The Witches of Cambridge (27 page)

“I’ve only been with one man,” Héloïse blurts out. “And I was with him for thirty-five years, and I never thought I’d ever be with anyone else.”

Theo nods. Without saying anything, he pours her a large glass of the red wine that’s just appeared on the table. Héloïse takes a sip. It’s delicious. She takes another sip. Then another. The warmth of the wine spreads to her skin and, little by little, Héloïse begins to relax, her nervousness evaporating into the air, mixing with the scent of orchids.

—

“I can’t believe we’re going to see her at last.”

George forces a smile, desperately trying not to look as terrified as he feels. “How can you be so sure she’s a she?”

“Because I wished for her.”

George squeezes Cosima’s hand, the buoyancy of her happiness keeping him afloat. The months have been a whirlwind of hormones and pistachio cream croissants—strangely, the only thing that Cosima had been able to stomach during her first three turbulent months of pregnancy. As they walk along the hospital corridor, Cosima gazing out of the window, placing one hand on her belly, George thinks of the last time he saw Kat, ten weeks ago.

“She’ll come around,” Cosima had promised. “She’ll come around eventually; if not now, then when she sees the baby. I promise.”

Kat hasn’t seen or spoken to either of them in over two months. And, according to Amandine, Kat hasn’t contacted the other witches either. Amandine and Héloïse suggested the book group could still meet, just the three of them, but George thought it too disloyal and suggested the group be disbanded until, if, or when, Kat came back. For his part, he still calls her every day, but she never answers. Sometimes she sends him the odd text, telling him to give her a little more time. He doesn’t know if she’s called Cosi or not.

“Perhaps we could call the baby Kat,” George suggests, “in honor of her aunt. What do you think?”

“That’s a lovely idea.” Cosima smiles. “It can be her middle name, since her name is Aura. I had a dream last night and—oh, I’ll tell you later. We’re here.”

She stops outside a door. Above it a sign in large white letters announces:

Foetal Scan Department

Cosima lets go of George’s hand and pushes the door open. George takes a deep breath and follows her inside. Thirty minutes later they are in a small dark room with an extremely enthusiastic nurse.

“Make yourself comfortable, Ms. Rubens,” she says. “I’m about to squeeze some cold sticky stuff onto your tummy so we can get a quick peep at your little miracle.”

Cosima snuggles down on the examination table before beaming up at the nurse. “We’re ready.”

The nurse turns to George. “Are you ready, Daddy?”

George blinks. No one has asked him this before, no one, certainly not Cosima. He hasn’t even asked himself.
No, not at all. I don’t know how this happened. I don’t know what I’m doing.

He looks up at the nurse and smiles. “Absolutely. I can’t wait.”

The nurse beams ever brighter. “That’s what I like to hear, Dad. So, let’s get started.”

The nurse squeezes the sticky stuff onto Cosima’s exposed stomach and all eyes turn to the screen of the fetal scanner. At first all they can see is static, then a mess of fuzzy movement and then…a head, belly, arms, and legs. A baby, kicking and flailing, with a tiny racing heart.

“Oh,” Cosima gasps. “Oh, my girl.”

George stares at the screen. How can it be? Cosima’s stomach hasn’t expanded much and yet he can now see that, contained within her womb, is a whole being, moving, growing, living. George has seen magic in his time, he’s even seen miracles, but this is beyond any spell he’s ever cast, beyond anything he’s ever conjured up in his imagination. He stares.

The nurse laughs. “I think someone’s had a little shock.”

Cosima glances over at George. “Are you okay?”

Without looking at her, George nods, though it’s not true at all. As a descriptive word
okay
is so far from what he’s feeling right now that it’s not even in the same language. He needs new words, words he doesn’t even know, probably in languages he doesn’t even speak, to say how he feels at seeing this new life, this new spirit and soul he has helped to create.

The baby turns and kicks and flips.

“You’ve got a feisty one.” The nurse laughs. “You’re going to have your hands full of mischief.”

She gives Cosima a wink and, while the two women look at each other, George just keeps staring at the screen, whispering the same incantation: of new love and desperate hope, over and over again.

—

“Why did you open this café?” George leans against the kitchen counter, watching Cosima baking. When she walks past him to turn on the oven, he catches a whiff of cinnamon sugar. He breathes it in and smiles.

