The Language of Spells (17 page)

Gwen realised that she was truly powerless to say no to her niece when she found herself agreeing to a dinner date with Cameron Laing.

‘I’m not sure he’ll want to come,’ she said when Katie rang.

‘Mum’s already invited him and he said yes,’ Katie said. ‘He’s picking you up at six.’

Gwen wanted to explain that she and Cameron were not together and had, in fact, celebrated that fact with an official Goodbye Shag, but that seemed indiscreet. Besides, he was clearly comfortable with the idea. He’d probably tucked her neatly in the box marked ‘just friends’.

Gwen spent the next day emptying Nanette and arranging boxes on the shelves in the garden room. As she carried and sorted, she pushed Cameron Laing firmly to the back of her mind. Eventually, her mind stopped torturing her for long enough to have an idea for a new shadow box. It had been months since she’d felt excited about making something, so she got to work straight away.

A sound broke her concentration and she looked up from gluing doll’s house wallpaper. She’d been working so intently that she hadn’t noticed the day disappear. Full dark had arrived and Gwen looked through the window into the pitch-black of the garden. The lights in the house weren’t on and Gwen’s vision was attuned to her anglepoise craft light. She couldn’t see a thing.

A loud knocking made her heart leap painfully.

Cat brushed against her legs and Gwen patted his head a little before opening the door. She hadn’t closed her curtains, so whoever was outside knew she was there.

It was Cam and he smiled as soon as he saw her. ‘Were you thinking about hiding under the table?’

‘Thank God it’s you,’ Gwen said, forcing a jokey tone. ‘I never know which of my friendly neighbours is going to visit next.’

‘It’s nice that they’re welcoming.’ Cam ducked through the low doorway.

‘I suppose.’ Gwen had lost her breath at the sight of Cam. He looked completely at ease, as if nothing at all had happened. As if he truly had moved on.
Crap.

‘You’re working?’ Cam said.

Gwen glanced back at the table. ‘I’m booked into a couple of markets. I could do with some bumper days, so if you could send all your rich friends shopping, that would be handy.’

‘What makes you think I have rich friends?’

‘Oh come on. You’re a lawyer. You must have some.’

‘It’s not going that brilliantly, actually. I lost another client today.’

‘Oh.’ Gwen felt like hell. ‘Sorry. What’s going on?’

‘My mother and my grandfather think I should join the Rotary, start making nice with Patrick Allen and his lot.’

‘Well, that sucks.’

Cam shrugged. ‘I’m good at my job. I’m just going to carry on being good at my job and the local politicians can go fuck themselves.’

‘You’re completely calm about it, then,’ Gwen said, smiling.

‘Completely and utterly.’ Cam smiled back at her with real warmth. Gwen swallowed, trying to ignore the sense memories of their night together. Her whole body was leaning towards the man, hoping for a rerun. Oh Christ.

‘You’ve been busy.’ Cam was looking at her work table, at the half-assembled shadow box.

‘Got to get my stock levels up. I’m famous now.’ Gwen grabbed a copy of
The Chronicle
and handed it to Cam. ‘Page six.’

She pressed air bubbles out of the wallpaper, smoothing it down carefully, while Cam read. Finally he looked up. ‘At least it’s positive.’

‘Only if you ignore the sarcastic quote marks.’ Gwen shook her head. ‘I bet Patrick Allen has something to do with this.’

Cam looked surprised. ‘You’re probably right. He basically runs this town. Still, at least it’s publicity.’

Gwen sat down. ‘I guess. I’ve had a couple of enquiries today already.’

‘That’s good, right? You said you needed the business.’

Gwen was staring at a tiny paintbrush, turning it over in her hands. ‘I just wish I could be sure people really like them. I worry that they’re only interested because they saw my name in the paper.’

‘You don’t get to choose who enjoys art or how.’

‘I’m not talking legally,’ Gwen said. ‘Although a law against keeping great works in the private collections of rich idiots would be good.’

‘New from Mattel, Socialist Gwen.’

‘Worst. Action figure. Ever.’

Cam laughed. He looked around the room. ‘I didn’t know about this place.’

‘I think it was Iris’s work room. I’ve been clearing it out.’ Gwen pointed to a cardboard box filled with glass jars. ‘Don’t know what to do with that lot. Feels wrong to throw them away.’

‘What about the boxes?’ Cam indicated the shoe boxes lining the shelves.

‘They’re mine. I moved them in yesterday.’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘Don’t look so shocked,’ Gwen said. ‘It’s not that big a deal.’

‘You’re moving in,’ he said.

