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But, eventually, as the sky outside darkened and things began to calm down, I got out the pictures I’d taken from Star’s flat and looked at them again.
They might not even all be of Star, I told myself. The one of her with a neck collar on was the only one that showed her whole face. But the close-up of the cut on her eyebrow showed a lock of curly blonde hair – Star’s hair – and anyway I remembered her having cut her face. She’d said a car had thrown up a loose stone as it drove past her. Had that been true?
The bruised knees could have belonged to anyone, and the burned arms and bloody hand. But why would she have photos of injuries someone else had suffered?
A knock on my office door made me look up. Fallon, one of the yoga instructors, stood there.
“I’ve found my diary,” she said. “I’ve got all my classes written in there – thought it might be helpful.”
“Brilliant,” I said. “Give it here and I’ll pass it to Nancy on reception.”
She came to hand it over and as she did so she glanced at the photo on top of the pile.
“Oh god,” she said. “Was that Star’s hand?”
I looked at her in surprise.
“Yes,” I said. “I think so. Did she cut it?”
Fallon picked up the photo and shuddered.
“She did it on one of the baubles from the Christmas tree,” she said. “She said it had happened when she was decorating it. But she was sitting at her desk when I found her. It was really strange.”
“It’s a nasty cut,” I said. “It’s deep.”
“I know,” Fallon said. “Like she’d fallen on it, not just that it had shattered in her hand. I bandaged it up for her and it took ages to pick out all the bits of glass. Poor girl. It must have really hurt.”
“Why would she lie, though?” I said.
Fallon shrugged.
“Why would she take a photo?” she pointed out. “I wondered…”
“What?”
“Just that she was so cagey about it, I wondered if she’d done it herself.”
“Really?” I said in surprise.
“You never know what’s going on in people’s heads,” she said, darkly. She tapped the diary on my desk.
“I’ve got a class,” she said. “Leave this in my pigeon hole when you’re done.”
I stared at the door as she left. She was right, in a way, I thought. You couldn’t really know what was going on in people’s heads. Except I did. Some of the time, at least. It was one of the witchy skills that I had that I enjoyed the most. Had I missed something terrible going on in Star’s?
On a whim, I pulled Louise’s business card out of my bag for the hundredth time and typed out an email.
“I know you’re busy,” I wrote. “And I don’t want to be in the way. But I found these photos in Star’s house and I wondered what you thought?”
I snapped photos of the photos with my phone – they weren’t brilliant quality but they’d do – attached them to the email and pressed send before I could change my mind.
Really what I wanted, I thought, was DI Baxter to come back to me and say I had nothing to worry about. The graffiti on the spa’s front door, and the broken windows, and Star’s injuries, and her death, were all just coincidences. A run of terrible, awful, horrific bad luck.
Feeling sick again, I stuffed the photos into my bag, and wandered off to find Xander. He’d told me he’d arranged to meet Esme again the next day and I’d pretended to be pleased.
“You’re so stressed, H,” he said, using the nickname my family used. I quite liked it when he called me H. “I can help you if I learn more about magic.”
He’d wrapped me in a hug and I’d let myself snuggle into his chest. I’d never had many close male friends, and I’d never known my dad so when I first met Xander with his tactile nature and habit of draping his arms round my neck or my shoulders, I was thrown for a while by his sheer maleness. But now I enjoyed how he was never afraid to give me a hug when he thought I needed one.
He kissed the top of my head.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “With my brains and your beauty we’ll have things back to normal in no time.”
I patted his chest and ducked out of his embrace.
“My brains,” I said. “You’re just the wallpaper.”
He stuck his tongue out at me.
“Go home,” he said. “I’ll close up.”
I suddenly realised how tired I was.
“Thank you,” I said. “What would I do without you?”
“You’d be bored,” he said with a grin.
I doubted that, but I grinned back as I put on my coat. The weather was getting worse and outside it was sleeting. Dirty grey freezing sleet covered car windscreens. Everywhere looked dark and gloomy because Twelfth Night was gone and now the Christmas decorations had been taken down. I felt uncharacteristically sorry for myself.
Chapter 9 (#ulink_3c068e8d-e811-59ce-b3b2-a4be80950059)
Esme and Jamie, however, had obviously not received the misery memo, because I arrived home straight into wedding planning central.
They were in the living room, surrounded by magazines, Esme’s laptop open, foolish grins on both their faces and an enormous sparkler on Ez’s finger.
“Look!” she shrieked as I walked in. She waved her finger in my face and I caught her hand. It was a beautiful ring – a traditional solitaire with a square diamond set in a platinum band.
“It’s gorgeous,” I said truthfully. “Well done, guys.”
My bone-aching weariness was actually beginning to wear off in the face of such happiness, so I flopped down beside Esme.
“Are you making plans?” I said.
“We are,” she said. “You can help. Jamie, give Harry some fizz.”
Jamie went off to the kitchen and came back with a champagne glass and a bottle of Prosecco.
“There’s another bottle in the fridge,” he said, handing me the glass and filling it to the brim.
