in the living room, one eye on the window in case the Land Rover had followed us down.

‘What on earth . . . ?’ Eve came in from the kitchen, comfortably aproned and motherly, carrying the teapot like the antithesis of what had just happened.

‘For starters, three men in a Land Rover waved a gun at us. Threatened us with . . . well, he wasn’t offering an evening at the cinema and boxes of Maltesers, was he? And one of them called Megan . . . well, a name.’

Vivienne leaned forward to catch her breath. She didn’t even raise a murmur at Rufus climbing onto the sofa. ‘And what do we say when the police arrive? We were taking a stroll up on the hill? We left the candles there. It wouldn’t take a detective genius to work out we’d been performing magic.’

‘Yeah? It’s not forbidden in the Court of Human Rights, you know. So, we lit a few candles, big deal. We didn’t sacrifice babies and shag a goat, did we?’

Eve limped over and pushed a hot mug of tea into my hand. ‘I understand what Vivienne is trying to say, Holly.’

‘Well I wish I did! In what universe do men get away with threatening women?’

‘Holly.’ Eve patted my hand. ‘If we ring the police and tell them that three men in a Land Rover had a shotgun and called you names . . . well, I hate to say it, but this is the countryside. And people go out shooting all the time. All we can say is that three unidentified men made threats. And if you are absolutely sure that it wasn’t poachers warning you off . . .’

‘If they were poachers, then . . .’ I suddenly thought about the men lurking in the woods near the Old Lodge, and the brace of pheasants, dripping blood. ‘I suppose they could have been. But they knew about the spells.’

‘They’d been watching, I’d guess. Judging the right moment to have a go at you. Out here poaching is a way of life for some people.’

‘Yeah, right up with hare coursing and incest.’

‘But you see what I’m saying? It could open a whole can of worms if you report it. Poachers guard their patch. They were warning you off so you couldn’t see anything which might get them identified.’

‘But . . .’ I looked around. Everyone was nodding. ‘But, Meg. You heard what they were calling you.’

Megan rubbed absently at Rufus’s scruff. ‘What, “black bitch”? God, Holl, I get worse than that behind the counter in British Home Stores. You should have heard what this woman said once, when we didn’t have the pelmets that she’d ordered. Bloody hell, I thought she was going to sell my ass into slavery or something.’

‘But you aren’t even . . .’

She sighed. ‘Dad’s Nigerian, Holl. Get over it.’

Vivienne came over, smoothing her hair into place. ‘And the police might get a bit curious about those candles, they could ask some awkward questions about exactly what we were doing up on the hill. Do you really want everyone to know that you practise witchcraft? Everyone you work with? Your family?’

I sat down beside Rufus. ‘It’s all a bit of fun. People will understand that, won’t they? That we just got together for some chanting and mucking around with a few spells?’

She looked at me, slightly sadly. ‘But there was blood. We used blood to concentrate the spell . . . I can’t believe I was so ridiculous . . .’

‘But it was only animal though, wasn’t it?’ Please God, Vivienne, say yes . . .

‘Of course. But can’t you see the angle that the newspapers will take, that we were fornicating with The Master, drinking blood and dancing naked under the full moon.’

I glanced dubiously out of the window. ‘In this?’

‘All right, maybe not the dancing naked thing. But you see what I mean? Would you find it easy to get work if that’s what people thought you did in your spare time? Because I don’t want to jeopardise my wish by having that kind of reputation.’

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