‘This is a really nice house.’ Gwen looked away so that she didn’t have to watch Cam’s expression. If he looked as horrified as Ruby had, she didn’t want to know. Instead, she concentrated on her shadow box. It lay on its back, the inside papered with to-scale striped wallpaper, the bottom edge carpeted in tiny burgundy pile. To one side sat a miniature armchair upholstered in dusky green velvet and a two-inch-tall reproduction of Van Gogh’s
Sunflowers
that she was rather pleased with. Cam pointed at it. ‘Did you paint that?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s really good.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I’m sorry, though,’ he added. ‘The colours are wrong.’

Gwen laughed. ‘That depends on your perspective.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘They’re little jokes. I put stuff in for people to find.’

‘Like Easter eggs?’

‘Sorry?’

‘In computer games. They put in hidden stuff for people to find—’ Cam broke off. ‘Never mind.’

Gwen lifted another box from the shelf. ‘Like in this one. Look.’

The box was one of Gwen’s favourites. It looked like a jumble of sewing supplies: cotton reels, scissors, a thimble, but hidden amongst them were tiny figures. A dark-haired girl with red lips peeping out from inside a cotton reel, a boy in yellow dungarees hanging from a scissor handle, a messy-looking dog trapped inside a box of pins, his paws scraping at the clear plastic. There was a minuscule bone on the ‘floor’ just outside.

‘Huh.’ Cam seemed at a momentary loss for words. He straightened up. ‘Are you ready to go, or do you need to get changed?’

Gwen looked down at her jeans.
Good thing this isn’t a proper date
. ‘I’m ready,’ she said.

Outside Ruby’s four-bedroom house in a pleasant street on the outskirts of Bath, Gwen remembered how she and Ruby had spent Saturdays in the city, walking around with linked arms. They’d been merciless in their opinions of the well-to-do Bathonians. The ladies-who-lunched and the men with cravats and Barbour wax jackets. Now Ruby opened the door wearing tailored black trousers and a black-and-white striped top, a silk scarf knotted neatly around her throat, and Gwen wondered when the hell everybody had become so grown up.

‘Cam! Lovely of you to come.’ Ruby leaned in so that he could kiss her cheek, diamond earrings twinkling in the porch light.

‘Nice that you made an effort, Gwen,’ Ruby said, her eyes sliding down Gwen’s body, pausing significantly at her blue Converse One Stars. ‘Come on through. David’s just getting ready. He’s only just finished work. You’ll know what that’s like, Cam.’

Gwen rolled her eyes, then realised that Cam had caught her doing it and was smiling in an annoying way. ‘Shut up,’ she whispered.

They were sitting in the cream-and-gold living room sipping gin and tonics when David came in. He had always been a restrained kind of guy, but Gwen could tell he was pleased to see her by the way he briefly patted her arm. However he didn’t look quite so thrilled that Cam was back in their lives. ‘You want a beer?’

‘I’m fine with this.’ Cam held up the hi-ball Ruby had thrust into his hand seconds before.

‘No. You want to come and get a beer,’ David said heavily. ‘Now.’

‘Okey-doke.’ Cam stood up, put his glass on one of the slate coasters on the polished-glass side table and followed David.

Ruby watched him go, then said, ‘Now that’s a keeper.’

Gwen’s heart leaped and she thought
I know
. She aimed for casual. ‘What makes you say that? His steady income?’

‘He used a coaster. It took me five years to train David.’

Gwen laughed. A joke. Of course Ruby was joking. For a moment, there, she had looked so much like Gloria, it’d confused her.

‘You okay?’ Ruby frowned. ‘You’re a little pale.’

‘I’m fine.’ Gwen took a hefty swallow of her drink, forgetting that she didn’t really like gin. She was still coughing when David and Cam walked back in.

‘Where’s Katie?’ Gwen asked, once she’d cleared her lungs.

‘Upstairs preening,’ Ruby said. As she spoke, the door opened and Katie bounced in.

‘Say hello to Gwen and Cam,’ Ruby said before Katie had a chance to open her mouth.

‘Hey, Auntie Gwen.’ She nodded at Cam, looking uncharacteristically nervous.

‘Give me a hand?’ David said, and Katie followed him into the kitchen.

Ruby stood up. ‘You two go through to the dining room; I’m going to check Katie doesn’t set fire to the starter.’

Once they were sitting in the immaculate dining room, Gwen asked Cam what David had wanted with him.

‘Just to ask about my intentions.’

‘Oh God.’ Gwen put her hands over her face. ‘I’m sorry. I’m thirty-one, for crying out loud.’ She really wanted to ask him what he’d said. Like it mattered.

