Chapter 4
Eve gazes from the window, wide-eyed and unseeing, as urban sprawl gives way to suburbs, farms and fields.
She’s barely aware of where she’s going, or why.
As the train dawdles between a succession of stations – Surbiton, Esher, Woking – she works her way through the shortbread fingers, chewing mechanically and folding the cellophane wrappers into neat rectangles which she pushes into her takeaway coffee cup.
As the train leaves Salisbury, the countryside softens.
Rolling chalk hills, ancient woodlands, and breezy expanses of grass.
Taking out her phone, Eve removes the SIM card and deletes all her personal data.
Then she puts the phone in the coffee cup with the biscuit wrappers and buries the whole thing in a litter bin.
It’ll be found, but not before the train reaches Exeter.
The next stop is Cranborne. Eve is one of three people to step off the train.
She’s still wearing sunglasses, but she’s exchanged the raincoat for a grey hoodie.
With the hood up, and her shoulders hunched like a disconsolate student, she shuffles past the single CCTV camera and out of the station into the car park.
She’s still got the cabin case, but it’s zipped inside a large plastic laundry bag now.
She doesn’t expect these counter-surveillance measures to keep the world off her back forever.
They’re more reflex actions than anything else.
Standard intelligence officer ‘dry-cleaning’ measures.
But if anyone were to come looking, it would take them a little time to find her.
Cranborne station looks much like any small regional station that has escaped modernisation.
Two short platforms, an ironwork bridge, and a red-brick building housing the ticket office.
Eve looks around her for a moment, takes her case from the laundry bag, and pulls it out into the car park, where a taxi driver is leaning against a dusty Toyota Prius, smoking.
Seeing her, he raises an eyebrow, but she shakes her head.
It’s a ten-minute walk into town. At least that’s how Eve remembers it, but it actually takes half that time.
The high street’s not much changed. The same red brick and yellowish stone houses.
The same shops selling outdoor clothing, children’s books and curios.
The half-timbered White Hart pub, and the dingier Four and Twenty Blackbirds.
The war memorial with its sun-faded rosette of plastic poppies.
Some things are new, though. The vape shops.
The tattooist. The vegan café, which seems as good a place as any to stop.
She takes a seat inside. There’s a young man behind the counter, a guy of about sixteen in a Tantric Sex Disco T-shirt, crouched over a phone, having what looks like an urgent conversation. Finally he ambles over. ‘Help you?’
She’s about to order a cheese and tomato toastie when she sees his fingernails, which are grubby, and have been gnawed to the quick.
The sight kills her appetite stone dead, and she orders a cup of tea.
When the guy has retreated behind the counter, she walks to the pinboard on the wall.
There are printed fliers for local bands, advertisements for pottery courses and bouncy castle-hire, and hand-written Post-it notes offering bed and breakfast. ‘Would you recommend any of these?’ she asks him when he shuffles back with her tea.
‘Lookin’ for somewhere to stay?’ He eyes the Post-it notes as if he’s never seen them before.
‘Yeah.’
‘How long’re you here?’
‘Not sure.’
He worries at his thumbnail with his teeth. ‘My mum’s got a room.’
‘Is it free?’
‘Nah, you’d have to pay.’
‘I mean, is it available?’
‘I could ask.’
‘That’d be great.’
As she drinks her tea, the guy makes an inaudible phone call.
‘So yeah,’ he says, looking up.
‘That’s OK?’
‘Yeah.’
The house is a couple of hundred metres up the road from the café.
It’s a tiny, timber-framed building, clearly several centuries old, sandwiched between a pharmacy and an estate agency.
A young woman with tattooed arms answers the door, fixes Eve with an unblinking gaze, and introduces herself as Philippa.
‘Are you—?’
‘Yes. I’m Tom’s mum. He’s sixteen, and so was I when I had him.’
‘I—’
‘You were wondering, Eve, and fair enough.’
‘How do you know my name?’
‘It’s written on the tag on your suitcase. Come in and have a look at the place.’
They step into a front room so tiny that the sofa under the window occupies almost half of the floor space.
Opposite it is a pair of side tables. One holds a small television and several framed photographs, the other appears to be some kind of altar, or shrine.
