“All right,” she said, and she was smiling under her mulishness.
About fifteen minutes after she had gone to have her probably-broken hand to be dealt with, Bernie called me. “Where are you?”
I went to the door of the gallery and waved across the road. My sister was standing at my front door, her phone held to her ear. I called her over and she came into the gallery. “We’ve had the strangest confession from Paston and I can only imagine what your involvement actually is.”
“I’ve given my statement,” I said. It had been a highly watered-down one and I really couldn’t account for my presence at Blickling Hall that night.
“You’ve given a statement, yes, but there are holes in it that I could drive a bus through.” She shook her head. “The thing is, I don’t want to know what you’ve missed out.”
“No, you don’t. What’s happened to Charlotte?”
“Released without charge. She’s gone home.”
“To her bedsit?”
“Yes. She seemed perkier and she was suddenly happy to corroborate her brother’s confession.” Bernie shook her head in exasperation. “So that’s it, then. You definitely need to stay out of things now.”
“I will, I promise.”
She glared at me.
What else could I say? I shrugged.
Bernie sighed. “Okay, then. Oh – I owe your Scarlett for missing her birthday party. How is she?”
I think she meant, “has she suddenly become magical, like you expected?” I smiled. “She is absolutely fine, and totally her own person, and just the same as always, and a better daughter than I could ever had hoped to have had.”
“I understand. Hey, she is a credit to you.”
“Thank you.”
We paused for a moment to bask in the unfamiliar mutual appreciation, but it soon passed. Bernie straightened up and said, “Right, anyway, I’ve got a lot to do. Mostly paperwork. You would not believe the amount of paperwork. Oh, and a press conference and a staff meeting and some meetings with my superiors and a meeting with the CPS and then there is another difficult meeting with the Pastons and did I mention the paperwork?”
“You might have done. What’s happening with Ron Thompson and the fraud?”
“That’s with my colleagues in another department but I wouldn’t imagine he’ll get away with it. Keep reading the news.”
“I write the news.”
She laughed. “You’re bloody well creating it at the moment.”
Not long after she had left, Gloria returned, suitably festooned in bandages. Her knuckle was slightly cracked and her hand had been splinted but it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. The bruising, she was warned, was going to be nearly as painful as a break. “I’m going to need Cora a lot more,” she said. “Just when I was hoping to get things started, too!”
“You could take on a school leaver or someone who needs a summer job,” I said.
“I didn’t mean in the shop. I meant my energy-raising women’s empowerment group.”
I blinked at her. “Your who-the-what-now? I am sorry ... have I slept through an entire conversation?”
“Maybe. Or maybe we just had the conversation in my own head.” She smiled apologetically. “I do that a lot. I think I’ve talked about something but actually I just practised it.”
“I definitely don’t remember it.”
She clapped her hands and remembered, a second too late, that it was going to hurt. We winced at the same time. “Yeah, I’m starting a women’s circle to raise energy and bring us closer to the great cosmic mother. You’ll come, won’t you? Will you ask Clare?”
I spluttered. “I’ll ask her but you know she won’t come.”
“She might surprise you. Ask everyone, well, anyone who identifies as female, anyway. It will be fun!”
Maybe it would. I didn’t really want to go, but I agreed anyway. After all, she was my friend.
I bid her farewell and wandered back to my own house. There was a small box on my doorstep and I froze in shock. It wasn’t from Bernie, because she would have brought it with her over to me in the gallery. I peered at it without touching it. There was no label or note attached. My name was written in biro on the brown paper that wrapped the box.
My first thought, in these terrorism-laded times, was that it was a bomb.
Then I had a word with myself about how ridiculous that was, and picked the box up. I held it to my ear just in case it did tick – it didn’t, and modern bombs probably didn’t, anyway.
I couldn’t feel anything sinister emanating from it. So I took it inside and unwrapped it on the kitchen table.
Under the paper was a plain brown box, and inside the box was a heavy glass ball like fishermen used to use, in nets, as floats. Local gift shops sold endless replicas of these items but when I held this one, I knew that it was old, and genuine.
I held it up to the light. The glass was green and impure, with swirls and marks in it. As I looked, the swirls moved.
There was magic in this ball.
I placed it carefully back in its nest of shredded tissue in the box, and knew, then, it was from Evangeline Dot. Was it a gift to say thank you, or a practical item to help in my fight against the Hopkinites? She would already know what had happened last night, though I knew I had to go and see her soon.
I sat down and put my head in my hands. I realised that I was committed to the task, now, whether I liked it or not. I knew too much, and Ian Martinet knew me. On an impulse, I pulled my laptop closer and flipped it open. I searched for his name, hoping – irrationally – that I would see a note on his profile on the university website that he had left, suddenly, to start a new life in Tahiti or somewhere.
No such luck.
In fact, what I read brought a chill to my spine.
It shouldn’t have. His latest research projects, the updated website said, were in the area of young people and the psychology of fake news. He was undertaking research around how we made moral judgements and acted upon them, in the face of peer pressure and community feedback. It sounded interesting.
But I had a very bad feeling about it, and I couldn’t quite put it into words.
Chapter Twenty
For the moment, though, life went on as normal – except nothing had gone back to normal for me. Not now I knew what I knew.