‘I told him that I’d already had my wicked way with you, so my intentions were entirely honourable.’

‘Oh. That’s good.’ Gwen could feel herself going bright red.

‘I’m joking,’ Cam said, looking adorably worried. ‘I think David might’ve killed me. He seems to take the big brother role very seriously.’

‘Oh.’ Gwen laughed awkwardly. ‘I knew that. Back in the day, he was always worried about you and me. He didn’t trust you at all.’

‘He was quite right,’ Cam whispered. He smiled filthily and Gwen felt her heart rate kick up.

Thankfully, David and Katie arrived with food and saved her from having to say anything.

‘So,’ Katie said, once they’d all exclaimed over the perfectly presented scallops, ‘are you going to be my new uncle?’ She batted her eyelashes at Cam, while Gwen almost choked for the second time.

‘Cam is an old friend of ours,’ Ruby said. ‘I told you that.’

‘I promise we won’t sit here telling boring stories about the past,’ Cam said, patting Gwen on the back as she spluttered. ‘What would you like to talk about, Katie?’

‘Bad idea,’ Ruby said.

‘You’re a lawyer, right?’ Katie said. ‘Does that mean you defend people even when they’re guilty?’

‘I don’t really handle criminal cases,’ Cam said, ‘but that’s the general idea. Everyone deserves to be represented, otherwise the trial system wouldn’t work.’

‘But what if you know the person is guilty, like one hundred per cent, isn’t it unethical to defend them?’

‘Yep, it’s a genuine dilemma and one of the many reasons I don’t do criminal law. But the lawyers defending criminals are doing a really important job. They’re making sure that, beyond all reasonable doubt, that person is truly guilty. You don’t want innocent people to be punished, do you?’

Katie shook her head. ‘That’s what Officer Friendly said.’

‘Officer Friendly?’

‘DCI Collins. He came to our school to give a talk.’

Cam laughed. ‘Harry gave a talk? And you guys named him Officer Friendly?’ He turned to Gwen. ‘I can’t wait to tell him that.’

Talk turned to David’s latest work project and Gwen got up to help Ruby bring in the main course.

In the kitchen, Ruby nudged Gwen with her hip. ‘Katie likes Cam.’

She’s not the only one,
Gwen thought.

‘It’d be so great if you two could get it together.’

‘Keep your voice down,’ Gwen said.

‘I mean, it’d be really good for your reputation. Give you a bit of respectability, you know?’

Gwen carried the plates through before she gave into the temptation to slap Ruby with a piece of herb-encrusted salmon.

After miniature cups of chocolate with homemade ginger biscuits and coffee made in the kind of machine usually seen in upmarket cafés, Ruby stood up. ‘You guys take a drink through. I need to borrow Gwen for a minute.’

In the hallway, Gwen raised her eyebrows. ‘What?’

‘I want to show you something.’ Ruby pulled Gwen upstairs. She stopped outside a door with a pink plaque that said ‘Katie’s crib’ in glitter paint.

‘In there?’

‘Don’t worry. We won’t be long.’

‘Isn’t it—’ Gwen had been going to say ‘breach of privacy’, but Ruby had already opened the door and walked in.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing hidden. It’s not like snooping.’

‘It is a little.’

‘Go and get some clean laundry to bring in and put away, if it’ll make you feel better.’

Gwen sat on the bed. It was covered with a lilac duvet sprinkled with tiny embroidered silver stars. ‘What are you worried about?’

Ruby crossed to a desk, overflowing with papers, pens, notebooks and hair accessories. She picked up a red exercise book.

‘I’m not reading her diary,’ Gwen said.

‘Relax. Look.’ She held it closer so that Gwen could read the writing in black felt-tip on the front cover. ‘Spells.’

‘And?’

‘What do you mean “and”? Doesn’t this worry you?’

‘What’s inside? A love spell? Something she copied from a fortune cookie?’

‘Nothing. She hasn’t used it yet,’ Ruby said, putting the book back on top of the pile. ‘But there are these, too.’ She pointed upwards and for a moment Gwen expected to see cobwebs or stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling. Instead she saw the usual mix of colourful mobiles, crystals, dream-catchers and scarves she’d expect to find in any teenage girl’s room. Not that she knew any, apart from Katie. ‘And this.’ Ruby opened the wardrobe doors and took something down from the top shelf.

‘If you go through her stuff, you’re bound to find something you don’t like.’

‘Can you stop being holier than thou for just one second? Look.’ She thrust the object at Gwen. It was a crystal ball – the kind sold by The Crystal Cave. Made of glass and about as occult as an elastic band.