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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
The Cambridge University witches have been meeting for as long as the university has been around - over 900 years - they meet mainly to discuss books, though they do so on the roofs of the colleges and they drink hot chocolate while up there. The members are limited and selective, only those invited can join. In 2014 this includes Kat (a great spell-caster and professor of mathematics), George (a professor of Classics & all-round witch who seems to have no special skills), Amandine (retired French Literature professor and psychic, Kat's mother) and Noa (student of history - who sees people's secrets and can't help but say them). Cosima, Kat's sister, is the chef/owner of Gustare, the best café in Cambridge, where they group meets every month. Cosima is also a witch and, when she begins casting spells to attract a mate (being desperate to conceive) everything starts to go wrong - she sets off a chain of events that turns each of the witches' worlds upside down.
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The Witches of Cambridge
MENNA VAN PRAAG
For my fellow witch, Amanda.
With love and thanks for first inspiring the story …
Contents
Chapter One
Amandine closes her eyes as the clock ticks past midnight. She tries to ignore the tug of the full moon and the flutter in her chest as its gravity squeezes her heart. Instead, Amandine focuses on her husband’s soft snores and wonders, as she has every night for the last few months, why she feels so numb.
When they met thirteen years ago, she thought him the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. Amandine Bisset was so passionate for Eliot Walker then that tiny silver sparks flew from her fingertips when she touched him. When they made love, her whole body filled with light so bright Amandine believed she might explode. Now she wonders, when was the last time sex was like that? Before the babies were born?
Now they have two rambunctious, full-blooded, glorious boys and hardly enough energy left at the end of the day for a goodnight kiss, let alone anything else. And any intimacy had quickly evaporated, like wet kisses scattered across warm skin. Thirteen years ago, when they were both undergraduates at Cambridge, Amandine’s skin had shimmered at the sight of him. The first time Eliot Walker entered her world she was standing in the foyer of the Fitzwilliam Museum gazing at The Kiss by Gustav Klimt and wondering if, among all the glistening gold, she’d ever be blessed enough to feel the passionate desire depicted in that painting.
A moment later, the thought still lingering in her head, Amandine had heard laughter as bright and brilliant as moonshine. She turned to see Eliot standing alone in front of a van Gogh, his laughter flooding the painting and filling the room. Seized by a sudden urge she couldn’t explain, Amandine found herself walking towards him. When she reached him, she didn’t extend her hand and introduce herself.
‘Why are you laughing?’
Eliot turned his smile on her. ‘What?’
She asked again and he shrugged.
‘I don’t know. There’s a quirky joy about it, the sky rolling like waves, the moon and stars like little suns. I think the artist wanted us to smile.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Amandine said, feeling the need to contradict him. ‘Van Gogh was a depressive. This painting was the view from his sanatorium window. I doubt he was smiling at the time.’
Eliot’s own smile deepened, tinged with cheeky triumph. ‘But he didn’t paint it there, did he? It was done from memory, years later. He might have been laughing then.’
Amandine frowned, not because he was wrong – indeed she knew for a fact that he wasn’t – but because he was so sure of himself, slightly arrogant and argumentative. Just like herself.
‘Before or after he cut off his ear?’
Eliot laughed again. ‘You don’t like to be wrong, do you?’
Amandine’s frown deepened. ‘Does anyone?’
‘Not me,’ he agreed. ‘But that doesn’t matter, because I never am.’
Amandine laughed, despite herself. ‘Everyone’s wrong sometimes.’
‘Something you know more than most, I imagine.’ Eliot’s eyes glittered.
Amandine was just about to fight back when she realised he was flirting. So she reined herself in, suppressing a smile and giving a nonchalant shrug.
‘I’m as wrong about life as anyone, I suppose, but I’m rarely wrong about art,’ she said. ‘And you’re not even studying art, are you? I haven’t seen you around Scroope.’
‘Law. Finalist. Trinity.’ He gave a little bow with a flourish of his hand. ‘Eliot Ellis Walker-Jones, at your service.’
‘Ah, so you’re one of them.’ Amandine raised a teasing eyebrow, her glance resting for a moment on his thick dark hair. ‘I should have known.’
‘One of whom?’
‘A lawyer. A double-barrelled name. A snob.’
‘The first charge I already confessed to. The second, I can’t deny,’ Eliot said. ‘But how can you claim the third?’
‘Your accent, your name, your knowledge of art even though it’s not your subject.’ Amandine smiled, feeling a sparkle on her skin as it began to tingle. ‘You probably play the piano disgustingly well and row for Trinity. And I bet a hundred quid you went to Eton—’
‘Winchester.’
Amandine rolled her eyes, finding it harder and harder not to look into his: vivid green with flecks of yellow, bright against his pale skin and dark hair.
‘So, you’re an art historian then?’ Eliot asked, shifting the tone.
Amandine gave a little curtsy, fixing her eyes on the floor, hiding her desire to know this man more deeply, though she knew him hardly at all.
