The Witches of Cambridge (11 page)

“H
IGHER
! H
IGHER
!”

Amandine laughs as she pushes Frankie, his little four-year-old legs kicking with sheer delight, through the air.

Next to her, Eliot pushes Bertie, very lightly, so the swing barely gets above a forty-five-degree angle.

“Carefully, Daddy,” Bertie says softly, when Eliot applies a touch too much pressure and sends him a little higher.

Amandine glances over at her husband, seeing the distracted glaze in his eyes that has been so typical lately. She wonders, yet again, what he’s thinking about and wishes that even if it’s another woman he could put it aside and be present with his children. The thought of Eliot having an affair causes her heart to heave with hurt, but it’s almost as painful seeing how he seems to have forgotten his own children.

After the twins were born, it gave Amandine as much joy to see how much Eliot loved them—to watch him stroke their fluffy little heads so gently and change their diapers so carefully, as if he might hurt them with his big man hands—as to feel how much he loved her. In those days Eliot’s whole world revolved around his new family. He dashed home from London as soon as he could leave the office; he took long weekends so often that his boss finally intervened. Eliot called her three times a day and was always happy whenever Amandine called him, his voice lifting with joy as he answered the phone.

“I want to get out. I want to get out.”

“Love, he wants to get out,” Amandine tells her husband, her voice stronger and more focused on its target than the soft plea of her little boy.

“Oh, right, sure,” Eliot says, blinking his way out of his daydream, then scooping Bertie out of the swing and popping him onto the grass.

“The slide now,” Bertie says, grabbing his father’s hand and pulling him in the right direction. “But you have to come with me, okay?”

Amandine watches Eliot being pulled across the park by their son, who nearly trips over his feet in delighted eagerness to get to his desired destination. She wonders why she still calls him by the endearments they’ve always shared—“Love, Babe, Ellie”—since there seems to be so little love between them nowadays. It’s habit, she supposes, a verbal tic, not dissimilar to swearing, though it sounds so different.

“Higher, Mummy! Higher!” Frankie squeals, making sure he still has her attention.

“Okay, sorry sweetie,” Amandine says, pushing him higher. Her boys might not be magical but they’ve always had an acute ability to tell whenever their parents’ attention wavers off them for a moment. Last week, while they were having dinner, Frankie was telling her, in intricate detail, about the lifestyle of a T. rex, and she was nodding along and making noises in all the right places. Then he stopped and said: “Mummy, you’re not listening.” And she’d had to admit she hadn’t been, not really. It’s strange, Amandine thinks, how her students and other adults aren’t able to tell the same thing. Or perhaps they can, but they’re just too shy to say anything.

Amandine hasn’t fixed a date to introduce Noa to her husband, she hasn’t even worked out how she might make it happen—when was the last time they had a dinner party?—and she dearly hopes that, after the book group disaster, Noa will still be willing. They’re meeting tomorrow for another tutorial, so Amandine can ask her then. Across the park Bertie glides down the slide on Eliot’s lap, giggling with glee. A shot of sadness, tinged with hope, pierces Amandine’s chest and she prays to the moon goddess Mama Quilla that Noa will say yes.

—

The next morning Héloïse spends a few hours puttering around the house, reshelving books, doing a little light dusting, eating what’s left in her fridge from Amandine’s last visit, generally doing not much of anything at all. She thinks of François often, of course, since his spirit—despite Amandine’s efforts—is still scattered all over the house. When Héloïse enters the living room, her eye catches on his high-backed brown leather chair, the one he sat in every evening to read Proust (it stubbornly having refused to move at all). For the last decade or so François had been trying to make it through
À La Recherche du Temps Perdu
but would always fall asleep before finishing two pages. In the kitchen she’s stopped short by the last of his coffee cups. In the bathroom, his shaving brush. In every room, his words dance in the air.

Je t’aime. Je vous aimerai toujours. I love you. Ne me laisse pas partir. Don’t let me go. Please…

Having the house full of François has given Héloïse much-needed comfort over the last two years, enabling her to pretend that he’s still living, that he’s just left a room as she’s entered it, that he’s always around a corner or down the hall. And yet, for the past few days, ever since her turn in the park, Héloïse hasn’t felt just comforted but also claustrophobic.

