wooden tablets inscribed with what looked like runes, and a bunch of dried herbs. I left those where they were.
We went through Walter’s Folly, and I opened the door of the cottage to be met and embraced by a warm miasma of lavender, furniture polish and bleach. There was no leftover redolence of mistress here, for Gloria Mundi had clearly excised every last iota of their existence. It simply smelled like home.
Flossie pattered across the flagged floor behind me as I climbed the stairs up to the Parsonage kitchen and opened the strangely silent door.
There was a delicious aroma, easily identified as steak and kidney pie with suet crust, and Em was sitting coring baking apples at the kitchen table, and plopping them into a big earthenware bowl of water.
‘You’ve come, then,’ she stated, without looking up from her task. ‘Put the kettle on – you must be frozen. Where’s Flossie?’
With a wheeze like a small pair of bellows Flossie hauled herself up the last step, looking vaguely around, then made straight for the wood-burning stove in the corner like a shaggily upholstered heat-seeking missile.
‘She must be cold,’ said Em fondly. ‘I’ll warm her some milk.’
‘She isn’t cold – she’s been fast asleep in her igloo all the way here. I’m the one who’s absolutely brass-monkeyed, because I had to have the roof open for the plants. Where’s Walter?’
As if on cue the door swung open and in hobbled a gnarled and cheery little goblin. The bridge of his over-large glasses had been bound with a great wodge of Sellotape, and his baggy corduroy trousers were held up by Father’s old school tie.
‘Hello, Walter,’ I said, giving him a kiss.
‘I’ve got no eyebrows.’
‘I know. How are you?’
‘No eyebrows. No bodily hair whatsoever!’ he proclaimed happily. ‘I’ve made you a veranda, and now I’m going to put your plants in it and make a jungle.’
‘It’s a wonderful veranda, Walter – it’s the best one I’ve ever seen. Thank you!’
Beaming like a lighthouse he hobbled off towards the cottage stairs, muttering, ‘No eyebrows … no bodily hair whatso …’
Em plopped the last apple into the bowl and got up. ‘There we are, now we’ll have a hot drink. Don’t worry about your stuff,’ she added, as ominous Burke-and-Hare dragging noises wafted up from the cottage. ‘Walter will bring it all in, and you can arrange it as you like later. I’ve put a couple of greenhouse heaters in the veranda to take the chill off, because there’s no electric in it yet, of course, and the floor’s just the old paving stones. Do you like the colour?’
‘Yes. It’s very bright.’
‘Walter’s choice. Gloria wanted dark green, but I thought that was a bit municipal. You can do your own thing with the inside of the cottage.’
Gloria is Walter’s sister, and they don’t so much work at the Parsonage as inhabit the space at odd hours between dawn and dusk, as the fancy takes them.
‘Where is Gloria? Where is everyone?’
‘Gloria is turning out Bran’s room, in case. Father’s in his study composing another epic.’
‘Oh God – who is it this time?’
‘Browning. Apparently, he didn’t produce much good work while he was married to Elizabeth Barrett Browning because he was actually busy writing all her poetry for her.’
‘The same line as usual then?’
‘He doesn’t change. But at least it’s lucrative; everyone loves to disagree with him. Otherwise, the mistress has gone out shopping, and then she’ll probably be picking up the two sprogs from school. Do you know, she wanted them to have Anne’s room because she didn’t like them sleeping in the attic? I told her that Anne locked her room between visits and even Gloria only cleaned when she was there, and that shut her up.’
‘Any word from Anne?’
‘No, but her answering machine’s changed: it just says, “This is Anne Rhymer, leave a message,” and doesn’t mention Red at all.’
‘Perhaps they’ve parted? Not that they ever seemed to be in the same country simultaneously anyway.’
‘Something’s happening – I can feel it.’
‘She will tell us if she wants to.’
‘Yes, or simply turn up. I’m starting to get the idea she might be coming home soon,’ said Emily, her eyes getting that strange, faraway expression. Then it was gone and she was saying briskly, ‘Funnily enough, I’ve had much more interesting foretellings than ever before since I made up my mind to embrace the Dark Arts, but I think I’m going to go ahead anyway. I’ve got three friends coming round soon to tell me about their coven. You know one of them – Xanthe Skye.’
‘I don’t remember anyone called Xanthe Skye.’
‘She was Doreen Higginbottom until The Change.’
‘Oh, yes? That will be nice,’ I said dubiously. ‘Didn’t she have a brief fling with Fa—’
I stopped dead, for the man himself, possibly attracted by the smell of freshly brewing coffee, had wandered in: big and broad-shouldered, in corduroys and a shirt rolled up to show muscular arms. He still had a full head of light, waving hair like Anne and Em’s, and though his face was looking a bit pummelled by time, the general effect was large, virile and handsome.
‘Hello, Father.’
‘Oh God! Keep the pans locked up, Em,’ he said resignedly.
Silently she poured out a mug of coffee and handed it to him, and he took two Jaffa Cakes out of the Rupert Bear tin and went back out without another word.
The study door closed behind him with a snap.
While I unburdened my soul to Em she baked a batch of sultana scones and made the biggest treacle tart you could fit in the oven, intricately latticed over the top.
She didn’t say much, but it was comforting all the same, as were the two hot, buttered scones she insisted I eat.
It was quite a while later before the front door slammed and a woman’s voice shrilled, ‘Hello everybody!’
Silence answered her. Even the zooming noise of Gloria Mundi’s Hoover stilled momentarily.
‘That’s her – Jessica. Can’t hear the sprogs; perhaps they’re out for tea or something.’
A woman staggered in and dumped a couple of bulging carrier bags on the table with a sigh of relief. ‘There you are!’
She was fortyish, with a firmly repressed dark downiness and an aura of elegant sexuality – a sort of hungry look about the shadowed eyes. Her body was diet-victim skinny, and the rather bird-billed face perched on top made her look like a duck on a stick.
‘Hello.
