Shaking all over, I get to my bed somehow. I climb straight in and pull the covers up over my head.
How did I get up there? I wrack my brain but there is no logical explanation. I don’t believe in curses, but I do believe in weird. The weirdness has followed me here. This time I don’t know if I can control it. It’s worse than it has ever been before. Now it is getting dangerous.
5
‘Why don’t you have a normal clock?’ Mae has bought a new clock with a photo of Tom Jones, a singer she adores, in the centre of it. Instead of chiming the hour it says ‘Yeah’ in a deep Welsh voice. ‘I can hear that from my room, and it makes it pretty hard to sleep.’
‘Oh, dear. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.’
I don’t tell her someone actually woke up on the roof, but I keep up my grump. I’m not good when I’m tired. Dad isn’t good when he’s tired either. He ranges from irritable to ‘time to ignore him until he’s had a nap’. I am at that point, where it’s best to ignore me.
A goat trots into the kitchen. Mae gives the goat a carrot. ‘This is Helen. Helen, this is Wilde.’
Helen bleats her version of a ‘hello’, then takes her carrot outside.
‘It’s not normal to have a goat in your house.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says me.’
‘Then you must be right.’ Mae raises an irritating eyebrow then chops up some coriander for a soup. ‘How’s the play going?’
‘It’s OK, thanks. It’s not my sort of thing.’ I spritz my hair with one of Mae’s flower sprays and am horrified when it makes me smell like someone’s nana.
‘Patchouli, geranium and orange blossom. It’s a calming mix which will keep its scent all day.’
Gutted to the nth degree.
‘Well, let’s just hope the play doesn’t dredge up things which are better left forgotten.’
‘I shouldn’t think it will even dredge up an audience.’
‘It’s not a good topic to cover. There’s too much emotion attached. And that Frocks Rutherford woman, or whatever her name is supposed to be, shouldn’t be meddling with things that are none of her beeswax.’
‘It happened a million years ago, Mae.’
‘Places store memories. The things they did to those people, they seep into the roots of a town and poison it.’
‘It’s just made up. It’s not like we are exhuming any bodies.’ I don’t know why I’m not agreeing with Mae. I don’t want to do a play about witches. I’m just in a grouchy mood so ready for an argument.
‘Your mum wouldn’t have let you take part.’
The world freezes. Mae never talks about my mum anymore. I don’t say anything. Wait for her to carry on. She doesn’t.
‘My mum loved drama, didn’t she?’
‘Yes. She loved theatre, but she wouldn’t have liked the subject matter. She was different. Talented. Like you. She could see things.’
It’s difficult to get my words out. ‘What do you mean? See things?’
‘In glass. In water. The future. The past. Scrying, it’s called.’
‘Whatever that is, I don’t believe in it.’ I don’t want to believe in it because I’m doing my best to be normal. ‘I don’t believe in it AT ALL,’ I say, for good measure.
‘Then I must be making it up.’ Mae briskly attacks the sink with a scouring pad. ‘Whatever you believe, young lady, this town used to try witches and hang them, and we shouldn’t be making light of it.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘Yes, it is.’
I feel the creeps, thick and threatening. How did I get on to the roof? Nothing like that has ever happened to me before.
Mrs Danvers comes in and sly-eyes me to show me she knows everything. She leaves with a very smug twitch of her tail.
I don’t like this conversation. But I need to know more. It’s like picking a scab. I need to know everything.
‘“The Witch called Winter” is just a story, Mae.’
‘Is it?’
‘You really believe in it?’ I am scared now, but pretending to be incredulous. ‘All of it?’
‘Yes, I really do.’ Mae scrubs harder. ‘Your dad doesn’t like me talking to you about this.’
I wait. Is she finally going to tell me what is wrong with me? Tell me properly about Mum? The smell of patchouli steams up from my clothes.
‘Forget I said anything…’
‘But…’
‘No. My lips are sealed.’ She hurries out into the garden.
I go upstairs to get my school bag. Looking out of the witch window, I squint into the sun. My mum gazed out of this window once upon a time.
She could do unusual things. I am unusual.
I examine the skylight. There’s no way I could have got up through it. I must have gone out through the witch window.
Mrs Danvers barges her way into my room and lies down in the most inconvenient central spot.
‘You could tell me all about her, couldn’t you, Mrs Danvers?’
She considers me with her odd-coloured eyes, then licks her bits to mark her indifference. She wouldn’t have met my mum, but she’s eavesdropped on all Mae’s conversations over the years. She knows what my mum could do. What she was and why Dad is trying to hide it. Why won’t Mae tell me more? She is so annoying.
I go and brush my teeth, hard. Tie my plaits tightly so I won’t have to do them again. Get my mind set for another day of being The Same at school. Hoisting the backpack Mae has given me over my shoulders, I stomp downstairs. It’s not fair that everyone knows more about my mum than I do. It’s not fair that they all keep secrets. If anyone should know things about her, then it should be me. I slam the door on my way out.
I stride to the end of our road. Sun glare strains my eyes. Cars. Fumes. Engines growling. I turn the corner to the school.
Brakes screeching. No laughter. No shouting. Children staring. Parents staring. Everyone staring. I realise that the sun is no longer shining on me. I am completely shaded.
Looking up, I see an undulating cloud of starlings. Thousands of them, making black waves in the sky.
Wow. It’s amazing.
The starlings start to swoop low, around me, almost catching at the ends of my plaits. I try to walk calmly through the gate, but they follow. I have to run.
I stop at the school entrance. Go away, please. Squeezing my eyes tight shut, I think of waterfalls, calm places. Fish circling under ripples of watery light. The moon-path on the sea.
I open my eyes and they are gone.
Everyone is staring at me now. Pointing fingers. I don’t know what’s happening. I’m scared. Really scared. I push through the doors, dash past the receptionist and his too-big teeth. Run past the pictures of witches and freaks. Get to our classroom, which is empty, and slump into my seat. Putting my head down on my desk, I try to process everything.