“Don’t you want—”
“Sit down.”
Maggie sat. Juliet took the teacup out of its saucer and cradled the cup between her palms. She looked into the tea and swirled it slowly round and round. Her hands looked strong, steady, and sure.
Something big was about to happen. Maggie knew. She could feel it in the air and in the silence between them. The kettle was still hissing gently on the cooker, and the cooker itself snapped and popped as it cooled. She heard this as background to the sight of her mother’s head lifting as she made her decision.
“I’m going to tell you about your father,” she said.
POLLY SETTLED INTO THE tub and let the water rise round her. She tried to concentrate on the warm wash of it between her legs and the gush of it across her thighs as she sank, but instead she caught herself in the midst of a cry, and she squeezed her eyes shut. She saw the negative image of her body fading slowly against her eyelids. Tiny pits of red replaced it. Then black swept in. That’s what she wanted, the black. She needed it behind her eyelids, but she wanted it in her mind as well.
She hurt more now than she had this afternoon at the vicarage. She felt as if she’d been stretched on the rack, with her groin ligaments torn from their proper housings. Her pubic and pelvic bones seemed beaten and raw. Her back and her neck were throbbing. But this was a pain that would recede, given time. It was the other pain that she feared would never leave her.
If she saw only the black, she wouldn’t have to see his face any longer: the way his lips curled back, the sight of his teeth and his eyes like slits. If she only saw the black, she wouldn’t have to see him stagger to his feet afterwards, with his chest heaving and the back of one wrist scouring his mouth of the taste of her. She wouldn’t have to watch him lean against the wall while he stuffed himself back into his trousers. She would still have to bear the rest of it, of course. That endless, guttural voice and the knowledge it provided of the fi lth she was to him. The invasion of his tongue. His teeth biting, his hands tearing, and then the last when he scourged her. She would have to live with that. There was no memory pill she could take to wipe it away, no matter how much she liked to hope there might be.
The worst of it was that she knew she deserved what Colin had done to her. Her life was governed, after all, by the laws of the Craft and she had violated the most important:
All those years ago, she had convinced herself that she cast the magic circle for Annie’s own good. But all the while in her most secret heart, she had thought — and hoped — that Annie would die and that her passing would bring Colin closer to herself in a grief he would want to share with someone who had known his wife. And this, she had believed, would lead them to loving each other and lead him to an eventual forgetting. Towards this end — which she called noble, unselfish, and right — she began to cast the circle and perform the Rite of Venus. It was no matter that she had not changed to this Rite until nearly a year after Annie’s death. The Goddess was not and had never been a fool. She always read the soul of the petitioner.The Goddess heard the chant:
and She remembered how three months before Annie Shepherd’s death, her friend Polly Yarkin — with sublime powers that came only from being a child conceived of a witch, conceived within the magic circle itself when the moon was full in Libra and its light cast a radiance on the altar stone at the top of Cotes Fell — had stopped performing the Rite of the Sun and had switched to Saturn. Burning oak, wearing black, breathing hyacinth incense, Polly had prayed for Annie’s death. She had told herself that death wasn’t to be feared, that the ending of a life could come as a blessing when the suffering endured had been profound. And that is how she had justified the evil, all the time knowing that the Goddess would not let evil go unpunished.
Everything until today had been a prelude to the descent of Her wrath. And She had exacted Her retribution in a form that exactly matched the evil committed, delivering Colin to Polly not in love but in lust and violence, turning the magic three-fold against its maker. How stupid ever
It was over now. Nothing worse could happen, except her own death. And since she was more than half dead now, even that didn’t seem so terrible.
“Polly? Luv-doll? What’re you doin’?”
Polly opened her eyes and rose in the water so quickly that it sloshed over the side of the tub. She watched the bathroom door. Behind it, she could hear her mother’s wheezing. Rita generally climbed the stairs only once a day— to go to bed — and since she never made that climb until after midnight, Polly had assumed she would be safe when she’d fi rst called out that she’d be wanting no dinner as she entered the lodge, hurried up to the bathroom, and shut herself in. She didn’t reply. She reached for a towel. The water sloshed again.
“Polly! You still taking a bath, girl? Didn’t I hear the water running long before dinner?”
“I just started, Rita.”
“Just started? I heard the water running directly you got home. More’n two hours back. So what’s up, luv- doll?” Rita scratched her nails against the door. “Polly?”
“Nothing.” Polly wrapped herself in the towel as she stepped from the tub. She grimaced with the effort of lifting each leg.
“Nothing my eye. Cleanliness is next to whatever, I know, but this is taking it to extremes. Wha’s the story? You fancying yourself up for some toy boy to climb through your window tonight? You meetin’ someone? You want a spray of my Giorgio?”
“I’m just tired. I’m going to bed. You go on back down to the telly, all right?”
“All wrong.” She tapped again. “Wha’s going on? You feeling queer?”
Polly tucked the towel round her to make a wrap. Water ran in rivulets down her legs to the stained green bath rug on the fl oor. “Fine, Rita.” She tried to say it as normally as possible, sifting through her memories of how she and her mother interacted to come up with an appropriate tone of voice. Would she be irritated with Rita by now? Should her voice reflect impatience? She couldn’t remember. She settled for friendly. “You go on back down. Isn’t your police programme on about now? Why don’t you cut yourself a piece of that cake. Cut me one as well and leave it on the work top.” She waited for the answer, the lumber and huff of Rita’s departure, but no sound came from the other side of the door. Polly watched it, warily. She felt chilled where her skin was wet and exposed, but she couldn’t face unwrapping the towel, uncovering her body for drying, and having to look at it again just yet.
“Cake?” Rita said.
“I might have a piece.”
The door knob rattled. Rita’s voice was sharp. “Open up, girl. You a’nt had a piece of cake in fifteen years. Somethin’s wrong and I mean to know what.”
“Rita…”
“We a’nt playing here, luv-doll. And unless you intend to climb out the window, you may as well open this door straightaway ’cause I mean to be here whenever you get round to it.”
“Please. It’s nothing.”
The door knob rattled louder. The door itself thumped. “Am I going to need the help of our local constabulary?” her mother asked. “I c’n phone him, you know. Why is it I expect you’d rather I didn’t?”
Polly reached for the bathrobe on its hook and slid the lock back. She draped the bathrobe round her and was in the act of tying its belt when her mother swung the door open. Hastily, Polly turned away, unfastening her hair from its elastic binding to let it fall forward.
“He was here today, was Mr. C. Shepherd,” Rita said. “He cooked up some story ’bout looking for tools to fix our shed door. What an agreeable bloke, our local policeman. You know anything about that, luv-doll?”
Polly shook her head and fumbled with the knot she’d made in the belt of the robe. She watched her fingers pick at it and waited for her mother to give up the effort at communication and leave. Rita wasn’t going anywhere,
