The Language of Spells (2 page)

Gwen yawned again and lay on the bed, meaning to test it for just a moment. It was gloriously comfortable and after five nights on a camping mat it felt like heaven. She pulled the quilt over herself and closed her eyes.
Just for five minutes.

Gwen woke up disorientated and very hot. She executed an ungainly quilt-wrestle and went downstairs. The curtains had been drawn and a casserole dish sat warming in the oven. Lily had clearly been and gone. Gwen ignored the creepy feeling that gave her. She was being a suspicious modern urbanite; things were different in the country. People obviously still looked out for each other. Gwen still felt disorientated from her nap. The week of sleeping badly and the weirdness of the situation had caught up with her and she couldn’t summon up enthusiasm for food. Gwen turned off the oven and went back to bed. Tomorrow she would visit the legal people and straighten out the will. If she could sell the place straight away, she’d have the deposit to rent a flat and could get her business back on its feet. The money would save her life and she’d be duly grateful to Iris. She just wasn’t going to live in Pendleford. Not even for six months.

She dragged herself back up the stairs, every step an effort, and by the time she’d unpacked her overnight bag, she was yawning so long and so hard it was difficult to brush her teeth.

Some time later, she sat bolt upright. The room was pitch-black and her eyes strained with the effort of trying to see. Her heart was thudding as she struggled to work out what had woken her. A scratching noise almost made her cry out until it happened again and she realised it was the sound of a tree branch against glass. She forced herself to breathe deeply, to snuggle back down into the bed. Silence. No traffic, no sirens, no late-night revellers vomiting or fighting outside her window. It was probably the quiet that had spooked her. And the scratching. She clicked on the bedside lamp and climbed out of bed. The window was open and a brisk stream of night air flowed inside. Gwen swallowed. She had closed that window earlier. She had definitely closed it. Forcing herself forward, Gwen approached the window, feeling the cool air on her bare arms. She pushed the window open further and leaned out. The moon was riding high in the clear sky. She couldn’t see the offending branch, but there was plenty of greenery along the side of the house. She shut the window and latched it before getting back into bed and falling instantly asleep.

The next day, Gwen awoke to the sound of hammering on wood. She stumbled downstairs, trying to shake off the fug of sleep.

Her sister’s voice cut through two doors like a razor blade through trifle. ‘Gwen? I can see your van!’

Gwen opened the door and stepped smartly back into the hall, the full force of Ruby being too much to take in a confined space.

‘Oh for goodness’ sake. You were still in bed.’ Ruby shrugged off her jacket and put down her leather handbag. ‘You can’t open the door like that. I could’ve been anyone.’

‘Not really.’ Gwen turned and headed back up the stairs. ‘Put the kettle on.’ She had to be dressed to deal with Ruby.

After hastily pulling on jeans, a shirt and hoodie, she found Ruby in the kitchen.

‘This place is a museum.’ Ruby frowned at the painted walls. ‘It’s not even tiled.’

‘I like it,’ Gwen surprised herself by saying.

‘Really?’ Ruby raised her eyebrows. She looked around. ‘I suppose you could knock through and make a proper family kitchen.’ She wandered through to the dining room next door, then hastily returned. ‘Did you know the ceiling’s sagging in there? It looks like it’s about to come down.’

Gwen concentrated on pouring hot water onto tea bags.

Ruby opened some cabinets, ran a finger along the shelves. ‘She was very clean, anyway.’

‘She’s got a cleaner. Or a housekeeper. I’m not sure of the difference.’

‘Fancy.’

‘I think she needed someone at the end. I wish we’d known.’

‘It’s not our fault,’ Ruby said robustly. ‘She could’ve called.’

‘She might not have known you lived in Bath.’
What an awful thought. Iris all alone out here, her great-niece just down the road.

Ruby shrugged. Then she said, ‘It’s weird that she left you the house, though.’

‘I know.’ Gwen said, feeling awkward.

‘She always liked you the best.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Gwen said. ‘I actually can’t remember her at all. It’s a bit odd.’ Which was an understatement. Ever since getting the letter from Laing & Sons, she’d been thinking about Iris and finding a strange blank, like typed words snowed over with Tippex.

‘God, do you remember that chicken she had?’ Ruby paused, hand on hip and a faraway expression on her face.

Gwen shook her head.

‘Oh, you do. It was like her pet or something. You nearly stood on it, remember? Iris went mental, but it wasn’t your fault. I mean, who keeps a chicken in the house? Bloody disgusting.’

