Chapter Two

‘The breakup spell?' I wrinkle my nose. ‘Like when we were kids?'

Something suspiciously like a cackle rises on Serena's lips. ‘The Weird Sisters fly again!'

I groan, dropping my head into my hands. The Weird Sisters was a game we used to play when we were about ten and it had its basis in our slightly… unusual family set up.

It started as a comment in the newspaper, referring to our family as a ‘coven' and my mum had laughed and said, ‘If the pointy hats fit!' Then Petty and Ava laughed too, so the three of us girls joined in, even though we had to look the word up in the dictionary later.

The papers wrote about us often in those days. When Ripp Harris was revealed to have impregnated three different women practically simultaneously, it was just the sort of salacious story the press could get behind. My mother, Dee – twenty-three years old and an up-and-coming musician herself – had the dubious distinction of being married to Ripp at the time, and so the attention on her was relentless. What would she do? they asked breathlessly. Would she stay? Would she fight for her man? Would she do so literally and preferably in front of a camera if the other two women came within fifty feet???

In fact, my mum did none of those things. She packed up and left (with minimal protests from Ripp), and bought a farm in Hertfordshire with her sizeable divorce settlement.

Then she invited Petty and Ava to come and live on the farm with her, and the tabloids went wild.

RIPP'S EX OPENS BABY COMMUNEwas Mum's favourite headline. She had that page framed in our downstairs loo. None of us were ever really clear what a baby commune would look like, but our real life was nowhere near as scandalous or exciting as the paparazzi outside our gates wanted to believe.

Mum gave up singing, and the press attention receded but never fully died down. The house was our safe place. Mum stopped performing and started an arts charity which she still runs from her home office. She and I lived in the middle section of the long, low, ramshackle building, which had been slapped together over several different centuries, while Petty and Lil lived in one converted side of the house, and Ava and Serena lived in the other. Everyone had their own space, but doors usually remained open, and we tended to congregate in the giant central kitchen, or the worn-in living room.

I don't know how Mum, Petty and Ava forged the relationship they did, especially under such circumstances, but for as long as I can remember it has been the three of them – best friends – and then the three of us – sisters – in and out of each other's houses, running around the acres of neglected farmland, growing up together in a happy, loving tangle.

Ripp didn't really feature in our lives. When asked about the whole three-babies-in-one-year thing, he would just shrug and say, ‘Hey man, it was the eighties,' with a rueful smile, as if that explained everything, as if the fall of the Berlin Wall and a proliferation of leg warmers made it simply impossible for him to stop shagging everyone in sight, spreading his seed about. (‘Ew, don't say seed,' Lil had said when I voiced this thought aloud.)

We were all born within four months of each other in 1990 and though Ripp could presumably have blamed it on the new decade, we were not blessed with any further half-siblings. It's hard not to take it personally when your dad gives a front-page interview about his vasectomy the week after you're born. (IT'S THE SNIP FOR RIPP!) That had really given my therapist something to get her teeth into.

Anyway, the general public consensus was that our home was a sort of cross between a cult, a commune, and a site for the practice of dark magic. The reality was of course much more mundane, but it became something of an obsession for my sisters and me, this idea that we were witches – like the three sister witches in Macbeth.

As the Weird Sisters we had dressed ourselves in Mum's Stevie Nicks-inspired wardrobe – tripping over long, spangled black dresses as we ‘cast spells' over an old Le Creuset saucepan, cursing our enemies, and gifting one another with radiant beauty, numerous love interests, and – on one memorable occasion – ‘much bigger boobs'.

Mum and Petty hadn't minded, but Ava said we should be asking for business acumen and stock tips because all that other stuff was for sale thanks to the Patriarchy. Patriarchy was another word we had to look up in the dictionary, and after that our spells got a lot… angrier.

Later, when we were teenagers, we had occasionally revived the tradition during periods of heartache.

