The Language of Spells by Sarah Painter Page A

She sipped her wine and told him about her work. She talked about Curious Notions and how she’d started out by selling her own creations and then, in the course of seeking out vintage miniatures for her shadow boxes, she’d started to pick up loads of other cool pieces and decided to put them on the stall too. ‘I was just messing about, really. Killing time while I worked out what I was really going to do with my life and then, one day, I saw this silk scarf.’
    Cam’s eyes glazed over slightly.
    ‘Stick with me. This was a thing of beauty.’
    ‘Scarf. Beautiful. Got it.’
    ‘This obnoxious guy had it on his stall in an antiques fair in Peterborough. He knew it was a Missoni and had it priced up accordingly, but as soon as I touched it I knew it was the last of its kind.’
    ‘You knew it?’ Cam frowned.
    Gwen was too excited, reliving her moment of triumph, to care that she sounded crazy. ‘It was such a rush. I bought it and put it on my stall. Sold it for ten times what I paid for it.’ It was one of the moments when the Harper family intuition had seemed like a blessing rather than a curse.
    ‘Wow.’ Cam straightened up. Suddenly interested. ‘So there’s money in this—’ he paused ‘…stuff.’
    ‘I know it probably looks like junk to you, but I love it. Some people hate the idea of secondhand, but I love the history, the hunt, the way everything is unique. It’s so much more interesting than the same boring mass-produced crap that everyone else has bought from Argos.’
    ‘I don’t buy things in Argo,.’ Cam said.
    ‘Not you. You’re rich. I mean normal people,’ Gwen said. ‘Anyway, you just buy things in the expensive version of Argos. It’s still not individual or anything.’
    ‘I see,’ Cam said politely.
    Gwen put her glass down carefully and said, ‘What about you?’
    ‘Not much to tell. Paperwork. Court. Paperwork. Court.’
    ‘You don’t like it?’
    He shrugged. ‘Actually, I kind of do. I like the puzzles and I like the challenge. I like arguing and I like winning.’
    Gwen smiled. ‘I still can’t quite get used to the idea of you as a lawyer. I mean, you were in a punk band. Weren’t you going to go to London?’
    ‘I did,’ Cam said, suddenly serious.
    ‘What happened?’
    Cam drained his glass and poured another. ‘I’m sorry about the other day. In the car. I just wasn’t ready to—’ He broke off and ran a hand through his hair, ‘I don’t know. Jesus. I just wasn’t ready to talk to you, I suppose. Do you still want to hear about your aunt?’
    Gwen jerked back to the present.’ Yes. I do. Yes, please.’
    Cam settled back in his chair and closed his eyes. After a moment he said, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but she was kind of odd.’
    Gwen stiffened.
Odd
. That was one of the many words used to describe her family over the years.
    Cam opened his eyes and looked right at her. ‘She was a very strong person. She told the truth. If someone was in need, she always tried to help. Always.’
    ‘Oh.’ Gwen swallowed. That sounded better.
    ‘She wasn’t a tactful person. Didn’t suffer fools gladly.’
    ‘I’ve never understood that phrase,’ Gwen broke in. She waved her glass. ‘Who does suffer fools gladly? Some kind of fool-fancier?’
    Cam ignored her. ‘She put a lot of people’s backs up. Didn’t play the politics game. I heard that when the police chief’s wife went to see her, Iris insulted her shoes.’
    ‘I thought she helped people?’
    ‘Oh she did,’ Cam said. ‘You just couldn’t be too choosy about the kind of help you got.’
    Gwen opened her mouth to say something about people in general being too choosy for their own good, when she heard knocking.
    Cam raised his eyebrows. ‘Expecting someone?’
    Gwen sighed. ‘Increasingly, yes.’
    She opened the door with a sense of resignation.
    The woman on her doorstep was clutching a blue dog bowl with a cartoon-style bone engraved on the side. ‘Are you Gwen