English and sat down next to Emmaline with my face still scarlet. To my surprise she was slinging books into her bag. < C ba hei/p>
‘Aren’t you staying?’ I asked.
‘You’ve got a nerve,’ she hissed. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t act innocent with me. Whatever you did on Saturday . You know what you’ve done to that poor boy and you should be ashamed of yourself. It’s disgusting. It’s cruel, it’s fake and it’s disgusting. And if you had any sense of shame you’d have un done it. I don’t want to share a town with you, let alone a desk.’
And she swept out of the room, bumping into Ms Wright, who was just coming in.
‘Not staying, Emmaline?’ she asked in surprise.
‘Sorry, Ms Wright, I’m going home. Something’s made me feel horribly sick.’ And with that Emmaline shot me a glance of pure hate and then walked out.
At break I cornered June.
‘Have you talked to anyone about what we did on Saturday?’
‘No, of course not, why?’
‘Because I just had a very strange run-in with Emmaline Peller and it certainly sounded like she knew what went on.’
‘What – that snooty cow? Emmaline Peller won’t give me the time of day, Anna. Frankly she’s the last person I’m going to have a heart-to-heart with about drunken antics. Anyway, why do you care?’
I ignored the question and pursued, ‘So you haven’t told anyone ?’
‘For the last time, no! Why are you so bothered about this?’
‘Because …’ I said lamely. ‘Because … It’s just a bit embarrassing, especially now Seth’s dumped Caroline.’
June gave me a very sharp look.
‘I thought you said you didn’t think about Seth on Saturday, that this whole business was nothing to do with you.’
‘It’s not .’ I undermined my emphatic assertion by blushing a furious red. ‘I didn’t. But – but people might get the wrong idea.’
‘Well, whatever. I certainly haven’t told anyone. But I can’t speak for Prue or Liz.’
But, when I questioned them, Prue and Liz both denied it too. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Most of Emmaline’s words had been fairly ambiguous. But that spat Cut ight="0out ‘Whatever you did on Saturday ’ was pretty specific. It could only refer to one thing …
I worried at the question all the way home, barely noticing the climb as I trudged up the cliff road to the woods. My feelings swung back and forth like a pendulum, between a scoffing incredulity, and a stomach-churning acid fear that we really had set something off with the spell book.
Surely, surely this was ridiculous. This was the twenty-first century, not Cromwellian England. Burnings, bewitchments and spellbindings were things of the distant past.
And yet. Wasn’t it a bit too much of a coincidence? Where had Seth’s violent obsessive infatuation come from, if not from the spell book? I wasn’t arrogant enough to think that Seth had gone crazy over me of his own accord. Guys like him just didn’t fall for girls like me in the real world. Whatever I might want to believe.
Emmaline’s angry words kept reverberating in my head: ‘If you had any sense of shame you’d have un done it.’ The realization came with a queasy mingling of relief and dread. If there was a spell in the book to bind someone, might there be a spell to un bind them…?
My stomach was sick and churning as I climbed the creaking stairs to my room. I don’t know why, but the first thing I did was to go to the window and draw the curtains, shutting out the brightness of the day. The last thing I saw as I pulled the curtains across was the spreading beech, crusted thicker than ever with hunched, beaked shadows, silent and watchful.
The book was hidden under my bed, wrapped in newspaper. Now I undid the bindings with the feeling of opening a Pandora’s box – but the only thing that escaped was the smell of charred parchment as I leafed through the fragile pages. Every page felt like a
‘Aren’t you staying?’ I asked.
‘You’ve got a nerve,’ she hissed. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t act innocent with me. Whatever you did on Saturday . You know what you’ve done to that poor boy and you should be ashamed of yourself. It’s disgusting. It’s cruel, it’s fake and it’s disgusting. And if you had any sense of shame you’d have un done it. I don’t want to share a town with you, let alone a desk.’
And she swept out of the room, bumping into Ms Wright, who was just coming in.
‘Not staying, Emmaline?’ she asked in surprise.
‘Sorry, Ms Wright, I’m going home. Something’s made me feel horribly sick.’ And with that Emmaline shot me a glance of pure hate and then walked out.
At break I cornered June.
‘Have you talked to anyone about what we did on Saturday?’
‘No, of course not, why?’
‘Because I just had a very strange run-in with Emmaline Peller and it certainly sounded like she knew what went on.’
‘What – that snooty cow? Emmaline Peller won’t give me the time of day, Anna. Frankly she’s the last person I’m going to have a heart-to-heart with about drunken antics. Anyway, why do you care?’
I ignored the question and pursued, ‘So you haven’t told anyone ?’
‘For the last time, no! Why are you so bothered about this?’
‘Because …’ I said lamely. ‘Because … It’s just a bit embarrassing, especially now Seth’s dumped Caroline.’
June gave me a very sharp look.
‘I thought you said you didn’t think about Seth on Saturday, that this whole business was nothing to do with you.’
‘It’s not .’ I undermined my emphatic assertion by blushing a furious red. ‘I didn’t. But – but people might get the wrong idea.’
‘Well, whatever. I certainly haven’t told anyone. But I can’t speak for Prue or Liz.’
But, when I questioned them, Prue and Liz both denied it too. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Most of Emmaline’s words had been fairly ambiguous. But that spat Cut ight="0out ‘Whatever you did on Saturday ’ was pretty specific. It could only refer to one thing …
I worried at the question all the way home, barely noticing the climb as I trudged up the cliff road to the woods. My feelings swung back and forth like a pendulum, between a scoffing incredulity, and a stomach-churning acid fear that we really had set something off with the spell book.
Surely, surely this was ridiculous. This was the twenty-first century, not Cromwellian England. Burnings, bewitchments and spellbindings were things of the distant past.
And yet. Wasn’t it a bit too much of a coincidence? Where had Seth’s violent obsessive infatuation come from, if not from the spell book? I wasn’t arrogant enough to think that Seth had gone crazy over me of his own accord. Guys like him just didn’t fall for girls like me in the real world. Whatever I might want to believe.
Emmaline’s angry words kept reverberating in my head: ‘If you had any sense of shame you’d have un done it.’ The realization came with a queasy mingling of relief and dread. If there was a spell in the book to bind someone, might there be a spell to un bind them…?
My stomach was sick and churning as I climbed the creaking stairs to my room. I don’t know why, but the first thing I did was to go to the window and draw the curtains, shutting out the brightness of the day. The last thing I saw as I pulled the curtains across was the spreading beech, crusted thicker than ever with hunched, beaked shadows, silent and watchful.
The book was hidden under my bed, wrapped in newspaper. Now I undid the bindings with the feeling of opening a Pandora’s box – but the only thing that escaped was the smell of charred parchment as I leafed through the fragile pages. Every page felt like a
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