‘Stay still,’ Bex said, relieved and alarmed all at once. ‘You might have broken something.’
‘I think I’d know if I had,’ Iris said. ‘Ouch.’ She rubbed her arm. The colour was coming back into her face. She was looking less dead with every moment.
‘Look, I need to call someone. Get you checked out properly. You’re not in your right mind.’
‘Don’t be cheeky,’ Iris said. ‘I just had a little fall. I’m fine.’
Bex gave her a long, steady look. The one that she used on Carly when she was having a meltdown over putting her shoes on.
Iris looked away. ‘I’ll be fine in a bit, anyway. Just need a drink.’
‘I don’t know if you should –’
‘Please,’ Iris said. ‘I’m very thirsty.’
Bex filled a glass with water and gave it to Iris on the floor, then she went to the hallway, ignoring Iris’s calls of protest.
The phone in the hallway was the old-fashioned kind with a clunky, heavy handset and dial.
‘Call my doctor, not the ambulance,’ Iris yelled, her voice surprisingly strong.
Bex hesitated. It no longer felt like a blue-light emergency, but Iris was so stubborn Bex wouldn’t have been surprised if she had broken something and was just keeping quiet. On the other hand, Bex’s own grandmother had gone into hospital, caught an infection and never come home.
Doctor Hathaway’s number was on the note block next to the phone. She rang it and hoped she wasn’t doing the wrong thing.
‘Iris Harper?’ the doctor said, when Bex had hastily and breathily explained. ‘I’ll be right there.’
‘Should I call nine-nine-nine? She was unconscious when I arrived. I don’t know how long she’s been lying on the floor.’
‘Not if Iris doesn’t want you to. I’ll be five minutes.’
The doctor was as good as her word, but even in that short time, Iris continued to recover. Bex was feeling increasingly stupid, and the terror she’d felt was ebbing from her body, leaving her shaky.
‘I’m sorry about the fuss,’ Iris said to Hathaway. She glared at Bex. ‘She panicked. And she won’t let me get up. It’s cold down here.’
Bex had covered Iris with a blanket and put a pillow under her head, but Iris was still managing to imply that Bex had violated the Human Rights Act.
‘She did exactly the right thing,’ Hathaway said, gently checking Iris over. ‘You are severely dehydrated. When did you last take a drink?’
‘Ten minutes ago,’ Iris said.
‘And before that?’
Iris looked away. ‘I had tea this morning.’
Bex looked on the counter. There was a full mug of cold tea on the side, the milk, which had separated slightly, giving it an unpleasant, scummy look.
‘You made it, but I don’t think you drank it.’
Iris narrowed her eyes and Bex cut in before she could say something she might regret. ‘I’m just saying.’
The doctor was taking Iris’s blood pressure and she gave them both a warning look. After a moment of silence, she put away the meter. ‘You need to be hydrated. Easiest would be an overnight at the Royal United.’
‘No hospital.’ Iris pressed her lips together in a stubborn line.
‘Up to bed, then?’
‘Yes,’ Iris said, already trying to stand up. Between them, the doctor and Bex got Iris upstairs and into her room. ‘I don’t need to get changed, just my shoes off.’
They helped Iris into bed, although this mainly involved Iris shooing them away and telling them ‘not to fuss’. The doctor gave instructions for mixing up an electrolyte-replacing drink. ‘You need an IV, really,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘I promise to take tiny sips at regular intervals for the next twelve hours,’ Iris said.
‘You can’t promise that. You’ll fall asleep,’ Bex said, then ducked out of the bedroom in case Iris decided to throw something at her. She went downstairs to mix the drink and, as she left the room, she heard the doctor say: ‘Fine. Have it your way.’
Bex mixed the powder into some water and stirred it until the grains had dissolved, then she took it back upstairs. She passed the glass to Iris who sipped some and looked at them both defiantly. ‘You can go now. I’m perfectly fine.’
‘I’ll check in on you in the morning,’ Hathaway said, closing the bedroom door.
They walked downstairs, silent by tacit agreement. Bex didn’t want Iris to overhear. ‘You can’t leave her. Shouldn’t we call an ambulance, anyway?’
‘She’ll be all right. I’ve seen her in a worse state than this.’
‘That’s terrible,’ Bex said. ‘Aren’t there community nurses and stuff?’
