Wine, Witches and Song (The Everyday Witches of Wildham-on-Sea Book 1)

by Molly Milligan

  Wine, Witches and Song

  The Everyday Witches of Wildham-on-Sea

  Book One

  “Magic is a matter of the wordless heart”

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  WINE, WITCHES AND SONG

  First edition. April 13, 2018.

  Copyright © 2018 Molly Milligan.

  Written by Molly Milligan.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter One

  That woman, as perennial as a weed, was waving at me through the large plate glass windows of her shop. I raised one hand in reply but hurried on.

  She must have been up early, I thought, as I took a short cut through a narrow alleyway. It wasn’t even seven o’clock yet and our sleepy seaside town was quiet. It was the fifth of May; sensible locals were in bed, and the annual tourists had not arrived. I thought I’d have the rocky beach to myself. I usually did.

  But I heard the door of the shop jangle and close. Gloria seemed to be coming after me, intent on greeting me like an over-eager cocker spaniel.

  Luckily I’ve lived in Wildham-on-Sea all my life, which is four decades and a little bit (a lady never tells) so I knew the nooks and crannies of the old part of town far better than Gloria, who was a newcomer of one month’s standing; she had a good few generations to go before she could be considered local. I ran up a set of stone steps which looked like they headed into someone’s back garden but in fact took me out onto a narrow path that was carved into the edge of the cliff.

  I glanced back. A flash of red skirt went past at the bottom of the steps and she didn’t even glance up to see me.

  I had lost her. I immediately felt bad. It’s not that I am unfriendly – in my job, you can’t be. I love people, and I love their stories. I’m a freelance features writer and I genuinely adore every minute that I spend listening to ordinary people’s tales of courage or adventure. I am struck everyday by how amazing and brave people are. I love it.

  But the only way I can get through a day of such extrovert behaviour is by having a good long solitary early morning walk and no one, no one, is going to spoil that for me. Yes, it’s a little window of selfishness so that I can be a better person the rest of the time.

  I promised my higher self that I would call in on Gloria later that day. It wasn’t that she needed her hand holding as she settled into Norfolk life – in fact she had already made herself a well-known part of the town, and she was liked. She was a woman of middle age, with a warm laugh, mad blonde hair in a fuzz, and so much witchy energy around her that she made the air crackle. She’d opened her arts and crafts gallery right at the top of the old town, opposite where I lived in a detached cottage on the headland, and I was sure that her business was going to do well once the summer came. I’d been in her shop and it was full of delightful things.

  I did like her; she made me smile, with her impulsive and forthright ways. Right now, though, I just needed to be alone. I scrambled down some more rough-hewn steps and came out on the north beach. Our town was cut in half by the River Wild which made a natural harbour, where it met the sea, for fishing boats. The south part of the town had sandy beaches, amusement arcades, caravan parks and more teashops than you could throw a sugar cube at. The north half where I lived was the old town of tumbledown cottages, rocky beaches and narrow roads. Tourists came to take photos of quaint lanes but most of those photos were spoilt, in the summer, by irate motorists getting themselves wedged down cobbled tracks.

  This beach I was walking on faced out eastwards over the North Sea. The sea was grey and crested by fluffy white heads. The shingle was tough to walk on, but I considered it a useful work-out. Up ahead, where the cliffs rose from the beach, there were larger rocks and little inlets and coves that would flood at high tide, trapping the unwary.

  The grey seals had gone away with their pups now but we’d see them return in the summer. For now, though, the beach was open to dog walkers and I could see something fluttering up ahead. I thought it was a dog in a brightly coloured bandana worrying at a pile of rocks, but as I got closer, I realised my eyes had been playing tricks with me. There was no dog. There was a large rocky heap like a cairn, obviously human-made, but the colourful fabric I’d spotted was sticking out between two rounded rocks towards the base of the pile.

  It was a sleeve.

  And in the sleeve was an arm.

  I did not panic.

  I mean, yes, sure, I went all hot and then cold and my head began to spin like I was on a merry-go-round. I took a deep breath until the roaring in my ears had gone away. I reminded myself that I was a strong, capable woman. I’d given birth. I’d nursed my own mother to her peaceful end. I could deal with this. Just as soon as I’d looked away at the sea and dragged in a few deep breaths and fumbled in my pocket for my phone.

  Once I was under control, I walked right around the pile of stones. It was as high as my waist, and I could see an ankle at the far end, and a boot. The skin was grey and purple, mottled and strange. I couldn’t see any other body parts, and there was no reply when I spoke aloud.

  I knew, in my heart, that the figure was dead. I called the police, and waited.

  AT FIRST I SHOVED MY hands into my pockets and stared out across the water, letting my attention focus on the rhythmic waves. But then I started to feel it might be disrespectful to the deceased to have my back to them, so I turned around and bowed my head. After a minute of that, curiosity began to override contemplation.

