The Witches of Cambridge (8 page)

“How…how many times?”

Tommy looks up. “Only once. I promise. It was only once.”

“
Only?
” Suddenly Cosima shrieks, her voice almost as piercing as the smoke alarm. “So, so, that makes it all right? Because it was only once?!”

“No, of course not,” Tommy says, stricken. “That wasn’t what I meant, I just, I just…”

“What?” Cosima’s voice breaks. “You what? You broke our vows. And you’re breaking, breaking my heart…and you what? What are you going to say?!”

Tommy shakes his head and lets out another sob. “I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”

Cosima looks at him, still unable to believe it. “I don’t, I can’t…”

Her head is spinning, she can’t catch her breath, her palms are suddenly sweaty, and she’s shaking. Cosima starts to hyperventilate. She bends over to drop her head between her knees.

Tommy leaps up and puts his arms around her shoulders. “Oh, Cosi, I can’t, I can’t bear to—”

Cosima pulls away from him as if she’d just received an electric shock. “Don’t. Touch. Me.”

“Sorry, I…”

Cosima shakes her head. “No. You don’t ever get to touch me again. Ever.”

Tommy shakes his head, tears running down his cheeks. “No, no…Please, I couldn’t stand it, I couldn’t…”

Cosima sobs. When she looks at him, all she can see is her Tommy, her boy, her love, and the thing he says he’s done seems suddenly impossible. It was once. One horrible thing. And if she takes it away, if she rubs out the stain and forgets it was ever there, then he’s still as pure and beautiful as the day they met. Once. Only once.

“Cosi…”

Tommy reaches up to her and, all of a sudden, Cosima is overcome with the need to touch him, to hold him, to make him hers again. She drops to her knees and rests her head in his lap. As Tommy strokes her hair, so softly, so tenderly, she feels the fall of his tears on her cheeks and she believes, for the briefest of moments, that everything will be okay, that their love will be strong enough to heal everything, to swallow this hurt, to absorb it, to eventually forget it altogether. They are strong enough to do this, she is strong enough, Cosima knows this. And then, she realizes something.

“But…” She pulls her head from his lap and looks up. “Why are you telling me all this now? If it was—the phone call? What was it? What happened?”

Tommy drops his head again. His voice is muffled, almost inaudible but Cosima already feels sick, already knows.

“She…” Tommy whispers, “she—she’s…”

And, even though he can’t bring himself to say the word, Cosima still hears it, a piercing cry in the silence, signaling the death of her hope and the complete shattering of her heart.

N
OA HURRIES ALONG
Magdalene Street toward Heather’s house. It’s late, nearly midnight, but it’s also Friday night, which means her aunt will be baking bread. She’s been doing it since Noa was a little girl, filling the house with the gorgeous scent of doughy yeast until every room smelled like a bakery. Noa loves baking night, not the actual weighing and measuring and kneading, but sitting in the breakfast nook with a milky coffee to keep her awake while watching Heather bake.

In the distance she hears the King’s College clock chime the twelve strokes of midnight, and starts to run. Just before the bridge, Noa stops to catch her breath. Her hands on her sides, she tilts her head back to look up at the sky when she’s splashed with liquid. Noa wipes her face with the back of her hand and frowns. It isn’t raining. Then she realizes it isn’t water, but wine. Noa squints up in the darkness, thinking she sees a shadow of someone up in the turrets of Magdalene College, and then another someone, and then another.

“Hey!” Noa calls out. “What are you doing up there?”

The shadows freeze.

“I can still see you,” she yells. “I’ve already seen you.”

Silence.

And then the moon slips out from behind a patch of cloud and Noa can see one of the shadows more clearly, though she can hardly believe it.

“Professor Bisset? Is that you?”

A faint curse echoes from the turret, then a hushed voice.

“Wait there.”

Noa, wondering what on earth is going on, waits.

When Amandine pushes open the heavy wooden door of the college and steps out onto the pavement, she hurries straight over to Noa, who’s frowning.

“Professor Bisset? Are you drunk?”

“No, of course not!”

“Then why are you sitting on the rooftop? Or, rather, hovering above it.”