Today their little house feels too small for one woman and one dead man. She finds that François’s presence has suddenly somehow expanded, that he’s sucking out all the air and squeezing her into the edges of the rooms. Something is changing.

For the past week, Héloïse has left the house at least once a day. And, with each day that passes and each step she takes outside, Héloïse finds that she’s returning to herself. When she’s not in the house, she doesn’t hear François’s voice. It’s only at night now that he talks to her. Sometimes he tells stories, re-creating tales from the favorite books they shared, putting his own twists into plots he’s forgotten. Although Héloïse is getting better at not talking to him, she can’t stop at night. The lights go out and the darkness presses against her chest and her hands, perfectly fine by themselves during the day, want nothing more than to reach out and hold his.

When milky morning light fills the little bedroom, Héloïse is brave once again and ready to venture out into the world alone. This morning she decides to walk to the market for breakfast. When François was alive they’d gone to the market every Sunday, buying fresh buttered baguettes for breakfast, sitting out in the sunshine when the weather was warm, scurrying back to the house if it was cold or wet. On sunny days, after eating, they toured their favorite stalls, hand in hand, lingering over French cheeses, Spanish chorizo, and bags of salted almonds that never seemed to last until lunchtime.

Héloïse’s favorite stall in the market has always been the secondhand-book stall, owned by a man called Ben, who inherited it from his father, Theo. Héloïse has been visiting the bookstall since she was a PhD student at Newnham, when Theo was in charge and Ben was a baby, occasionally brought to the bookstall to visit his father. As an eager student, Héloïse had shared many wonderful discussions about literature with Theo, learning a great deal from the man who, though only a few years older, seemed to have read every book ever published, many that hadn’t been. A subtle flirtation had always skimmed the surface of their conversations, but it had never gone anywhere since they’d both been married then.

The years passed and Héloïse stayed on to teach and Ben grew up among the market stalls, learning the book trade and getting to know the desires and delights of the regular customers. By the time she was a professor of French literature and he was working full-time on the bookstall, Ben knew Héloïse’s literary tastes almost as well as she did, offering her new books on every visit and telling her what she would and wouldn’t like before she even picked it up.

Héloïse hasn’t been to the market or the secondhand-book stall since François died. After drinking a double espresso, she leaves the house and, twenty minutes later, arrives first at the fresh bread stall to buy a croissant. Cambridge croissants aren’t the same thing as Parisian croissants, but they’ll do in a pinch. Nibbling the crusty pastry, Héloïse wanders through the four lanes of food, trinkets, arts and crafts before at last arriving at Ben and his books. She finds him kneeling on the cobbles, sorting through a large cardboard box.

“
Bonjour
, Ben.”

He looks up, frowning, but instantly upon seeing her he grins and stands.

“Lou, you’re back! It’s great to see you.”

For a second they stand together, then Ben pulls Héloïse into a hug.

“I’m sorry about François,” he says softly into her shoulder. “We all miss him.”

When they pull apart, Héloïse nods. “Yes, me too.”

“How are you doing?” Ben asks, casting an eye up and down her. “You look beautiful as ever, I must say. But then you are the most glamorous person I know.” He glances down at his own scruffy T-shirt and jeans. “I’ve never had the touch for glamour myself. I didn’t know when you’d come back. I’m glad you have.”

“Thank you, so am I. How is your papa?”

“He’s well. I’ll send him your regards.”

Héloïse nods. “Please do.” She steps toward the planks of wood covered with books that form his shop. Gazing at the jumble of colors and words, she runs her finger along some of the spines and feels herself starting to breathe more easily. What is it, Héloïse wonders, about the comfort of books? Just by touching the printed words she already feels sparks of excited curiosity begin to wake up her brain. She picks one up and holds it out to Ben.

“Any good?”

He nods. “I stayed up till four o’clock in the morning finishing it.”

Héloïse smiles. “I can’t remember the last time I did that.”

Ben scuffs his feet in the dirt. “Well, I suppose you’ve had other things to…”

“Yes, I suppose I have.” Héloïse holds the book, her hand hovering to slip it back among the others. Then, changing her mind, she presses it to her chest.

