Page 41 of Witch You Weren't Here

Perfect.

She rubbed a hand hard over her sternum. ‘Look, I’m sorry I dragged all this up now,’ she said in a thick voice. ‘I know you’ve got a million things to do, and I better call Mum.’

‘Yeah,’ Joe drew the word out slowly. ‘Good luck with that.’

She gave a watery laugh. ‘Thanks.’

They hung up and before she could chicken out of it – and also maybe because she didn’t want the time to think too much – she immediately called her mother.

It sort of worked to snap her out of the stupor as she couldn’t concentrate on her own misery when her mother’s was so apparent. After they’d exhausted all the possibilities so her mum truly understood Kay was never going to make it to the dinner, they moved on to the strategy for her mum coping, with Kay encouraging her to enjoy it and not worry about her dad being there.

Even as she said these things, she wondered whether she was an enormous hypocrite because she had clearly let herself obsess over Harry and the emotional injuries she’d perceived he’d inflicted on her. Her parents had been married twenty years and there was no ‘perceived’ about it.

Not to mention what Kay had recently learned about herself and her extra ‘gift’. Her presence would have brought all those feelings into stark relief, over and over again. Her mum hadn’t stood a chance at ignoring how she felt and moving on from it with Kay around.

By the time she got off the phone, she was shaking, her eyes burning. Harry was walking over to her, and when he caught her eye, he accelerated his pace, taking her gently by the upper arms.

‘What is it? Has something happened? Are you OK?’

What had happened? Good question. A wake-up call? A good hard slap around the face telling her she was again responsible for causing people around her additional pain? That she’d assumed a bunch of stuff about him and her brother, and now she was wondering how much she’d got wrong over the years.

‘It … it just occurred to me that, not only did I cause my parents’ divorce, my mum has never been able to get over it, because of me,’ she admitted, because she had to admit something. And it wasn’t going to be that she’d made a mistake about him. Something lay down that path, and she was far too anxious to follow it and find out what it was at the moment.

Harry’s eyes darted over her face. ‘Kay, the divorce wasn’t your fault. Your parents’ marriage was already dysfunctional. You just saw what your mum couldn’t. Or even, what she could see, but couldn’t face up to. As for never getting over the divorce, I don’t understand?’

‘Because I was always there exaggerating her feelings. I still am, always there, exaggerating her feelings. She turns to me for support and what I’m actually doing is making her painfully aware that she feels terrible. That she feels humiliated and hurt.’

‘First off, no. You do not exaggerate people’s emotions. They are just more aware of them around you. Secondly, you don’t determine what the emotions are. They are what they are. Third, you don’t even live with your mum. She’s been living on her own for the majority of the last eight years if I’ve understood Joe correctly. And, finally, it’s not your fault that it happens. It isn’t something you can control. Just like I can’t control the feeling about where I’m supposed to be or the eye thing. They’re just there. Part of us.’

She stared up at him, the strength in his hands on her coat and the stern set of his jaw, accentuating the angle of it as a muscle popped. He was serious. And she knew he couldn’t influence her this way – with a sheer force of his will – but it still seemed to filter through her as though it could.

It was a good point about her not having lived at home full time since she was eighteen or at all since she was twenty-one. She wasn’t sure she could believe him necessarily about things not being her fault – because clearly the divorce wouldn’t have happened if her gift hadn’t revealed that her dad didn’t love her mum anymore – but this secondary gift he said she had wasn’t something she could feel happening or will in anyway so—

‘Hang on. What eye thing?’ She stared up into his eyes. Did they have something magical about them? Because she’d always felt like she was falling into them and if it was magic, then that might mean she was not as pathetically infatuated with him as she thought.

‘My eyes change colour according to what the person looking at them wants to see. What’s most aesthetically pleasing to them. It’s an influencer thing to help …’ he trailed off and cleared his throat, a blush touching his cheeks.

‘To help make you attractive to them?’ she concluded slowly.

He nodded and Kay watched his eyes like she was waiting to see something happen, like they would change colour in front of her like a mood ring, even though they’d always been the same to her. It made sense. That beautiful blue touched something within her soul. It was too perfect to be real.

‘What colour are they really?’

Her own face heated up as the subject of finding him attractive was now firmly inserted into the small space between their bodies. Even though he’d said it was a general thing. It was to help make him attractive, not because you found him attractive already.

‘It doesn’t matter. But … not the colour of bluebells.’ He gave a shrug and stepped back, shoving his hands in his pockets. She cringed internally, remembering when she’d made the comparison inside the cave. Your eyes are like bluebells, your magic is so impressive, I’m going to follow you around Biddicote like a puppy unless you hit me on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper and send me away.

An awkward silence stretched out, as though they were in their little bubble under the umbrella still and all the people passing them by were drops of rain separated from them by the magic.

‘So. Feeling better?’ Harry asked with a rueful smile as though he could tell he’d knocked her for another loop.

‘Er … yes. Thank you.’ She nodded, even though it wasn’t true. They had other things to worry about.

‘Right, so. I have the tickets, but all the car-rental places nearby don’t have anything available until tomorrow at the earliest. There is one on the industrial estate outside of the city, but I actually have friends who live here, and I thought I might ask them if we could borrow theirs instead.’

Kay tightened the belt on her coat in lieu of pulling up her socks, because that’s what she needed to do. ‘You think they’d be OK with that? Would you be asking to drive it all the way back to England or leave it at the ferry port? Because we’ll need to drive when we get to Harwich too, won’t we?’

‘I don’t think they’ll mind if we borrow it for the whole journey. They hardly ever use the car. And if we swing by there and they can’t for some reason, we’ll be halfway towards the industrial estate anyway.’

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