looked down at her from a large framed photograph, in which he was being awarded a trophy of some kind. Since he was wearing a wetsuit, Tansy supposed it must be for diving, though it was hard for her to think of paunchy Uncle John as athletic. She straightened the frame, which had become lopsided, and this led her to examine all the frames on the wall.
One was a map of Sweetholm, dated 1904. A century of grubby fingers had worn the Haven away entirely, but on either side Tansy saw the paths wind down to the cliffs. Westward, the moor was scattered with smallholders’ cottages, then the Tor, on either side of which the island petered out in dubious marshland, sound pebble beach that swirled into the hungry sand. The old priory church was marked ‘Ruins’. A ten-minute walk south would take her to Palmerston’s gun battery. The Haven lay ten minutes to the north.
Sweetholm had a past, of sorts: a past that exceeded its future. After the novelty of yesterday it was the island’s grim smallness that struck her now. Three months. That was a long time, especially if there were to be arguments. Would Mum and Dad get on here? Would they? They had started so well, with such good intentions. But already there were signs, which Tansy knew too well to be able to block out. Geoff’s defensiveness, the sarcasm that sometimes seemed as involuntary in her mother as a tic.
Back in Bristol there had been ways to escape the situation. The bus to the Mall, movies, friends’ rooms where she could take refuge. Especially Kate’s. Trouble was, Kate wasn’t her friend any more – not since it came out about Geoff and Gloria.
Tansy couldn’t blame her for that. After all, Gloria was Kate’s mother. What was worse, Kate had known nothing, all that time. But she guessed how much Tansy had known.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kate had demanded at last.
Kate hadn’t spoken to her for days. Finally, Tansy had been allowed into Kate’s room. Usually there was music playing, but today she could hardly speak for the silence.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kate’s voice was toneless, like the voice of a machine.
“It’s just, I didn’t want—”
“You knew! We were meant to be best friends. No secrets, remember?”
“Kate, I never wanted to hurt you.”
“If you’d been in my house that night you’d have seen what hurting was. My Dad was sobbing, begging her to tell him it was all lies.”
“I really thought they were going to end it. Then no one would have been hurt. Oh, Kate, I’m so sorry.”
“Go on, Sellotape it with a ‘sorry’. I bet that’s just what your dad does too.”
That had really hurt. But Kate didn’t guess the whole truth even then. Tansy didn’t tell her that the whole affair had been started by the Cursing Candle. And that was odd because the candle – all the magic, in fact – had been Kate’s idea to begin with.
Kate Quilley had always been given to fads. At first her parents probably dismissed the incantations and the supernatural gewgaws that had suddenly appeared in her room. They would soon be gathering dust, they assured themselves, like the well-thumbed shelf of Screams for Teens that had preceded them. So they were not too anxious when Kate came home one day with a fat church candle, even though the cabalistic signs on its side were said to have been daubed with cockerel’s blood. “She’ll grow out of it,” they sighed.
“It’s a Cursing Candle,” Kate explained to Tansy later. “One step up from wax dolls – and much more stylish. All you need to do is take a totem from your enemy and burn it. Then watch them droop and die.”
Tansy sounded faintly shocked, as she knew Kate wished her to. “Have you tried it out?”
“Not yet. That’s the trouble,” Kate complained. “I can’t think of anyone I hate enough.”
“Except for Mr Podgery,” said Tansy wearily as Kate’s hamster began yet another workout on his wheel in the corner of the room.
Kate watched meditatively as the plump little rodent galloped and clanked.
“What a wicked mind you have,” she said at last.
For years Kate had begged her mother for a pet. She had dreamed of a pony of her own, a dog, perhaps a kitten. She settled for a hamster in the end, though by the time Gloria relented Kate had almost lost interest. Four years later, Mr Podgery’s demands for food and clean bedding were more than she could bear. “If he was a human being he’d be over a hundred by now!” she would exclaim petulantly. “Roll up and see the world’s first immortal hamster!”
So they began with Mr Podgery. Kate and Tansy took a clipping of Mr Podgery’s hair and funnelled it into a twist of paper. The flame from Kate’s candle burned green as they lit it, whispering words of power. Inside its little paper coffin the hair crackled. Mr Podgery was belting round his cage as though the very devil were at his heels.
“I don’t like this, Kate. We shouldn’t have done it.”
“No one forced you.” Kate’s eyes were shining. Each reflected a small green lick of flame.
“I know. I feel sick. I know it’s stupid.”
“It’s only a bit of fun,” said Kate when it was over.
“I know.”
Nevertheless, the next morning Mr Podgery was dead. His legs were sticking up like wishbones. They put him in a shoebox and buried him near the compost heap.
For a good while afterwards neither of them mentioned the Cursing Candle. They pretended nothing had happened and at first pretending was easy. There were plenty of other things to claim their attention and exams were coming up. It was six weeks later that Kate came home livid because of the school play, where Carol Sage’s superior projection had robbed her of the chance to play Juliet opposite Frank Bonetti.
“You know Mr Finlay’s always had a soft spot for Carol,” Tansy consoled her.
“Never mind,” said Kate. She was dangling Carol’s choker from one finger. “Let’s see how she does without her voice.”
“You wouldn’t!” said Tansy in alarm. She understood at once what that smile meant.
Kate was already arranging the candle in the middle of the table. “Watch me.”
“Be serious, Kate! Mr Podgery – remember …’
“It’s all right, I only want to give her a head cold.”
“Mr Podgery got more than that.”
But Kate had already made a new funnel of paper and now she was slipping the bead choker into it. She lit the candle and flicked the wax away from the writing on its side. Finally she held the paper funnel over the flame.
The choker would not easily burn and more than once Kate had to poke it down towards the candle with the end of a pencil. When it finally caught it was with a green-blue flame as the plastic melted and dripped into the wax. It smelt foul.
All the time Kate was urging infections to take root in Carol Sage’s throat. “Come bronchitis, come halitosis!” Tansy tried to laugh
