Page 32

Temperance ran for her life.

The wedding dress was ripped down to shreds: just one layer of the skirt still hanging on, the hem singed, ragged and pulled to bits. The sleeves and the red belt had come off somewhere behind her in the woods, but all she could think about was running.

Running from the clap of thunder, the white burst of lightening, the roll of smoke around her head. The fire was spreading; it was spreading to the village. She had to get there. Before . . . before . . .

Suddenly, someone was standing on the path in front of her, screened by thick, grey smoke. But were they blocking the path or had they come to rescue her?

She opened her mouth, her hand at her throat.

But she couldn’t make a sound.

Temperance sat up in bed.

‘Shit!’ she yelled, bringing Susie bursting through her door.

‘What? What’s happened? ’

Temperance dragged her hands down her face. ‘It didn’t work! This morning, at the beach: it didn’t work. I had the nightmare again, only this time it was worse.’

Susie flopped onto the bed next to her. ‘Oh fuck. So we’re still in doom times?’

‘Seems like it.’ Susie got her phone out her back pocket and started typing frantically. ‘I’m having a major magical crisis and you’re texting?!’

The little sister bit her lip. ‘Not texting. Googling.’

‘What?’

‘ Witch premonitions: storms and fire. ’

Temperance gulped back a sticky lump in her throat. ‘What does it say?’

‘Well, the first history site that comes up is about this woman, Mother Shipton. Born in the 1400s.’ Her eyes scanned the screen.

‘She lived in a cave, with a skull-shaped rock pool. Made herbal potions for those in need. And . . . accurately predicted the Great Fire of London and the Spanish Armada.’ Susie shivered.

‘I was hoping you’d find something a bit more reassuring than that.’

‘Me too.’ Susie squeezed her big sister’s hand. ‘We’ll email F again, see if they have any other tricks up their sleeve. Some bigger magic. How are you feeling?’

‘I mean, pretty wired, what with the magic and the – um – broken sleep before dawn and then this. I suppose I—’

Susie sucked in air between clenched teeth. ‘Is there a chance you could pull all of that together in the next half an hour and come to the pub with me?’

‘What? Now?’

Her little sister nodded. ‘It’s actually 11.30 – you slept in. And seeing as his jacket was dry, I texted Mark to come for lunch. He’ll be there at twelve. Time to plant some devious little magical seeds, Tee.’

Temperance gave a sigh of defeat. ‘OK, I’ll get up. Let’s hope this bit of F’s advice actually does the trick.’

‘And one more thing?’ Susie held up a finger.

‘Yes?’

‘You really need a shower. You smell like you’ve just done the marathon in an acrylic knit.’

Temperance swung her legs out of bed and snatched a towel from her radiator. ‘You could have at least brought me some tea.’

Temperance picked slowly at the crab salad sandwich Susie had ordered for her by way of an apology as she started her shift at the pub and went into the back to start prepping for the evening rush She watched the door, waiting for Mark to stroll in.

So much depended on the belladonna having the effect F had promised them.

Who knows if there would even be a pub to have a crab sandwich in in two years’ time if it didn’t?

She’d been trying to ignore the presence of Abel in the room as he aggressively rubbed down the bar top, using about ten times as much CIF as you’d need to clean the hull of a boat.

Every time his forearm muscle tenses and flexed, Temperance would have another flashback to the saucy dreams she’d had.

Each reminder was a cocktail of overwhelming sensations: a squeeze of annoyance across her forehead that Abel Gulliver could still have such a visceral effect on her; a lurch of guilt in her stomach that she was somehow harassing him by making Dream Abel carry out every single one of her sexual fantasies without the real Abel’s knowledge; and a deep tightening between her legs when her libido betrayed her better sense, aching to experience those dreams all over again.

As Abel leant right over the bar to reach the far edge, scrubbing away with a particularly vocal huff, Temperance saw a flash of him bending her over the desk in her living room and

she snapped. ‘What is UP with you?’

His head whipped up. ‘Sorry?’

‘You’re treating that bar like it owes you money. Are you OK?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re sure.’

‘Yes!’