The doctor shook her head. ‘Iris won’t take help.’
‘She’s too stubborn for her own good.’
Hathaway smiled. ‘I think she’s doing so well because she’s stubborn. Can you stay around for bit, though? Make sure she drinks the rest of that glass and make her up another one?’
How did this happen? One day out of work and she was volunteering as outreach for the elderly. Her mother was right; she was a sucker.
‘I can stay for an hour,’ Bex said.
‘Great.’ Hathaway was packing things away into her bag. ‘She likes you, I can tell.’
***
When Iris woke it was early morning. Light was coming through the gap in the curtains and the air was filled with rampant birdsong. Iris loved hearing them, especially in the spring when their enthusiasm was tinged with a manic energy. She got up slowly, waiting for the ache in her back to reignite to yesterday’s level of unpleasantness.
After she’d managed to wash and dress and get downstairs without incident, she felt a lift of triumph. Which was quickly squashed by what she saw through her living room door. The girl, Rebecca Adams, was asleep on her sofa. ‘I’m not running a hostel,’ she said, loudly, and enjoyed the sight of the girl sitting straight up as if she’d been electrocuted.
‘Bloody hell,’ she said. She rubbed her eyes. ‘That wasn’t very nice.’
‘Neither is squatting. What are you doing here?’
‘Don’t you remember? Last night?’
‘I remember perfectly well,’ Iris said, wishing she didn’t. Humiliation. That’s what old age brought. Continual low-grade humiliation with occasional spikes of acute embarrassment. ‘I don’t recall asking you to stay.’
‘Doctor Hathaway did.’ The girl stood up and stretched. A loud cracking sound came from her shoulders. ‘And you were in no state to be left alone.’
‘Nonsense,’ Iris said. ‘You are making a fuss about nothing.’
‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘You should call someone. Seriously.’
Iris made a shooing motion with her hands. She didn’t need help from anybody. It would ruin her reputation, for starters.
‘Who’s Gwen?’
Iris frowned. ‘My great-niece. Do you know her?’
‘No,’ Bex shook her head. ‘You said her name when I came in last night, that’s all.’
‘Oh.’ Iris looked away. ‘Her mother, Gloria, lived with me for a while.’
‘Right.’
‘We never became close,’ Iris said, ‘but she used to bring her girls round to see me. Ruby and Gwen.’
‘That was nice,’ Bex said.
‘Ruby was nothing special, but Gwen was very talented.’ Iris said.
‘Wow, poor Ruby,’ Bex said, her hand on the door handle. ‘You can be very harsh, you know.’
The child knew nothing. ‘I’m just being honest. It’s generally for the best.’
Having managed to shoo Rebecca from the house, Iris tried to get back to normal. The girl’s words haunted her, though. Had she grown mean in her old age? She hadn’t been once, she knew. Once she’d been a kind person. A person worth loving.
James Farrier had been everything that Iris hadn’t even known she’d wanted. He’d looked at her as if she were truly precious and it had warmed her rig
ht through to her bones. The wedding date had been set and Iris was counting down the days until she became Mrs Farrier. She’d told James about her affliction and he’d called her a silly goose, said that it was just like her to give people things, that he loved her generous nature. Iris had meant to correct him, to explain more fully that it had nothing to do with generosity, but the words had died in her throat. She wanted him so much. She wanted to be happy.
The women in the Harper family often had a gift. Iris’s mother spat out discarded jewellery at the breakfast table, Gloria had an uncanny knack for fortune telling and her daughter Gwen found lost things. Iris, like a distant relative of mother’s, had The Giving. Not all of the time, but more often than was convenient, a horrible itching feeling would creep across her body and, with it, a terrible compulsion to give a certain thing to a certain person. When it started, at aged fourteen, Iris often had no idea what she was doing or why she was giving certain things, but her knowledge grew quickly. Soon she knew far more than was ladylike.
‘Giving things to people is nice,’ her mother had said, holding a white lacy handkerchief in front of her mouth. ‘I just wish you could be a little more discreet about it.’ She coughed and moved the handkerchief to her pocket, hiding whatever item had appeared.
