Sarah Painter - The Language Of Spells

‘I won’t take up any more of your time. You’ve got your work cut out for you here.’

Gwen smiled. Relief made her giddy. ‘I’m quite looking forward to it. I’ve never had my own house before.’

Lily looked at her curiously. ‘You’ve never bought a house?’

‘No. Just rented. Usually just a room in a shared house, actually.’

‘Oh?’ Lily pursed her lips. ‘Isn’t that a bit cramped?’

‘A bit. I’ve always moved around so much – for my work – my domestic arrangements haven’t mattered much.’ Gwen had always felt safest moving around. Pendleford had been the last place she’d called home and that hadn’t ended well.

‘You’re not working now, though.’

‘Not right at this second. No.’ Gwen didn’t feel the need to explain Curious Notions to Lily. She seemed like the type who would turn her nose up at second-hand, let alone ‘craft’.

‘You’re going to stay, then?’

‘Yes.’ For now .

Lily made a face. ‘Make sure you find that list. I don’t want any trouble.’ She picked up her bag and headed out of the door at a clip. ‘And make sure you have that soup tonight. It’s chicken.’

Okay, Gwen thought. So Lily was a bit odd. A bit intense. She opened the file again and plucked out the sheaf of stapled A4 paper with ‘End House, Contents’ typed on the top sheet. It was handily split into rooms, but after a minute of reading: one candlestick, pewter, broken base; one wool rug, red; three fountain pens; one wastepaper basket, her will to live fled. She was sure Lily hadn’t taken anything, anyway. She flipped to the last page and signed the declaration at the bottom. She made another mug of tea and drank it at the kitchen table. Why would she be so anxious for Gwen to check the list if she had? Unless she was looking for something. Gwen shook her head to release the ridiculous thought, but instead found herself staring at the small grey key.

A key for a locked door. Gwen didn’t have to pause; the knowledge jumped to the front of her mind; an extrovert piece of information that couldn’t wait for its turn in the spotlight. She ventured outside to the small outbuilding beyond the vegetable patch and tried the whitewashed door. It was locked. The key turned smoothly and the door swung inwards. The room wasn’t big, but it was obviously well used. A scrubbed wooden bench sat against one wall, a chair pushed neatly underneath. Another wall was filled by shelves and these were crowded with jam jars, neatly labelled. Gwen picked one up and read ‘Wolfsbane’. Okay .

There were bunches of herbs hanging from the ceiling and a butler’s sink in the corner with a wooden draining board to the side. There was a tartan-print cat bed in the corner. Gwen sighed with relief. That explained the noises in the night. The poor thing could be shut in somewhere or was hiding out of fear. Odd that Lily hadn’t mentioned a pet. Her heart clenched as she imagined it hungry and afraid, clenching harder when she realised that she was now responsible for it.

Her eye was caught by a notebook. It was spiral-bound and had a plain cover. She flipped it open and was confronted with tightly packed writing in black Biro. Iris’s writing sloped violently to the right and she seemed to have little regard for the spaces between words. Gwen pulled out the chair and read a page at random.

M D came again today. I knew she would’ve been drinking to get up the courage and by the smell of her it was sweet German wine. Not surprising that she has the palate of an illiterate eight-year-old. I gave her the usual prep (2 x WB, 1 x F, 1 x LLB) .

Okay. So Great-Aunt Iris had an acerbic streak. She flipped to another page.

That bloody woman was sniffing around again. There’s nothing worse than a frustrated witch.

Witch. Gwen felt sick. If the cat’s black, she thought, I’m out of here.

That night, Gwen didn’t even pretend to consider sleeping in Nanette. Yes, she didn’t want to be in Pendleford or inside End House, but it was forecast minus six and too late to drive very far. Gwen knew she could be irrational, but she wasn’t about to sleep in her van when she owned a perfectly good, warm bed. And food. She poured the soup from the flask into a pan to heat it. Rich smells of leek, garlic and chicken rose up. Gwen got down a bowl and cut a thick slice of the fresh bread. She managed a couple of mouthfuls, but tiredness mugged her and she put the spoon down. She trailed upstairs to the master bedroom and the enormous bed. Her mind and heart were trying to reconcile the coldness from Cam. Coldness that she’d expected. It was exactly what had stopped her from picking up the phone so many times over the last thirteen years. She’d heard that the anticipation of pain was usually worse than the pain itself. Well, not in this case. Gwen couldn’t believe how much it hurt to look into Cam’s face and see nothing. Nothing but a chilly disdain. She closed her eyes and a spiral of colour twisted in the darkness. She watched it turn and writhe until sleep took her.

Gwen opened her eyes. The darkness pressed against them as she struggled to wake up. She’d been dreaming about the river. Black water, icy-cold. Stephen Knight’s pale face emerging from the thick depths as if he were floating in oil, not water. His eyes open and accusing. His mouth opening, filling with the black liquid.

Scritch, scratch. There it was again, the sound that had woken her up. Gwen forced herself properly awake. She ignored the window that had inexplicably opened and tiptoed onto the landing. She peered over the banister and there, sitting squarely in a patch of moonlight on the hall floor, was the skinniest cat she had ever seen. She crept down the first couple of stairs, watching carefully to see if the cat would bolt. It stayed motionless, watching her with unblinking eyes that were nothing more than reflections in the half light. Gwen looked casually away and then back, showing that she wasn’t a threat. The cat hadn’t moved and it looked reasonably relaxed. In fact, it looked like it was waiting for her, so she tried a couple more stairs. Then it meowed. Instinctively, Gwen put her hands over her ears. The noise that split the air wasn’t feline. It was like a rusty saw being dragged over corrugated iron. ‘Jesus!’

The cat regarded her with disgust. Perhaps it didn’t like blasphemy. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You startled me.’

The cat got up and walked into the kitchen, its bottle brush tail high in the air.

Gwen followed obediently and then realised there wasn’t any cat food in the house. She took down a tin of tuna and mashed up a little on a plate, while the cat wound its wiry body round and round her legs. ‘You’re going to trip me over,’ she said.

The cat screeched.

‘All right, all right.’ Gwen put the plate down in front of it.

While the cat made short work of the tuna, she filled a saucer with some watered-down milk. ‘You shouldn’t really have dairy, but you look like you need the extra calories.’ I’m talking to a cat. God help me.

The cat sniffed the liquid, then lapped. Gwen felt a ridiculous sense of achievement.

She fetched one of the sad-looking cushions from the living room and put it on the floor of the kitchen. ‘You can sleep in here tonight.’ Then, shutting the kitchen door, she went upstairs. She went to the bathroom and washed her hands. There was no knowing what the animal had. Worms or fleas or, quite possibly, scurvy. She would need a litter tray, food, a new cat bed, and to get it checked by a vet.

Gwen paused on the landing, looking at the moonlight on the hallway tiles and listening to the night-time sounds of the house.

The cat was curled up on the foot of the bed. Gwen looked at it for a long moment. The cat looked steadily back at her. Then she got into bed.