The Dream Weavers by Barbara Erskine (books you have to read txt) 📕

talk to demons! She’s got the newspaper cuttings about that awful place you went to over on the border to chase out a poltergeist.’

‘Oh God! Did she show them to you? I don’t know what I’ve done to make her so determined to damage me.’

But she was being disingenuous there, Bea thought, ashamed. She knew all too well. She sat down at the table heavily and put her head in her hands. ‘What can I do? She’s already been to the dean.’

Heather sighed. ‘She told me. Did he say anything to you?’

‘No, but he had a word with Mark.’

‘Bless him. He wouldn’t want to believe anything bad about anyone anyway. So Mark knows? He’s seen the cuttings?’

Bea nodded. ‘I showed them to him when they first appeared.’

‘So, what are we going to do?’

Bea smiled with relief. ‘You don’t know how much it cheers me up to know you’re still on my side.’

Heather laughed. ‘It’s like being back at school! Sandra isn’t a classic bully, she’s the sneak who hides behind the lockers and then runs to the teacher pretending to be all innocence and only interested in the greater good!’

‘So, what can I do?’

‘Turn her into a toad?’

Bea opened her mouth to retort, then fell suddenly silent. ‘You don’t think I’m a witch too?’

Heather laughed again. She stood up and went to plug in Bea’s kettle. ‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ she said. ‘But if you are, you need to adopt a cloak of invisibility in future because she is out to get you. What we have to do is come up with a cunning plan.’

Bea watched as Heather made tea and reached for the mug gratefully as it was pushed across the table towards her.

‘And that doesn’t include turning her into a toad,’ Heather added sternly, ‘tempting though that might be.’

‘You credit me with more talent than I have, alas,’ Bea said with a rueful grin.

‘Well, even if you can do such things, I expect there is a law against it by now. Animal welfare or something. So, we have the might of the Church on our side, in the shape of the dean and Chapter, but we also know they will never sack her for malfeasance or anything like that, so we are stuck with her.’

‘Do I gather you don’t like her either?’

‘Let’s say I’ve never warmed to her. Luckily I don’t normally see much of her, but today she sought me out deliberately to warn me about you and ask me what she should do. Naturally I said do nothing and she didn’t like that. I could see her little brain whirling with indignation and self-righteous zeal. So, you have to be careful. I wonder if she’s capable of standing up at matins and denouncing you from the floor of the house.’

Bea gave a weary laugh. ‘I think you’re muddling the cathedral with the House of Commons.’

‘She threatened to go to see the bishop. No, it’s all right, I warned her off him as well.’ Heather sat forward, resting her chin on her folded hands. Bea hesitated and Heather nodded. ‘I won’t do anything, Bea, unless you ask me to. I promise.’

‘Even though you know it’s true?’

She hadn’t meant to say it.

Heather narrowed her eyes. ‘You’ve been talking to demons in the cathedral?’

‘No.’ Or had she? Wasn’t Eadburh close to the demonic? ‘No, but I have been talking to, or perhaps praying with is a better way of putting it, the spirit of an old priest in the Stanbury Chapel. Sandra saw me, heard me speak out loud. That’s what has given rise to all this. You know how discreet I try to be, but I’ve been helping a family whose daughter has been very disturbed. I brought her to the cathedral to pray and Sandra saw us together and followed us. She keeps asking me about what I was doing.’

There was a long moment of silence.

‘Tricky,’ Heather said at last.

‘What am I going to do?’

‘I suppose you could cast a tiny spell on Sandra. Something to shut her up.’ Heather’s eyes were twinkling.

People will call you a witch. Nesta’s words echoed at the back of Bea’s mind. That word I think implies evil and brings fear as much to your time as to mine.

‘Only joking.’ Heather noticed her expression. Her whisper got through and Bea smiled. ‘I’m not into spells,’ she said softly, ‘but I know someone who is. I’ll bear the idea in mind.’

31

Emma claimed to be too tired to do anything when Bea arrived to pick her up next morning. She reminded Bea of a Victorian heroine, flinging back her dishevelled blond hair, pressing her hand against her brow and throwing herself down in the chair nearest to the fire which was nothing but a bed of cold ash. Bea was quite pleased. She wanted the chance to talk to Simon alone and a walk seemed a good way of grabbing it without the possibility of being overheard.

Emma watched them leave out of the corner of her eye; as soon as they had disappeared up the lane she leapt to her feet.

‘Duh?’ Felix had been glued to his phone.

‘I want to read Dad’s book.’ Emma had descended on the pile of manuscript that was now residing on the windowsill near his desk. She scooped it up and retired to the chair. ‘Don’t tell him, OK? I need to know what it is he was writing about that stirred everything up. I’m studying history, this counts as revision.’

‘Whatever.’ Felix shrugged his shoulders and went back to his phone, uninterested now that she appeared to be staying in one place.

Emma flipped through the pages. There was a marker about halfway through and she turned to that bit, searching for the chapter heading, ‘The Offa’s Dyke Years’. Minutes later she was completely absorbed.

‘How is Emma doing?’ Bea pushed her hands into her pockets. In spite of the sunshine a lively breeze had got up and the air was sharp and ice-cold as they