We chinked glasses.
“So what are you thinking?” I asked.
“We looked at some fancy Edinburgh venues,” Jamie said. “But they weren’t really us. And then Esme had an idea.”
“I want to go home,” she said with a smile. “I want to get married at the café.”
My mum, Suky, Esme’s mum, Tess and their friend Eva, ran a café on the banks of Loch Claddach, where we’d grown up. It was a thriving little business with amazing views. They’d had a difficult time a couple of years ago, when my mum had been diagnosed with breast cancer and the vultures started circling their business. But things were on the up again. In fact, they were expanding. Eva’s husband, Allan, who was a landscape artist whose paintings adorned birthday cards, posters, prints and teacups across Britain, had come up with a plan. He’d persuaded Mum and Suky to clear the top floor of the café – a little-used attic space with incredible light – whitewash the walls, sand the floorboards and turn it into a gallery. Claddach was brimming with artists, writers, poets, musicians – it was that sort of place – so there was no shortage of interest.
He started with an exhibition of his own work, had quickly found other artists to feature and now ran poetry readings, concerts and all sorts in the room upstairs. In fact, that’s what he’d called it – The Room Upstairs. Cute, huh? He was in the process of drawing up plans for an extension out the back, which would allow the gallery and the café to grow. I’d helped him out with business plans and accounts and the like and been pleasantly surprised by his financial acumen. He was a dark horse, Allan, I’d decided. But he was making a massive success of the gallery and it was, without a doubt, the most perfect place for Esme and Jamie’s wedding. I clapped my hands in a very girly way – apparently talk of brides and flowers can do that even to a cynic like me.
“What an amazing idea,” I said. “Have you asked your mum?”
“I have,” she said. “She was thrilled. Your mum was in the background shouting out ideas. We’ll have to go up and have a look and make some lists.”
“Oh that’ll be nice,” I said. “You guys can tell me what the gallery’s like.”
“Not Jamie,” Esme said. “He’s too busy to come up. I meant you and me.” She looked shifty for a second. “Actually, H, I’ve got something to ask you.”
“What?” I said warily.
“I rang Chloe,” she said. “I asked her to be bridesmaid.”
I nodded. Chloe was the obvious choice – she’d been Esme’s best friend forever and knew all about our family and its quirks.
“She said no,” Esme said.
“What? Why?”
Ez screwed her face up.
“She’s pregnant.”
“Again?” I said in horror. “She’s got about four kids already.”
“She’s got two,” Esme said, in a tone that suggested she thought I was less intelligent than either of Chloe’s sprogs. “I think this one was a bit of a surprise and she’s only just found out.”
“So why can’t she be bridesmaid?”
“Because her baby is due in August,” Esme said. “And we’re getting married in September. She says she’ll do a reading, or be a witness, or whatever. She just doesn’t want to be bridesmaid and have to squeeze into a fancy frock while she’s sore and lumpy and breastfeeding.”
I shuddered.
“You’re not selling it, Ez,” I said. “So what has Chloe’s fertility got to do with me?” Realisation dawned.
“No,” I said. “I’m not the bridesmaid type.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“Mum would love it. Your mum would love it.”
Esme looked at me, her blue eyes twinkling.
“Will I have to organise a hen night?” I said.
Esme shook her head.
“What about the dress? Can I choose it?”
“You can even choose mine,” she said. “You’re much better at clothes than I am.”
I knew when I was beaten.
“Okay,” I said. “But you are not to call me anything vile like matron of honour.”
Esme grinned.
“Maid of honour,” she said. “Because you’re not married.”
I whacked her with a wedding magazine and she chuckled.
I left her and Jamie to their plans, ran myself a bath, and sank into the bubbles, closing my eyes and letting my mind drift. It was just what I needed after such a stressful few days.
I didn’t think about Star, or the power cut and our lost files, or Xander’s pursuit of Esme, or even the fact that I’d just agreed to be a bridesmaid. It was bliss.
Maybe it was all coincidence, I thought. This wasn’t the Wild West. No one had a grudge against me, no one would have targeted Star deliberately. It was just bad luck. I got out of the bath, and into bed feeling much better about everything. And then, the next day, it all went wrong again.
Chapter 10 (#ulink_c5c31439-fb07-523e-a7ac-8fd5968f1db1)
The first thing that went wrong the next day was that Louise rang. Not that it was wrong that she rang exactly, it was more what she said.
“I looked at those pictures,” she said. “Do you think Star was in some kind of trouble?”
“It looks like it,” I admitted. “She must have thought so – otherwise why would she take those photos?”
I was sitting at my desk in my office. I twirled round on my chair, and stared out of the window.
“I was worried that she might have been protecting me,” I said. “That someone was targeting me and she got in the way.”
There was a pause.
“Can you think of anyone that would want to hurt you?” she said.
“No,” I said. “There’s no one. I know I’m not the easiest person to get along with and I sometimes rub people up the wrong way, but there’s no one I can think of who hates me.”
“That’s good to hear,” she said.
