The Cure of Souls

some kind of Welsh Tuscany.

And who had to look after the bloody kids, meanwhile?

‘It’s exactly like being an au pair,’ Jane said with acidic triumph, ‘because I work my butt off for the privilege of learning the fucking language!’

She began to beat the pillow with her fists.

‘I’m sorry!’ Eirion almost sobbed. ‘I genuinely didn’t realize she’d be quite so…’

‘Opportunistic?’

Eirion was too honest to reply.

It was a big old farmhouse. The first floor had been divided into two sections. There was a separate staircase to Dafydd and Gwennan’s suite; the other staircase led to three small bedrooms: Sioned, Lowri… and Jane in the middle. Most nights the kids fell asleep with their respective boom-boxes still pumping Welsh-language rock through the plasterboard walls either side of Jane’s bed.

Come to think of it, Gwennan and Dafydd were unlikely to be at all put out by the thought of the young master giving one to the English au pair.

Not that he had, yet. The daily and nightly presence of the evil little stepsisters seemed to be intimidating him more than whoever had been his school’s version of Charles Manson.

Stepfamilies: a nightmare.

She’d made the kids’ supper. She’d made them tidy their rooms. She’d made them go to bed at ten p.m. She’d made them go back to bed at ten-fifteen. And in the course of this endlessly crappy evening, she’d been grilled by Mum over the phone and made to feel like shit. At eleven-thirty, probably looking like some totally knackered housewife, she’d followed Eirion up to his attic bedroom and collapsed, fully clothed, onto his bed and poured it all out.

* * *

‘Let’s go over it again,’ Eirion said. ‘This Layla and this…’

‘Kirsty.’ Jane moved closer to him, which wasn’t difficult on a single bed.

‘… Find that by staging little seances, or whatever you want to call them, they can wield enormous power over certain kids.’

‘It’s addictive, I reckon. You keep going back, even though you’re terrified. I mean, I’m not terrified – OK, maybe a little scared – but I’m, like, somebody who’s attracted to all this stuff anyway. As you know.’

‘Yeah,’ Eirion said grimly.

‘But this is a buttoned-up kid from some fiercely Christian household, who’s been taught that spiritualism is, like, firmly in the devil’s domain, and her immortal soul is at risk – and she still keeps going back because something about it has… grabbed her.’ Jane gripped what she thought was going to be Eirion’s arm but turned out to be his thigh. ‘Sorry.’

‘Go… go on.’

‘Kid knows she’s like doomed. She’s totally beyond the pale. I mean, I’ve listened behind the door when Mum’s been counselling individual parishioners – which is, like, her version of confession. You get some people who are really, really scared that they’ve thrown it all away because of some really piffling sin.’

‘Gets blown up out of all proportion.’ Eirion tentatively slid an arm under her waist.

‘You’d think it was only a Catholic thing, or hellfire Nonconformism or something, but I don’t think it’s anything to do with what denomination you are, or even what religion. It’s a psychological condition. A kind of dependency. A terrible fear of getting on the wrong side of God. I mean… no wonder she threw up in church. Holy Communion? The Eucharist? You’re kneeling there with a mouthful of the blood of Christ, knowing you’ve as good as sold your soul to the other guy? It’s all gonna come down on you in a big way, isn’t it?’

‘Layla would have known about this girl’s background?’

‘Oh yeah, Riddock knew exactly what she was doing. Must have been giving her a major buzz, a cruelty high. But you can’t help wondering how shocked she was when it really started to happen. When this Justine started coming through and turned out to be Amy’s real mother.’

‘Would heighten the power trip no end.’

‘Mind-blowing. She wouldn’t want to let Amy go after that.’

Eirion pushed a hand through her hair. ‘You’ve got this pretty well sussed, haven’t you, Jane?’

‘I don’t know. It’s all guesswork, isn’t it?’

‘You tell your mum all this?’

‘Not the theoretical stuff. But she’ll have worked that out for herself by now. She’s not thick.’

Eirion drew her to him, the length of his body the length of hers, toe to toe, faces almost touching. ‘You haven’t told me how it ended.’

Jane closed her eyes, saw the circle of letters, the glass with a mind of its own.

J-U-S-T-I-N-E.

‘How it ended? We got raided, didn’t we? Pretty ludicrous. The shed door just like crashed open and they burst in. The drug squad – the deputy head and the caretaker. All very dramatic. “Nobody move! Hands on the table!” Like one of us might pull a gun. Of course they didn’t expect it would be so dark. Layla just blew out the candles, and it was probably Kirsty gathered up the letter-cards. I don’t know where she put them – down her front, I expect; they certainly weren’t there by the time the caretaker found the lights. The glass was knocked off the table and smashed. It was just a glass. They were expecting… I don’t know – Es or worse.’

‘They search you?’

‘Nah. Layla had her cigs out by then. Plain old Rothmans scattered across the table, like she was sharing them out. Smart bitch. You could see the relief on the deputy head’s face, now it was clearly no longer a police matter. “Now, girls, because it’s the end of the term, apart from confiscating these disgusting things, I’m not going to take this any further. However…” ’

‘That was smart of her.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What will she do now, your mum? Go and tell the girl’s parents, try and patch things up?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Or go after this Layla?’

‘Yeah,’ Jane said soberly. ‘I’m afraid that’s exactly what she’s going to do – having not the slightest idea of just how massively evil that bitch can be. And if I try to warn her, it’ll look like there’s something else I don’t want her to find out. I… I’m like… feeling pretty pissed-off, Irene. On every front.’

He kissed her gently on the lips.

‘OK,’ Jane said, ‘except maybe that one?’

She put a hand behind his head, opened her mouth to his tongue and moulded her body into his. One of Eirion’s hands seemed to be trapped against her left breast.

Jane was feeling less and less like a knackered housewife when they heard the doors of Dafydd Lewis’s new Jaguar slamming down in the yard, then laughter. And then something about Eirion, the great lover, Mr Experience, began to kind of shrink.

Soon afterwards, Jane crept back to her own room and lay glowering at the ceiling. She’d been set up; she’d been framed; she’d been used to damage her own mother. She couldn’t live with this.

16 Mafia

LOL GENTLY SHOOK the hand of the vicar’s wife.

‘I won’t get up,’ she said.

Simon St John said, ‘You might think she says that every time.’

‘Just go and get me a drink, you bugger.’ Isabel’s accent was Valleys Welsh. She was plump and had light