Page 38 of Witch You Weren't Here

Harry turned his head to squint out of the window. ‘Honestly, not great. He felt that I’d missed the point that working for the business would have been a good use of my affinity too. The money goes towards the estate and the estate is there to help protect the community, which is important. Very important—’ He broke off from what Kay suspected was a recitation of an argument with his dad. He swallowed and looked back at her. ‘Joe hasn’t been keeping you up to date?’

Kay stiffened. Did he really expect her to believe that he and Joe were still friends, when her brother never mentioned him? Not even in passing. Harry might have been invited to the wedding, but so was Minerva, their second cousin once removed, and they’d only met her a dozen times throughout their whole life. Some guests were an obligation. She didn’t understand what he was playing at. ‘With news about you? No. You never come up in conversation,’ she said, pointedly.

‘No. Of course. That makes sense.’ He averted his eyes back to his sketchbook this time, his cheekbones flushed.

Kay pulled out the latest novel she was reading, pretending to get absorbed in the pages, when truly she was wishing it was a thriller rather than a romance. Although five minutes of peace from the constant roller-coaster of adjusting to being around Harry might help to soothe the ache in her chest, she didn’t need to read any kissing scenes or swoony declarations of feelings.

Admitting there was a distance between them, that had widened and widened over time, made it impossible to avoid the fact that once there had been closeness too, which had been lost. The more he mentioned things from the past, the more she slipped into feeling comfortable with him, and enjoying their conversations, the more confused it made her.

She’d forced herself to believe that he’d only acted friendly with her that year because he’d needed to keep Joe on side to help him with his A levels. It made sense. Once they were done, he no longer had to pretend, and he could give her the shove she needed to stop mooning over him.

But he wasn’t talking to her now like he thought of her as a nerdy irritation. And he needn’t keep her on side. She was the one getting help from him. So, had she got it wrong? And if so, why had he pushed her away so hard? Or was it just that he’d changed? Had rose-tinted glasses on now? It was a problem she didn’t have the capacity to try to figure out at the moment.

Flakes of snow began falling, but that didn’t keep the little boy opposite them entertained for very long. He started to get remarkably fidgety and even though they were speaking in a different language, Kay recognised that frayed but subdued tone his mother was using to try to get him to calm down without hollering at him in public.

Harry shifted over onto the spare seat beside him next to the aisle so he was closer to them and used some of those German words he learned to get their attention. He showed the boy a flick book he’d made in the corner of his sketchbook. Kay couldn’t see what he’d drawn but it enraptured the boy.

Then he pulled another smaller book out of his coat of many pockets, along with a pencil and gave it to the little boy. Harry and the mother exchanged some more words in German, and Harry scooted back across, the boy moved next to him and the mother moved over to sit next to Kay.

She gave her a smile and they both watched with interest – the mother openly, Kay covertly over the top of her book – as Harry started to show him how to draw what looked like a superhero, and then an assortment of animals.

Kay kept a sharp eye on him for a moment to see if Harry was going to use magic through his drawings to calm the boy down – modifying his behaviour – but she couldn’t see any influence in them other than things that accentuated the picture. A sense of cheekiness in a monkey, the joy of a bird singing. The boy was captivated, and yet somehow still bouncing about, only occasionally settling to copy the shapes as best he could. Mostly, Harry appeared to be giving the mother a break from trying to entertain him.

She wondered if Harry used his influence in the illustrations for the children’s books. Would that even work en masse and once it had been through a computer and printed out in production? Unlikely, as far as she understood magic (although perhaps she didn’t understand it quite so well as she’d thought). Regardless, if it was only the initial artwork he could put his influence into, did that mean that he’d used an unfair advantage to move the commissioning editors when they were viewing his portfolio?

But he was a great artist – she knew that. And people wanted to be moved by art, didn’t they? That was the point of it. If he could bring joy to children, help them enjoy the experience of reading or inspire them to be artistic themselves, was that so terrible? Joe using his gift in his teaching was acceptable, as long as it wasn’t anything to do with behaviour, so why wouldn’t Harry using his gift this way be?

And, sweet Goddess, she was tired of feeling self-righteous when it came to him. She supposed it was easy to judge how other people chose to use their gifts, when she’d been given an ability which she could block. Her day-to-day life wasn’t complicated any further than her putting on a pair of glasses. Was she really that morally superior because she had chosen not to use her gift at all, rather than learn to balance it with who she was and make choices every day about what was best?

As one of the stops in the Netherlands was coming up, the mother of the boy started getting her things together to leave and accidentally knocked Kay’s tote over, spilling some of the contents on the floor beneath the table.

‘Entschuldigung,’ she said, getting down on her knees in the aisle to gather the things that had escaped, as Kay rescued her bag. ‘Es tut mir leid.’

Even Kay could translate that. ‘It’s fine. Don’t worry,’ she said gently, taking her purse and hairbrush back with a smile.

Then the woman straightened, holding something pale and lumpy in her hand. She handed it slowly over, the bemusement plain on her face.

Kay reached for it, confused herself until she saw the scorch mark and realised it was her demented corn-husk doll. Heat rushed into her cheeks, and she forced a laugh. ‘Souvenir,’ she offered weakly and jammed the thing back in her bag.

The woman gave her a tentative smile and continued to organise their things so they could disembark at the next station. They left with profuse thanks to Harry, who looked like it had been as much a pleasure for him as it had been for them.

He glanced over at Kay briefly, gaze drifting to her tote bag, which was on the seat next to her, and looked like he wanted to say something, but she raised her book in front of her face again. There were too many mixed emotions swirling around inside her at the moment to face talking to him. Until she had to. And once they got off the train in Amsterdam, the conversaion would all be focused on journey logistics again, steering well clear of any awkward topics.

She stifled a sigh and glanced out of the window. The snow was growing heavier, the further north they went. So much flat land now, covered with pristine white blankets. Were they going to get stranded in Amsterdam next? She wasn’t sure if there would be any other options to travel back if they were. And what would that mean? Them trying to find a hotel together?

She’d deal with that if it happened. For now, she was here, on the train with Harry, and part of her – the part that was considering he wasn’t quite the evil villain she’d painted him as – kept trying to make her sink into the memory of last night when they had curled up together in a bed and she’d played make-believe on a future she’d once dreamed of.

Chapter Ten

2.30 p.m.: saturday 30 october

Centraal Station, Amsterdam

331 miles and 24(+1) hours and 30 minutes until the wedding

Instead of heading straight outside once they got off the train at Centraal Station, they went deeper inside to where it backed onto the ferry docking. Harry went to each of the information desks there to figure out their travel options, while Kay bought them coffee and grabbed a couple of seats as people streamed past.

‘Well, the bad news is, there are still no flights landing in the UK and no ferries directly from Amsterdam until tomorrow morning … and that’s going to Newcastle.’

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