The Witches of Cambridge (17 page)

“
Non
!” Héloïse laughs. “If I dye it again, it’ll be black.”

Amandine studies her mother suspiciously. “You’re a lot…happier. What’s happened?” She frowns. “Did you meet someone?”

“No.” Héloïse laughs again. “Of course not.”

“Okay then, so what is it?”

Héloïse shrugs.

“Come on,” Amandine says, “you’re a lot…you’re significantly less suicidal than you were last week.”

Héloïse smiles. “I’ll take that as a compliment. But nothing has happened. I’m just…I’m starting to come back to life a little, that’s all. It’s nothing more.”

“It’s not nothing,” Amandine protests. “It’s a bloody big deal. And I’m sorry I haven’t noticed. I’m sorry I’ve been so preoccupied with my own messed-up life not to see what’s going on with you.”

“Don’t be sorry, my sweet, you should be preoccupied with your own life; you’ve spent enough time taking care of me and mine.”

Amandine sighs. “Can you tell me what’s going to happen? It’d make everything so much easier to deal with.”

“Would it really?”

“No, I suppose not.” Amandine shrugs. “But will you tell me anyway?”

Héloïse sips her cappuccino. “I wish I could help you,
chérie
, I wish I could assure you that everything will be all right, but I can’t see it. I’ve looked and I can’t—you know I haven’t been able to see clearly since your father died.”

Amandine reaches for her mother’s hand. “It’s a shame,” she says, wanting to relieve her mother of the subject of her father. “I’m so worried about the boys. I just can’t imagine—”

“I don’t think he’s having an affair,” Héloïse interrupts. “This is Eliot, he’s too…I just don’t believe it, I don’t.” She swallows the last of her cappuccino. “But…”

“What?”

“I’m sorry,
chérie
, I didn’t know what was best. I didn’t…I thought perhaps I shouldn’t be involved. I didn’t want to get between you. I—”

“Mother, what’s going on? You’re scaring me.”

Héloïse takes a deep breath. “I felt something shift a few months ago. I don’t know what. But it was the day you dropped the boys at my house, when your babysitter fell through. I’m afraid I didn’t look after them well, they just watched television all—”

“Never mind that now,” Amandine interrupts. “Do you remember what day that was? It might help me to figure out…”

Héloïse nods. “The eighth of March. That’s when I felt it the first time.”

Amandine frowns. “Why that day? What’s special about that date?”

Héloïse shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Did something happen?”

“You tell me.”

“I don’t know.”

“Think about it.”

“What day was it?” Amandine asks. “Lent term ended on the eleventh, so that must have been a Friday, so it was a Tuesday. I wasn’t working in the afternoon. I took Frankie and Bertie to the park…before I got a call and I had to—oh.”

“What?”

“Eliot received a letter that morning. Handwritten. I remember because our address was written in purple ink.”

Héloïse, who had been reaching for a chocolate and pistachio cream cupcake, drops her hand to the table and stares straight at her daughter. “Purple?”

“Yes. It’s unusual, I suppose, so I remembered it. I left the letter on Eliot’s desk, and that night—”

“Purple?” Héloïse says softly, thinking of the green ink in her books, but trying to focus on Amandine’s mysteries and not her own.

“He didn’t come to bed. He slept in his study, that’s what he told me, and I thought it was strange but I didn’t want to make a big thing out of it. He told me it was nothing, that he was working on a case all night, and I believed him.”

“
Bien
,” Héloïse says. “Then I suppose the thing to do now is to find the letter.”

—

I’m having sex with your sister. I’m sleeping with your sister. I, okay…Hey, Kat, remember your sister? Well, I know it sounds crazy, but I think we might be trying to have a baby…

George hurries along King’s Parade, toward Trinity College to track down Kat. She’s been avoiding him for days now and he can’t let it continue. He’s not exactly sure why she’s so upset—can she really think he’d be a horrible match for her sister, that he’s so unworthy of her?—but he’s determined to get to the bottom of it. Kat is his best friend and he can’t lose her over this. It’d be dreadful if he and Cosima married and Kat refused to speak to them. He’d hate to cause a family rift, to be the reason for displeasure and disharmony. He couldn’t bear it. He’d rather give Cosima up altogether. Well…almost.

