Page 34 of The Trouble With Love

‘Nor me,’ Megan piped up. The tea and warmth had made her skin flush. ‘They scared us, that was all.’

‘No, that wasn’t all. They threatened us. With a shotgun. That goes a little bit beyond the Hammer House of Horror scary, it goes into the outright terrifying category.’ I looked around the room. All the women were looking somewhere else. Isobel and Megan were making an unnecessary amount of fuss of Rufus, Vivienne was stirring her tea with undue attention and Eve was poking the fire. ‘So you all think we should forget it?’

‘Not forget it. Ignore it. Be more careful in future, perhaps. More circumspect, certainly. Maybe find somewhere else to perform the rituals.’

‘No,’ Vivienne looked up at that. ‘It must be Dodman’s Hill. That traditionally has the most earth-energies; it’s on a ley line, and we need all the power we can muster to get the spell to work.’

‘Oh come on! What’s more important, some so-called magic or the possibility of getting our heads blasted off by a rapist wannabe?’

Their silence spoke for them, but then Vivienne piped up. ‘Don’t forget, Holly, just because the fulfilment of your wish has left you disappointed, the rest of us are still waiting. No one here wants to do anything to prevent the working of the spell.’

I shook my head. ‘You’re all bloody insane,’ I said, and walked out.

Chapter Fifteen

I drove round the outside of Barndale Woods to get to the Old Lodge. The track down which Kai had driven me through the middle of the woods looked as if even a Jeep would struggle to get down it now. Pockets of snow lay, broken by bare stretches where the trees grew so close together that even snowflakes couldn’t get between them. It gave the ground a skewbald look. I parked on the road and trekked the quarter mile in.

Cerys came to the front door, breathless and led me through to the kitchen, where Nicholas and Kai were sitting eating toast together, looking remarkably domesticated. ‘And here we have the males of the species,’ she announced in a bad David Attenborough imitation, ‘conducting their bonding session with food prepared by the female.’

‘You offered.’ Kai spread Marmite on another slice.

‘I offered Nicholas toast, not you.’

I pulled out a stool and sat next to my brother. ‘You had Ma and Dad quite panicked yesterday.’

A quick flick of his head. ‘You aren’t angry with me, are you Holly?’ He’d snatched the toast up and was cradling it against him as though unsure if I would allow him to take another bite. ‘I don’t want you to be angry . . .’

I forced my voice to syrupy consistency, although Kai was frowning at me. ‘No, not angry, of course not. I was worried, that was all. Why did you stop taking your meds?’

‘I just wanted to see. Wanted to check that they were working and to see what life felt like without them.’ He looked remarkably normal this morning, slightly more fey than usual in clothes obviously borrowed from Kai, judging by the number of times the legs of his jeans were rolled up. He began eating the toast again, little snatched bites, like an animal that’s just been released from captivity and isn’t quite sure how long the freedom will last.

‘Not voices again, telling you to stop?’

‘No. More like . . . you remember when the OCD cut in big time? That kind of compulsion, like I couldn’t not not take them.’ He smiled, his grey eyes tired and slightly drugged. ‘I’m sorry I freaked you, Holl. I was pretty freaked myself. I got this itching under my skin to be back here, that’s why I got on the train.’

A hot urge to smack him rushed down my arms. ‘I knew I should have put a note in with your packing to get Mum to double check you were taking them!’

He spread his hands wide in an expression of bafflement. ‘Sorry, Holl.’

Cerys rolled her eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Holly.’ With difficulty she hoisted herself onto the stool at Nick’s other side. ‘How old is he?’

‘Nick? Thirty-two. Eighteen months older than me.’

‘And you did his packing? Were you some kind of doormat in a previous life?’

‘He didn’t ask me to.’

Kai pushed a mug of tea at me and pulled a face. ‘I think Cerys is trying to say . . .’

‘Shut up Kai. I can talk for myself. I think you baby Nicholas, Holly. Surely there’s nothing stopping him packing his own suitcase? I mean, being mentally a bit kah-kah doesn’t prevent you from checking you have clean underwear, does it?’ She turned to Nicholas, then frowned. ‘Does it?’

Nicholas hadn’t even broken eating-stride, even though her voice was bordering on the tetchy. If I’d spoken like that, he’d have been halfway to locking himself into his bedroom before I’d got as far as ‘suitcase’.

‘Well, no. But I like to keep an eye on him. Make sure he’s taking his meds, that kind of thing.’

‘Why?’ Cerys stared around Nicholas at me.

‘Why?’ I repeated stupidly.

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