The Witches of Cambridge (19 page)

Amandine stares at him. “You’re dating Cosima?”

George nods.

“Oh.”

“What?” George scowls at Amandine. “Are you saying it’s too soon? Are you saying you wouldn’t want me dating your sister?”

Amandine frowns. “I don’t have a sister.”

“That’s not the point,” George snaps, his eyes filling with tears. “Am I really so hideous? Really? I’m a good man. I am. Does it matter that our babies will be short, fat, and bald? Most babies are anyway.”

“Babies?”

George shrugs. “That’s not the point. The point is that Kat’s furious. We had a huge fight and she walked away. We haven’t spoken since. That’s never happened with us before, I don’t understand it, I just don’t understand.”

Amandine looks at her friend, at his watery eyes behind thin gold-rimmed spectacles. She wants to help, to take his pain away, to offer him a sense of understanding and so, without thinking out the consequences, she does.

“She doesn’t hate you,” Amandine says. “She loves you.”

“I don’t think so,” George says. “She used to, but she certainly doesn’t seem to anymore. I only wish she did.”

“No.” Amandine shakes her head. “I mean, she
loves
you.”

George stares at her, speechless.

Amandine nods, then shrugs.

“She
loves
me?” George whispers. “But…well, that explains why she doesn’t want…but my God, I never, that’s just—incredible.”

“It’s not that incredible. You’re a lovely man. I’m not surprised.”

George laughs. “I’m hardly an Adonis, am I?”

“I don’t think most people are that shallow, do you?”

George fixes Amandine with a wry smile. “You’re one to talk. Your husband—excuse me for saying so—is one of the most gorgeous men I’ve ever met.”

Amandine’s face clouds and her eyes fill with tears.

George steps toward her. “What? What’s wrong? Is Eliot all right?”

Amandine nods. “See, this is why you’re a catch. You’re so bloody thoughtful, observant, sweet…If you had a wife I bet you’d notice whenever she’d had a haircut or was wearing a new dress. I bet you wouldn’t cheat on her with your secretary.”

“No, well, I don’t have a secretary, but…” George trails off, staring at Amandine, openmouthed. “Is Eliot having an affair with his secretary?”

She sighs. “Yes. No. I don’t know. I’m convinced he must be having an affair with someone, either his secretary or some beautiful barrister in a short skirt. It’s really the only sensible explanation.
Maman
assures me he isn’t, but I just don’t know. I don’t know what else it could be.”

“Why?” George asks. “Why do you think so?”

“He’s been so different, so distant. I’ve felt nothing from him, no love, not even a shadow of the adoration he’s always had for the boys and me. He’s numb. He’s distracted, he’s not with us, he’s not loving us because he’s thinking of her.”

“Well”—George is tentative—“that doesn’t mean…after all, it could be something else, he might have a big case on, or—”

“I found a letter.”

“A letter?”

“Well, sort of. A piece of paper with her name all over it. Sylvia.” Amandine spits out this last word as if it’s poison. “Sylvia. A hundred times. In his handwriting.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“It doesn’t look good,” George says, doing his best to focus, though he’s still thinking of Kat. “I must admit.”

“No, it doesn’t, does it? There is a letter too. He received it when he started being weird with us.”

“But you haven’t read it?”

“No, of course not. Otherwise I’d know what the hell was going on, wouldn’t I?”

“Yes,” George admits. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“I’ve spent the last three days searching the house, but I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Ah.” George’s eyes light up.

“What?”

“Well, if I did have a wife, but I wanted to hide a letter from her, I wouldn’t keep it at home.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“No,” George says with a smile, delighted, with all the agony he seems to be causing lately, to finally be of some help. “I’d keep it at work.”

“Ah,” Amandine exclaims. “Of course.”

—

Kat stands in her kitchen. It’s been a long time since she’s actually cast a baking spell. Her mother warned her so often against spells for one’s own gain, and Kat desperately hopes this doesn’t count. She’s mainly doing it to save her sister from risking her life, and George from being stuck with something he doesn’t want. That it will alleviate her own heartache a little is an incidental blessing.

Luckily, one thing Kat doesn’t have to worry about is how to do the spell in the first place. Kat learned her method from her mother and has never changed it. Lucinda Rubens baked her spells into bread. Every Saturday morning (in addition to other times that arose spontaneously) she set up her kitchen for an early-morning bread baking session, bustling down the stairs while her husband slept, waking Kat on the way. Together they filled the little house with the smell of yeast and dough and happiness. Peter Rubens always woke with a smile on Saturday mornings. He’d whistle in the shower, bound down the stairs, spin Kat around the kitchen, then pretend to tango with his wife before dipping and kissing her full on the lips.

After breakfast, Kat would go around to the neighbors with her mother, carrying a basket of bread. During the week, they’d make inquiries to see who needed their help. They baked yarrow bread for those with broken hearts, sorrel bread for neglected children, stephanotis bread for couples who were fighting, pear blossom bread for anyone grieving, laurel bread for those needing financial help, and a simple sage bread for everyone else.

When Lucinda died, Kat was too busy taking care of the new, squalling, motherless baby to bake bread on a Saturday morning. And after that, her father stopped whistling in the shower or spinning her around the kitchen. When Cosima was old enough to learn the secrets of special bread making, Kat taught her all the techniques and skills she knew. Once again the house was filled with the smell of yeast, dough, and happiness. And once again their father began whistling in the shower. Sadly, at seventeen, Kat was now too big to spin around the kitchen although happily, for Cosima at least, she was still the perfect size.

