flame inside her.
Gina isn’t sure why she’s brought her witch-ball to the Magistrate’s House. She isn’t even sure why she’s here now. She and Stuart looked at dozens of other properties before they bought Dryden Road, but this was the one place that filled her with its energy. Even now, Gina feels a connection with it, a need to know its forgotten stories. In the middle of the night, jarred out of sleep by thoughts that go round and round in circles, she’d had a strange, romantic picture of hanging the witch-ball in the abandoned doorway, leaving it for the lucky person who buys the crumbling house and turns it back into the family home that she can see hovering over the broken shell like a ghostly negative. The house needs protecting until it can attract a new family.
It could have been them. Gina loses herself in her favourite private fantasy of what might have been, imagining herself floating through the garden, now landscaped and not overgrown with weeds; she’s rosy-cheeked and healthy, snipping dead heads off the fondant-coloured roses that form banks of drifting scent between the drive and the house.
She pictures herself in the cool, cream-tiled kitchen, making apple pies with deft, floury hands; Stuart in the book-lined study, transformed into an enthusiastic reader of Victorian fiction; both of them in the bedroom, in a brass-framed bed, passion licking and burning between them again like the first purple flames of the coal fire in the tiled hearth. It’s idyllic but not impossible. They’d have grown with the house, she thinks, they’d have stretched up to match its convivial dining room and welcoming hall.
Gina rubs her eyes, suddenly tired. In the fantasy, she and the house are always sharper than Stuart, and obviously she never gets cancer. It’s been nine months since her final appointment with Mr Khan. There are no signs of her original cancer, and the chances of it coming back, as long as she’s on the daily Tamoxifen, are ‘very low, in a woman your age’. Stuart had taken them all out for a celebration dinner; Jason and Naomi had bought champagne; Janet had cried with relief. Everyone had felt relief, apart from Gina.
Gina just felt, secretly, that a bigger balance had been squared. She was back to zero. Twenty-nine, and back to zero.
She looks down at the witch-ball, gleaming in her lap like a magical pea. It’s a stupid idea to leave it here. It’s a delicate thing, just old silvered glass – an easy target for a kid with an air rifle. As she moves, the light shifts on it, and Gina shivers at the thought of seeing another face behind her.
Gina had always thought a witch-ball was supposed to trap spirits but Mrs Hubert said it was to warn you of any witches creeping up on you. This is a fresh start but there are lots of things behind her. Like Mrs Hubert, Gina thinks it’s better to be able to see them than to pretend they’re not there.
It wasn’t the best day to see the house. The local radio weather forecast was promising early rain that would make the damp feel damper and the halls seem darker, but as Gina turned down the short tree-lined drive, a burst of sunshine emerged from behind the clouds, and her heart fluttered at the sight of the red roof rising above the trees, the symmetrical chimney stacks at each end.
She parked her red Golf next to the array of cars already assembled along the gravel turn: a black Range Rover, a BMW estate, and the council’s pool Astra. No sign of Lorcan’s van yet.
Good, she thought, getting out. She’d deliberately arrived ten minutes early so that she had time to gather herself, put the old dreams firmly away, before she went in.
As she headed towards the terraced lawns at the side of the house, Gina’s expert eye spotted signs of deterioration since she’d last been there. There were some tiles missing off the roof, and two of the crenellated chimney pots were visibly leaning. The mental calculator in her head
Gina isn’t sure why she’s brought her witch-ball to the Magistrate’s House. She isn’t even sure why she’s here now. She and Stuart looked at dozens of other properties before they bought Dryden Road, but this was the one place that filled her with its energy. Even now, Gina feels a connection with it, a need to know its forgotten stories. In the middle of the night, jarred out of sleep by thoughts that go round and round in circles, she’d had a strange, romantic picture of hanging the witch-ball in the abandoned doorway, leaving it for the lucky person who buys the crumbling house and turns it back into the family home that she can see hovering over the broken shell like a ghostly negative. The house needs protecting until it can attract a new family.
It could have been them. Gina loses herself in her favourite private fantasy of what might have been, imagining herself floating through the garden, now landscaped and not overgrown with weeds; she’s rosy-cheeked and healthy, snipping dead heads off the fondant-coloured roses that form banks of drifting scent between the drive and the house.
She pictures herself in the cool, cream-tiled kitchen, making apple pies with deft, floury hands; Stuart in the book-lined study, transformed into an enthusiastic reader of Victorian fiction; both of them in the bedroom, in a brass-framed bed, passion licking and burning between them again like the first purple flames of the coal fire in the tiled hearth. It’s idyllic but not impossible. They’d have grown with the house, she thinks, they’d have stretched up to match its convivial dining room and welcoming hall.
Gina rubs her eyes, suddenly tired. In the fantasy, she and the house are always sharper than Stuart, and obviously she never gets cancer. It’s been nine months since her final appointment with Mr Khan. There are no signs of her original cancer, and the chances of it coming back, as long as she’s on the daily Tamoxifen, are ‘very low, in a woman your age’. Stuart had taken them all out for a celebration dinner; Jason and Naomi had bought champagne; Janet had cried with relief. Everyone had felt relief, apart from Gina.
Gina just felt, secretly, that a bigger balance had been squared. She was back to zero. Twenty-nine, and back to zero.
She looks down at the witch-ball, gleaming in her lap like a magical pea. It’s a stupid idea to leave it here. It’s a delicate thing, just old silvered glass – an easy target for a kid with an air rifle. As she moves, the light shifts on it, and Gina shivers at the thought of seeing another face behind her.
Gina had always thought a witch-ball was supposed to trap spirits but Mrs Hubert said it was to warn you of any witches creeping up on you. This is a fresh start but there are lots of things behind her. Like Mrs Hubert, Gina thinks it’s better to be able to see them than to pretend they’re not there.
It wasn’t the best day to see the house. The local radio weather forecast was promising early rain that would make the damp feel damper and the halls seem darker, but as Gina turned down the short tree-lined drive, a burst of sunshine emerged from behind the clouds, and her heart fluttered at the sight of the red roof rising above the trees, the symmetrical chimney stacks at each end.
She parked her red Golf next to the array of cars already assembled along the gravel turn: a black Range Rover, a BMW estate, and the council’s pool Astra. No sign of Lorcan’s van yet.
Good, she thought, getting out. She’d deliberately arrived ten minutes early so that she had time to gather herself, put the old dreams firmly away, before she went in.
As she headed towards the terraced lawns at the side of the house, Gina’s expert eye spotted signs of deterioration since she’d last been there. There were some tiles missing off the roof, and two of the crenellated chimney pots were visibly leaning. The mental calculator in her head
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