‘Amandine Françoise Héloïse Bisset.’
‘Pretty name.’
‘Merci.’
Eliot met her eyes. ‘You don’t have an accent.’
‘My parents are French, but I grew up here.’
‘Well, I’m glad about that,’ Eliot said. ‘Your growing up here, I mean. Well, that you live here right now, anyway …’
Amandine stifled a smile. ‘Yes, me too.’
They stood for a while, both glancing at the floor, then back at the painting.
‘It’s very …’ Eliot trailed off.
Amandine waited.
‘And you – you’re, you’re very …’
And, although he didn’t finish his sentence, this time Amandine knew what he’d wanted to say, because she felt the wave of his feelings fill the air like smoke. Joy. Passion. Desire.
She could feel what Eliot felt just as she could feel what van Gogh had when he painted The Starry Night in 1889. Every artist – painter, writer, musician – put their spirit and soul into their work, along with their emotions, and Amandine had always been able to feel exactly what the artist had when she looked at a painting or read a book. Music was trickier because the emotions of the musician always mixed with those of the composer, and she was confused and cloudy when confronted with conflicting or unclear emotions.
And, amazingly, though he clearly wasn’t a witch, Eliot had been right about van Gogh’s Starry Night, though Amandine was loath to admit it. Besides, she couldn’t say so without also telling him her deepest secret. And she had absolutely no intention of doing that. Even her father hadn’t known about her mother. Héloïse Bisset had kept her true nature from her husband and so Amandine had always assumed that it wasn’t safe to share such things with people who were purely human. It was likely, if nothing else, to shock them so much that they’d never see you in the same way again.
‘I don’t suppose …?’ Eliot began, tentative for the first time.
‘What?’ Amandine asked, though she already knew the answer.
‘I don’t suppose you fancy taking a cup of tea with a snobby lawyer? My treat.’
‘Well,’ Amandine pretended to consider, ‘since you’re not a lawyer yet, I suppose I could make an exception. And if you like van Gogh, you can’t be so terrible.’
‘Ah, high praise indeed. I should ask you to write my references,’ Eliot said. ‘And when I am a lawyer, what will you do about fraternising with me then?’
They began to walk past the paintings and towards the door.
‘We’ll still know each other then, will we?’ Amandine swallowed a smile.
Eliot paused for a moment in front of The Kiss.
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘In ten years or so I’ll be a London lawyer and we’ll be married with two kids. Both boys.’
Amandine raised both eyebrows. ‘Oh, really?’
They began walking again.
‘But I don’t want children,’ Amandine said, ‘so I’m afraid that might put a little crimp in your plans.’
‘You might not now,’ Eliot said, ‘but you will.’
Amandine laughed. ‘Now you’re taking arrogance to a whole new level. But I’m afraid you’re wrong this time. I admit I might change my mind in many ways in the next ten or twenty years, but not about that.’
‘Ah, but I told you,’ Eliot said, still smiling. ‘I’m never wrong.’
And then, with one bold move following another, he reached out and took her hand. Amandine almost flinched, thinking perhaps she ought to be shocked, affronted at his arrogance again. But she wasn’t. So she let her hand soften in his and, as they walked together, Amandine wished that her mother had given her psychic powers along with extraordinary empathy, so she could know whether it was possible that this man might be right.
Now Amandine lies in bed next to her husband, who has changed so much, from being the light at the centre of her life to someone currently trying to hide at the edges. Lately there’s something else Amandine has begun feeling from Eliot, emotions coming off him in swells so strong she could swear she can almost smell them. Wafts of guilt and fear float around the house in great ribbons, trailing through corridors and lingering in the air so Amandine could track his every movement if she so chose. Her first assumption, of course, was that he was having an affair. It wouldn’t be difficult. He commutes to London every day and often works late and on weekends, no doubt spending time with a wide variety of ambitious young paralegals who might set their sights on a successful and handsome barrister.
However, if Eliot’s having an affair then he’s as careful and cunning as an MI5 agent. No emails, no texts, no phantom phone calls. Amandine’s routine investigations have failed to unearth anything remotely suspicious and she’s sure he’s neither discreet nor deceptive enough to hide such an obvious secret right under her nose. Eliot Walker is clever, certainly, and as a lawyer he has probably pulled off a few tricks in his time, but as a husband and father he’s always been transparent and true. It’s just a shame that her gift for feeling what other people do isn’t accompanied by the ability to know their thoughts. Empathy balanced with telepathy would make sense. It would provide the whole picture. Without it, sadly, Amandine is left knowing how people feel but not knowing why.
Noa Sparrow has never been much liked by people and she doesn’t much care. That isn’t strictly true, of course. She tries not to care, she pretends not to care, but she doesn’t do a very good job. The problem is that most people don’t like to be told the truth. They prefer to hide things from themselves, to act as if everything is okay, to pretend that stuff doesn’t bother them when it does. They think, rather foolishly, that what they ignore will simply disappear.
