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

by Molly Milligan

  “Getting old looks like fun,” Sandra said. “That’s all I’m going to do when I retire. Go for lunch and argue loudly.”

  “I dunno,” I said. “Not everyone has it so good. Have you seen Evangeline Dot lately? I think she might be finally losing her marbles.”

  “Do you think? I know she needs help around the house now – she’s got your Scarlett, hasn’t she? But I never thought she was going to succumb to dementia. I suppose it could happen to anyone.”

  “Back up,” I said in surprise. “My Scarlett?” My daughter was a community carer. She was studying for nursing qualifications, and supplemented her income with part-time work from a local agency.

  “Yeah, I saw her the other day and asked how she was. She was just coming out of Evangeline’s place and said that she’d been requested specifically.”

  “Evangeline asked for Scarlett? What is that woman playing at?” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing.” I tried to turn the conversation to other things, but now I was feeling angry. Evangeline Dot could say what she liked to me, but I did not want her involving my own daughter. She could not defend herself like I could.

  Sandra looked at me quizzically, but she let the matter drop. We talked about the folk club again, and somehow I found myself agreeing to help Sandra dig into its activities and get to the bottom of why it was so unwelcoming to new people.

  Like I didn’t already have enough to do.

  “WE GO STRAIGHT TO THE source,” Sandra told me, once we’d digested enough of our ample meal and felt able to move again. We walked slowly out into a rather pleasant afternoon. Birds were singing, flowers were budding and trees were sending their pollen everywhere. Sandra sneezed.

  “What do you mean, straight to the source?” I said.

  “Ron Thompson. Let’s go and talk to Ron about the folk music club. We’ll just say we’re thinking of doing a feature on them and I am sure he’ll open up. Everyone loves to see their name in print. Except on court day, obviously.”

  “I am not so sure. He’s never been very open to the press, as I recall, except for that business with his wife. But okay, let’s try it.”

  So that is exactly what we did. Sandra drove us back into town in her little grey sports car – she resolutely refused to buy a red one as that was “too stereotypical”.

  We knew where Ron lived. I know it is going to sound a little creepy but old-time journalists like Sandra and I do know where almost everyone lives. In any small town, there are those people who are “known” for whatever reason – and Ron was “known” because he’d run the folk club for, like, forever.

  He lived with his wife Mary in a beautiful barn conversion that had once been on the edge of town, but now found itself bordered by new houses. It had enough of its own land around it that it still felt rather private and exclusive. There was a tall brown wall all around it, built of the rounded cobblestones so distinct to certain areas of Norfolk. The ornate metal gates stood open and Sandra drove right through, and parked on his gravel driveway, slap in the middle, making a statement.

  The house had one of those massive picture windows all bordered with beams so everyone could see inside and admire how tasteful the conversion had been. We crunched our way to the porch but the door opened before either of us could ring the bell.

  Ron Thompson was in his sixties. He was youthful and I knew that he dyed his hair – that wasn’t my witchy sense nor even some sinister journalist thing. I’d been behind some racking in the pharmacy one time, when he was trying to have a whispered conversation with the cashier. So not only did he dye it, he was embarrassed about dyeing it. I didn’t care what people did, but I was interested in how he felt about it.

  He was dressed in a pair of well-ironed casual slacks – honestly, I never would use that word when “trousers” would do, but there was something so catalogue-man about these garments that only “slacks” really covered it. You can guess already that these slacks were paired with a neatly-pressed lambs’ wool sweater with no bobbles (all my woollen garments are bobbled) and deck shoes. With tassels, obviously. I scrutinised him for any hint he might be wearing fake tan.

  Possibly.

  “Good afternoon, ladies,” he oozed with a wide grin.

  I let Sandra take the lead. This was her idea, after all. “Hello, Ron! You’re looking well. I wonder if you remember me ... I’m Sandra and I work for ...”

  “The local paper!” he said, interrupting her rather rudely in his keenness to show off his knowledge. “Oh yes, my dear, I remember you very well. You did a marvellous feature for my wife when she was so ill. It meant so much to us. We shan’t forget, oh no. And Jackie Hardy, too! A real treat to see you both. What can I do you for,” he added, laughing as if it was the most original joke.

  “We were wondering if you would be interested in being featured in an upcoming story?” Sandra said.

  “Well, well, that sounds jolly interesting. Why me?”

  “We think our readers would be fascinated to learn more about the folk music club, and...”

  Once again, he steam-rollered over Sandra while she was still speaking. “No, sorry.”

  She was quite stunned, as was I.

  She tried again. “It’s such a long-standing institution in the town, and we’d love to know what...”

  “I can’t help you. Our members are very private people. You must respect that.” He started to close the door.

  Sandra pushed her foot forward and he stopped with the bottom of the door inches from her glossy mules. She went full-throttle into full-on hard-nosed reporter gear. “The folk club has never been featured in the paper. Never. It has been run in the public community centre by yourself for twelve years and has never once advertised anything – not a concert, not a jam session, not a single event, and it never broadcasts for new members. You have no accounts and are not registered as any kind of entity. The same small handful of people are seen entering and leaving, and carrying instruments. Music is heard. Yet when people have attempted to become members, they find themselves rebuffed. Why is this, Mr Thompson?”

