Sarah Painter - The Language Of Spells

Gwen carried on with the pep talk as she drove. She had a dodgy moment when she thought she saw Cam and nearly drove up onto the pavement. It was a tall man with messy dark hair, but as soon as she passed him and looked in the rear-view mirror, her heart in her mouth, she saw that it wasn’t him at all. Cameron Laing was long gone. Probably in London. Or prison.

The big houses gave way to row upon row of traditional stone cottages and a town hall with a triangle of grass outside. A man in head-to-toe tweed was changing parish notices on the board outside. Pendleford’s surface was as pretty and as tame as she remembered. If it hadn’t been for the daily taunting at school and a very bad memory that began with the river and ended at the local police station, then perhaps she wouldn’t have hated the place quite as much.

At the very edge of town, there was a row of box-type houses. Council – or more likely ex-council – houses, with neat gardens and freshly painted windows that did nothing to hide the brown pebbledash and the nineteen-sixties municipal architecture. Then the town petered out into farmland and Gwen almost missed the turning for Iris’s road; the small wooden sign was weathered and only the word ‘End’ legible. After four hundred yards up a single track road, Gwen turned a corner and the house came into view. Stone-built, square and bigger than she expected. Gwen got out of the car and pulled on her fleece. The sky was pearl-grey and the weak November sun drooped in the east. It was quiet. ‘Too quiet,’ she said aloud, trying to make herself laugh. It didn’t work.

Gwen hesitated at the front gate, her body rebelling against setting foot inside the boundary of the property. Which was ridiculous. She was homeless and she’d been given a house. It was crazy to be anything except insanely grateful. Crazy .

The front door had once been dark green, but was sorely in need of a paint job. To her left, fields stretched out to the horizon and a flock of black birds swooped down to the frozen earth.

Gwen spent five minutes attempting to unlock the door before realising it was already open. The porch was cleanly swept and a neat pile of mail sat on the windowsill.

The inner door opened and a woman wearing narrow black trousers and a yellow blouse looked at her in surprise. ‘Yes?’

‘Um, is this End House?’

‘Yes.’ The woman’s pale blonde hair was cut in layers and she shook her head slightly to flick her fringe away from her eyes.

‘This is my great-aunt’s house. Um. That is, I think this might be my house.’

The woman’s face changed and what could charitably be described as a smile appeared. It displayed a disturbing number of teeth. They were small and white, like baby teeth; alarming in an adult-sized mouth. ‘You’re Gwen Harper. I wasn’t expecting you yet.’ She took a step back. ‘I’m not ready for you, but I suppose you’d better come in.’

‘Thanks.’ Gwen stepped over the threshold. The hall was large and square, floored in red quarry tiles. The walls were whitewashed, but patterned with tiny black cracks, like something dark was trying to break through.

‘I’ll show you around.’ The woman turned to go, but Gwen stopped her.

‘I’m sorry, but … Who are you?’

‘Oh, bless you. I’m Lily Thomas. I’ve been helping out your poor auntie for years.’

‘Helping?’

‘Cleaning and cooking, that kind of thing.’ Lily frowned at Gwen. ‘She was very old, you know.’

Gwen looked at the woman’s frosted-pink fingernails. They didn’t look like they’d scrubbed anything in their lives.

The woman followed her gaze. ‘Falsies.’ She waggled them. ‘Aren’t they brilliant?’

The doors off the hallway were all shut, but the staircase of polished dark wood curved invitingly and Gwen took an involuntary step towards it.

‘She needed help with all kinds of things towards the end, bless her.’

Lily’s voice seemed to be coming from far away and Gwen could hear a rushing in her ears. I must be holding my breath, she thought. Good way to faint. She made herself take a lungful of air, but the rushing continued and the stairs seemed to be glowing just for her. She walked towards the bottom step, confused when yellow silk appeared in her vision, eclipsing the lovely warm wood. It was Lily, barring her way.

‘The upstairs isn’t ready. I’ve not had a chance to clean. I wasn’t expecting you—’ Lily hesitated. ‘Not yet, I mean. I wasn’t told—’

‘That’s okay.’ Gwen stepped around Lily and took the stairs at a jog.

Weird, she decided, already on the landing. The door on her right was wide open, like someone had come out in a hurry. Through the gap she saw a double bed with a flowered wash bag lying on the quilt.

Lily appeared behind her, puffing slightly. ‘It’s a mess. I haven’t had a chance—’

‘Don’t worry.’ Gwen opened the other doors from the landing and discovered a small bedroom with a single bed and a desk underneath the window and another double with a brass bedstead suffocated by layers of blankets and a patchwork quilt.

‘Let me show you the kitchen,’ Lily said firmly.

Gwen allowed Lily to usher her back down the stairs and into a long room lined with 1950s cream cabinets with pale green trim and lemon Formica worktops. A red enamel coffee pot and an electric kettle were the only things visible on the spotlessly tidy work surface. A small table with two chairs tucked in was at the end and the small window above the stainless-steel sink was cracked.

‘What’s through there?’ Gwen gestured to the door behind the table.

‘That’s the pantry. It’s very small.’ Lily smiled again. ‘Go and take a look at the garden. I’ll make us a nice cup of tea.’

‘Right.’ Gwen left Lily moving comfortably around the kitchen and walked into the cold, dead air. Place must be well sheltered; there’s no wind at all . The garden was separated from the fields by a stone wall on one side and a line of trees at the bottom. Gwen identified rhododendrons in the corner, a giant spreading conifer thick with cones, holly, ash and hornbeam. A few fruit trees were dotted about the lawn. A lot of work, she found herself thinking. Around the corner was an untended vegetable plot. It had been cared for at one time, though, that was easy to see. Stone paths led along rows and the edges were defined with old red bricks. There were willow wigwams for peas or beans and fruit canes, but one was half pulled down by a mutant rhubarb that had clearly got ideas above its station.

The front garden offered more grass, many bushes, and wide borders filled with the seed heads and brown plants of a dead summer.

The crisp evening air cleared Gwen’s mind. What was Lily Thomas doing in her aunt’s house? The way she seemed so at home wasn’t that odd – especially if she’d been working for Iris for years – but why on earth was she here now? She hesitated, wondering whether she was overreacting, when some bundles of greenery caught her eye. Half-tucked behind the water butt, three tied-together collections of foliage. She recognised branches of ash and broom, and remembered her mother fixing something similar above the door to their flat; to ward off malignant forces, she’d said. Gwen dropped the bundle as if it were hot, and went back inside.

Lily was squeezing a tea bag against the side of a mug as if it had personally offended her.

Gwen sat down at the table, feeling slightly dazed.

‘I’ve made you a casserole but it’s down at my house. I’ll bring it up later.’

‘That’s very kind,’ Gwen said, ‘but I’m not sure—’

‘No need to thank me. Least I can do for Iris’s niece.’

‘Great-niece.’

‘Right.’ Lily popped open the lid on a plastic tub and arranged slices of fruitcake on a plate. ‘So, are you from the area?’