Noa can’t help that she’s always been able to see the truth. What’s worse, though, is that she’s unable to keep silent about what she sees. The words escape her lips, no matter how hard she tries to clamp them tight shut. How often she longs for the ability to feign and fake, to be two-faced, to be a bold and brilliant little liar. Most people seem to manage it easily enough, but sadly it’s never been one of Noa’s gifts.
She was twelve years old when her need to tell the truth ruined her life. It was two weeks before Christmas and Noa was sitting at the dinner table with her parents, wondering what she’d get in her stocking that year, while they talked about fixing the dripping tap in the sink, when she saw something – a dark truth snaking beneath benign sentences about taps and the price of plumbers – that she couldn’t keep secret. Every day since, Noa has cursed her awful truth-telling Tourette syndrome, wishing she’d been able to keep quiet on that dreadful December night. But, since she can’t undo the past, she’s spent every day instead hating herself.
Diana Sparrow didn’t speak to her daughter for three months after Noa, reaching for more potatoes, suddenly burst out with the fact of her mother’s affair with her tango teacher. The shocking secret had just slipped out. Noa clamped her hand over her mouth as the words tumbled into the air, but it was too late. Both her parents had turned to look at her in shock and the stunned guilt on her mother’s face was unmistakable.
In the months of ear-splitting, heart-shattering pain that followed, Noa prayed every night that her ‘gift’ for seeing and telling the truth would be stripped from her. She cut off her long blonde hair in penance and denied herself any treats. She took a vow of silence, not opening her mouth to say anything at all, so no hideous, undesirable truths could sneak out. Noa watched, helpless, while her mother relocated to the sofa, then moved out altogether. She listened to her father sob behind his bedroom door in the early hours of the morning. And all the while she said nothing. Not a single word.
Noa had hoped she would somehow be able to go through the rest of her life like that, silent and unseen, never upsetting anyone again. But Noa found that her teachers weren’t willing to let her tiptoe through her education undetected, especially when they noticed the quality of her written work. Seeing they had someone rather special in their school, they encouraged her to participate in class, to join in with everyone else. So, in spite of her desperate efforts to remain anonymous, Noa was frequently forced into class discussions, team projects, and group assignments. And, although she tried desperately to monitor her words very carefully in her mind – planning them once and checking them twice – before she let them out of her mouth, every now and then someone’s secret would break free. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Noa’s childhood passed without the comfort of friends.
By the time she reached university to study the History of Art at Magdalene College, Cambridge, Noa had almost convinced herself that she didn’t need anybody else, she was perfectly fine going through life alone. She could quite happily spend entire days in the Fitzwilliam Museum on Trumpington Street, passing the morning with Renoir, Matisse and Monet, sharing her lunchtime sandwiches with van Gogh and Vermeer, having a quick supper snack in the presence of Picasso and Kandinsky. But at night, as she lies alone in her bed, all the unspoken thoughts of the day pinballing around in her head, Noa’s loneliness is bitter and sharp.
Noa sleeps with the curtains open, allowing as much moonlight as possible to flood her bedroom, allowing her to see each and every picture on the walls, if only as a pale glimmer. It took Noa weeks to perfect the art display. Reproductions of Monet’s gardens at Giverny blanket one wall: thousands of violets – smudges of purples and mauves – and azaleas, poppies and peonies, tulips and roses, water lilies in pastel pinks floating on serene lakes, reflecting weeping willows and shimmers of sunshine. Turner’s sunsets adorn another: bright eyes of gold at the centre of skies and seas of searing magenta or soft blue. The third wall is splashed with Jackson Pollocks: a hundred different colours streaked and splattered above Noa’s bed. The fourth wall is decorated by Rothko: blocks of blue and red and yellow blending and bleeding together. The ceiling is papered with the abstract shapes of Kandinsky: triangles, circles and lines tumbling over one another in energetic acrobatics.
Noa adores abstract art. It quiets her mind; it creates, for her, fewer questions than figurative art. She doesn’t wonder – though perhaps she ought – what intention lay behind the placing of a square or the choice of yellow or blue. Noa can simply gaze at the colours and shapes and enjoy the emptiness inside her, the rare absence of thought, together with a feeling of connection – the shadow of something she misses and longs for.
Other than her beloved aunt, Heather, and with the exception of a few cursory words exchanged with librarians and museum curators, virtually the only people Noa speaks with are her professors. So far, to her great good fortune, she’s had only two teachers, who have been so boring and lifeless that they harbour no hidden truths for her to blurt out and offend them with. Today though, she’s meeting a new professor, Amandine Bisset, and Noa can already sense that she won’t be so lucky this time. This new teacher’s name alone suggests sensuality and secrets, veiled lives and lovers, concealed longings and desires. Noa imagines her: tall and willowy with long black curls, enormous brown eyes, and lips that have kissed a hundred men and brought them to their knees with whispered French words coated in black coffee and chocolate. Noa is absolutely certain that this woman will be her undoing. After years of carefully clipped silence, she will be unable to contain herself.
