Page 14 of Uncharmed
Chapter Seven
MAEVE
‘W hat do you think?’ Annie asked over her shoulder, chewing on the inside of her cheek as she checked her outfit from every possible angle in the mirror.
Faye stood with hands on hips behind Annie and spoke to her reflection. ‘It’s a bit much for the school run, isn’t it?’
‘Okay, maybe I’ve panicked. Is the blazer a little over the top? I am going to pick her up from school, though. It’s a formal, academic environment, isn’t it? I don’t want to embarrass her by turning up and looking like a slob,’ Annie said, examining the length of the skirt again.
‘Where the hell did you go when you were a kid?’ Faye said, bemused. ‘This is a British state secondary school, Annie. I’d lose the corsage, for starters.’
‘You don’t like it?’ Annie said, sounding entirely dejected as she removed the enormous floral corsage from her lapel before smoothing down her blouse.
‘That’ll do it. Yeah, now it all looks very laid back and normal, actually,’ Faye said, deadpan.
After much deliberation, Annie had finally settled on the exact opposite of laid back and normal for anybody other than herself: a flamingo-pink skirt suit with a pencil silhouette and enormous power shoulders in the matching blazer.
The coordinated pink pumps and ruffle-bow blouse had resulted in an alarmingly bright finish, which she hadn’t entirely intended on.
Nonetheless, she had decided to roll with it as some kind of feminist statement that a modern teenager was sure to appreciate.
‘She’ll like the whole retro thing, right? It makes me seem fun,’ Annie asked, flouncing the bow to give it a bit more life. Faye quickly turned away and busied herself with flipping through a few mixtapes. Annie gulped. ‘Right?’
‘Absolutely. There’s nothing the kids love more than power suits. But,’ Faye sighed, folding her arms, ‘whether Maeve thinks your outfit is truly excellent or frankly insane is irrelevant. She’s going to love you for you and this is an amazing thing that you’re doing.’
Pari poked her head around the doorway. ‘Woah. Your outfits get jazzier by the day, Annie. It’s very children’s TV presenter or maybe a weather girl?’
‘She’s going to collect the kid,’ Faye explained.
‘Of course, that’s today!’ Pari whooped. ‘I still can’t believe you’re going ahead with it. As if you don’t have a frantic enough schedule already, you decide to throw some volunteer work in the mix with an actual, real-life teenager.’
Annie had told Faye and Pari that she’d signed up for a local after-school scheme.
As far as they understood it, she was to help Maeve with homework, encourage her about the future and offer up some work experience in a female-led, independent business.
The small details about nurturing supernatural powers and managing potentially explosive magical mishaps would have to remain just between her and Maeve.
The mental image of the lovely cafe curtains being set ablaze was one she tried not to dwell on.
‘Wish me luck.’ Annie pulled down the hem of her blazer firmly.
‘Luck, luck, luck!’ Pari sang, bundling her into a cuddle.
‘I wish you an abundance of luck. In fact, I wish you a miracle and, more than anything, I wish that your sanity returns to you in due course,’ Faye said grimly.
Annie landed with a shower of sparks in the middle of a pansy-covered roundabout.
Stepping out of the flowerbed, she assessed the quaint, quiet village, finding a crossroads of three different residential roads to take.
In a blur of fuchsia pink against the neat rows of brown terraced houses and a very grey northern sky, she put down her briefcase as she took in her surroundings with an optimistic smile.
Small gardens in front of each house, porches full of winter coats and a couple of cats sleeping on doorsteps, one of which had startled awake on Annie’s arrival.
With a big stretch, he wandered towards her and immediately laced his way through her ankles.
Attracting the attention of any neighbourhood cat within a five-mile radius was natural to a witch’s animal affinity.
‘What a warm welcome. Do you know where I can find Maeve?’ She bent down to give the cat a stroke and, if she hadn’t been paying attention, she might have missed the way he used his tail to point down one of the streets.
A sign on the grass read Heath Road and a little way further loomed a large building, which Annie assumed to be the school.
There wasn’t much similarity to the boarding school that she’d attended with Romily, Vivienne and Harmony – considerably fewer turrets and drawbridges, for starters.
This building was a slightly puzzling mix of intricate, old architecture, long-ignored ‘Girls Entrance’ and ‘Boys Entrance’ signs carved into the stone above the doorways, while modern prefab extensions were stuck against the sides.