Scarlett came for tea one night with her lovely boyfriend and I felt like a regular mother for a few hours. We talked about everyday things, and magic was never mentioned. The shock confession and arrest of Vincent Paston had been in the news for a few days but soon faded as nothing new could be said. He had done it, and he was to be jailed for it.
Ron Thompson had separated from his wife Mary. He was going to court soon, and could be facing a jail sentence too. His house was to be sold and the proceeds returned, wherever possible, to the people who had donated in good faith.
Sandra had finally got her article about the folk music club, and they were taking on new members.
And a week after Vin’s arrest, I went to see Charlotte, and I took her the book of songs.
She opened the door and didn’t look surprised to see me. She let me in without a word and I followed her through to her main room. It was looking clean and tidy, though still cluttered. She dumped a pile of books on the floor so I could sit down.
I perched there with the book on my knees. “This is yours,” I said. “But if you don’t want it back, I will happily take it to a museum for you. I don’t want to cause you any more stress or anything. Do you know what you want to do with it?”
She hesitated. She stood at the window, with her back to the light, and I couldn’t see her aura at all. But she seemed lively and alert. She thought about it, and finally said, “I’ll take it back, I think. Thank you. I might give it to a museum soon, but I think I’d like to have it for a little while. Is that okay?”
“That is more than okay. I think you’re making the right choice. How are you, after all that’s happened?”
I waited. But she wasn’t the chattiest person on the planet. I didn’t want to pry but I had to ask more questions. “Are you playing music or singing again?”
“I might go back to the folk music club.”
“That’s good. I’m glad to hear it. Um, I don’t know if you’re interested but my friend Gloria is starting up a women’s empowerment group.”
“That’s nice.”
“I mean, if you wanted to go.”
“I’ll think about it. Thank you.”
“And how are your family?”
“Mum and dad are upset and it’s hard for them. I am spending a lot of time with them at the moment. They’ll be okay.”
“And ... Vin?”
She paused before saying, “Justice will be done, and that’s all we want. His parents ... Will’s ... they are moving away, you know? I don’t think they want to bump into any of us.”
“I can understand that.”
“Poor Will.” She turned around abruptly and stared out of the window. “I didn’t know what Vin was going to do. I don’t understand what happened or why he did it. He says it was for me, but why? Why me?”
“He is wrong to put it on you,” I said firmly. “It was his own ego, and he’s using you as an excuse. Why didn’t you go to London, though?”
“I wasn’t ready. I wanted to wait, but Will wanted to go and he said these opportunities only came up once in a lifetime. He stole the book and that was the thing that made me stop here. I did plan to follow him but when he took it, I was betrayed. So betrayed. I couldn’t imagine he’d do that. Once he took the book, I realised I couldn’t work with him. So I stayed here. I didn’t realise the book being gone would make me ill. Not until it was too late.” She turned back around to face me. “But now I understand, and I am getting well again, and when the time is right, it will go to a museum and as long as it’s under glass, I will be fine.”
That was the most I’d ever heard her say. She leaned back and tipped her chin up and I could feel her struggling to keep control. She’d been through a rollercoaster and she’d stayed remarkable strong throughout it all, considering. I stood up and put the book on the arm of the chair. It would look after her, and she would look after it.
I hoped that Anne would sing her to sleep.
I said goodbye and she didn’t say anything back so I let myself out, and when I glanced back, she was moving against a darker wall and I could see her aura flare in a shimmer of bright rainbow colours, and I knew that she was going to be all right.
AND ME?
Was I going to be all right?
I walked along the shingle beach. The sea sang to me and this time, I listened. Ian Martinet would be up to no good, and Evangeline would be on my back, and I had a lot of work to do.
There was a lot of responsibility heading my way.
Then my phone buzzed. It was a text from Clare.
Come tonight, it read. Tell me everything.
Then it buzzed again. It was another message from Clare.
Also Gloria left something here for you to pick up. It’s purring and has done a poo on the kitchen floor.
Oh no. I groaned and put my phone away. At least she was saying “it” so there was only one cat, and not the three that she had threatened me with before.
And then I wondered, why has Gloria been around at Clare’s house?
I shook my head. Life was just one mystery after another for me now.
I crunched along the rocks, and the waves crashed to one side of me, and I breathed in the salty spring air, and decided that life was good.
THE END
BEFORE YOU GO – CHECK this out. Yes, Anne Boleyn’s Songbook IS REAL and you can see some of the pages through Google Arts and Culture here: https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/tQJy4lhltNelLA
It dates from the early 16th century and yes, the handwriting changes halfway through. You can see the signature purported to be from Anne herself.
The myths and legends associated with Anne, her father and Blickling Hall are all commonly known or told. The song “O Death Rock Me Asleep” is attributed to her as she awaited execution but there is no proof, I’m afraid.
Book two – A Fine Figure of a Witch – will be following soon. To keep up to date with releases, you can follow me on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MollyMilliganAuthor/ , or sign up to my newsletter http://www.subscribepage.com/n8z7a5
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THE END
Wine, Witches and Song (The Everyday Witches of Wildham-on-Sea Book 1) Page 19