It’s a surprise, then, when Noa opens the door to Professor Bisset’s office and steps inside. The room is large and the walls are bare – a strange quirk for a professor of art history – except for a big, bright poster of Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss hanging opposite a large oak desk, behind which sits Amandine Bisset, head down, scribbling into a notebook.
‘Give me a sec,’ she says, without a French accent and without looking up.
Noa stands at the edge of the room, not sitting down in her allotted chair, antique and upholstered in dark red leather, wanting to give her new teacher at least the semblance of privacy. While Amandine writes, Noa watches her. She was right about the beauty and the black hair, but it’s very short, Amandine’s eyes aren’t brown but green, and she isn’t tall and willowy but average height and verging on voluptuous. More importantly, however, Noa instantly sees that she’s absolutely accurate about one thing, the worst thing of all: Amandine Bisset is full of secrets.
‘It’s strange that your walls are empty,’ Noa says, before she can help it. ‘Why do you have only one painting? Don’t you get bored?’
Professor Bisset looks up from her writing. ‘I have a good imagination,’ she says, her voice a little sharp and a little shocked. ‘And you have a rather impolite way of introducing yourself.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Noa says as she sits. ‘I can’t help it. I …’
‘Oh?’ Amandine’s frown deepens, though she sounds more curious than annoyed. She studies Noa then, about to say something, but seems to change her mind. ‘I’d get bored looking at the same paintings every day, no matter how much I loved them.’
‘Except for the Klimt.’
‘Yes.’
Amandine glances back at her notebook.
Noa bites her lip, but she can’t stop herself. She sees what her teacher isn’t saying as if it were written on a teleprompter that someone is insisting she read aloud.
‘Your husband. That’s why you keep that painting. It reminds you of when you were happy.’
Amandine’s eyes snap up again.
‘How did you know that?’ she says. Her mouth remains open, as if she wishes she could swallow the words back down. She can’t, of course. And the truth once spoken is undeniable.
Noa gives a little shrug and starts fishing around in her canvas book bag for her essay. ‘I’ve been looking forward to the French Impressionists,’ she mumbles, hoping her teacher will appreciate the swift change of subject and let her off the hook. If Noa’s really lucky she’ll be able to get through the next hour without saying something really off limits, something that will have Amandine refuse to keep her on as a student. It’s happened before.
‘Fuck the French Impressionists.’
Having just pulled her essay out of her bag, Noa drops it. Five pages flutter to the floor but Noa just stares at her teacher, wide-eyed, her fingertips already sticky with fear. Mercifully, the shock empties her mind and silences her mouth.
‘Sorry,’ Amandine says softly. ‘I didn’t … of course, that was rude. But you can’t say something like that and then expect to start talking about Monet. You have to explain yourself first.’
Noa nods. Her mouth is dry. She swallows. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just …’ Noa has no idea how to explain herself so that she doesn’t sound crazy or scary or both.
Amandine takes a deep breath and sits up. She pulls her long fingers through her short hair. ‘You don’t have to give me a rational explanation,’ she says. ‘I’m not a rational person myself. I’m …’
It’s then that Noa sees what Amandine is. And she smiles, just a flicker at the edge of her lips, but a sense of relief floods her whole body from fingertips to toes. Now she knows it’s safe, for the first time in her life, to reveal herself. Noa has only just met this woman, but she knows that Amandine won’t judge, reject or punish her. She knows that it’s finally okay to tell her own secret, to be honest about who she is.
‘I see things I shouldn’t,’ Noa begins, her voice soft. ‘I see all the things most people don’t want other people to see … I don’t want to say anything, I want to keep their secrets, but I can’t seem to help saying what I see. I don’t have any control over it, I don’t know why not.’
Amandine sits forward. ‘How do you see what you see?’
Noa shrugs, twisting a piece of her hair around her finger, then smoothing it against her cheek. ‘I don’t know. I’ve always just known things. That’s okay, I guess, but not being able to shut up about it, that’s a shame.’
Amandine nods. ‘It doesn’t make you many friends, I suppose.’
‘No,’ Noa says, ‘not many.’
Amandine sits back in her chair. ‘You mentioned my husband.’ Her eyes flicker to the one painting on the wall. ‘And how we used to be happy …’
Noa nods. ‘Something changed, quite recently. It’s like … a wall between you.’ While Noa speaks she looks at her teacher, who’s still gazing at the painting. ‘You don’t know what’s happened. You wonder if he’s having an affair. You wonder if he loves you any more.’
Still staring at the painting, Amandine nods, slowly, as tears pool in her eyes and drop down her cheeks.
‘Do you want me to leave?’ Noa asks, her voice so soft she almost can’t hear her own words.