Instead of answering, Amandine whispers a simple forgetting spell she learned from Kat a few years before.

“
Reminiscere quod vidi. Oblitus quod vides. Reminiscere quod vidi. Oblitus quod vides.”

“What are you doing?” Noa raises an eyebrow as she sees another of Amandine’s secrets. “You’re trying to cast a spell on me.”

While Noa gasps, Amandine sighs. Of all the people who could have seen them, it had to be her strange student, the one who can see people’s secrets. When confronted with awkward questions from overinquisitive passersby before, she’d always been able to cover her tracks and protect the book group with forgetting, mystifying, or confusion spells. But she can see none of them will work on Noa.

“What are you doing up there?”

Seeing she has no other alternative, Amandine answers.

“That’s pretty cool,” Noa says. “Can I join?”

Amandine starts to shake her head and form her lips into the word no, but somehow finds herself nodding and saying yes instead.

“Great, thanks.” Noa smiles. “How do I get up there? You don’t fly, do you?”

Amandine casts her student a curious glance, wondering if she may be a witch after all, or a very rare and subtle sort of enchantress.

“We go up by the stairs,” she says, turning. “Follow me.”

—

“I hated it. I read it two years ago, and I hated it,” Noa says. “Sorry,” she adds, seeing the looks the other members of the Cambridge University Society of Literature and Witchcraft are now fixing her with. “I mean to say, well, it wasn’t quite to my taste.”

Héloïse looks at the newest member of their little book group, wondering why Amandine had agreed to admit her, and regretting her impulsive decision to rejoin the group. It’s too soon. It’s far too soon.

“I’m not sure you picked up the subtleties of the story,” Amandine suggests, seeing how suddenly distressed her mother looks. “Or perhaps you don’t remember the story very well. In a sense it’s—”

“Pretentious rubbish,” Noa says. “That is to say, I mean…” She glances to the other two, still-silent, members: Kat and George. Kat raises an eyebrow in her direction while George examines his feet, flexing his toes in his shoes. Kat glances at George’s feet too.

“You’re talking about Simone de Beauvoir,” Héloïse snaps, in heightened hushed tones, each word as sharp as a spike of ice, as if Noa had just blasphemed during confession. Suddenly, her fury momentarily eclipsing her sorrow, she feels sparks of angry passion at her fingertips. “She was the pioneer of modern feminism. Without her, you would be chained to a kitchen sink with fifteen
petits enfants
tugging at your apron strings.”

“Yes, true,” Noa says, “and I’m very grateful for that.”
Don’t say it
, she tells herself,
don’t say it
.
Keep your mouth shut. Please
.

“So,” Noa begins, cursing herself as she speaks but unable to stop, “you’re the sort of friends who just nod and smile and don’t really tell one another the truth, right?”

A little sigh escapes Amandine’s lips.

“I’m sorry, what?” Kat asks.

“You are all so suppressed,” Noa says. “You’re practically dead to the world.”

“Mademoiselle,” Héloïse slowly pulls herself up, “I am not sure you realize this privilege, being invited to join our group. We can easily uninvite you, so be aware,
s’il vous plaît
.”

“Sorry,” Noa says, “that came out wrong. I didn’t mean…”

“What did you mean?” Amandine asks.

Noa gives her a grateful look, wondering how on earth she’s going to explain her outburst without giving herself away. “Well,” Noa says, scrambling, “I just meant to…to inject a little life into the group, a little passion and vigor, a little
joie de vivre
…”

Kat adjusts her glasses. “I assure you, we’ve all got quite a lot of that, and we certainly don’t need lessons in living from a teenager who’s lived half as long as the rest of us.”

“I’m not a teenager,” Noa objects softly.

“Almost,” Héloïse snaps. “I am probably three times older than you.”

“Exactly right.” Kat nods. “Well, actually 58.2 into 23.5 is 2.47, so not quite, but close enough.”

Noa frowns. “How do you know how old I am?”

“I’ve got two PhDs in applied mathematics,” Kat explains. “I see everything in numbers.”

