The Language of Spells

by Painter, Sarah

  ‘That’s just a village, isn’t it?’ Ruby said.

  ‘There’s a little bit of the original castle left in the woods. Bit of a crumbling wall, basically.’ He turned to Gwen. ‘Could that be it?’

  ‘We can check it.’ Gwen bit her lip. ‘It might not even be a castle. I just saw an old wall. It made me think “castle”, but what if I’m sending you on a wild goose chase?’

  Ruby shrugged. ‘It’s all we’ve got. And it’s better than nothing. We’ve been door to door all around the party house and everywhere else we can think.’

  ‘Old walls,’ Cam said. ‘What else has old walls?’

  ‘Really old. And uneven on the top,’ Gwen added.

  ‘Bath has plenty of old walls, but they’re not in ruins.’ Ruby was already pulling on her coat.

  ‘So does Pendleford. What if she’s just lying in a field next to a dry stone and Gwen just got the perspective wrong?’ David said.

  ‘Hey,’ Cam said.

  ‘No, he’s right. I don’t know.’ Gwen sank down onto a chair, put her head in her hands. ‘I don’t know,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ She closed her eyes and reran the two images, trying to see them afresh but intact. What if her faulty memory or desperation added something that wasn’t there? Her wild goose chase could spiral even further out of control.

  There was the wall. Old. The stones near the ground were very rough-looking, but the ones further up were block work. A little yellowish lichen. The next image, with the top of the wall, the slice of sky. The uneven top was more regular than Gwen had first thought. Block work suggesting crenellations. Exactly why she had immediately thought ‘castle’. So she wasn’t leading them astray, but how on earth had Katie gone as far as Sherbourne?

  In the car, Cam concentrated on the road while Gwen stared out of the window. Castle Combe was only five miles away so, even though she was almost positive it wasn’t the right place, it made sense to double-check. Ruby and David had started towards Sherbourne, the more likely option.

  Cam took one hand off the steering wheel and touched her knee. ‘She’ll be okay. It’s been less than twenty-four hours.’

  ‘That seems very long, suddenly.’

  ‘I know. But Harry says that most missing people are found within the first day.’

  Gwen didn’t say anything, but she knew he meant most of the missing people who were found alive got found quickly. That didn’t account for the ones that stayed missing. Her stomach clenched. It gurgled, too, and Gwen realised that she hadn’t eaten since the night before.

  The traffic was light, even approaching Bath, but as they skirted the east edge of the city, the cars in front slowed and soon they were snarled in one of the ever-present queues. Even the bad weather didn’t seem to put a dent in Bath’s traffic problem.

  Gwen gazed out of the side window, seeing nothing. She had walled in the scary thoughts. The images of Katie lying alone and injured, or worse. The images of homeless kids. Lost kids. She went back over the two images for what felt like the millionth time. ‘I’m sure it isn’t a crumbled top; the more I think about it, the surer I am.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It won’t take us long to check this, then we can rule it out. At least we’re doing something.’

  ‘I know.’ Gwen lapsed into silence again.

  They inched forwards, the familiar yellow stone buildings of Bath spread out before them. To the left rose Bathwick Hill and Gwen took in the familiar scene: the picturesque way the buildings rambled up its side. Even at this dead time of year, with a dark grey sky and bare trees, it was attractive.

  The crenellations of Ralph Allen’s folly were just visible. They inched forwards, turning a bend in the road, and Gwen gazed back at it. It was typical of a Bathonian. To build something just to improve the view from his own window. Showy, expensive, but oh-so-tastefully done. Ruby and Gwen had developed a shorthand when they’d gone to school here; they’d put on comedy-posh voices and trill ‘this is Bath, darling’. Then it hit her.

  Crenellations.

  The folly was a mock front of a medieval castle. Made out of bath stone, it was fifteen feet high and had crenellations on the top of the walls, for battlements. From behind, the effect was lost. It was like a piece of scenery from a film set or a Lego model.

  ‘The folly.’

  ‘What?’ Gwen pointed and Cam looked. ‘The sham castle,’ he said. Then a second later, louder. ‘The sham castle.’

  Gwen stared at him, stunned with the realisation. ‘Katie’s there.’