‘No.’ Amandine pauses, taking a long moment before she brushes her cheeks with the back of her hand and looks up at her student again. ‘No, I don’t want you to leave. I want you to meet my husband. I want you to tell me the truth about him.’
Chapter Two
It’s been a while since Amandine has practised any real magic. She can’t help what she feels, of course, but since marrying Eliot she’s been careful not to cast any spells and to control her body so it doesn’t betray her. It hasn’t always been easy. When she gave birth to Bertie and Frankie four years ago, her skin got so hot that her sweat burnt holes in the sheets of the hospital bed. Fortunately, Eliot was too caught up in rubbing ice cubes on his wife’s back and whispering urgent words of encouragement to notice. The midwives did give Amandine strange glances while changing her scorched sheets, after the four-hour-old sleeping babies had been tucked up into bassinets, but didn’t say anything. On her wedding day Amandine was so happy that her skin sparkled and her hair shone, but luckily the heavy July heatwave shimmered over all the guests and hid the shining bride. On the wedding night silver sparks dropped from her fingertips onto her new husband’s back but he, swept up in love and desire, didn’t feel a thing.
On her wedding night, and many times over the past thirteen years, Amandine has almost blurted out her secret to Eliot but, whenever the white-hot words are sitting on her tongue, ready to tumble out and change everything, she swallows them back, choosing to keep everything safely the same for a little while longer. Amandine has no idea how Eliot might react if he knew the truth about her but guesses, based on his practical, rational nature, that he’d be horrified, thinking she was either crazy or a con artist, or both. She should have told him on their first date, or soon afterwards; she should have told him the day she knew she was in love. But she didn’t want to lose him, and the longer she loved him the harder it was.
Amandine watches her boys closely for signs that they’ve inherited her particular powers but she hasn’t seen anything yet. She wonders what she’ll do if she does. How would she explain that to Eliot? Sometimes Amandine feels sad that her husband doesn’t know the deepest parts of her. Sometimes she blames herself for the breakdown of their relationship, for the distance between them. After all, starting out with such a big secret to hide doesn’t really foster intimacy. Lately, while she watches him move through their lives barely noticing her any more, Amandine wonders if that’s why he finally found a mistress (as she suspects he has): because he never really felt connected to her. But why didn’t he say anything? Why didn’t he ask if he felt something was wrong? Amandine can’t blame him for that, she knows, since she hasn’t done the same thing herself.
How can it be that two people who’ve been together for over a decade, who’ve shared a bed and two births, who’ve kissed every inch of each other’s bodies and gazed into each other’s eyes through tears of joy, can one day turn into virtual strangers? If it hadn’t happened to Amandine she wouldn’t have believed it possible.
Now she watches her husband eating breakfast, forking scrambled eggs into his mouth with one hand, flicking through The Times with the other. Bertie and Frankie sit opposite their father across the wide oak table on their respective booster seats. The twins chatter away in their own secret language, ignoring their parents and their breakfast.
‘Eat your eggs, boys,’ Amandine says, ruffling her fingers through their soft brown curls, swallowing an urge to kiss their cheeks. When the boys were babies they loved kisses, insisting on at least a dozen a day, but as soon as toddlerhood hit the kisses stopped. Now Amandine is lucky if she can sneak a solitary peck at bedtime.
‘Oui, Maman.’
‘Oui, Maman.’
The boys speak in unison, their words simultaneously reassuring and dismissive. Sometime over the last year they perfected the art of superficial listening, absorbing instruction without stopping to really hear the words. As her sons gobble up their eggs, still chattering, Amandine closes her eyes, remembering the days when they used to fix her with attentive gazes of such absolute adoration that she almost couldn’t breathe, unable to absorb so much love all at once.
A wooden chair scrapes against the stone floor. Amandine opens her eyes to see Eliot pushing his chair back, tucking The Times under his arm, and taking his empty plate off the table. He strides over to the kitchen sink, where Amandine stands, and slips his plate gently onto the white plastic drip tray. He quickly kisses the tops of his sons’ heads as he passes.
‘Bye, Dad,’ Frankie says.
‘Bye, Daddy,’ Bertie says.
‘Bye, boys,’ Eliot replies as he reaches the kitchen door, giving a little wave with his newspaper. Then he looks at his wife, while somehow managing not to meet her eye.
‘I won’t be back till late tonight, maybe midnight,’ he says quickly. ‘We’re working on the Tredlow case, it’s a pain in the arse.’
Amandine’s eyebrows shoot up and she nods towards the boys. She can see Eliot swallow a sigh and speak through thin lips.
‘Sorry.’ He turns and pushes open the wooden door. As it bumps shut behind him, Amandine turns to the sink and starts to wash the pan she’d scrambled the eggs in.
‘I’ll get a babysitter then,’ she says softly, ‘since I’m visiting my mother tonight, though I expect you’ve forgotten that.’
