Page 22 of Witch You Weren't Here

Twenty minutes later, her butt was starting to hurt from the bark of the log.

She checked to see if he’d sent her a message to say he was running late.

Nothing.

After forty minutes, she double-checked to see if she’d got her wires crossed about which Saturday they were meant to meet.

Nope. Definitely this one.

At ten to eight, she was beginning to feel chilly and her heart had slipped down to sit with her feet in her very clean shoes.

She got up and walked around the clearing a little. Just in case. He might have got the time wrong, so she’d give him until eight. Harry’s dyslexia sometimes meant he got a little muddled about arrangements or didn’t manage his time particularly well. So, she gave him until 8 p.m., and then an extra ten minutes after that in case he was running late …

And then she had to face up to the fact that he wasn’t coming.

Why wasn’t he coming?

Walking back up to the village from the valley was harder work, each step tiring, her shoes dragging through the dirt and dust, the skirt of her summer dress too flimsy to keep her thighs warm as the wind picked up and she constantly had to pull it down.

She could have sent him a message to see where he was, but at that moment, she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to know the answer. There was a chance he’d innocently forgotten, but there was also the possibility that he’d changed his mind.

As she went past the pub on the green, a cheer went up inside, drawing her attention through the leaded window. And there he was. Smiling. Punching the air in victory and hugging the other teens from the sixth form who were old enough to drink now.

He was watching some kind of match with them all. He wasn’t even into sport, was he?

Either he’d completely forgotten about their date or he never intended to come and meet her at all.

Tears burned at the back of Kay’s eyes and in her throat, but she wasn’t going to cry. Especially not now, because somehow he must have felt her watching him and he was looking back through the window, straight at her, his arms hanging slack at his sides, his wide mouth downturned at the corners as some pretty girl from his class wrapped herself around him and planted a kiss on his perfectly freckly cheek.

He had known. He hadn’t innocently forgotten, otherwise he’d be hurrying out now to apologise to her. Instead of staring at her with that grim expression.

He’d stood her up and been caught out.

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared back at him. It didn’t take long for her humiliation to succumb to anger. She was about to storm in there and confront him about it, when suddenly, like tearing a wax strip off a shin bone, he turned and disappeared deeper into the pub.

Kay waited. Again. She couldn’t help herself. Maybe he was going to come out and talk to her?. Like the decent person she’d thought he was.

Instead, her brother appeared. His face in that scowl he almost constantly had when he looked at her these days.

She turned away. She didn’t need to deal with that on top of this.

‘Hey, Kay. Wait.’ Joe’s voice was rough, like he was having to drag it out of himself to speak to her.

‘What?’ She stopped and looked back at him, arms still tight across her chest, fingers digging into the bare flesh of her goose-bumped upper arms.

‘Harry asked me to give you this.’ He stepped forward a couple of paces, coming down the smooth stone steps of the pub and waiting by the big tub full of roses, but moving no further, so she had to go over to him. In his hand, he had a folded napkin.

‘When?’ she croaked, reaching out and plucking it from Joe’s fingers.

‘“When” what?’ Joe sighed and looked up at the sign for the pub rather than maintaining eye contact with her.

‘When did he give you this, to give to me?’ Perhaps this was a note to tell her he wanted to move their date, and Joe had just forgotten to give it to her. Or withheld it on purpose, just to hurt her the way he kept telling her she’d hurt the entire family when her gift came in.

‘Just now,’ Joe said, like she was an idiot. ‘I’m going back in.’

It hadn’t sounded like a lie and she had to face facts; if Harry had wanted to change the date or time of them meeting up, surely he would have texted her like a normal person?

Joe paused in the doorway. Sighed again and tromped back down the steps. ‘Are you going to be OK?’

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