George crosses the road onto Trinity Street, glancing up at St. Mary’s Church, wondering, as he does every time, whether he’ll one day find the time to climb to the top along with all the tourists. Why is it so often true that, when something sits on your doorstep, you take it for granted? He slows his pace as he passes the Cambridge University Bookshop, looking in the window at the display of book sculptures. A three-dimensional Mad Hatter’s Tea Party has been created from a single copy of
Alice in Wonderland
. George ponders it. Why, after all, is he rushing? He hates confrontation. If he didn’t care so deeply for Kat he’d never be going to face her now, to ask why she’s avoiding him. If he didn’t need her so much, he’d just let her go, drop out of the book group and never see any of them again.

As he ambles along Trinity Street, images of silky white wedding dresses and giggling babies with chubby fingers they wrap around his thumb fill George’s mind and he smiles. It seems strange to him now that he’s never thought about these things before, never wanted them. How misguided he must have been. But now he’s seen the light. He remembers how she looked at him, how she kissed him, unlike any way he’s ever been looked at or kissed before. And every moment of time, every molecule of air, contained promise and possibility.

As he reaches the little courtyard of trees at the end of All Saints’ Passage, about to turn left onto the cobbled path outside Trinity College, George closes his eyes and turns his face up to the sun, mumbling thanks to all the deities he knows of for his great good fortune. When he opens his eyes again, he’s face-to-face with Kat.

She just stares at him, unable to hide her horror. His smile drops, all his joy draining away at how unhappy she is to see him.

“I was just—I’m heading into college. I’m late for a tutorial.”

George looks at her. It doesn’t take any of his limited magic to know that she’s lying. Since the moment they met he’s been able to read her face and know her emotions as well as he knows his own.

“Have you got a few minutes? I was on my way to see you,” George says, aware that he’s begging. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I haven’t,” Kat says. “I’ve been busy.”

“You’ve been avoiding me,” George says again. It’s probably the most direct he’s ever been with anyone in his life and he can already feel the skin on his neck starting to itch.

Kat bites her lip, avoiding his gaze.

“Please.” George swallows. “I need to talk about this, I want to make it better again. I can’t stand you not speaking to me. I’m not sure why you’re so against the idea of me and Cosima, but—”

Kat rolls her eyes. “You and Cosima? What, did you get engaged over cupcakes? Are you getting married? Did you forget she’s still married herself?”

“Hardly,” George says. “He’s having a baby with another woman.”

Kat scowls.

“Look, this isn’t just a fling for me,” George says. “You don’t have to worry about me hurting your sister. I’d never do that—I love her.”

Kat laughs. “Love her?
Love
her? What the hell are you talking about? Can you hear yourself? You don’t love her. You can’t. It’s been, what, five minutes? Anyway, she doesn’t love you, you know that, right? She might seem okay but she’s still mourning the end of her marriage. You don’t get over a husband in a month, even with magic, even…”

“Okay, okay,” George says, “I seem to have made it worse. I thought it would be a good thing to say so. I thought it’d reassure you. I didn’t mean—”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Kat snaps.

George frowns. “Get what?”

Kat rolls her eyes.

“What?” George protests. “I don’t understand. What—”

Kat shakes her head. “No. I’m not going to tell you. If it matters…if our friendship matters to you at all, you’ll figure it out.”

And with that, she turns and walks away, leaving George staring after her, wondering what just happened.

—

Noa has passed a glorious few days in a haze of delightful normalcy, engaging in carefree conversations with checkout girls, chatting about the weather with the college porters, discussing politics with other students.

Last night Santiago took her dancing. They caught a late train to London and took a taxi to an area Noa had never been. Santiago greeted the doorman with a few incomprehensible words of Portuguese in his ear, upon which the door cracked open and a dim sliver of light shone out.

No one in the club spoke English and Noa drifted toward the bar on a wave of lyrical words, barely audible above the beat of drums and sensual song. It seemed to Noa that every man she saw was unusually beautiful: tall with dark hair, olive skin, enormous deep brown eyes, and brilliant smiles. The women were equally mesmerizing and every one extremely elegant. Noa had dressed up for the occasion but feared she stood out too starkly with her blond hair and blue eyes. The gorgeous Brazilians stared as she slipped past them and she tried to shrink herself a little smaller with every look.

