Weyward(41)

But she needn’t have worried. Now, worlds, characters, even sentences linger – burning like beacons in her brain. Reminding her that she’s not alone.

She’s just finished a slim novel called Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner, about a spinster who moves to the countryside to take up witchcraft. A stamp on the flyleaf reads Kirkby’s Books and Gifts, Crows Beck. The bookshop next to the church. There is a handwritten message next to the stamp:

Made me think of you! Emily x

Looking through Violet’s collection, Kate sees that some of the others bear the same stamp. There are no other books about witches – although she does find a collection of Sylvia Plath’s poetry, dog-eared at a poem called ‘Witch Burning’. Two lines have been circled in pencil:

Mother of beetles, only unclench your hand:

I’ll fly through the candle’s mouth like a singeless moth

She remembers what she’d overheard the receptionist hiss at the medical centre. That one of the Weywards had been a witch.

Kirkby’s Books and Gifts is a red-brick building attached to the village church, St Mary’s. Small and squat, it nestles close to the church, as if trying to hide behind it. A bell chimes as Kate opens the door, welcomed by the comforting smell of dust and old leather bindings. Original floorboards are almost hidden by brightly coloured Turkish rugs, dusted here and there with glimmering strands of what seems to be cat hair.

‘Hello,’ calls a voice, its owner hidden by a maze of bookshelves. Kate peers around a sparsely populated shelf labelled ‘St Mary’s History’ and sees a woman in her fifties, standing behind a desk stacked high with new releases. The woman is wearing a sweet, woody perfume – patchouli oil. In her arms she cradles an enormous orange cat, which swats at the glasses that dangle from a chain around her neck.

‘Get off,’ she says to the cat, who meows and leaps to the floor. And, to Kate: ‘Can I help you?’

There is something familiar about her, about the way her eyes crinkle as she smiles. The greying auburn curls. Kate flushes when she realises: it’s the same woman she saw at the greengrocer, all those weeks ago.

Could this be Emily?

‘Are you all right, love?’ the woman asks, when Kate doesn’t answer.

‘Yes, sorry.’ She wipes her sweaty palms on her trousers. ‘My name’s Kate … Kate Ayres. I’m looking for Emily?’

‘Oh!’ The woman’s smile widens. Kate is embarrassed to see a sheen of emotion in her eyes. ‘Violet’s great-niece. I should have known – you have her eyes. I’m Emily – your great-aunt and I were friends. I’m so sorry for your loss. She was a wonderful woman.’

‘Oh, it’s OK.’ She colours. ‘I mean – I didn’t really know her. I didn’t even know she had died until her solicitor contacted me – she left me her house.’

‘We should get together sometime,’ Emily says brightly. ‘Me and Mike – that’s my husband – live out at Oakfield Farm. We’d love to have you round. Then I can tell you all about her.’

‘Oh,’ Kate falters. ‘That’s really kind. Maybe I could let you know?’

‘Of course.’

There is a pause, and she feels Emily’s eyes on her. She wishes, suddenly, that she was wearing something else: her T-shirt is cut too low, and her jeans stick uncomfortably to her thighs. Even her hair feels wrong. She lifts a self-conscious hand to the coarse, bleached strands of it.

‘Anyway, is there anything else I can help you with?’ Emily asks. ‘Book recommendations?’

‘Actually,’ she says, ‘I was wondering if you had anything on local history. Or if …’ She pauses, nerves ticking in her stomach. ‘You could tell me about the Weywards?’

‘Ah,’ Emily grins. ‘Heard the rumours already, then?’

Kate thinks of the receptionist at the doctor’s surgery, the word she had spat from her mouth as though it was something rotten.

Witch.

‘Something like that, yeah.’

‘The villagers do like to gossip. Well … the story goes that a Weyward was tried as a witch, back in the 1600s.’

She thinks of the cross under the sycamore tree. Those carved letters. RIP.

‘Really? What happened to her?’

‘I don’t know the details I’m afraid, pet. But there was a lot of that going on around here then, sadly. Women being accused left, right and centre.’

‘Did Aunt Violet ever talk about them? About the Weywards?’

Emily pauses, frowns. She fiddles with the chain of her glasses, so that the lenses blink in the light.

‘She didn’t like to talk about her family much. I got the impression it was too painful. Something to do with leaving Orton Hall.’

Kate thinks of the turrets she passed on the drive up, gilded by the dawn.

‘Anyway,’ Emily blinks and turns to look up at the clock, which is shaped like a cat’s face. One of its whiskers – the shorter one – hovers close to 5. ‘I’ll be closing up soon, I’m afraid, pet. Do come back another time, though, let me know how you get on. And the offer stands.’

Kate feels heat rising in her cheeks as she says goodbye. There is something else she wants to ask, too, but she hasn’t been able to work up the nerve. Her bank balance is dwindling rapidly – soon she’ll be down to the emergency stash of notes hidden in her handbag. She’d developed a silly fantasy, when she’d found the note in Aunt Violet’s copy of Lolly Willowes, that perhaps she could work here, in the bookshop. She’d almost convinced herself of it, that she could slip on that old professional persona the way one would a coat.