It was as though the school couldn’t quite decide which century to belong to.
‘Aha! Thank you, sir, you’ve been a big help,’ Annie told the cat, conjuring him a small pile of treats in return for his assistance, before scooping her briefcase back up and waving thanks to a car that halted to let her cross.
Unable to hold back an excited grin, she trotted towards the school, approaching its blue railings.
Morena had arranged for Annie to collect Maeve from the canteen and escort her to Celeste, where they could get to know each other over hot chocolate with extra cream.
Annie had pictured their moment of meeting over and over, imagining her mini-me as a slightly shy but absolutely charming go-getter.
Annie had decided that the occasion called for ice-breaker brownies, so she carried a ribbon-tied box of them under one arm.
Her other hand clutched the pink vintage briefcase, which was only full of the bare essentials for when they inevitably stayed up all night talking: fluffy slipper socks, feather-trimmed pyjamas, face masks.
She could conjure anything else fun once they’d found their feet.
The bell had yet to ring for the end of the day. Searching for a place to wait, Annie spotted a bench across the road where an elderly man was sitting quietly alone, clutching a striped bag of sweets. His knee bobbed up and down, Annie noticed as she sat down – a small giveaway that he was nervous.
‘Are you waiting for someone?’ she asked brightly.
‘My granddaughter. I collect her when her mum is working late. My favourite days of the week,’ he said, unable to contain a sheepish smile at the mention of his grandchild.
‘That’s lovely.’ Annie made sure that her own smile stayed put, even though her heart pinched. ‘I always wished I had a grandparent that I was close to, but I never really knew mine. She’s very lucky to have you.’
‘Nonsense, I’m the lucky one. The light of my life, she is,’ he said proudly, then jiggled the bag in his hand. ‘We share a bag of strawberry creams while we walk.’
Another pinch. ‘You must be very proud of her.’
‘Proud like you wouldn’t believe. She’s eleven. I know it’s only a matter of time until she’s too old to be seen walking home with her Gramps, but never mind, eh? I’ll treasure it while it lasts,’ he said while he stared determinedly at the school doors.
As the bittersweet softness of his words entered the air, Annie was overwhelmed with empathy, touched by the genuine care laced between them.
Then it began to dull, like an old injury that kicked up in the rain and cold.
A greyness leaked into the golden feeling, a longing for an unconditional family love that fitted together so simply, something that she had never known but coveted more than anything.
A shrill bell tolled, snapping Annie from her thoughts, and the school doors burst open.
A short girl came bounding over in a blazer that was three sizes too big for her and the old man raised himself with difficulty to meet her with open arms, before producing the bag of chocolates for her like a magic trick.
They walked away and he turned back to give Annie a small wave.
She hurried to wipe away a stray tear and rose to cross the road.
As she waited at the zebra crossing, she couldn’t resist sending a dusky pink twirl towards their bag of sweets; the same nostalgia enchantment that she added to the scone stacks at Celeste, which would help the girl to treasure the precious moment, now and on a far-off day to come.
A crowd of students had gathered inside the canteen, laughter and shouting muffled behind the glass.
She approached the closed canteen doors, with a renewed spring in her step at the infectious buzz for the end of the school day, and knocked on the window to catch someone’s attention.
The group closest to the window spun their heads towards the interruption and each of their jaws promptly dropped.
A moment later, they all burst into a fit of shared giggles, one boy shouting something across the room that Annie failed to quite make out.
She couldn’t think what was so funny. Eventually, one of the more well-mannered ones of the bunch came to open the door.
‘Hello there!’ Annie said excitedly. ‘I’m looking for Maeve?’
The boy, a smattering of swollen acne across his chin and a fluff of moustache on his top lip, sniffed in response.
‘Maeve Cadmus?’ Annie went on. ‘She goes here...To your school, I mean. At least, I think she does?’ Annie, wide-eyed, tried to encourage him to respond. Perhaps he was shy.
‘Someone actually wants to speak to Grave Sadness?’ A tall, lanky girl poked her head around the door, chewing and popping on gum, with lips covered in concealer and eyebrows that had been plucked line-thin.
Annie marvelled at how it was evidently the thing for some teenagers to make themselves as orange as possible.
‘What do you want with her miserable arse?’