As it turned out, Cosima had quite a flair for flavor. She created things that shocked Kat, who had only ever followed her mother’s more mundane recipes. One Saturday, Cosima made rosemary, stilton, and walnut bread and their father ran up and down the street after breakfast, telling his neighbors he was training for a marathon. Another Saturday her bacon and brie bread caused Peter Rubens to quit his sales job and revisit a great passion for pottery and carpentry that he’d long before abandoned. Kat personally puts her father’s remarriage down to the chocolate and chili bread Cosima made when she was six. Kat liked her stepmother and loved that she was finally free to leave her father and little sister and go out into the world to live her own life.

Usually, baking spells required that the intended recipient eat the bread. However, in this case it isn’t possible for either Cosima (since she’d instantly know it was spell bread) or George (since Kat isn’t speaking to him right now), so she will have to do something a little unconventional and eat it on their behalf. Kat isn’t entirely sure whether this will work, and wishes she could ask her mother, but of course she can’t.

This is the first time Kat has needed to invert one of her mother’s beautiful, kind, sweet baking spells into something ugly, cruel, and sour. She’s used a slight twist on the binominal theorem to capsize and corrupt the original spell.

Once she’d calculated the weights and measures on her list of slightly sinister ingredients, Kat went shopping.

Now she unwraps the bouquet of dark red roses, begins ripping off the petals and adding them to the flour, salt, sugar, and water. She snips off thirteen thorns and sprinkles them into the mixture. Kat grinds in the black pepper, jasmine (separation), and basil (hate). Then, when she’s kneaded the dough—pounding and slapping it on the bread board—until it’s far too dense to be delicious, Kat adds the final touch: two pods of vanilla and three drops of her own blood. She doesn’t let it rise, doesn’t stroke or shape it, but slams it straight into the oven. Then she whispers a few words and sprinkles them with a few exquisite equations to ensure the perfect balance of the spell.

Nearly an hour later, when the bread is nicely burned and black, Kat cuts two slices: one for George and one for Cosima. She turns out all the lights, draws all the curtains, switches off all electrical equipment, and sits down at the kitchen table. A single candle flickers in front of the bread, casting shadows of broken promises and impossible futures. Kat bites into the first slice. It’s dry and dense. It sticks to the roof of her mouth and catches in her throat so she has to swallow seven times before it’ll go down.

It takes Kat thirty minutes to eat both slices of bread. In between every bite she mumbles an incantation: of love lost and forgotten, of friendship regained and illusions shattered. When her plate is empty, Kat blows out the candle and sits in the dark. Then she closes her eyes and prays that it’s not already too late.

W
HEN
G
EORGE WAKES
the next morning he can instantly feel that something inside him has dramatically and fundamentally changed. Or rather, he’s changed back to how he was before…At first he’s not sure what it is and then, as he pulls himself up to sit and turns to see Cosima lying asleep next to him, he knows.

“Oh, shit.”

She stirs.

Fuck.
He freezes.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. How the hell did this happen?

And then it all starts coming back to him. The café. The food. The pizza. The cannoli. The wine. The sex. The nonstop sex they’ve been having. Kat. Love.

Oh, fuck.

She must have drugged him, she must have—and then he remembers the baking spell. The fertility bread. George opens his mouth, but this time he’s too stunned to even think anymore, let alone speak.

“Hey, you,” Cosima half-opens her eyes and gazes happily up at him. “Morning.”

“Morning,” George mumbles.

Cosima frowns. “Are you okay?”

George nods. “Yeah, sure, of course. How are you?”

“Still a little knackered after last night,” she says with a grin, “but happy.”

Last night? Oh, fuck.

George nods. “Right, right. Yeah, me too.”

Cosima sits up. “Are you sure you’re okay? You look a little peaky. Shall I make you some tea? I’ve got special herbs that’ll clear a cold up before it—”

“No!”

“What?”

“Sorry.” He coughs. “I mean, no thank you, I’m fine.”

George slides out of bed, scrambling around on the floor for his underwear while trying to maintain some semblance of decency.

“What are you doing?”

“I, um, I just remembered, I’ve got an early-morning tutorial, with that crazy chap, the one who likes to work at dawn, anyway…” George pulls on his trousers and looks around for his shirt.

Cosima laughs nervously. “Are you running out on me?”

“No, of course not,” George says, “don’t be silly.” He steps quickly over to the bed, giving her a chaste kiss on the cheek. “Sorry, I’ve just got to go.”

—

Héloïse stops outside 28 St. Barnabas Road, her hand hovering over the bell. It’s like a Band-Aid, she thinks, just rip it off. Héloïse rings the bell, steps back, and waits.

“I’m sorry,
mon amour
,” she whispers. “I love you, I do. And—”

The door opens. Theo stands in the doorway, smiling. It’s been a long time since Héloïse has seen him, and the first thing that strikes her is how little he’s aged. The second thing that strikes her is just how handsome he is.

“Come in, come in,” Theo says, stepping aside to let Héloïse enter. She watches the back of his head, his thick wavy white hair that curls at the nape of his neck. He’s a full head taller than she, while François was the same height, and strolls while François always hurried. I wonder if it’ll always be like this, Héloïse thinks, a constant stream of comparisons with the love of her life and every man she meets.