George gives a quiet cough. “I’m afraid I’ve got to be up early for a lecture tomorrow.” He stands and edges toward the parapet. “So, if we’re not going to discuss Ms. Beauvoir’s novel, I’ll leave you ladies to discuss…whatever it is you’re going to discuss.” And, with that, he disappears down the ladder.

“He’s so timid I’m surprised he can get out of bed in the morning,” Noa says. She turns to Kat. “How long have you been in love with him?”

Kat stares at Noa, her eyes suddenly as wide as her glasses. Héloïse splutters and Amandine is silent, averting her gaze to the rooftop.

“I’m sorry,” Noa says, “but you are, aren’t you?”

Kat spins around to Amandine. “What did you tell her? I never said—have you been reading my feelings again? You promised you wouldn’t do that anymore.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Amandine says. “And I wish I could stop doing that.” Her voice drops so low they can barely hear her above the breeze. “I can’t.”

“You told me,” Kat protests, “you told me you could.”

Amandine gives an apologetic shrug. “I’m sorry, I can’t really help it.”

Kat turns to Héloïse. “Did you know?”

“
Bien sûr
.” Héloïse gives a slight shrug. “You forget my psyc—at least, before…”

“Bloody hell.” Kat sighs and sinks her head to her knees. She looks up. “At least Cosi doesn’t know. And, God forbid, George.”

“Cosi?” Noa asks.

“My sister. Luckily she’s neither an empath nor psychic,” Kat says, casting dark looks at Amandine and Héloïse in turn. “And George, well…”

Noa regards Kat more closely. Then she stands. “Well, I guess I’d better go. I didn’t mean to ruin your book group. I don’t mean to be a bitch. I just, I can’t seem to…whatever I see, I just say it.” She turns and walks toward the ladder. When her left foot is on the first rung she turns back to the three witches. “Please forget what I said.”

“You’re not a bitch,” Amandine says. “You just see what you—”

“Shouldn’t,” Noa finishes. “I know. I don’t want to…I see things about people, it rises up like a sneeze, and I just can’t swallow it back down, no matter how hard I try.”

“You don’t need to go,” Amandine says.

Noa sighs. “I already told you that you think your husband is having an affair with some sexy lawyer at his firm. Also, you haven’t had sex with him in nearly two months.” She looks at Héloïse. “You still talk to your dead husband at the breakfast table every morning and every evening you wonder if you should swallow that bottle of paracetamol in your bathroom cabinet.” Noa looks at Kat. “And the real reason—”

“Enough,” Kat snaps.

“I’m sorry,” Noa says. “You see, I’m no fun to be around. No one wants to be friends with a human lie detector test.” She climbs down onto the second rung of the ladder. “Thank you, Professor Bisset, it was kind of you to invite me to your book group. I’m sorry I spoiled the meeting.” She steps down to the third rung. “Apologies to you all.”

And, with that, her blond bob disappears behind the red brick.

—

“I feel awful for the poor girl,” Amandine says. “Can you imagine living like that?”

“That’s your problem,” Kat says with a sniff. “You’re too nice.”

“I am not,” Amandine protests. She can’t stop thinking about what Noa said about the paracetamol, but she’s nervous to ask her mother if it’s true. “I absolutely am not.”

Héloïse pats her daughter’s knee. “I’m afraid you are,
ma petite
, you always have been. When you were a little girl I had to teach you not to apologize all the time. At school, if a child trod on your toes, you’d say sorry. If someone stole your lunchbox, you’d say sorry…”

“Okay, okay,” Amandine says. “I get it.”

—

The three witches sit in a booth at Gustare, drinking coffee and eating pistachio cream croissants for breakfast. After the book group fiasco the night before, Amandine had persuaded them to meet again the next morning to settle themselves and partake of a little caffeine and empty but delectable calories. Kat didn’t need much persuading and together they dragged Héloïse along.

“She’s an interesting case,” Kat admits. “That’s quite a brilliant gift to have, being able to see people’s secrets, if slightly less brilliant for the people being seen.”

“I feel for her,” Amandine says. “It can’t be easy going through life like that; I’ll bet she doesn’t have many friends.”