  ‘Use my phone.’ Cam plucked it from the side pocket and handed it across, just as traffic began to crawl forward again. ‘Phone Harry. He might be able to get there quicker.’

  ‘Right.’ Gwen’s head was frozen. She felt a rush of gratitude to Cam. He didn’t believe her, but he was acting as if he did. Somehow she managed to find the address book and press the button for Harry. There were traffic sounds wherever he was and someone in their queue was beeping their horn, but she managed to get the essentials across.

  ‘On it,’ Harry said and cut the connection.

  As Cam drove, Gwen leaned her head against the glass and thought about the last time she had visited the folly. She had been with Cam, and they’d walked up Bathwick Hill one clear moonlit night. They had a bottle of Jack Daniels and had made up shapes from the stars, admired the lights of Bath spread below them, talked and drank. It was too cold to lie on the ground, not that Gwen wouldn’t have done so anyway, but Cam had held her up against the wall, her legs hooked around his waist. She felt a flush of guilt at thinking about sex at a time like this.

  She blinked as the car stopped. ‘This isn’t it.’

  ‘It’s a golf course. I don’t think I can get any closer.’

  ‘Over there.’ Gwen jumped out and almost skidded on the icy ground. She caught her balance and opened the gate. A sign said: Private. Staff only.

  Cam took the service track too quickly, the back of the car fish-tailing as he took a corner. When they saw flashing lights up ahead, he went even faster, pulling to a long, sliding stop. ‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘You were right.’

  Gwen already had her seat belt off and was out of the door, running, her feet crunching on the snow.

  The doors to the ambulance were open and they were lifting a figure on a board inside. Two police in uniform came to meet her. She pushed past them. ‘That’s my niece.’ She saw feet disappearing into the ambulance. One red trainer, one stripy sock. ‘Oh God. Katie!’

  Cam was with her now. He had his hand on her arm, was pulling her back. ‘Let them look after her.’

  ‘I just need to see her,’ Gwen said, pulling against Cam.

  ‘Come on. We’ll follow them to the hospital.’

  Gwen struggled forwards, but the doors slammed shut. ‘Is she all right?’ She turned to the police, trying to shut out images of Stephen Knight’s lifeless body. That couldn’t be Katie. It couldn’t be. ‘What’s happened to her? Is she—’

  ‘She’s unconscious. They’ll be able to tell you more at the hospital.’ The man nodded at Cam. ‘Mr Laing.’

  ‘Oh God.’ Gwen put her hands to her face. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Is Harry here?’ Cam said.

  ‘Over there.’ The second policeman jerked his head in the direction of the castle.

  Cam set off and Gwen, holding onto him so that she didn’t keel over, had no choice but to go with him.

  As they got closer, Gwen saw the rough and ready back of the folly. Something she hadn’t appreciated in the dead of night with her brains exploding with lust, was that the back was nowhere near as fancy as the front. It was almost slap-dash, in fact. They walked through the archway and there was the city, spread out below them, and there was Harry, crouched over by one of the fake towers.

  He was poking through the snow with a pencil, but he straightened up as they approached. ‘I’ve phoned Ruby. They’re coming back.’

  Cam nodded. ‘What does it look like?’

&n
bsp; Harry glanced at Gwen. ‘No obvious injuries, no sign of a struggle. She’s got hypothermia, though. Hopefully moderate rather than severe, but that can cause confusion, lapses in judgement. Her mobile phone was less than a metre from where she was lying, but she either lost it or forgot about it.’

  ‘But why would she let herself get that cold? Why wouldn’t she have come back, used her phone?’ Gwen closed her eyes, felt herself swaying like a blade of grass.

  Harry shrugged. ‘Maybe the hypothermia set in quickly, made her thinking muddled. Maybe she was drunk.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Cam was pointing at a plastic bag.

  Harry held it up. An empty alcopop bottle, some bright blue liquid still in the bottom. ‘Not much of a mystery.’

  Gwen opened her eyes in time to see a look pass between the two men. She filed it under ‘later’ and said, ‘We need to go to the hospital. Now.’

  The drive to the hospital passed in a blur. Gwen felt feverish. She laid her head against the cool glass of the window and marvelled at the heat in her head. Her body was in overdrive, while her brain seemed to have shut down.