The problem was, Iris didn’t give people conventional gifts; she gave them what they needed. If it had been a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates, perhaps all would be well. Instead, Iris was forced to take baby clothes to a woman who did not wish to be pregnant or a purging potion to someone who had been poisoned. Once, she had felt compelled to give an iron nail to a man, with absolutely no idea why. He was as mystified as she was. Three days later, he killed a man in a bar fight, jamming that iron nail into his attacker’s neck.
It was the day before her wedding and the winter solstice when Iris had woken with the pricking sensation that heralded a Giving. She knew that she had to take something warm to Roberta, her future sister-in-law. Already warm from the imagined embarrassment of arriving at the Farriers’ house with a blanket, wary of looking unbalanced and strange in front of her new family, Iris tramped through the snow and ice to deliver her gift. There was no possibility of not doing so, Iris already knew. Over the previous three years, she had tried every way to resist, to ignore her affliction, but the pricking and itching soon turned to burning pain, her mind clouded with the need to deliver the gift. That was something Iris had discovered; how need could very quickly overcome your senses, making a fog of reality and stopping your rational thought processes as surely as a sleeping draught.
When she’d arrived, she’d seen Roberta instantly, huddled on the snowy ground to the right of the front door. She was insensible from the cold and, even as Iris pulled the blanket around her shoulders and hugged the girl close, trying to impart her own warmth, she thought that she was too late, that Roberta had perished.
At that moment, her beloved had thrown open the door. He had not noticed that Iris was there, not immediately, and was already speaking. Iris heard him tell Roberta that he hoped she had learned her lesson and, in that instant, Iris grasped that he had locked her out of the house to punish her. Whatever slight Roberta had been guilty of (and Iris found it hard to imagine such a thing, Roberta was so quiet and cowed), she had been dealt a cruel punishment. The sort of punishment that could only be devised by a cold and disturbed mind.
Iris could never hear the word revelation without a twinge of pain. Her revelation that day had been swift as a knife. James Farrier, the man she loved and had promised to join with in matrimony, was a monster. Or, if not a monster yet, had all the makings of one. Iris had seen enough of human nature in her short life to know one thing: no matter how powerful your magic, you could not change the essential nature of a person.
She’d broken the engagement, horrifying her parents and, it seemed, the entire town. And then she’d buried herself in her calling. If she was a witch then she would be one straight from a storybook. Alone. Austere. Powerful. And, while she had no urge to grow warts or become ugly, she welcomed the notion that girlish prettiness was no longer of consequence. If it was no longer the most important thing about her – her passport to marriage and children – then it wouldn’t matter if she didn’t have it, or that it would decay over time.
She’d never truly intended to become mean, though. Or ‘harsh’, as the child, Rebecca, had said. Iris wiped at her eyes. Damn things were watering again.
Chapter Six
Bex was working on her CV when her phone buzzed. It was a text from Jon.
Film night?
She pressed the call button to speak to him. ‘Didn’t we do that on Tuesday?’
‘You think we’re in a rut?’ Bex could hear the smile in his voice. ‘I’m still taking your mind off your troubles.’
It was a bad idea, Bex knew, but her mouth overruled her brain. ‘What time?’
All the way to Jon’s house, Bex rationalised her bad decision. They were friends. More than that; Jon was her best friend. It wasn’t late, which meant his housemate, Ben, would be around and he could sit in-between them on the sofa. Make it seem less like a date.
Bex knew that spending the evening with Jon was flying in the face of operation ‘get over him and get a new life’, but she shoved that knowledge down and paused in front of a shop window to take her hair out of its ponytail and brush it over her shoulders. In defiance of the sensible voice which was telling her, quite insistently, that she ought to turn around and go home, Bex added a slick of tinted lip balm to her lips before knocking on Jon’s door.
‘I’ve been cooking,’ Jon said. He had a checked tea towel slung over one shoulder. ‘It’s supposed to be a nice surprise, but I’m not sure –’ He broke off, his mouth twisting. ‘Put it this way. I hope you’ve already eaten.’
‘I’ve eaten,’ Bex said. Four bowls of cereal and half a loaf of bread.
‘That’s a relief,’ Jon said. ‘I’ll just go and dispose of the evidence.’ He disappeared back into the kitchen and Bex heard the sound of a plate being scraped into the bin.
‘When’s Ben back?’ His mountain bike had been missing from the hall.
‘Oh, he’s staying out tonight,’ Jon called back.