‘OK. Whatever. Suffer alone. It’s really none of my business.’

Abel gave her a long stare before throwing the jay cloth in the sink and stalking around to her table.

‘Sorry. I’m . . . I had the weird dream again.

That one I told you about? Last night. Except this time there was a fire coming towards the village, really close to the pub.

And I knew Gran was still inside, so I was banging on the door, but for once in her life she’d locked it.

The dream . . . it’s shaken me up, OK? Scared the shit out of me, if I’m honest. I don’t like the idea that something could happen to her and I’d be too far away to help. ’

Temperance slightly regretted her snappy tone and softened her next words.

‘Margie has a big network of people here who love her. We’d never let anything bad happen to her.

We are always around.’ Temperance had meant to sound reassuring, but maybe her intonation had lingered too long on that final ‘we’: the implication being that she and Susie were doing a better job as surrogate grandchildren than Abel was doing as a real one.

‘Right. I appreciate that,’ he picked at his thumb, ‘but all the same I’m going to extend my stay a bit, really make sure she’s OK once the birthday party stuff has died down.’ He said it as excitedly as if it was four back-to-back dental appointments.

Temperance felt her heart unclench just a little – more time to puzzle out the spell she’d cast over them all was a good thing, at least. Who knows if she had the powers to be as on the money with her predications as Mother Shipton, but she wasn’t going to let it get far enough to find out.

‘She’ll love that,’ Temperance said encouragingly. ‘Not that she’s a wilting little wallflower when you’re gone or anything, but I can see the extra spring in her step at having you back.’

Half a smile lit up his face. ‘It was fun watching her kick out a lairy holidaymaker who rested their pint on the pool table. She told him to go back to Centre Parcs where he belonged. I think she threw in a few extra swear words just for me.’

‘I legitimately learnt all my swear words from Margie as a kid. Well, Margie or you .’

‘Oh right, because you were a goody-two-shoes? It wasn’t my idea to steal flakes from the ice cream man, remember? And yet somehow, I got the massive lecture from Gran about “leading you astray”. Typical.’ Abel grinned, blinked, then quickly went back to wiping down glasses.

Temperance felt her breath catch for just a second.

Abel Gulliver had actually admitted to having a past here in East Prawle.

It shouldn’t have felt so momentous, but it did.

Now she’d heard it confirmed with her own ears, and had glimpsed some sliver of warmth in Abel, Temperance was too curious for her own good.

She wanted to see what else he might open up about.

‘Must be nice, though, a Gulliver get-together for Margie’s big birthday? ’

His mouth folded back down into a line. ‘Yes – although it’s always weird, seeing Gullivers in a big group.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It reminds you who’s not there. Who never turns up.’ Abel rubbed unnecessarily hard again at the bar, as if he could polish out his anger. ‘And I don’t enjoy that part.’

Temperance bit her bottom lip. She hadn’t meant to stir up memories about Abel’s dad like that.

Even if he could be a cold, rude arse at times, he didn’t deserve for that kind of a wound to be opened.

She could kick herself. Trying to dig deeper to expose his happy roots to the village, she’d actually uncovered a deep, dark well of sadness.

And perhaps another reason why he’d been happy to turn his back on the place he grew up in.

For each good memory, there was obviously a sad one lurking just behind.

‘I’m really sorry, Abe, I didn’t mean . . .’

He looked up and met her eyes. ‘It’s OK. You get it, more than most.’ His eyebrows scrunched together as he moved to start wiping down the big coffee machine.

‘If you ever wanted to talk—’ she ventured, but her words were cut off by a giant blast of steam shooting out of one of the shiny steel pipes, dangerously close to Abel’s face.

‘What the?!’ Abel stepped back, his forearm shielding his eyes.

A stab of pins and needles shot up Temperance’s hands, as if she was reading the strongest magic. She sprinted over to where he stood. ‘Are you OK?’

Abel nodded, wiping moisture away from his skin.

Temperance threw a tea towel over the guilty pipe and slid her hand around the machine to unplug it. But she found that it was already unplugged.

Her blood went cold .

The doom was rolling closer.