“I’ll take it,” she says. “It’s about time I stayed up until four o’clock in the morning for a reason other than just missing my Frankie.”

—

“Hey, Cosi, is it
seicento
grams of ground almonds instead of flour?”

Knocked out of bitter thoughts about Tommy (who’d called the night before to say that he was going to try and make a go of it with the harlot for the sake of the baby—Cosima had hung up on him), she glances up from her mixing bowl to see her sous chef, Marcello, standing in the doorway. She hired him for his Sicilian roots and huge brown eyes. The female customers adore him. They gaze at him when he asks for their orders, lost in those eyes, imagining whether their future children would have his thick black hair and olive skin. He draws a crowd when he flips dough in the kitchen, women gathering on the pavement outside the windows to watch, nudging one another and giggling like schoolgirls. But sadly, for all his beauty, he lacks brains, so his genetic code is wanting. Ten times a day Marcello asks for clarification on her recipes and she’s had to throw out dozens of batches of lemon-basil biscuits because he burned them. Still, Cosima can’t bring herself to fire him.

“Instead of flour, Marc, otherwise the cake’ll be too dry.”

“
Ah, certamente
,” Marcello says with a smile, “
perfetto
.
Grazie
.”

When he’s gone, Cosima opens her special cupboard and removes a glass jar filled with one of her special spices. Twenty-one glass jars sit in her cupboard, each unlabeled, though Cosima knows what’s in every one. Now she sprinkles a dash of fennel flower (strength), scabiosa (unfortunate love), and striped carnation (I cannot be with you) over her orange and poppy seed muffins, mumbling a little incantation. This is the tenth batch of enchanted biscuits she’s baked for George—in an attempt to undo this first spell, the one that has him mooning over her every lunchtime—and she hopes against hope that this might at last be the one that works.

“I know, Kat,” Cosima says softly. “I know I shouldn’t have done it. I know you always warned me about practicing magic for selfish purposes and I’m sorry, okay? I’m trying to make it better, but it’s trickier than I thought.”

All her life Cosima has felt her big sister watching over her. She’s always heard Kat’s voice in her head, reproving her use or misuse of magic (enchanted breakup brownies are one thing, fertility cannoli quite another) and critiquing her business decisions. Kat would have a heart attack if she knew what Cosima has been doing with the baking spells lately; she’d kill her if she knew what Cosima had accidentally done to Kat’s best friend. So Cosima had better fix that, and quickly.

Marcello pokes his head around the door again.

“
Mi scusi
, Cosi, am I meant to add cream to the cake mixture before it goes in the oven? I’m sorry, it is a bit…thick.”

Cosima smiles. “Yes, Marc, just as it says on the recipe, okay?”

“
Perfetto,
chef,
grazie
.” He nods, grinning, and turns to go.

“Wait,” Cosima says, and he does, lingering in the doorway, that hapless smile on his face. Why not give him a chance? Perhaps…

“
Sì
, chef?”

“Marcello.” Cosima rolls her tongue around the three syllables of his name. “Would you like to work late tonight?”

—

Noa steps inside Santiago’s flat. Her aunt Heather wouldn’t like to think she’s gone home with someone she barely knows, someone who claims to have the ability to rid her of the habit she hates most about herself, someone who talks about magic as if it’s something he has at his fingertips. The rational, sensible side of Noa is a little nervous but even though she can’t see his secrets, and even though she’s not entirely sure she can trust him, when she’s looking into those deep brown eyes she doesn’t really care.

“Take off your shoes,” Santiago says, as they reach the end of the hallway.

“Of course,” Noa says, slipping off her trainers.

“Follow me,” he says, reaching for her hand.

Noa allows herself to be led down the hallway and into the living room. As Noa looks around, it takes every ounce of her depleted social graces not to gasp. The room is like a cave, like the catacombs underneath a twelfth-century church carved out of stone and painted with the faded frescos of Catholic saints. The walls are windowless and white—in places. She’d expected Santiago’s pictures to be hanging everywhere but instead he’s painted them directly onto the walls. Between dark green forests, deep red fields, and purple sunsets are dozens of shelves lined with hundreds of different objects. Noa can’t identify even half of them immediately, though she feels she’s stepped into an exotic antiques shop filled with mysterious, magical objects from all over the world.