Winding her way towards the kitchen, Eve notes a sheaf of lavender, a dagger, a statuette of a stag-headed god with dead ivy entwined in its antlers, and a nude Barbie figure wearing the beaked skull of a bird – a crow, perhaps, or a raven – like a helmet.
There’s a smell in the air that Eve recognises but can’t quite place.
Something animalistic. Something alluring and faintly nauseating.
‘I’m a witch, by the way,’ Philippa says. ‘Did Tom tell you?’
‘No,’ Eve says. ‘No, he didn’t.’
‘Little bugger. I always tell him to say. There’s some as don’t like it.’
‘Fine by me,’ Eve says.
‘That’s a relief!’
As Eve looks around her, a cat winds itself around her ankles, mewing loudly. Eve bends to stroke it and the cat begins to purr.
‘That’s Pyewacket,’ Philippa says. ‘She likes you. I’ve seen her snarl at guests.
We had one once, Pye scratched her so badly I had to take her to the doctor for a tetanus shot.
Turns out she was wanted by the police for coercing a man into sex, not that they need much coercing in my experience. How’d you take your tea?’
As Philippa bustles round the kitchen, which is even smaller than the front room, Eve covertly examines her.
She’s pale-skinned and freckled, with auburn hair falling to her shoulders, and strong, clear features.
The tattoos on her arms are elaborate and skilfully executed.
There’s a dancing hare, a pentagram, and half a dozen symbols that Eve doesn’t recognise.
‘So,’ Philippa says, when the tea is made and poured. ‘What brings you here to Cranborne?’
Fair question. What does bring me here? Desperation?
Instinct? A broken heart? All of the above?
Have I made a terrible mistake? Shouldn’t I concede that Oxana is a special case, that she really does love me in her own crazy Oxana way, and that I just have to live with the fact that she’s also a habitual pants-on-fire liar who takes me into account when it suits her and forgets me when it doesn’t?
No. I had to walk out of that meeting. I had no choice whatsoever.
I was blindsided and humiliated; ironically, by Oxana being honest. By her showing that she cared more about her relationship with the Twelve than her relationship with me.
That’s why she didn’t tell me about the deal she made with them.
Because she knew that I’d have read it as a rejection of the life we shared – the life that’s been so desperately difficult to build and to hold together, the life to which I’ve given absolutely fucking everything – and she’d have been right.
I don’t hate her. I can’t even bring myself to be angry with her.
I’m just sad, in a way that I’ll never recover from. I’m lost. My heart is broken.
‘I need to get away from my life in London. I need a break. A change.’
Philippa regards her with quietly attentive eyes. She smiles. ‘Well, Wessex is a nice place to come, and Cranborne Chase is an area of outstanding natural beauty. Lots of walking routes. Lots of history to be discovered, if that’s your thing. I can lend you a booklet, if you like.’
Eve sips her tea, which is strong and good and made of proper tea leaves.
She was half-expecting something herbal, some insipid brew that tasted of grass clippings but was marvellous for the colon.
Or something more sinister, made of wormwood or valerian, that would give her visions.
But no, this is standard-issue PG Tips. ‘Thanks for this,’ she says, raising her cup a few inches, ‘I needed it.’
‘You look as if you need a good rest,’ Philippa says, scratching absently at her elbow.
Eve’s eyes are suddenly and infuriatingly brimming with tears. She nods, not trusting her voice.
Philippa tilts her head and smiles. ‘Can I make a suggestion? Some practical magic?’
Eve looks at her suspiciously.
‘Do you like reality TV shows?’
‘God, yes.’ She finds a tissue and blows her nose.
‘Tom’ll be out this evening. Lord knows where, not my business. So why don’t you help me get our dinner ready? Then we can crack open a couple of cans of Guinness and watch Love Is Blind?’
Eve stares at her gratefully. ‘Honestly, there’s literally nothing I’d rather do.’
‘Beef and potato pasty suit you?’
‘Sounds lovely.’
Philippa goes to the fridge and takes out two plump, pastry-covered ovals.
‘I make these myself. See the crimping along the side? If you buy pasties in the shops, the crimping always goes clockwise. If you ever see a pasty with counterclockwise crimping, like these, you’ll know it’s been made by a witch. Still hungry?’
Eve smiles. ‘Starving.’