A Charm of Powerful Trouble by Joanne Horniman Page A

full of loss and longing; she wallowed in it, stretching out on the bank and staring up through the branches of a tree, watching the pinpoints of light through the leaves.
    Emma loved this place, but it had a tendency to make her melancholy. She'd taken to going for walks in the early evening, and she saw symbols everywhere of the vulnerability of life. The sight of a calf alone on a distant hillside, tottering on unsteady legs with no mother in sight, crows circling overhead, had made her sad for days.
    â€˜Come into the water, Emma,’ Flora called. ‘It's lovely. Take off your clothes and come in.’
    But Emma shook her head.
    She lay in the grass and dreamed about love, for Emma was a great believer in Love. It was Beth who pinned pictures of the Beatles on her bedroom wall and declared on many mornings that she'd had ‘another lovely dream about Paul last night', but it was Emma who yearningly remembered the lyrics of their song ‘Love Me Do', despite her averred interest in Voss and Das Kapital .
    The grass was long and full of seeds that fell down her back, and ants wandered along various parts of her body, causing her to itch. She brushed them all away and continued to lie with her nose close to the ground, drinking in the earthy, herbal smell.
    She thought of Frank, his glistening back as he dug in Flora's garden, the corded muscles of his arms, his ready, noisy laugh. She had asked Flora, had pressed her, about whether she loved Frank, whether she'd marry him, but Flora waved the idea away She'd said, lazily, ‘Stella and I are all right.’
    But Stella loved Frank. She hung onto his arm and pestered him until he noticed her; she giggled helplessly when he tickled her. She sought his attention by dressing up; one day she appeared in her mother's long black velvet coat. It swept the floor and enveloped her like a shroud, but she had her mother's sense of style and she wore a beret on her head and nothing at all underneath, and she looked pleased when Frank wolf-whistled her.

    Flora took them all to the beach, just a short drive away, late one afternoon. She said she only ever went late, when the sun was going down, her skin was so fair. ‘First to see the sea!’ called Stella, as they crested a hill and saw the ocean stretched out in the near distance.
    Emma strolled along the shore, and the white moon hung low in the sky Still in her melancholy mood, she saw death everywhere: a long thin seahorse, as stiff as a twig; a fish with its eyes pecked out by gulls. Everywhere was the smell of rot overlaid with the clean smell of salt. Aunt Em, so old and upright, walked a little way along the shore, and then stood still, and gazed at the sea. She searched the tide line for treasures and looped her skirt up into a nest to hold the things she wanted to keep. Her old legs were as mottled and as pleated as tree bark. Flora wore a white bikini, and her skin was white; she was lush and full and ripe. She caught wave after wave, with the white full moon behind her on the horizon. And then she dragged Stella into the sea from where she'd been dabbling on the edge. Emma saw their two blonde heads bobbing close together far out among the waves.
    â€˜Do you think there was someone in her life she was to marry? You know, who got killed in the war or something?’ Emma asked later, as Flora lay stretched beside her on a towel. She was sure there had been a young man in Em's life, a great, tragic, lost love.
    â€˜Who? You mean Em? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe there wasn't. Do you think there ought to have been someone?’
    Emma didn't reply to that. Instead, she said, ‘What did Em do, then?’
    â€˜Do?’ said Flora.
    â€˜For a job. When she was young. With her life.’
    â€˜I don't know,’ said Flora. ‘There wasn't much for a lot of women to do in those days, was there? Look after other people's children, or do domestic work, or factory work if they were poor. If