“They are struck by your beauty,” Santiago said with a smile. “You are a rare jewel.”

Noa smiled; with him, she felt it.

“É verdade!”
Santiago laughed, pulling her through the crowd and onto the dance floor. “Let me show you how beautiful you are.”

As Noa flew across the floor, stepping and turning and dipping as if she were being blown by a perfect wind, she thought that Santiago must either be a dance maestro or a magician. She’d never moved so smoothly, so quickly, so gracefully. She’d never felt so in sync with her body and the world. Her heart beat in time with the drums, her breath swelled with the song, her feet skipped along the piano notes. It was as if Noa’s skin was dissolving into the air until she was weightless, a spirit floating through the air.

“There,” Santiago whispered into her ear as the song subsided, “see how beautiful you are.”

Noa could only nod. She could only let him hold her as the music started again and dance and dance until she couldn’t stand any more. Noa had once seen a film about a ballerina who found a pair of enchanted red ballet shoes. When she wore them she could dance without stopping, her feet at last able to match the joy of her heart and its desire to dance forever. Unfortunately, the ballerina couldn’t control the shoes and died. Which is rather how Noa felt as she sank into Santiago, their bodies blending together, on the journey home.

Now Noa hurries along Bridge Street toward Magdalene College. She has another tutorial with Amandine, on Monet and the French Impressionists, though she fears her essay won’t be up to scratch, since she hasn’t really slept in the last few days. When Noa reaches Amandine’s office, she finds Kat standing at the door.

“Hi,” Noa says, instantly a little embarrassed to remember how they last met. “I’m…I’ve got a tutorial with—”

“She’s not in,” Kat interrupts. “I don’t know where she is.”

“Oh, okay.” Noa stands at the door. She scratches around her increasingly fuzzy brain for some useful words and, fortunately, finds something.

“So, um, how’s the mathematical department?”

“Fine.”

“How’s…George?”

The second she says his name, Noa knows she’s made a dreadful mistake. Unfortunately, these were the only two facts she knew about Kat: that she taught applied mathematics and she was in love with George. It left her conversational repertoire rather limited. She should have stuck to mathematics.

Kat starts to cry. Little stifled sobs escape as she bends over, head in hands, hiding her face. Torn between the urge to run and the need to be polite, Noa turns her own face to the floor and shuffles her feet.

“Sorry,” Kat’s voice is muffled. “I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t…”

“It’s okay,” Noa lies, finding a few more appropriate words. “Don’t worry. I, um, I understand.”

Kat looks up, brushing her hands across her cheeks. “You do?”

“Well, um, I, I mean…” Noa averts her eyes, racking her brain for something more sympathetic and comforting to say. “That is, I…”

“He says he’s in love with my sister,” Kat blurts out. “My
sister
.” She says this last word as if her sister was a creature worse than those inhabiting the seventh circle of hell. “And he shouldn’t be, he can’t be…” Kat bursts into sobs again.

“Oh” is all Noa can manage. “I didn’t…Oh, dear.”

“Too right.” Kat screws up her eyes at Noa. “But then I’m sure you already knew about them, didn’t you? Given your ‘gift’ for sneaking into other people’s private thoughts?”

“Seeing their biggest secrets,” Noa says, a little hurt. “But don’t worry, I can’t do that anymore. I…um,” she trails off, suddenly unable to remember the name of that sexy Brazilian or any facts surrounding him. “Well, anyway, something happened, but it’s a relief really. It means people don’t hate me anymore, which is nice.”

“Yeah,” Kat says, sniffing. “I suppose.” She regards Noa curiously. “But don’t you think it’s a shame? Don’t you miss your magic?”

“No,” Noa lies again. “I like being normal.”

“Really?” Kat says, as if she couldn’t imagine anything worse than this in the world, except perhaps for her best friend being in love with her sister.

“Well…So, what will you do, about George and—?”

Kat shrugs. “What can I do? It’s done.”

A little shiver runs through Noa and, all of a sudden, she can feel Santiago’s voice in her head, his kiss on her lips, and his breath in her mouth.

“Well,” she says, her voice as smooth as cachaça. “You could cast a spell.”

Kat frowns. “What do you mean?”

When Noa smiles, it’s
his
smile. When she speaks, they’re his words. “What is the use of being a witch, after all, if you can’t use a little magic?”