‘We're not kids anymore,' I say now, but Serena is already rummaging through her ginormous handbag and she pulls out a small wooden box.

‘I thought we might need this tonight,' Serena says and my mouth drops open.

‘Oh my God!' Lil exclaims. ‘Is that…'

‘The breakup box?' I finish breathlessly.

Serena nods. ‘You know Petty's been renovating Granny Mac's house and she found it buried in the garden.'

Lil's eyes are wide. ‘That is some spooky timing. It's like… destiny.'

I take the box from Serena and there's a needle of pain in my chest as I pry off the lid. Inside there are several envelopes – one for every time one of us had broken up with our teenage crushes. On the top is a black envelope with a silver star drawn on it. I know exactly what's inside… the last spell the Weird Sisters ever cast. The breakup spell.

It was right before I turned eighteen and a time of my life I don't like to dwell on. I had just gone through a breakup that made this one feel like a walk in the park, and Serena and Lil had talked me into a night of drunken witchcraft. We were up in Northumberland at the time, at Petty's grandmother's house, and after we cast the spell we buried the box in the garden. I didn't think I'd ever see it again.

Serena plucks the black envelope from the box and tears it open without ceremony. ‘Three Wishes and a Curse,' she reads, then she looks up at me and Lil, grinning. ‘Time to reawaken these bad boys, don't you think?'

‘Yeeeeeeeeeessssss!' Lil shrieks, falling off the kitchen counter.

Serena starts opening the kitchen cupboards looking for a suitable pan. There's no aged Le Creuset – if we had any to start with, I'm certain it would now be safely ensconced in Len's new home – but she emerges with a dented frying pan which she seems to think will do the trick.

‘I'll get the herbs,' Lil exclaims, and she makes for the front door, swaying slightly on her feet.

‘Serena, this is ridiculous,' I say. ‘I can't believe you're encouraging this.'

‘Why not?' my sister shrugs. ‘It can't hurt. It's not like your luck can get much worse.'

I groan again.

‘Candles?' Serena asks.

‘Do I look like I've got candles?' I gesture at the barren wasteland of my home. It is hardly an advertisement for Jo Malone.

With a tsking sound she starts opening and shutting drawers, eventually letting out a victorious yelp as she pulls out some half-melted birthday cake candles.

Lil bursts back in, her hands full of greenery. ‘I wasn't sure if any of these were herbs,' she says, dumping a pile of weeds on the kitchen counter.

‘I think that one's sage,' Serena says, poking at one of the leaves.

‘That's a dandelion,' I reply.

‘Never mind.' Serena waves an airy hand. ‘Lil, put them all in the pan.'

Serena lights the candles and sticks them in the leftover pizza, which makes it look vaguely festive, while Lil dumps all the leaves in the frying pan.

‘This is stupid,' I try again.

‘Tell that to your bra size,' Serena snorts.

‘That's called puberty, not magic,' I say.

‘We've got a great track record,' Lil giggles tipsily. ‘Remember when Cam and Serena broke up and we cast that spell?'

‘That's right,' Serena says. ‘And then her mum found her secret stash of Marlboro Lights under the bed and grounded her for the whole summer, and she missed seeing Shania Twain in Hyde Park. Who had the last laugh then?'

I blink. Maybe it's this compelling argument, or the unflinching support of my sisters, maybe it's the wave of nostalgia, or maybe it's the bottle of champagne I've drunk (who can say?), but I'm actually warming to the whole magic spell idea.

‘Fuck it,' I say. ‘Let's do it.'

‘Yessssss!' Lil pumps her fist in the air and then staggers slightly, tripping over the hem of her nightie.

‘What did we use to do first?' I frown, trying to remember.

‘We need a salt circle,' Serena says, already liberally scattering Maldon flakes around the kitchen floor. She runs out halfway around, but, undeterred, grabs the pepper mill and starts cranking that instead. Soon all three of us are sneezing our heads off.