  I didn’t have anything to add, but I tried to make myself look big and intimidating. That’s hard when you’re five-foot-two, but I inflated as much as I could.

  His face had completely closed up. His eyes were narrow slits and his mouth was set in a line. “As you yourself have said, music is heard coming from the centre. That is what we’re doing. Playing folk music. We do not hold concerts because that is not our remit. We are simply a small band of enthusiasts and private people. If no new people join, that is hardly our concern. It only means that they were not right for the club.”

  “But Mr Thompson, people have tried to join...”

  “I am sure you understand that there always has to be a balance and sometimes a new member upsets things.”

  “Mr Thompson, we will write about the club with or without your input...” It was the last-ditch threat of a beleaguered journalist, but it had absolutely no effect on Ron.

  He sneered. “You will not be able to. No one will talk to you.” He began to press the door against Sandra’s foot.

  We withdrew and the door slammed closed.

  “Wow,” she said, looking at me.

  “Wow indeed.”

  We walked pensively back to her car.

  “I don’t know what you think,” she said as we drove away. “But he’s pretty damn guilty of something.”

  Chapter Six

  A pile of work landed on me on Monday morning. This was good for my bank balance and yet also unfortunate, as the previous night Sandra had driven me over to her home, and we’d attempted to get to the bottom of Ron Thompson’s secret. We’d done this by getting drunk and firing up her state of the art computer to trawl the internet.

  Two drunk middle-aged ladies, let loose on search engines and social media, is never going to end well; by the second glass we were looking up our exes and by the third glass I’d been sign
ed up to another dating site and Sandra was sending a regrettable message to someone she’d been for a meal with, and who had not contacted her since.

  I vaguely remembered getting a taxi home, and the rest was a blur. I woke up blearily, still half-dressed, with a pounding head and a sense of foolishness and irresponsibility.

  I inched my way to the kitchen first, and blundered about, trying to concoct a decent hangover cure. I downed a glass of water with some electrolytes added, and then mixed up some turmeric powder with ginger and tried to drink that, diluted, too. After a little dry toast, I was able to get into the shower and I pretty much lived there for fifteen minutes, muttering a pleading and pathetic chant to the element of water, until my aching legs forced me out. The waste of water sent a shock of guilt through me. I usually put the plug in the bottom of the bath, and collected the grey water in buckets for the garden, but I just wasn’t capable of thinking straight at all.

  But I had to sober up. I sat at my computer, wincing until I remembered I could adjust the screen brightness, and read through my emails. I had some responses to pitches that I needed to follow up, and a tweak to make to an article I’d already submitted. The editor wanted it back about a week before he’d even asked me – such are the demands of editors, they live in a different time altogether – and I had to work, whether my eyes were itching or not.

  I had missed my early morning walk, and I was beginning to feel both grumpy and hungover. So, just before lunch, I cleared my desk and headed out into the too-bright sunshine. I had my smartphone to hand, and two large plastic bags with me. One was full of bird food and the other was a mixture of wildflower seeds. It still wasn’t too late in the year to scatter them, and I took great delight in being a “guerrilla gardener.” There was a roundabout on the edge of town which was a sea of spring bulbs at the moment, because Clare and I had sneaked out there in the dead of night last autumn and planted dozens of daffodils, crocuses and snowdrops. Clare had mostly supervised and I had done the digging.

  The display, when it emerged from February onwards, caused a flurry of letters to the local paper but no one knew – except us two, and Donny, who knew everything that happened involving local green spaces, of course.

  Anyway, I’d checked with him before I’d done anything, in case the council already had plans for the area.

  So I scattered the bird seed under bushes for the ground-feeders like wrens, and I dropped the wildflower seeds in patches of rough ground that no one cared about, and just the little acts of subversion made my headache seem to lift.

  Ron Thompson was on my mind. I knew that the folk club met at the community centre on a Monday night. I let my feet wander me that way, while I pondered his possible involvement in the murder.

  Could he have killed Will Howlett? Will had been in the folk club, as had Charlotte. Ron followed Will from the pub that night. Ron was secretive and indeed obstructive and now he was the subject of anonymous letters about fraud.

  I couldn’t imagine for one moment what Ron would gain from killing Will, but he was definitely tied up in things.

  And then I realised something. Not only did Charlotte have no musical instruments in her bedsit, according to the police, but she didn’t go to the folk club. She used to, along with Will, but she had stopped when Will had left for London.

  There had to be a link, I thought. And then there was the matter of that ghost I had seen.

  Which Ian Martinet had seen, too. I had no idea that the professor was magical. He hid it very well. I thought I knew all the magical folk in the area.

  I reached the community centre. The road outside was double-parked with lines of cars, and the car park was likewise full. Inside I found a women’s institute craft market in full swing, and I ended up accidentally buying a macramé teapot cosy.

  I escaped out again before I purchased a hand-painted ashtray – I don’t even smoke – and looked at the noticeboard in the lobby. There was no word at all about the meetings of the folk club. But one person should know about it, and I sought him out in his little cubby near the community centre’s kitchen.

