A Witch in Love by Ruth Warburton

Author:Ruth Warburton [Warburton, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781444904703
Google: 1dC9T-QjtGgC
Amazon: B0089YGZ5I
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2012-07-04T23:00:00+00:00

When I got off the tube at Pimlico it was quite, quite dark. I clip-clopped my way down Vauxhall Bridge Road in the new pair of shoes I’d bought from Topshop in an effort to make my jeans look like something more than Saturday slob-wear. I couldn’t afford a whole new outfit, but the heels at least made me feel like I was smart from the ankles down. I’d have to change back into my walking boots on the train home though, or risk breaking a leg on the walk back.

At Vauxhall Bridge I stopped, fished in my pocket and found Elizabeth’s card. It was cold on the bridge, the winter wind howling along the Thames and straight through my thin anorak. My hair whipped around my face, obscuring my vision as I tried to read the spidery black writing on the little card.

‘Go to the centre of the bridge,’ I read. ‘Stand above the second pier, downstream, statue of Fine Arts. When bridge …’

The last few words were in even smaller writing, cramped into the corner where she had run out of room. I couldn’t read it in the dim light, but there was a streetlamp halfway along the bridge so I began to make my way along until I stood by the second pier, under the lamp. I leant over the edge, trying to ignore the black water greasily swirling around the foot of the pier, and saw that I was standing above a black iron statue – of what, I couldn’t quite tell, but I was quite prepared to believe that it represented Fine Arts. I angled the card to the light again and the lamp flashed off the little embossed bird. Again it reminded me of something hovering just at the edge of my memory – but whatever it was eluded me and I peered instead at the narrow slanting letters cramped into the corner of the card. When bridge … empties? Yes, that looked right. The next word was even smaller, just three or four letters. When bridge empties, jump.

No, that couldn’t be right. I angled the card again and then had an idea and got my mobile out of my pocket. I turned on the screen and shone it at the card. The word leapt out, clear and bold and unmistakable. Jump.

What was this – some kind of joke? A test? What would I find down there? I looked down at the black waters, sucking and eddying at the grimy concrete, and shuddered. I was pretty sure what I’d find down there; used needles, condoms, shopping trolleys, various dysenteric bacterium. Yum.

I could turn back – I could go back to Winter and leave my grandmother waiting, and my questions unanswered, and my yearning for a family and a link with my mother unassuaged. Yes, I could turn back.

But that would make me a coward.

The parapet was curiously low, with no real safety barrier. There was even, improbably, a little ledge to help you climb up.

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