“I love getting up before dawn and filling the kitchen with the scents of pistachio croissants, lavender cookies, and chocolate cakes…I like feeding people with the most delicious food I can possibly make.” Cosima smiles. “Sometimes with a little sprinkle of enchanted sugar or a dusting of charmed flour…But I just like giving people pleasure,” she says, returning to the counter. She sprinkles a pinch of purple rose petals into a bowl of flour and stirs it until little white puffs burst over the bowl. “And delicious food is the easiest way to do that.”

“I suppose so.” George smiles. “We’ll have to be careful though, that Aura doesn’t become as round as she will be tall.”

Cosima laughs. “Yes, you’ll have to monitor me. You’ll have to limit the amount of cakes I offer our little girl, or I might get a bit carried away.”

Cosima picks a bottle of dried honeysuckle flowers off the shelf and adds a dash to her mix. She whispers a quick wish for her sister, of love and luck for her dear Kat. Then she adds a few heaped spoonfuls of amaranth, and an extra one for luck.

“I’ve been thinking…” George ventures.

“Yes?”

“That perhaps we don’t need to move in together, to raise Aura, I mean. Not just yet, anyway. What do you think?”

Cosima looks up from her baking. The spoon keeps stirring her mix and the scent of chocolate and vanilla floats through the air. “You want to stay at your flat?”

George nods. “Of course, I’ll be here whenever you need me. More often, in fact. You won’t be able to keep me away. But I love my home, I…don’t want to leave it, not just yet.”

Cosima nods. “You can do whatever you want, George. It’s fine by me. You can come and go as much as you please. It’s totally up to you.”

“Really?”

“Of course. You’ve given me the greatest gift in the world.” Cosima grins. “Now I’ll spend the rest of my life giving you anything else you ask for.”

George steps forward, flooded with relief, grinning with delight. “Anything?”

Cosima steps back, holding her wooden spoon out between them. “Well, within reason…”

“How about a batch of your chocolate and sour cherry cupcakes?”

Cosima smiles. “Absolutely.”

“A lifetime supply of vanilla and orange oil cannoli?”

“I think I can manage that.”

“Your secret recipe for pistachio cream.”

Cosima grins. “No way. Never. Not happening.”

—

Hamish paces up and down the living room of his tiny student flat. As the weeks have passed he’s been feeling more optimistic, almost hopeful, that some sort of relationship with Kat might be possible after all. Nothing has happened, not specifically, to suggest it. But he holds on to the moment in the pub when he’d definitely felt a spark of something—before she’d vomited all over them both. He wonders, of course, if he was just kidding himself. Some days he’s racked with self-doubt. Others he’s high on hope. He’s tempted just to ask her outright, in one of their tutorials, but directness isn’t his style. Despite his well-honed light and breezy manner with her, he’d prefer to wait three years then drop a few hints and cross his fingers—less risky that way.

“What’s wrong with me?” Hamish moans. He stops pacing and flops onto his sofa. “I’m a coward, a bloody shameful coward.” He sighs, crossing his long legs. “I should go to the pub and drown my sorrow and shame in too many pints.” Then, suddenly, he stands again. “No! I should do what they do in those silly, soppy romantic films. I should buy a bunch of roses, a dozen, then chase her to the airport, or at least turn up uninvited at her office. Not quite so romantic, but the message is basically the same.”

Before he can change his mind, Hamish strides across the room, picks up his jacket, wallet, and keys. Then opens his front door, steps outside, and slams it shut. It bounces open again. Hamish tries again. Same result.

“Bugger,” Hamish mutters. “I can’t even slam a bloody door shut. This does not bode well.” Pulling it into place, he hurries off down the street toward the supermarket to find a bouquet of roses.

Two hours and six shops later, Hamish has settled for a slightly wilted bunch of pink carnations. His swift step has slowed to a reluctant shuffle as he makes his way along Trinity Street. When he walks through the college gates, Hamish feels his stomach plummet to the ground. What is he doing? What the hell is he doing? Is he a glutton for punishment and humiliation? He’s an idiot, that’s for certain, on his way to confess his love to a woman who’s already told him she’s in love with someone else. What is he thinking?

Just before he reaches Kat’s office, Hamish turns on his heel and starts striding swiftly across the quad, back toward the street. He’s got his pace up to a near canter, when he bumps into Kat coming out of the porter’s lodge.

