to see why she thought she deserved that part. In the following days, she and Tansy examined Carol closely for signs of encroaching fever. However, Carol and her voice remained unharmed. The play was played, Carol and Frank found true love, and walked around in dreamy smirking bliss. Kate fumed for a while, then forgot about Carol and the Candle too. She had moved on.
Tansy took up tapestry. She took up sketching. She discovered a talent for caricature and sold sketches to her friends. Planning a career for herself in Montmartre, she began to wear a floppy hat and occasionally a feather boa. Kate, by this time, was a mistress of the Tarot and in the evenings they had begun to collaborate on a special pack of their own. First, Tansy would draw a face, then on the reverse side Kate would inscribe her occult symbols. Friends, teachers and family would all be captured, and – although Kate and Tansy resolved to use their power exclusively for good – all would be brought under their sway. “It’s an experiment,” Kate would insist, “in sympathetic magic.”
One evening in November, Tansy was working on a sketch of her father’s face. They were in Kate’s bedroom, which had become more Gothic than ever in recent months. Gloria had forbidden matt-black wallpaper, but had been unable to stem the invasion of horned skulls and astrological posters that had transformed the place into a witches’ den. Thirteen candles flickered across the scene.
“What do you think?” said Tansy, pushing the card across the table. “Have I got him?”
“Not bad, my friend, not bad. The way his bottom lip hangs down! I hope it’s not genetic.”
When Kate left the room Tansy had taken Geoff’s card back again. She paused. Something was wrong with it. Turning it over, she realised what. She had already used the reverse side the previous evening, to draw Gloria. Silly – she must have taken it from the wrong pile. Gloria didn’t look much like Gloria any more, for that matter. The sketched face was darker than she’d thought, and rounder-mouthed. Kate had written under it: La Papesse. Briefly, she wondered whether to Tippex Gloria out. But she knew Kate would never stand for it. The hidden image would cause no end of psychic interference.
With a sigh, she held the card to the nearest candle until it sprang into green flame. It was a moment before Tansy recognised the crimson traces of a cabalistic symbol painted on the candle’s side. She pulled the card out at once, with a yelp of fright. It was too late, of course. The card flapped and writhed in the flame’s heat like a living thing. It curled over on itself, forcing her to drop it on the table. The last thing Tansy saw, before the card lost itself in ashes, was the pair of sketches she had made twining into each other – her own father and Kate’s mother, their faces fracturing and merging in the heat.
The next day Tansy came upon Frank Bonetti wandering across the school field. He was on his own. His skin had the blotchy complexion of one who has been crying, hard. At the back ofTansy’s mind there was already a note of alarm, a warning to stay silent and walk by. He watched her pass. A little further on, though, a girl from Tansy’s class had noticed her and was waiting.
“What’s up with him?" Tansy heard herself asking. She looked back at Frank Bonetti. “He been dumped or something?”
Gossip. Please let it be ordinary, who’s-going-out-with-who gossip.
“You haven’t heard?” said Tansy’s friend. “Carol’s in hospital.” The concern in her voice couldn’t disguise her eye-bright excitement as she told the story.
Carol and Frank had been fooling about with Frank’s skateboard, on the footpath down to the park. It had been getting dark and Carol, squatting on the board as it ran downhill, hadn’t seen the horizontal bar of the cycle barrier.
Tansy stood and listened.
“It got her in the throat, Tansy. Her windpipe!” Eye-Bright looked at her in awe. “They don’t think she’ll ever be able to talk again!”
“Why did you come now, Dominic? Why did it take you four years to start looking for me? Did you care if I was alive or dead?”
It had taken only one night to unravel Sophie and Dominic’s truce. Calypso was still in bed – although her open window overlooked the lawn on which Dominic, Sophie and Sal sat, watching the foragers buzz about the hive.
Dominic glanced quickly at Sal. “I knew you were alive.”
“Of course, you’ve got a direct line to God! So why didn’t you know how miserable I was?”
“I knew that too,” Dominic muttered.
“And you didn’t think to drop me a line, to visit? To phone, even once?”
Dominic bit back a word. “Where I was there were no phones. And you didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address. Life is not a game of hide and seek. While you were having your teenage rebellion, half the planet was crashing into ruin. You are my sister, Sophie, and I love you. But when I put your fate against the floods, the poison algae, the triple plagues—”
“You’re dribbling, Dominic,” said Sal.
“Put it in that scale and one person’s misery just doesn’t register. You and I don’t matter much to the world. No one person matters.”
“Screw the world! I needed you more.” Sophie threw the words at him like plates. Dominic let her. She would get tired, as she always did.
“At least,” she said, “you came here eventually.”
Dominic did not reply. He stroked the rim of his glass. Sophie heard the silence, and something unspoken in it. “Why did you come?” she asked.
“I sent for him,” said Sal beside her.
Sophie stared at Sal. Her mouth dropped.
“She did the right thing, Sophie,” Dominic began – but the look on his sister’s face silenced him.
“I can’t believe this,” she said, with a moan of despair. “I thought I could trust you, Sal.”
“It was Calypso,” Sal began, “the things that were happening to her. I was scared. For her and for you, Sophie. I couldn’t think of anyone else to ask. After that time with the music—”
“Music?” interrupted Dominic. “You didn’t tell me about that.”
Sal looked to Sophie for permission. Sophie held her gaze, then tossed it aside. “Tell him, then – tell him everything.”
Sal turned to Dominic. “It was about six months ago. This place wasn’t quite the same then. There were more passers-through, sneaking a holiday at Winstanley’s expense. We didn’t see so much of Winstanley himself. One was a nasty piece of work, a guy called Neil. We named him Masher. Just a joke at first, but later we found out he’d broken his parole and pulped a social worker’s face. He was trying to lie low, but someone like that can’t be anywhere without trying to take control. You never knew when he was going to take a swing at you. Most of the time he was drunk though, lying in his room with the speakers full up. All that beauty outside and he might as well have been in prison. The time Calypso was ill last Christmas, he kept everyone on edge with that machine-gun