  Alan the caretaker.

  He greeted me with a wide grin. He was a red-faced man in his thirties who needed to smarten up his diet and his exercise routine, and he knew it. He would turn over a new leaf on a monthly basis before lapsing back into takeaway food and cans of lager in front of the television.

  “Jackie! How are you?”

  “Not bad. Hey, Alan, what can you tell me about the folk music club?”

  “Bunch of weirdoes. Not the music. Music’s all right. But the musicians are the weirdoes. You don’t wanna go joining them, my love.”

  “Do they still meet here on a Monday night?”

  “They do. There’s about seven of them. I mean, to be honest, I love the music but they’re all a bit ... well, like I say, weird. Can’t think of anything else to say. Weird.”

  “They definitely play music then?”

  “Course they do! And it’s good, too, generally. I like a bit of folk, I do, and I tried to join them, once, but they weren’t for having me, you know? I go to Bickering now, on a Thursday night.”

  “What do you play?”

  “Hurdy-gurdy,” he said proudly. “The Bickering lot are much friendlier. None of them’s weird. There’s a lot of people from round here go over to Bickering to play music because this lot won’t let anyone in. I car share with Maggie.”

  “But why won’t they let anyone join? What’s their problem?”

  He shrugged. “If you ask me, they’re just a clique what has got all pally and that. They’re all too comfortable and know each other and don’t want to have to go to the effort of getting to know anyone new. It’s just like school. Horrible.”

  “So you don’t think they are hiding a deep, dark secret?”

  He burst out laughing. “No, my love! What secret would that be?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said. “What with it being a secret.”

  “No, no. There’s no secret. I’m here every Monday to unlock and lock up, and I stay here and listen, and they just play their music and go on their way. That’s it.”

  “Thank, Alan.”

  I knew that Alan wasn’t lying to me, and if they were hiding a secret, it was a long-running one. I walked out of the centre and stood for a moment on the pavement, looking left and right, trying to decide which way to go.

  Listen, Evangeline Dot had told me.

  Something shoved me in the back.

  I turned around and there was nothing there.

  I went in the direction that I had been pushed, and it took me away from town and towards the place I had been the day before – I found myself walking towards the area that Ron Thompson lived in.

  This time, I had a different purpose. I was not going to ring his bell or ask him any questions. That approach had failed. I could not return as a features writer.

  But I could return as a witch.

  I was a witch of small places and domesticity; of the hearth and the home. I was one in a long line of traditional witches. My mother and grandmother and all my forebears had not had the access to the internet that I did, so they never felt the need to label themselves as one thing or another. Gloria, when she had first met me and we had detected one another’s power, had introduced herself as a Wiccan and asked “what” I was.

  “Just a witch,” I had said.

  “Just” a witch. But I couldn’t really describe the wordless things that made up my very being. Really, to be a witch wasn’t to be a definable thing. It described the relationship I had with nature and the world. As I was part of nature, it described my relationship with myself, too. It had to be open and honest.

  So, honestly? I couldn’t walk past Ron’s house and see through walls. I couldn’t project myself into his house and spy on him. I couldn’t cast some kind of spell that would take him over and force him to speak the truth to me. If only I could!

  But I could feel for connections and im
balances. There are a lot more networks tying us all together than most people are aware of; we’re all linked, caught in a web, joined to one another and to other creatures, too, and to place and to the wide world beyond.

  A witch like me is dedicated to taking care of those unseen connections and repairing them when necessary.

  I had used up all my wildflower seeds and scattered all the bird food. I tucked my phone away, out of reach. I had been taking photos of where I’d scattered the seeds, so I could compare my work later in the year. But now I wanted to be free of technological distractions.

  The road that led towards Ron’s house had layers of history that I could feel all around me. It had been an old track that led to a farm. The farm was now gone, with only the barn that had become Ron’s house remaining. But the memories of cattle lingered along the way, and industriousness and hard work and toil. My footsteps went in the path of many thousands of others. I passed by a house on my right that was throbbing with good energy, all pink and shiny, and I knew that a baby had been born recently to that family, and it made me smile.

  Something pale and insubstantial flittered up ahead and disappeared – not by going behind something out of sight, but by literally ceasing to be visible – pop! It had been a ghost, but I couldn’t tell what it was in the daylight, and now it was gone.

  Then someone appeared from a side street on the opposite side of the road, and turned left so that they were ahead of me, and going in the same direction that I was heading in.

  They had a small, pinched-in aura that I could only just detect.

  It was Vin Paston once again. Perhaps the ghost had been the same one I’d seen before, hanging around Vin and Charlotte.

  Vin had something under his arm and I immediately thought of the mysterious book, so I picked up my pace. I had no worries about him spotting me. I was often seen walking around town and there was nothing suspicious about me at all.

  As I got closer, I saw that he was carrying the local newspaper, not a book or manuscript. I slowed down again, and pulled my phone out to give me more of a reason to stop and start randomly. I stared down at it, and up again, and down at it, as I wandered along. Anyone would have thought I was checking social media or emails.