  Who ends up being buried under rocks on a beach? And not from any kind of accidental rock fall – this was done by a human being. This had been done deliberately.

  That realisation made me angry. Who was the victim? Was it someone that I knew? I prowled around the cairn of death again, looking at the dangling hand and rigid foot with objective eyes. There was an expensive watch on the thick wrist. There was dark hair on the arm and the leg. So it was a man, and it couldn’t have been a robbery because even the densest mugger knows to take the watch.

  The shoe was black leather, thin and shiny and not worn down. It was a new shoe and not the best choice for walking on a beach. That told me he hadn’t intended to be here.

  Well, duh. I was pretty sure no one intends to be squashed under a pile of stones.

  Then I heard the sirens, and I stepped away from the rocks, feeling unaccountably guilty, as if I was going to be the one under suspicion. As the first police officer approached me, I put my hands in the air and started to gabble, “I just found him like this!” I could hear myself from a distance, and I was surprised at how panicky I was feeling.

  Oh, I thought, randomly, that will be the shock kicking in, then.

  As soon as I let myself think that, I began to feel sick and dizzy and my vision darkened. I was enfolded in a flurry of activity as people streamed past me, tape was unwound, radios and phones crackled int
o life, and someone led me away with a red blanket around my shoulders like I was some accident victim. I started to give my name and address but the young officer laughed and told me they knew who I was and had written all my details down already.

  That made me feel uppity. Whatever happened to data protection?

  But there is little privacy in a small town.

  “Your sister will be along soon,” the officer said. I could barely see their face. My eyes were blurry.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “I can’t comment. Ah look. Here’s Chief Inspector Hardy now.”

  I stood up and wobbled into my older sister’s arms. “Bernie, he’s dead!”

  “Do you know him?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Then why are you so upset?” she said in her calm, slightly gravelly voice. She patted me firmly and steered me back to my perch on a folding chair. “You can barely see anything nasty, anyway.”

  “I saw his arm and his leg!”

  Bernie was ruthlessly unsympathetic. “Well, I can’t see any blood or guts or gory bits, so you need to buck up and give that blanket back.”

  “Is the blanket only for if you see gory bits?”

  “Yes,” she said, and took it from my shoulders. She passed it to the police officer standing by us. Somehow, Bernie’s no-nonsense attitude cleared my head.

  “You’re a hard woman,” I said. “Callous, even.”

  “I’d prefer to call myself practical ... and busy,” she retorted. “So get yourself home and get on with your day, and I’ll be along later tonight if I can. Don’t go off anywhere in case someone needs to come and interview you properly.”

  “Am I a suspect?”

  She shot me a withering look. The look of a fifty-year-old woman who has spent thirty years in the police force would turn you to stone, I can promise you. She sighed and said, “I don’t think this is your style. Now, if he had been poisoned by an over-enthusiastic beef stew, then I’d believe it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you disappointed? Did you want to be a suspect?”

  “It’s a bucket list thing, isn’t it? Getting arrested?”

  “Go home.”

  As I turned to go, she strode up next to me, and said in a much more quiet voice, “You are okay, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, sure, of course I am,” I replied as breezily as I could possibly fake it. But when I got home, I made one of the world’s strongest cups of coffee, and sat in my office at the back of the house, and stared out over the sea, and let the drink go cold.

  I LET MYSELF MOPE AROUND for three hours then I stood up and got on with what remained of the day. Moping has its place but it’s not my preferred lifestyle choice. I had a deadline to meet, first of all. It was for a straightforward human-interest article I’d written for a regional magazine, interviewing a woman who had completely changed her life by giving up her job and moving to Finland for six months where she learned how to race huskies. She was now back in our local area and working as a teaching assistant. I read through the whole thing one last time, found the inevitable embarrassing typo (“waving farewell out of an open widow”, anyone?), and emailed it off to the editor with some photos.

  Then it was time for lunch and some phone calls. My daughter, Scarlett, would be twenty-one in ten days’ time, and I’d ordered a very fancy cake from a local shop. I also had her party to plan.

  Twenty-one. I sat in my kitchen with the phone on the counter-top, and tried to get my head around how I’d got old enough to have an adult daughter. Twenty-one! I kept repeating it to myself like it was a charm.

  And in a way, it was.

  Surely this time, this milestone birthday would be the one.

  It felt like her last chance and I wasn’t sure how I’d feel if things didn’t work out this time.

  I was heading back into moping again.

  My morose reverie was interrupted by my phone ringing. My best and oldest friend Clare was breathless with excitement.

  “Turn on the telly! Have you heard?”

  “Let me guess. Alien invasion. Government overthrow. A body found on the beach.”

  “You already know! Are you watching?”

  “Clare,” I said, thumbing at the remote and bringing the television to life, “I found the body.”

  She squealed until she had a coughing fit.

  “I’ll come right over,” I told her.

  “No, don’t. I need to sleep ... last night was bad, I’m sorry...”