Bex ignored the treacherous flair of excitement and joined Jon in the kitchen. ‘He’s missing film night, again? You did invite him, right?’
‘He’s busy,’ Jon said, opening the fridge and getting two beers. ‘You know Ben.’
Not really, Bex thought. Jon’s housemate was more elusive than the yeti. ‘Does he hate me, or something?’
Jon had a funny look on his face when he said ‘No, of course not’, which made Bex think the real answer was ‘Yes, he finds you deeply irritating. Soon, I will have to choose between you and you will come off worse; after all, I live with Ben.’ It was a lot to get from one funny look, but Bex was highly trained at deconstructing and decoding Jon’s every move, word, smile and gesture.
‘I’ve got the perfect thing to take your mind off things,’ Jon said, clinking his bottle against hers. ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers,’ Bex said, trailing back to the living room.
‘I got this.’ He held up a DVD case and Bex let out an involuntary squeak of excitement. It was Walk the Line. They’d both been looking forward to seeing it after missing it in the cinema and Bex had watched Reese Witherspoon pick up her Oscar for her performance with great delight.
Too late, as she watched the love story between June Carter and Johnny Cash unfold, Bex realised that this was possibly the worst film he could have picked. At the time of the evening when they were usually cheerfully singing along with Eric Idle to ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’, they were instead treated to the sight of Joaquin Phoenix staring at Reese Witherspoon with sparkling, soulful eyes while they sang together. Reese/June was smiling back at Joaquin/Johnny with a naked love that her professional smile couldn’t quite disguise.
Bex looked away from the couple on the screen and fo
cused on her feet. She had taken her trainers off and she looked at her stripey sock-clad feet, concentrating on swallowing down the sudden pain in her stomach.
Joaquin Phoenix stopped singing abruptly and Bex looked up to find him frozen on the screen. Jon was watching her, his hand on the remote. ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah.’ Bex forced a smile. ‘Fine.’
‘It’s not working for you, is it?’
‘I’d better go,’ Bex said. ‘I’m knackered. And I’m not fun to be around.’
‘It was meant to distract you,’ Jon said, indicating the television.
‘That’s all right.’ Bex stood up and stepped into her trainers, forcing her feet into them as quickly as possible. ‘I’m just in a terrible mood. It’s a waste of a good film.’
‘Another time, then?’ Jon looked subdued.
Bex wanted to tell him what was wrong, but she couldn’t, because he was what was wrong. And what could he say?
‘Sorry to spoil your evening. You could call Nicola.’ Bex wanted to hit herself in the head as soon as the words were out. Why give him ideas?
‘Maybe,’ Jon said. He didn’t meet her gaze. ‘She was very enthusiastic.’
‘She’s a blast,’ Bex said.
‘You think I should call her?’
Bex walked into the hallway without answering. She did not want to discuss Jon’s love life. Why had she brought it up? Why was she so bloody masochistic? ‘Night, then,’ she said, not looking over her shoulder, not stopping.
‘Bex …’ His hand was on her arm. She looked down at it. His beautiful big hand, enveloping her arm. Those knuckles she had spent hours staring at; fingers she was pretty sure she could pick out of a line-up.
‘You don’t have to go,’ Jon said. ‘We could talk.’
God, she must look even worse than she felt. She forced another smile, her whole face feeling weird and numb. ‘See you tomorrow, yeah?’
Chapter Seven
At End House, Iris Harper’s evening was not going according to plan. She had hoped to do some cooking while listening to a play on the radio. But there was something about the girl, Rebecca, that stopped her from relaxing. Her image kept elbowing its way to the front of Iris’s mind. Rebecca had said something she had not intended to say. Not out loud, of course, but Iris had heard it nonetheless. It was a truth so naked and painful that it shone from her being. Iris had spent so many years listening to people and their problems that she heard things they didn’t say louder than the things they did. Rebecca had been wronged by Alistair Farrier and she felt too weak to do anything about it. Iris knew she wasn’t a weak person – she’d shown a quick wit and a sense of responsibility that Iris liked and admired – but Rebecca was scared. Iris realised that she had been staring at an empty saucepan and missed the first ten minutes of the play. She could feel Rebecca’s fear and it made sense to Iris that she would be scared of Alistair Farrier; like father like son.
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