‘Maybe sugar would be better than pepper?' Lil says, eyes watering. ‘It feels like a sugar and salt circle would actually be really, like, symbolic of life – sweetness and… saltiness, you know?'

I'm in this now, and the champagne fizzing through my veins means that Lil's argument actually sounds incredibly sensible. I grab a bag of caster sugar and finish up the circle. ‘Now what?' I ask.

Lil takes the pan of herbs and puts it on the floor in the middle of the wonky circle.

‘We have to have music.' Serena grabs her phone and frowns down at it. ‘Needs charging,' she mutters, digging around in her enormous handbag and pulling out a charger, which she plugs in. After tapping at the screen for a moment, the familiar sound of ‘Sisters of the Moon' by Fleetwood Mac rings from the tinny speaker.

‘Yesssss!' Lil exclaims again, already swaying from side to side. ‘I remember!' She starts crooning along with the lyrics, and Serena and I join in. I close my eyes, imagining us back in our old kitchen, the music crackling over Mum's record player, the smell of lavender and mint pilfered from Ava's garden hanging in the air. Music was a simple thing for me then. Something that filled our house.

Serena shakes out the paper in her hand and begins to read from it: ‘We are the Sisters Weird, and we come here today to ask the Goddess to grant our wishes three!'

She passes the paper to Lil, who reads the next line: ‘We also ask that you curse our enemy. A man who has wronged our beloved sister.'

‘Leonard,' Serena snarls, inserting his name here instead of the name written on the paper. The one I definitely don't want to think about.

‘Yeah,' I nod, cranking the cork out of a bottle of red wine and slopping it into my mug. ‘Len, we curse you!'

Lil hands the paper back to Serena. ‘Leonard, we curse you! May you never satisfy another woman sexually, and may you get some sort of extremely itchy rash down there,' she cries.

‘It does not say that!' I hiss, horrified.

Serena holds out the paper to me and I see the words written there in her handwriting.

‘God, we were savage,' Lil says sunnily.

‘Poor Jenny,' I murmur. Serena hands the paper to me and I read the next line, which is in my handwriting. ‘May you learn the error of your ways and feel guilty forever for how you treated me.' I feel a dip in my stomach as I think about the girl I was when I wrote that. ‘Hmmm, a bit earnest, maybe.'

‘It's not earnest,' Lil jumps in. ‘It's true! Len should feel guilty forever just like…' She catches Serena's glower and cuts herself off, before she brings up the ex we never mention. ‘But the rash thing, too,' she says, flustered. ‘Definitely the rash thing.'

With a nod, Serena plucks one of the candles from the pizza and throws it into the pan of leaves. The three of us cheer, and Serena cackles again.

‘Now the wishes,' I say, looking at the sheet of paper.

‘Three wishes for Clemmie,' Lil says. ‘To heal her heartbreak.'

Serena immediately snatches another candle and throws it in the pan. ‘Hot sex!'

‘You didn't even need to look at the spell,' Lil says admiringly.

‘I remember it well.' Serena smirks. ‘Just what she needs. I don't know if it helped, Clem, but it certainly came true for me. A lot.'

‘I remember pointing out that you could have given it a bit more thought at the time,' I say.

‘That's your problem, Clemmie,' Serena exhales wearily. ‘Too much thinking, not enough doing, and by doing I mean…'

‘We all know what you mean.' I roll my eyes.

‘You haven't been with anyone but Leonard for years,' Serena shudders. ‘Frankly, I can't imagine anything worse.'

‘It would be good to really embrace your sexuality,' Lil says more diplomatically.

‘I embrace my sexuality,' I huff.

My sisters are suspiciously silent.

‘Just put yourself out there a bit,' Lil pipes up in the end.

‘Casual sex, Clemmie… it's great and you've never had any,' Serena says.

‘There was Tom at uni,' I say indignantly. ‘That was casual.'