Noa ambles along Bene’t Street, past the enormous shining gold clock (an incredible work of art in itself, with an elaborate pendulum marking off the seconds while a fierce metal locust gobbles up time with each tick) and the tiny stone church until she reaches Gustare, the lovely little Italian cafe at the top of the street. This is her morning ritual: first she stops at the cafe for an espresso and pistachio cream croissant before dividing her allotted breakfast hour between the two art galleries across the road. Before her first lecture of the day, Noa sips her coffee and nibbles her croissant while the beauty of the art and the peace of the empty, unpeopled place soaks slowly into her skin.
Noa’s dream, her deepest desire, is to work as an art curator for the National Gallery. She first found this wish – waiting for her, wrapped in shining gold paper and tied with ribbons of longing and hope – in the gallery of modern art, tucked between Monet’s Le Bassin aux Nymphéas and van Gogh’s The Church at Auvers. Her father, a curator at the Fitzwilliam Museum, took Noa down to London to visit the art galleries as a special treat for her seventh birthday. She already knew more about every artist, from Aachen to Zaganelli, than any child, and probably most adults, from the amount of time she spent among the corridors of the Fitzwilliam, gazing up at all the wondrous art contained within its walls. At three o’clock every afternoon after school finished, Noa hurried along Trumpington Street, her bag bouncing on her back, towards her father and the magical world to which he held the key. She spent a blissful few hours away from people, wandering up and down the galleries, absorbing the brilliance of the colours and the beauty of the pictures, with a full heart and a silent mouth.
The Fitzwilliam Museum was the greatest place in the world until Noa saw the magnificence of the National Gallery. She’d never seen anything on that scale before and was – incredibly – rendered speechless at the sight of it all. She walked along each wooden corridor in a daze, grasping her father’s hand, until she found the wish.
Noa has treasured this wish ever since that day, and every step in her academic career has been aimed towards this one goal. The only problem is that, in addition to a degree in art history, Noa needs work experience and, given her particular power for seeing and speaking the truth, that might be significantly harder to come by.
She’s never spoken to the owner of either art gallery on King’s Parade, too worried that she’ll blurt out their secrets mid-conversation and be instantly banned from her two favourite places in the world. Noa would love to work part-time as a sales assistant in one of the galleries but she doesn’t dare ask. A fellow art history student works in one; she sees him on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, so Noa knows she’d have a good chance of getting in. If only she weren’t a social liability. Even if she got through the interview (no chance of that, though, since she’s already seen that the owner of Primavera is concealing a gambling addiction and the owner of Atkis is hiding an affair with his sister-in-law), Noa wouldn’t be working an hour before she’d insult a customer with an undesired and unsolicited titbit of truth, something she’d snatch sight of while extolling the talents of the artists they represented or the beauty of the paintings they sold.
Noa pushes open the door to Primavera and smiles at the girl behind the counter, a pretty redhead in a gorgeous green dress, who nods slightly and smiles back.
‘Good morning,’ she says, ‘I’m here if you need anything.’
‘Thanks,’ Noa says, hurrying past her as quickly and politely as she can. The beautiful girl is bulimic, spending her evenings gorging on gargantuan tubs of chocolate ice cream and plates of cookies, then regurgitating it all before bedtime, something she certainly wouldn’t want a stranger mentioning in the midst of polite chitchat about the weather and the price of art.
Noa settles herself in the farthest reaches of the gallery, admiring the work of an artist she hasn’t seen before. The canvases are large and dark, great splashes of royal blue on black, what appear to be deep purple seas beneath deep red skies. They remind her of Turner’s tranquil sunsets, with a slightly sinister edge, as if sharks swim in the purple seas and black crows caw through the red skies. Noa gazes at the painting, leaning closer, careful with her coffee and croissant, to see each brushstroke, the curves and dips of the sea and sky. And then she does something she’s never done before in her life, not to the thousands of paintings she’s ever seen – Noa reaches out and touches her finger to the paint.
For a split second she imagines she’s about to be pulled into the painting, sucked into the purple and red and spat out in another world. Because, so close now, Noa can’t believe the picture could simply be a flat surface, it must contain depths hidden to the naked eye. Noa peers at the artist’s name on a small plaque beneath the painting: Santiago Costa – Storm over Bahia – 114’ x 98’ – £950.
‘What do you think?’
Startled, Noa turns to see a man standing behind her. She’s not sure how he managed to sneak up so close without her feeling his presence. He’s tall and thin with floppy black hair, caramel-coloured skin, a large nose, and large brown eyes. Noa stares at him. It’s not that he’s handsome, though he is; it’s more than that. He’s captivating. When this man fixes you with his brown eyes you want to stare into them for a long, long time. It’s as if his heart doesn’t reside in his chest but sits, waiting and open wide, just beneath his eyes. And you believe that if you look long enough you’ll fall right in.
Noa knows, before he says another word, that he is the artist.
He reaches out his hand, but drops his beautiful eyes to the floor.
‘Santiago Costa,’ he whispers. ‘It’s a pleasure.’
