pointed inside a bush at a coil of rusty barbed wire; the branches had grown around it. Further along, the bushes thinned out very slightly and there was a sign, one of those ones you can buy in hardware shops that says:
BEWARE: THE DOG ALWAYS ATTACKS
‘Erm … Roxy?’ I said.
She flapped her tiny hand dismissively. ‘There’s no dog. Don’t worry. Come on!’
I followed, feeling like an obedient puppy.
We came to a gap in the bushy barbed-wire defences. It would have been easy to squeeze through it had I been Roxy’s size. All I could do was lie absolutely flat on my belly and try to shimmy forward, following her flip-flops.
Her feet and lower legs were scratched all over and stung by nettles, but she didn’t seem to care.
Then the gorse bush cleared and we were in long grass: long enough to hide us if we lay flat. That’s when I saw the house properly.
The sloping ground extended another couple of metres and then dropped away sharply to become a brick wall about the height of a person. There was a neat, paved yard with a round fire-pit made of stone. A smouldering log gave off a thin wisp of smoke that rose up straight in the still air, and a few chickens pecked around on the ground. Next to the fire-pit was a round, metal pot, blackened with age and smoke.
The house itself was made of stone bricks, mottled and misshapen with age, and topped with a roof of the mossy slates I had seen from a distance. We were looking at the back of the house; the door was one of those ones that’s split in half. The top half was open but I couldn’t see inside. The paint on the door and window frames was a bit flaky; in fact, everything about the house looked old and dry and worn.
‘So, Roxy …’ I began.
‘Shhh!’
I lowered my voice. ‘So, Roxy. It’s someone’s house.’
‘Yes!’ she whispered back excitedly.
‘And this is a big deal?’
‘Well … yeah!’
‘Why exactly? People have houses, you know. They live in them.’
‘You don’t know who lives in this one.’
Roxy paused and took a breath, building the suspense. Then she stopped, both of our eyes drawn to a movement inside the doorway.
A woman appeared, framed in the open half of the door, and scanned the bushes and grass where we lay hidden. Instinctively we both shrank back.
I only got a quick look at her before she went back into the house. How old was she? I couldn’t tell. Long skirt, headscarf, sunglasses.
‘That was her,’ said Roxy.
‘That was who?’ I know this sounds like I was being deliberately uninterested to tease Roxy, but I just could not work out why she was so excited about some woman in a house. Big deal.
‘The witch.’
And, at that point, I forgot all about being quiet, and said – louder than I should have, probably – ‘Oh, Roxy!’
I was genuinely quite annoyed. Disappointed as well.
Annoyed with Roxy because I was lying in the grass, a bit scared, and covered in forest gunk and nettle stings, spying on someone’s house, probably breaking some law or other, and all for nothing. And disappointed because, well …
I’d thought Roxy might be a bit different. Someone fun to hang out with. Especially with Spatch and Mo in Italy.
And then she mentioned witches, for heaven’s sake. If I want witches, or unicorns, or animals in clothes, I just need five minutes with my little sister.
‘Shhh! She is, I’m telling you. She’s, like, two hundred years old and she lives in a cottage in the woods. She even has a black cat – look!’
Right on cue, a cat – not entirely black but anyway – strolled along the top of the wall right in front of us. It flashed us a look with its striking yellow eyes, then leapt gracefully down into the yard, mewling loudly, causing a chicken to flap out of its way.
‘Have you tasted it? The house?’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Is it made of gingerbread?’
The glare that Roxy gave me could have melted an ice lolly, but I didn’t care. This was just a silly fantasy.
‘I’m going back,’ I said, and I started to get up.
‘Get down!’ hissed Roxy. ‘She’ll see you.’
‘What? And turn me into a toad? I’ll take the risk, thanks.’
What happened next may have been my fault. I’m not really sure.
As I got to my hands and knees, Roxy grabbed my collar, and pulled me back down really hard, and, for someone so small, she had plenty of strength.
‘Stop it!’ I whispered, and struggled from her grasp and, as I did so, I pushed her. She rolled down the bank, scrabbling for my hand or for grass, or for anything to stop her tumbling into the yard, which was where she was headed.
For a split second, her eyes locked on mine, pure terror etched onto her face, and then she was over the edge of the slope and out of sight.
There was a loud thump as she hit the ground, but no shout, no scream. I had drawn breath to shout her name, and to check she was OK, but the shout stilled in my throat as I saw the back door of the cottage burst open and the witch come running out.
‘Ay, ay, ay!’ she cried. And then something else, something I couldn’t make out, because it was in a language I’d never heard before.
It wasn’t French. I know what French sounds like (third from top in my class, en fait). And it wasn’t Italian, because I’ve heard Spatch talking with his dad at home.
It was like nothing I had ever heard before: a throaty, musical language. The witch – or ‘witch’, I suppose – hurried to where Roxy had fallen right below me. Then, in her language, she called out again, as if shouting for someone.
That’s when I saw him.
He stood in the doorway: a pale, skinny blond boy. A pair of sunglasses hung on a loop round his neck and he put them on before scuttling out into the sunshine of the yard to where Roxy lay.
Was she dead? I was terrified, but I didn’t think it was likely, even though it was quite a long drop. Then I heard her moan. Thank God for that.
Should I stand up? Reveal myself? I was caught in a terrified dither of simply not knowing what to do when the boy picked up Roxy and carried her little body easily into the house, a dripping trail of blood coming from her head.
Both halves of the door clattered shut and I realised I hadn’t breathed since Roxy had fallen.
This is what I know about the life-pearls:
1. They contain a thick liquid which, when mixed with your own blood, immediately stops you from getting any older.
2. If you repeat the process with another life-pearl, the ageing starts again.
That is it. That is pretty much all I know, and all Mam knows too.
As