‘You were together for six months. It was only casual in that you found out he was shagging half the drama society.' Serena's tone is withering.

That's not exactly true. It was casual for me because I was still not over the aforementioned very devastating breakup and therefore not really invested in Tom.

‘I'm just saying a one-night stand would do you the world of good,' my sister continues.

‘I could do something casual,' I insist. ‘But I'm not using any apps.' Last time I was single, Serena signed me up for all of them and made a profile describing me as ‘A curvy redhead with a mind for business and a bod for sin', incorrectly assuming that this would attract men who could quote Working Girl (good), rather than a bunch of massive pervs who thought I'd be instantly enamoured by pictures of their penises (bad). ‘Thank God I'm a lesbian,' Serena had said by way of apology.

Now she rolls her eyes. ‘How are you going to find someone to have sex with otherwise? You're basically a hermit. You hang out in libraries and the only men you interact with have been dead for eight hundred years.'

‘No. Apps,' I say.

‘It's fine,' Lil interrupts soothingly. ‘The spell will bring Clemmie someone to have hot sex with. She doesn't need an app. Now, Clemmie, do your wish.'

I look down at the paper. ‘I wish for a job doing what I love,' I read. ‘Wow. Thanks for that, past me. Looks like I'm no further on now than I was at seventeen.'

‘That is unfortunate timing,' Serena grimaces.

‘But the wish will help get you back on track,' Lil says firmly. ‘That's the whole point.'

I feel a kick of pain as I remember I've only got a couple of months left in the job I love. I grab a candle and throw it in the pan.

With that, Lil turns and picks up the final candle in the pizza. She reads the words written in her own looping hand with a soft smile: ‘I wish for big love – the unconditional, whole-hearted, soulmate kind. Just what Clemmie deserves.'

‘Booooooo!' Serena jeers. ‘I forgot how rubbish your wishes were.'

Ignoring her, Lil throws her candle in the pan. ‘The three of us say the last line together.' She shows us the words.

‘Into the darkness we offer light, from the ashes may we rise,' the three of us intone. Wow, we were really bringing the drama back in the day.

Then Lil looks at us both, and when we nod she drops the spell into the frying pan as well. The paper catches and smoulders around the edges. There's a sudden hiss, then a cloud of smoke as some of the dry leaves catch alight.

‘Wait, Lil… are there sticks in there?' I ask.

‘Maybe?' Lil says it like a question.

The tiny flames flicker to life, gobbling up the sheet of paper and licking higher, taking over the pan as all three of us watch in stupefied silence. A plume of thick smoke rises. Then the smoke alarm begins to wail above our heads. Seconds later, all the lights go off.

‘WHAT IS HAPPENING?' Serena yells, her hands clamped over her ears.

‘You've plugged your phone in the dodgy socket!' I shout back, tripping over things in the dark. ‘The fuse has blown. There's a torch in the cupboard under the sink.'

Lil is on her feet waving a tea towel ineffectually at the smoke detector. Serena grabs the wine bottle and upends it on the fire, which puts out the flames but does little to decrease the smoke.

‘My wine!' I yelp forlornly.

‘WHERE THE FUCK IS THE FUCKING TORCH?' Serena growls from the shadows. There's more clattering, several loud bangs, and Lil manages to wrestle the back door open. Serena finally locates the torch and sends a bright arc of light around the room.

The smoke alarm abruptly stops its wailing but is replaced by a shrill ringing.

The three of us stand blinking in confusion over the steaming wreckage of the frying pan.

‘It's my phone,' Serena says finally, grabbing her mobile and glancing down at the screen.

‘Hi, Mum,' she says, picking up. ‘It's not actually a great time…' She pauses here and whatever Ava says has her eyes widening. ‘Wait, slow down,' Serena breaks in. ‘Who died?'

‘Oh my God, Clemmie,' Lil whispers, the tea towel still clutched in her hands. ‘We are some seriously powerful witches.'