Noa slips her coffee and remaining croissant into her left hand and shakes his hand. ‘Noa Sparrow.’
They stand together in silence for several moments.
‘Your work,’ Noa begins, searching for adequate words, ‘your work is, it’s …’
‘Thank you.’ Santiago gives a slight bow, a lock of black hair falls over one brown eye. He brushes it back with long fingers.
‘I can’t really explain why I love it so much, it’s just so, so …’
‘Good, that’s the best way,’ Santiago says. ‘Too much analysis kills a thing. Art is created from passion and inspires passion. And passion is beyond reason. Don’t you think?’
Noa laughs. ‘If that’s the case then I’ve just wasted the last two years of my life.’
Santiago frowns. ‘Why?’
‘I’m studying for a degree in art history. It involves rather a lot of analysis.’
‘Oh dear,’ Santiago says, sounding genuinely concerned. ‘That is a shame.’
‘I’m going to put it to use,’ Noa protests. ‘So it won’t be a total shame. It’ll be in service to the greater good.’
‘What will you do with it?’
Noa doesn’t answer immediately. She hasn’t shared this dream with anyone else, not her parents or her teachers, no one. She glances at his paintings, then back at him. Santiago holds her gaze and Noa sees in his soft eyes the promise of something spectacular. What it is exactly, she can’t be sure, but Noa sees enough to want to know more.
‘Well, I want to work as a curator for the National Gallery,’ she says softly, hoping the girl at the counter won’t hear. ‘It’s what I want … more than anything else in the world.’
Santiago smiles. ‘And I admire you for it. When you could be putting your excellent education to lucrative ends for private clients, you’ve chosen to work in virtual penury for the public, so everyone can enjoy great works of art. It’s a beautiful, noble ambition.’ His smile deepens. ‘And one I have every belief you’ll achieve.’
‘Really?’
Santiago nods. ‘But of course. Don’t you?’
Noa shrugs. ‘I certainly hope so, but I don’t know …’
Santiago fixes her with his deep brown eyes. ‘I do. And you can trust me. I can see things in people that they can’t see in themselves.’
‘Oh?’ Noa says and, before she can stop herself from asking such a thing from a virtual stranger, she blurts it out. ‘And what do you see in me?’
Santiago smiles and Noa feels her skin flush. He brushes his fingers through his thick black hair again and Noa feels suddenly overcome with the desire to touch his long, thin fingers, to entwine them with her own.
‘Great strength,’ he says. ‘The power to do anything you put your mind to.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He nods. ‘And so, when you’re a curator at the National Gallery, I hope you’ll invite me to exhibit there. I should be most honoured.’
‘Of course,’ Noa exclaims. ‘As soon as I’m in place, you’ll be the first artist I’ll ask.’
Santiago places one long-fingered hand on his chest and reaches out the other to her. ‘It’s a deal.’ He gives a little bow. ‘And now I have two reasons to hope your dream comes true. First, for you. Second, for me, so that I will see you again.’
Then, in a gesture so quick Noa doesn’t see where it came from, Santiago plucks a card from his pocket and holds it out to her, between two fingers. Noa takes the little dark purple card and reads, in delicate silver letters, his name and phone number inscribed across the front.
‘So you can call me when you get that job,’ he says. ‘I hope it will be soon. I have a feeling it will be sooner than you think.’
And, with that, Santiago turns and walks away. When Noa blinks again, he’s gone and she’s left standing next to his paintings in the empty shop.
It’s only when she’s walking back along Bene’t Street that Noa realises she hadn’t seen any of Santiago’s secrets. She’d looked deep into his soft eyes and seen nothing. It certainly wasn’t because he didn’t have any secrets. Everyone has secrets, even little fears and facts they won’t tell another living soul. Noa has never met a person for whom this wasn’t true. It’s what has made her life so difficult up to now. And Santiago is no exception. If anything, she’d guess he has more secrets than most. So why couldn’t she see them?
Amandine is scared of heights. Which wouldn’t matter ordinarily, except that she’s president of the Cambridge University Society of Literature and Witchcraft, which meets on the first Friday of every month, at midnight, on the top of various university turrets, each one at least fifty feet from the ground. This means that, for twelve days of the year, Amandine has to take a dash of valerian and a sprinkling of passionflower in her tea before she leaves the house, which serves to stop her legs shaking and her heart beating quite so fast.
Three women and one man are members of the Cambridge University Society of Literature and Witchcraft, all professors and all witches, but only one is afraid of heights. In the early days Amandine had suggested the group meet in a more conventional location, a library or cafe, but she’d always been voted down by the others, who prefer places that afford better views. Each professor takes it in turn to choose the book and host the event at the highest point of their respective colleges. A month ago George Benett had chosen E. M. Forster’s Maurice and discussions took place on the roof of Pembroke Chapel, just next to the ornate silver weather vane. It was the first of April, a chilly evening with a cool breeze, but the weather didn’t affect the witches, who are not subject to petty physical limitations.