‘I don’t remember.’ Gwen closed her eyes. A wave of nausea, like she was riding a roller coaster, swooped through her stomach and she opened her eyes again.

‘You must,’ Ruby was saying. ‘You cried all the way home and Gloria took us for ice cream. She never did that. You must remember.’

Gwen’s mouth filled with saliva. She tasted strawberry at the back of her throat and almost gagged. ‘I remember the ice cream. Just not Iris. Not the house.’ She gestured around. ‘I don’t remember any of this. Not at all.’
And that couldn’t be right.

‘Well, we only came here once or twice. And you were young.’

‘Not that young. Thirteen, maybe?’ Gwen had a horrible feeling she knew why there was a blank in her memory. She’d probably asked too many questions and Gloria had solved the problem with a memory charm. Charms and hexes and simple casting were the kinds of thing Gloria had taught Gwen while other mothers were showing their kids how to bake fairy cakes.

Ruby shrugged. ‘Well, you’re not missing much. Apart from the chicken, it was pretty boring. Gloria and Iris talking and pretending they weren’t arguing.’

‘I don’t remember,’ Gwen said again, hating that she sounded so forlorn, hating that being back in Pendleford was reminding her of all the things she’d tried so hard to forget.

‘I don’t care,’ Ruby said robustly. ‘It’s all in the past. Gloria’s escaped to Oz and Great-Aunt Iris is dead; what does any of it matter?’

Gwen pulled a face. ‘I just feel guilty. I don’t deserve this place. I hardly knew the woman.’

‘Well, according to Gloria, we were better off without her.’

‘I guess.’ Gwen handed her a mug, then sat down at the table to sip from her own.

‘It’s not our fault,’ Ruby said. ‘Gloria’s the one who cut contact. We were just kids.’

They had been forbidden from having anything to do with Iris. In fact, sitting in her house was probably still a capital offence. Whether she had passed on or not. Gwen was just going to ask Ruby if she had any idea what had caused the schism between Gloria and Iris, when Ruby said, ‘Look, she was a grown woman with her own friends and family and life. We weren’t part of it, through no fault of our own, but that doesn’t mean we missed out or that she missed out.’ She looked around the kitchen again. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Then why leave me her house?’

Ruby frowned. ‘How the hell should I know? Dementia?’

‘That’s not funny,’ Gwen said. After a moment, she added, ‘She sent me birthday cards.’

‘Did she? When?’

‘Every year after I turned thirteen. After we stopped visiting.’

Ruby opened her eyes wide. ‘That’s weird. What did she write?’

‘Nothing. Just her name. Just her initial, actually. I used to hide them from Gloria. Did she—’

‘No. Nothing.’ Ruby shook her head. ‘She never sent me anything. Didn’t give me a house, either. It’s not fair.’

Gwen thought that Ruby was only half-joking. ‘Good thing you married rich.’

Ruby looked around. ‘Can you imagine what David would do to this place?’

Gwen shuddered. David was a good man, but he was an architect and didn’t seem able to appreciate a house unless it had weirdly big windows or a glass atrium in the middle or a roof made out of turf.

‘Well…’ Ruby had stopped assessing the house and focused on Gwen. It was disconcerting. ‘I see you’re still dressing like an art student. People will think you’re mad.’

‘I look fine,’ Gwen said. ‘For my job, this is normal.’

Ruby pulled a face. ‘If you say so.’

Gwen thought about telling Ruby about the people she knew from the art fair circuit. Next to Bonkers Brenda, who crocheted bikinis and embroidered them with little faces, and often wore her creations on the outside of her clothes, she was positively conformist.

After a moment of silence, Ruby said, ‘Are we going to pretend the last year didn’t happen?’

Gwen realised that she didn’t have the energy for a showdown with Ruby. The stress of the last few weeks and the oddness of being back in Pendleford crowded everything else out. ‘I really don’t want to argue. I’m too freaked out by all this.’

‘Fine with me,’ Ruby said. She pursed her lips. ‘It’s unseemly.’

Gwen laughed. ‘Unseemly?’

‘And it’s bad for my chi.’

Gwen stopped laughing.

‘I’ve had a course of colonics and I don’t want to retox.’ Ruby spoke as if expecting a medal of some kind.

‘You had what now?’

Ruby gave her a withering look. ‘You know perfectly well what it is.’

‘And you paid for that?’

‘Mock away. I feel lighter.’

‘I bet you do.’

‘In my soul,’ Ruby said and the shock of hearing Ruby saying a word as loaded and mumbo-jumbo as ‘soul’ shut Gwen up.