  ‘You were right,’ Cam kept saying. ‘I can’t believe it. How did you do that?’

  Gwen was too overwhelmed to answer him. She shook her head. ‘What the hell was she doing up there? And what if we were too late?’ She thought about the hours that had passed. Katie lying outside, unconscious, in the cold. She wrapped her arms around her middle, as if she could physically hold herself together.

  Miraculously, they found a place to park at the hospital. Even more amazingly, Gwen made it to the right department without fainting.

  ‘She’s not awake yet,’ the nurse at the desk said. ‘You can go in, but just for a minute.’ The nurse had curly brown hair tied in a very high ponytail. It looked insultingly jaunty to Gwen but, at that moment, everything did. How could people be walking around, talking on their mobiles, eating chocolate bars, breathing, when Katie was critically ill? It wasn’t right. Nothing about this was right.

  Ruby and David looked up as they walked into the room and then looked straight back to Katie. Gwen thought she’d prepared herself for the sight of Katie in a hospital bed, but she was nowhere even close to ready. Katie looked so young. Just a little child again. She was lying unnaturally straight, her hands lying neatly at her sides on top of several layers of blankets.

  ‘They warmed her up,’ Ruby whispered. ‘Her core temperature was really low. Hypothermia.’

  ‘They said she was really lucky,’ David was whispering, too. ‘Another hour out there and—’

  ‘Don’t,’ Ruby said. ‘Don’t say it.’

  ‘Is she all right?’ Gwen said, stepping closer to the bed. She reached out and touched Katie’s hand. The one that didn’t have tubes coming out of the back.

  ‘They don’t know. She hasn’t woken up yet. They don’t know how long it’ll be.’

  A nurse appeared, wheeling a portable blood pressure monitor. ‘You’ll have to go now. Only two at a time.’

  ‘Call me later,’ Gwen said.

  Ruby didn’t look up, and Gwen’s last impression was of her sister’s hunched form, bent over Katie’s bedside.

  Chapter 26

  Back at End House, Cam went upstairs and ran a bath. He poured a glass of wine and pushed it into Gwen’s hand. ‘Drink this, then go and have a soak. It’ll help.’

  ‘Okay.’ Gwen hadn’t realised that she was shivering. The red wine slopped about in the glass until she held it with both hands.

  Cam rubbed soothing circles on her lower back as she sipped her drink. ‘You found her; she’s safe.’

  Gwen felt the tears well up again and she buried her head in Cam’s shoulder, breathing in his scent and letting the pressure of his arms soothe her. ‘What if she isn’t okay, though? What if she doesn’t wake up?’

  ‘She will,’ Cam said.

  Gwen thought that if she voiced her worst fear, perhaps she’d feel better. She didn’t. The tears kept falling until they were dripping off her chin. She scrubbed at her face with her sleeve.

  ‘Are you hungry? Shall I order a takeaway?’

  ‘Not for me,’ Gwen said.

  ‘You need to eat something.’

  ‘Okay,’ Gwen said. She realised that she hadn’t eaten that day. She took another hit of wine, willing it to undo the knot in her stomach.

  ‘Right.’ Cam started hunting around the kitchen. ‘Do you have any menus?’

  ‘Just put the cannelloni in the oven. It’ll be ready in forty minutes.’ Gwen hesitated as Cam looked at her, suddenly wary. The cannelloni. Their big argument. It seemed to belong to a different time.

  ‘About that…’ he began.

  Gwen shook her head. There was no room for anything else right now. She went upstairs to the bathroom before he could say anything else.

  She soaked in the bath and tried to stop crying. Every time she thought she was getting a handle on the situation, she would think about how Ruby must be feeling or about how pale and young Katie had looked, and she started sobbing again.

  She had just got into some clean clothes and into the living room, when the doorbell rang. Cam jumped up from the sofa. ‘I’ll tell them to sod off,’ he said.

  But he didn’t come back through. After a couple of minutes, Gwen followed him and found an uncomfortable-looking Harry in her hallway with an older man in a police uniform.

