obviously she’s not going to wear a black hat and have warts. That would just give the game away, wouldn’t it?’ she declared.
‘Oh, so the fact she doesn’t look much like a witch proves she’s a witch, does it?’ I said in exasperation. ‘So what if she had had a black, pointy hat? What would that prove? That she wasn’t a witch?’
She ignored this bit of logic. ‘And she’s got a cauldron and a black cat!’
‘Black-and-white, Roxy,’ I said wearily.
‘So what?’
Everything I said was batted back to me with wide-eyed innocence. Our voices were getting louder and it was becoming an argument, which I didn’t want because Roxy was daring and fun.
‘I can prove it, you know,’ she said, and then her phone rang: a jolly, tinkly-tonkly tune on the piano that somehow suited Roxy perfectly. She glanced at the screen but didn’t pick it up. I looked at her quizzically.
‘It’s my mum. Gotta go.’
I’d barely noticed that Roxy had been alone all this time. I mean, wherever I am, usually there’s a parent kicking around somewhere in the background: bringing out juice, checking you’re wearing a warm top, or not running with scissors – just being parentish. But Roxy had been parentless all day.
Her phone rang out and went to voicemail.
‘Where is your mum?’ I asked.
Roxy jerked her head in the direction of the house. ‘Inside.’
‘And she’s phoning you?’
She let out a deep sigh as she jumped down from her chair and stood up. ‘Long story. Another time, eh?’
It was as if Roxy had been pricked with a pin and her sigh was all the air escaping, along with her fun and liveliness and everything else. I would swear that even her sticky-up hair lay flatter on her head. She locked the door to the garage and put the key under a stone. She said nothing: she knew I was watching so I knew I was trusted.
She turned and a flicker of light returned to her eyes when she said, ‘Midnight.’
‘Tonight?’
‘No. In ten years’ time. Of course tonight.’ She turned to slip through the gap in the fence. ‘It’s the witching hour,’ she said, and then she was gone, leaving me staring into the thick woods, trying to piece together what had been going on.
Roxy had said, ‘I can prove it, you know.’
What did she mean by that? Was it, ‘I can prove it: she did a magic spell,’ which of course would be yet more nonsense?
But there was something in the way she said it, a light of certainty in her eyes, which I couldn’t stop thinking about.
You see, I was on the point of dismissing Roxy as a harmless crazy: we’d have been friendly but not ‘friends’, the boy and the woman in the forest cottage would have been left in peace, and Roxy would have grown out of her belief in the ‘witch in the woods’.
But then the disaster happened, and Roxy and I became the last people to see the witch alive.
I watched the girl go back up the lane. I wanted to go with her, make sure she got home safely, but I do not think Mam would have approved. Besides she did not live far: on the other side of the woods. She had a funny little shed with an illuminated sign hanging by the door. I knew that much.
Biffa jumped into my arms as I stood there. It meant that, when the girl turned back to look, she did not see my hand give a little wave because it was sort of hidden by Biffa. I am not sure. Maybe she did see.
R. Minto.
It was sewn into her jacket on a label. I saw it when I carried her in. She also had something with wires going into the pocket. Probably one of those mobile telephones or something.
I watched her all the way to the bend in the lane in case she turned back again, but she did not. Biffa hopped out of my arms then and gave a little growl, which made me smile.
‘Do you like her, Biffa?’ I said in our old language. ‘Me too.’
I sniffed the air in the lane. The weather had been hot for spring, but it would cool down later: I could smell it. The sky was cloudless, so, when the sun dipped, the evening would get cold and Mam would want the fire to be lit to keep the chill from the old stone house.
I should have gone right away to the woodstore to get some old logs, but I was still thinking of R. Minto, and her friend in the bushes, and how Mam had been suspicious of them. Then Biffa came back with a big beetle she had caught and dumped it on its back by my feet, where it lay, waggling its legs.
‘No, Biff!’ I laughed. ‘Leave the beetles alone!’ I crouched down to flick the insect back the right way up, and it scuttled gratefully into the undergrowth.
I completely forgot about fetching the old logs, which turned out to be the biggest mistake of the last thousand years.
It was past midnight when the fire sirens started.
I got up to look out of the bedroom window – Libby’s bedroom, where I had been moved to make room for Aunty Alice and Jasper. My stomach lurched with fear when I saw the glow of the fire coming from the woods, fierce enough to light up the sky, although it was still quite a distance.
I knew instantly what was burning.
‘Dad! Dad!’ I called.
‘Strewth!’ I heard. ‘That’s a hell of a conflagration.’ I swung round and Jasper was standing behind me in his pyjama bottoms, leaning on a stack of boxes that hadn’t been unpacked yet.
A smell of smoke was seeping through the open window so I shut it.
‘There’s a house there, you know,’ I said. ‘In the woods.’
‘Really? Well, I hope they’re all right. Ghastly things fires, eh?’ Jasper scratched his thick beard and his fingers travelled from his cheek to his throat to his chest and it was hairy all the way down. The beard never actually stopped, but just merged with the rest of the hair on his body.
I heard the doorbell go downstairs. I bet that’s Roxy, I thought.
Dad opened the front door not to Roxy but to a fireman, and while I ran down the stairs he spoke to Dad. Through the door, I could see a fire engine in the street, its blue lights flashing.
‘Sorry to wake you, sir, but we have to run a hose down the side of your house. If that fire spreads, it poses a risk to the buildings, so we have to soak the trees,’ he said.
The firefighter wasn’t expecting a refusal, I could tell that much, because the others were already unspooling the hose from the fire engine and opening up the fire hydrant right outside our house.
‘No need for alarm, son,’ the fireman said to me. ‘Just a precaution.’
‘What about the house? The witch … the house in the woods? Are they all right?’
‘Dunno anything about that, son. Now ’scuse me.’ He turned his attention to the others, who were by now running up the junk-filled alley, shifting stuff to make room.
He was lying. I knew it at once, and I felt scared.
I stood