‘I’m doing yoga now, too,’ Ruby said.

Gwen looked at Ruby in disbelief. ‘Yoga?’

‘It’s transformed my life,’ Ruby said. Her expression was a mix of anxiety and defiance, exactly the same as when she’d brought home a copy of
Smash Hits
magazine, aged ten. ‘Marcus says I’m a natural. He says I’d be able to take the teaching course if I wanted, set up my own classes.’

‘Marcus?’ Gwen instantly pictured a bendy-limbed Lothario leaning towards her sister, his long fingers reaching for her golden hair. She suppressed a shudder.

‘He’s been brilliant,’ Ruby said. ‘And the yoga really helps with stress.’

Gwen refrained from snorting at the idea of Ruby being stressed. Ruby led a charmed life straight from the pages of a John Lewis catalogue while she’d been living like … Well. If she was being kind to herself, she’d say a free-spirited artist. If not, she’d have to go with hobo.

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Ruby said, as if reaching into Gwen’s mind and plucking her thoughts clean out. ‘You’ve never faced up to responsibility. As a mother—’

‘Here we go,’ Gwen said, irritation leaping to the surface. ‘I’m not a mother so I don’t understand.’

‘Well, you’re not. And you don’t.’

This was why she shouldn’t spend time with her sister, Gwen thought. At a distance she felt almost fond, at close quarters she could happily strangle her. ‘Do you meditate?’

Ruby looked startled. ‘Of course. The mind–body connection is fundamental to—’

Gwen shook her head and then found she couldn’t quite stop. She clenched her fists, digging her nails into the palms. A tight ball of anger lodged in her stomach and, all at once, she realised why. ‘Let me get this straight,’ she said, surprised at the venom in her own voice. ‘All this time, I’ve been keeping away from you, not wanting to infect your precious life, your precious family with my “alternative” ways and you’ve been doing bloody yoga.’

‘You make it sound like a bad thing. I thought you, of all people, would be pleased.’

Gwen closed her mouth. There was nothing she could say to fill a pit of ignorance that deep. The unfairness of it burned bright and Gwen was surprised that Ruby couldn’t see the raw energy sizzling under her skin. She counted to ten to stop herself from saying something she would regret later and then settled on, ‘You must’ve had quite the epiphany.’

‘It’s not the same as your … stuff,’ Ruby said. ‘Yoga has been around for hundreds of years; it’s a spiritual thing, it’s not dangerous, it doesn’t ruin people’s lives,’ she counted the points off on her fingers, finishing with, ‘and it doesn’t mark you out as a weirdo. Not these days. I mean, you can buy yoga pants at The White Company.’

‘Well, if that’s what’s most important to you. The look of things—’

Ruby shrugged. ‘It’s a factor. Especially for Katie. You remember what school was like.’

Gwen repressed a shudder. Millbank Comp had not been a friendly place. Not for either of them. ‘I haven’t seen you in ages. I don’t want to argue with you,’ Gwen said. She pushed the anger and hurt back down and forced out, ‘If yoga makes you happy, I’m happy for you.’

Gwen couldn’t look Ruby in the eye, though. Instead she began to explore. She opened the door to the larder. Old newspapers were stacked neatly in a cardboard box on the floor, a broom hung from a nail on the back of the door and there were empty glass jars filling the top shelf. A spider ran across the floor.

Ruby called across from the living room. ‘It’s got the original fireplace.’

Gwen joined her, trying not to shiver. The living room was misnamed. The walls were painted in oppressive purple which, combined with the patterned carpet and sofa, made Gwen’s eyes itch. She sniffed. There was the shut-in house smell, but with something else underneath. A herb of some kind?

‘Good cornicing.’ Ruby pointed upwards.

Gwen pulled the curtains back, revealing big sash windows. ‘These are nice.’

‘Original?’ Ruby said.

‘I think so. I don’t think Iris got around to doing a modernist makeover.’

Ruby prodded the sill. ‘Probably rotten. Nightmare to look after, but people lap up this kind of thing. Very saleable.’

‘Mmm,’ Gwen said non-committally. She showed Ruby the upstairs, pausing underneath the loft hatch. ‘I suppose I should look up there.’

‘I’m not doing it. That’s what a man is for.’

‘How very 1950s of you.’

‘Oh please. Spiders, itchy insulation, low ceiling. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?’

‘True romance indeed. How is David?’ Gwen asked, smiling as she pictured her brother-in-law. He was married to his work somewhat, but a good guy nonetheless.