‘Fuck me, that was hot.’ Abel had his fingers pressed into his closed eyes.

Temperance turned to him. ‘Can you see OK?’ She took his hands away, moved them down to his sides. ‘Open up. Can you see me alright?’

The skin over his nose and forehead was flushed still but when Abel opened his grey-green eyes to her his gaze was unblinking and direct. He spoke slowly. ‘I can see you, Temperance.’

Her hands were still holding his. ‘Good. That’s . . . good.’ She slipped her fingers away and stood back. ‘Margie should get that machine checked out.’

‘I’ll tell her. Maybe something fell in there and set it off. I swear that steam looked purple as it was coming at me.’

‘Um, right.’ Temperance tried to gulp back the lump in her throat.

‘Actually, can you watch the bar for me? I’ll tell Gran about her demon machine.’

Temperance nodded numbly. ‘No worries.’

She went back to her sandwich and was silently worrying about what other inanimate objects might start magically attacking Abel, when Mark popped his head around the heavy front door. ‘Hello? Are you open?’

‘They’re open.’ Temperance waved him in.

‘Temperance, hi. Is Susie around? She’s promised me the perfect fish and chips to help put an end to my three-day hangover. Fair, when she was the one behind the sambucas. I could have sworn I told her that was not my poison.’

Temperance trilled out a fake, tinkling laugh at the word ‘poison’. ‘She is a one. Must not have heard you properly over the jukebox. I’ll go and get her for you.’

She sped off to the kitchen, nipping quietly through the swing door.

She didn’t see Susie straight away, but she did see the broad back of Abel as he rolled an orange back and forwards along the stainless steel counter with one hand and pressed his phone to his ear with the other.

The way his hand moved, slowly and smoothly, had Temperance back in the dream where she was up against the wooden door, his hands all over her, squeezing tight .

. .She shook her head like a wet dog to dispel the image.

‘. . . much rather be hanging out with you, too. I don’t like it but it’s something I’ve got to do. I know, babe. Maybe another week? Yeah, OK.’

He turned on the spot and locked eyes with Temperance, his jaw falling open ever so slightly.

‘Sorry,’ she blurted, her stomach trying to make its way out through her mouth, ‘looking for Suse.’

Her heart was pulsing in her ears as she walked blindly towards the pub garden instead, finding Susie polishing silverware at one of the tables, under an umbrella.

‘Mark’s here. In the pub.’

Susie’s eyes lit up with a manic energy. ‘Go time!’ She snatched up the jacket in a bag next to her and went inside.

Temperance picked up a fork and napkin, rubbing at a water mark. She decided that it was much safer out here with the cutlery.

Twenty minutes later, from over the fence she heard Mark and Susie open the pub’s front door.

‘I thought it was a good place to moor at the time. Maybe it’s not. And I’d hate to get caught in anything choppy today. I could just call a taxi to take me home, leave the rig here.’

‘Hmmm,’ Susie said without commitment. ‘You could.’

‘I don’t know quite what to do . . .’ his voice trailed off. ‘Oh, um. I brought this for you. But maybe you already have it.’

‘ Rough Guide to San Sebastian. Oh. Thanks.’ Susie’s voice was flat.

‘I knew one of the guys at the boat club had been, so I borrowed it off him this morning. He said you can keep it. If you like. I think you’d have a great adventure there. And I would—’

‘The other night,’ Susie suddenly cut in, ‘you said you had an exciting project you wanted to tell me about. But we didn’t get a chance to talk about it. But I’ve got a little time now?’

There was a pause on Mark’s end. ‘Did I say that? I suppose . . . it’s still up in the air, though.

Lots of hurdles to go over. Might not get very far at all with it.

Red tape, you know. A solo project of mine, and my family .

. . aren’t always easy to convince. Now I think of it, I really should rush back.

Don’t want to piss off my dad. Goodbye, Suse. ’

Temperance heard footsteps on gravel as he crunched hurriedly away. After a good beat, Susie yelled out, ‘Hear all that?’

‘Yup.’

‘I’d say we’re in business. Or more like – he’s not. Ha! Belladonna, you little beauty.’