In three days’ time, on Friday, it’s Amandine’s turn. By rights it should be her mother’s, but Héloïse Bisset hasn’t attended a book group meeting or taught a tutorial for nearly two years now. She’s hardly left the house since her husband died. For many months, Amandine had let her mother sink into her sorrow. She brought her food and forced her to eat it. She wiped her mother’s nose while she sobbed, she held her while she shook, she made sure she washed and dressed every few days. For fourteen months she allowed her mother to fall apart, along with the scattering pieces of her shattered universe. But, six months ago, Amandine decided that enough was enough. Héloïse is still young, not yet sixty, and it was time for her to start living again.
Perhaps Amandine’s decision was partly selfish; she could no longer cope with feeling her mother’s pain so acutely every day, trying to shed the heavy cloak of sadness when she came home at night so she could be with her husband and boys and feel joy as she hugged them close. Perhaps she’d reached her limit of self-sacrifice. So, for the last six months, Amandine has stopped pandering to her mother’s pain and agoraphobic tendencies and instead tried to force her out of the house and back into life among the living. She took her on walks, packed picnics, dragged her into cafes and cinemas. Amandine has chosen her book – She Came to Stay by Simone de Beauvoir – in a bid to tempt Héloïse back into the fold by picking her favourite author. So far, sadly, it hasn’t worked. But Amandine hasn’t given up, nor will she.
Amandine has picked, as their meeting place to discuss the book, a nice discreet turret at the back of Magdalene College far from the street, just in case any curious passers-by happen to glance up, although she knows from experience that normal people rarely look very far above their own noses. After eight hundred years in existence, the Cambridge University Society of Literature and Witchcraft has only been spotted by the public a handful of times. People don’t look up. They scurry about, lost in their thoughts, and rarely consider slowing down and gazing at the sky. It’s a shame, Amandine sometimes thinks, since they miss so much. She’s always particularly shocked at how many of her own students, who should be drawn to architecture, haven’t noticed the incredibly intricate turrets and towers crammed into the city.
Amandine has been gazing up at the colleges of Cambridge since the first day she arrived as an undergraduate. Now, in her thirty-seventh year, she knows every single carving, every stone spire and sculpture. She knows all 149 gargoyles by name, having named them one weekend when she wasn’t in the mood to stay at her desk and mark essays.
Amandine joined the group as soon as she was admitted to the university. She attended her first meeting on the evening of her matriculation, finally achieving a dream she’d been dreaming since she was a teenager. On the eve of her thirteenth birthday Amandine had followed her mother, Professor Héloïse Bisset, out of the house and under the cover of a cloudy sky.
Every month Héloïse went out and Amandine always wondered where she was going. She knew it was somewhere special because she felt the anticipation and delight that bubbled inside her mother on the morning of the day she was set to go out. Little Amandine begged Héloïse to tell her, but her mother always refused, telling her she was too young, that she’d tell her one day but not yet. By the time she was nearly thirteen, Amandine finally got fed up with the waiting and determined to find the truth for herself.
She followed Héloïse to Emmanuel College, crept up the stairs of the north wing on tiptoe, and alighted on the rooftop. There sat three other women and a man in a circle, each hovering five inches in the air, holding a book and a cup of hot chocolate. Amandine watched as Héloïse went to join them, finding her place in the circle, mysteriously producing a book and, even more mysteriously, a hot chocolate of her own as she sat down. That night Amandine watched and listened. The book they talked about was one she’d never heard of but, after hearing all its salacious details discussed in depth, she borrowed it off her mother’s bedside the next morning and spent her birthday reading it cover to cover.
Amandine hadn’t really been surprised by the strange things she saw that night: the sudden appearance of marshmallows and chocolate on sticks, along with a tiny elevated fire, flickering and spitting a few inches off the roof, upon which to roast them. She didn’t gasp in shock when the strangers themselves hovered a few feet in the air whenever they laughed or argued. She didn’t wonder why, when it started to rain, none of her mother’s friends got wet.
Amandine had always suspected there was something different about her mother. Unlike her father, her mother seemed to know what would happen before it happened – she picked up the phone the second it started to ring, she started to pack before they had to move house, she made tea with lemon and honey just before her father started sneezing and complaining of a cold. Amandine also knew there was something different about herself quite early on, quickly realising that other people didn’t feel their fellow human beings’ feelings in the same way she did. But it wasn’t until the night that she turned thirteen that Amandine finally confronted her mother.
When she saw that the book group was coming to an end, when the marshmallows had all been eaten and the little fire went out, Amandine scampered back down the staircase – treading as lightly and quickly as she could – then waited for Héloïse around the corner so she could catch her on her own.
‘So,’ Héloïse said, before she saw her, ‘ma petite fille is ready to grow up now, is she?’
‘Can I join your book group, Maman, can I, please?’ Amandine asked, running along to catch up to her mother.
‘Not yet, ma petite