“Hey, Ham,” she says, grinning up at him. “Where are you running off to?”

Hamish snaps his handful of flowers behind his back.

“Hey, prof. Nowhere, I just, I…”

“We didn’t have a meeting today, did we?”

Hamish shakes his head. “Nope, next Monday.”

“Ah, okay, great,” Kat says. “Well, I’ll see you then.”

“Yep.” Hamish nods.

The snapped head of a carnation drops to the floor between Hamish’s legs. Kat picks it up and hands it to him with a quizzical look. Hamish sighs, taking it, and revealing the rest of the bunch.

“Who’s the lucky lady?” Kat asks with a grin.

“I, um, well, actually, I bought them for—” Hamish takes a deep breath of courage, filling his lungs with strength and power and madcap haste. “—my mother.”

“Oh,” Kat says. “What a sweet son you are.”

Hamish regards her, horrified.
No, not sweet!
He wants to shout.
I’m manly, courageous, virile, daring, bold, plucky, macho. Oh, who am I kidding?

“Thanks,” Hamish mutters. “See you on Monday.”

Then he turns and hurries away.

—

It’s early Friday morning and Noa sits on a train bound for Cambridge. She hasn’t slept in nearly forty-eight hours, being too scared of falling back into that dreadful dream again. She feels herself being dragged into a swamp and it’s taking all her effort of will to keep her grip on reality. She’s meeting Santiago at his home to pick the paintings they’ll sell at Sotheby’s. For some astonishing reason, Rupert has given her carte blanche to choose five paintings and, if they do well, she’ll return again to select ten more.

“Come in, darling girl,” Santiago says as he opens his front door. “Don’t you look absolutely gorgeous? Come in, come in.”

Noa smiles, despite herself. She knows for a fact that she looks shocking.

“Thanks.” She steps over the threshold and follows him into the kitchen. She has to tell him about the nightmares and the hideous headaches; she has to ask him about her future, about the possibility of returning to university. But it can wait. Right now Noa—as always whenever she sees him in the flesh—is too starstruck to focus. Seeing Santiago is like stumbling on a film star in the supermarket and it always takes her several long moments to recover.

“Tea?”

Noa shakes her head.

Santiago smiles. “Come on, you know we always have a good time after you drink my tea.”

Feeling her resolve weakening, Noa swallows a smile. “Well, maybe later.”

In response, Santiago steps forward and kisses her, long and hard. For a few moments afterward, Noa forgets why she’s there at all. Then he pulls back.

“Okay,” Santiago says as he steps into the living room, “you want to take care of business first and save pleasure for later? I can respect that.”

“Yes, um, exactly,” Noa says, tasting sea salt and Sambuca on her tongue, her thoughts drowned out by waves crashing against the shore.

“Follow me then, my love.” Santiago takes Noa’s hand and leads her into the living room. Stacks of paintings lean against every available space, making the dark room feel more like a cave than ever. Noa is reminded of the catacombs beneath a twelfth-century church she saw in the south of France. She’d loved the frescos of the Catholic saints on the walls but had felt an irrational fear of being trapped there for eternity, her image and soul caught to be seen by future generations of art lovers.

Noa walks slowly toward the closest stack of paintings and runs her fingers along the frames. She glances up at the dozens of shelves lined with hundreds of strange objects. Her eye settles again on the little statue of the naked boy, the birth baby.

“Of course, I know the choice is yours for the paintings,” Santiago says. “But I’ve selected the five that I think you should take. I’m sure you’ll—”

Noa looks up as he steps across the room. “Wait.”

Santiago turns around. “What is it?”

“I’ve, I’ve got to ask you something, some things…” Noa says, pacing along the carpet between the sofa and the shelves. “I’ve been thinking—I haven’t been sleeping, I’m having these hideous nightmares, I’m feeling awful and…”

In a second, Santiago is at Noa’s side, tucking his arm around her waist and gently lifting her over to the sofa. He kisses her lightly, stroking her hair.

“What’s wrong, my love? Why didn’t you tell me? I can help you—”

Noa fixes her gaze on her hands curled tightly in her lap. “Well, actually, I mean…that’s what I wanted to ask you about, that is…”

“What,
querida
, what is it?”

Noa drops her voice to a whisper. “You mentioned, the first time I was here, that your mother had to, had to…”