  ‘Katie’s fine,’ Cam said immediately. ‘No change.’ He put an arm around her shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Harry said. ‘I need to ask you a few questions.’ He gestured to the uniform. ‘This is PC Albion.’ PC Albion was gazing around as if he’d never been inside a house before. ‘We can do it here, though,’ Harry added.

  ‘What the bloody hell is going on? Harry? Is this an official visit?’ Cam looked tense, Gwen realised with a jolt of fear.

  She moved out from under his arm. ‘I’ll make tea. Make yourselves at home.’ She escaped to the kitchen to do some deep breathing. The penny dropped. Harry meant questions here, rather than at the police station. Something was very wrong. No, no, no. Not again.

  She flicked the switch on the kettle and got out mugs. The kitchen looked the same. The dresser looked the same. The cupboards were still perky lemon and the mugs were still aqua polka dot, but there was something wrong with the picture. Oh yes, the police were sitting on her sofa waiting to question her.

  She carried a tray into the living room and PC Albion jumped up to help her with it. Everything was surreally polite and calm.

  ‘Okay, Gwen. First off, I need to ask where you were last night. It’s routine.’

  ‘I was here.’ Gwen sat in the armchair by the door.

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Harry looked questioningly at Cam. ‘You weren’t with her?’

  Cam shook his head, looking furious. ‘Don’t say anything else, Gwen.’

  Harry met his stare without flinching. ‘Gwen has agreed to answer a few routine questions. It would be better if she does so.’

  ‘In her home, Harry?’

  ‘Not if you prefer we relocate to the station.’ Harry’s voice was even and toneless. Then he said in his normal voice, ‘Come on, man, don’t make this harder than it already is.’

  ‘Make what harder?’ Gwen said.

  Harry was still looking at Cam. ‘If I don’t follow procedure, I could make things worse.’

  ‘Make what worse? Katie’s definitely okay, isn’t she?’ Her heart clenched. ‘What are you not telling me?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Harry looked uncomfortable, and Gwen would’ve felt sorry for him, but there wasn’t any room in her mind for it. This whole thing was so weird and she was exhausted from not sleeping the night before,;the adrenaline that had kept her going while they were looking for Katie had ebbed away, leaving her shaky and tearful. She blinked. Harry was speaking and she needed to concentrate.

  ‘So, you say you were here last night,’ Harry said. ‘Did y
ou see anyone at all? Speak to anyone on the telephone?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Can you remember the last time you saw Katie?’

  ‘At the hospital.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘I’m not sure. A few days ago.’ Gwen closed her eyes to force her brain into proper activity. ‘She came round after school on Monday. We made cakes.’

  Harry nodded. PC Albion wrote something down in his notebook.

  Gwen waited.

  ‘And how would you characterise your relationship?’

  ‘She’s my niece,’ Gwen said.

  ‘Do you get on well?’ Harry said.

  ‘I think so. Yes.’

  ‘How would you characterise her mood?’

  ‘In general?’ Gwen said.

  ‘The last time you saw her.’

  ‘On Monday?’

  He nodded.

  ‘She was fine,’ Gwen said. ‘A bit wound up from school, I suppose, but fine.’

  ‘Has she seemed depressed lately?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Angry?’

  Gwen shrugged. ‘She’s fourteen.’

  Harry gave a small smile. ‘I’m trying to ascertain her state of mind last night.’

  ‘Why not ask her?’ Too late, Gwen realised that he couldn’t. She felt her throat close up.

  ‘Once Katie’s awake, I’m sure we’ll be able to clear all of this up,’ Harry said, ‘but, in the meantime, I’ve got to write a report.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re asking about her state of mind. Why does it matter?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Harry said.

  ‘She went missing. That’s not like her. She’s a really good kid. And she was found unconscious. Clearly something happened to her.’

  ‘Clearly.’ Harry paused. ‘What we don’t know is how she got to the folly and what she was doing there.’

  ‘What if she was taken there? She could’ve been abducted.’ Gwen shook her head in frustration. ‘Why are you asking me? Isn’t it your job to figure out what happened?’

  ‘Oh, we will, Ms Harper,’ PC Albion said and Harry shot him a filthy look.

  ‘The thing is,’ Harry said, ‘there’s some question as to how you found Katie. If you weren’t involved with her, um, mishap, how did you know where to look?’