  I stopped her apologies. She didn’t need to explain anything to me. “How about I come around tonight and tell you everything? If you are well enough,” I said. “Do you want me to bring you anything?”

  “That ginger tea, please.”

  “How are you doing today?”

  “Ugh. Not great.”

  “Right. Ginger tea on order. Go back to bed.”

  “I haven’t got out of bed yet.”

  We rang off and I turned up the sound on the television. I also pulled open my laptop so I could have rolling news in stereo. There was the beach, looking far more wild and bleak than I usually imagined it, and it was covered with an ants’-nest of police, crawling across it in black and yellow.

  And they had released the victim’s name.

  I gasped as they flashed up a picture of the young man. Will Howlett was one of our local success stories. How could he be dead? He’d only just returned to Wildham-on-Sea, fresh from three amazing years in London, where he had been making a name for himself as a rising singer-songwriter. The reporter had a bland-yet-sympathetic tone as they narrated the barest details of a young life cut short at only twenty-seven. His family, who still lived near the town, were supporting one another at this most difficult time. Stock phrases soothed the horror.

  But I was feeling deeply unsettled. He’d only returned on Saturday, and no one knew why. Everyone had been indulged in a little bit of gossip about that. Failed love affair, blah blah blah – but no one knew for sure. Had something happened in London, and followed him up here? Was this a targeted attack, or were we all at risk? I couldn’t help my chain of thoughts. Nothing like that happened here.

  Nothing like that happened here, of course, because this town had more than its fair share of witches. I suspect that’s what drew Gloria to this place. Norfolk’s got history, you see, that goes way back. Waaaaay back. There’s a reason that Matthew Hopkins started out his witch-finding vendetta around here, back in the seventeenth century. East Anglia is ancient and it’s weird. When you’ve got a lot of witches, you tend to have a pretty low crime rate. Even the non-magical folk know there’s something different about Wildham-on-Sea.

  So I guess I was also feeling personally affronted that something so horrible could happen in my own backyard.

  I tried to explain that feeling to Gloria when she turned up – unannounced – on my doorstep, later that evening.

  I was getting ready to go around to see Clare, but when I heard the knocking on my door, I assumed it was Bernie come to see me like she’d promised she would. I was going to send Bernie a text telling her to find me at Clare’s, but when I opened the door, I was assailed by a cloud of patchouli as Gloria wafted her way into my house.

  She was a tall white woman, and statuesque. She carried a fair few extra pounds but she walked like a queen and wore what she pleased and ate what she liked, and essentially grabbed life with both hands. I knew a little of her history, because we’d bonded as two divorcees. Her children were all grown up and scattered across the globe. But unlike my situation, she was still on very good terms with her ex-husband and they remained in touch. I think it was probably impossible to fall out with Gloria.

  I was later to be proved wrong about that.

  “You have heard, haven’t you?” she demanded, with her hands on her ample hips.

  “The murder? Everyone has heard. But how did it happen, that’s what I want to know?”

  Gloria browsed her way through my k
itchen, examining pots and jars. “They say he was found under a pile of stones! He was crushed to death. Oh how lovely! Is this from Morocco?”

  “Yes. It’s traditional Fassi work. Um, I think the victim had to have been killed or at least stunned before the rocks got piled on him,” I said. “He wasn’t just crushed to death. They were too neatly done. Put that down! Please. It’s not ready yet. And it wouldn’t be right for your hair.”

  She put the jar of nettle decoction back on the shelf. “What do you mean, neatly done?”

  “I saw him.”

  She squealed.

  “I found him.”

  She squealed again and the high pitch made me fear for my glassware.

  So I had to tell her everything and she was a good listener. She parked herself on a stool at the breakfast bar and didn’t interrupt at all, though her fingers spun her rings round and round, like some part of her always had to be in motion even when she was trying to be still.

  I finished by explaining why I felt so personally attacked by it. “Things like that should not happen here!” I told her, banging my fist on the worktop. I’d worked myself up into quite a state by this point. “Why didn’t I feel a disturbance? Why didn’t I know it was going to happen? I was scrying at Beltane and I saw nothing. Nothing! Not a hint. Did you know?”

  Gloria was taken aback. “What, did I know someone was going to get murdered? No, Jackie, I did not! Come, now,” she added, in a soothing tone. “You’re overwrought. It must have been a shock. Shall I put the kettle on?”

  “Oh – no, I’m sorry.” I suddenly remember where I had to be. “I’m off out. Damn it, I’m late already. I’ve got to go.” I started to pull my coat on and I picked up my bag.

  Gloria smiled with her head on one side. “Hot date? It’s about time.”

  “Fat chance. I wouldn’t be interested. No, I’m off to see my friend Clare.”

  She kept on smiling and I knew exactly what she was angling for. I pretended to be ignorant. “But anyway, thank you for coming round. I had been meaning to call in to see you, actually.” I tried to steer her towards the door.