Page 8 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
He doesn’t get home at ten. Midnight comes and goes, and the hours creep ever closer to daybreak. She tosses in their bed, back and forth, back and forth. He’s left her, she’s sure of it. He’s with Carrie. He went to her the minute he left the house. She pictures them, imagining their rekindling. How he will stare at her in reverence, closing the distance until she’s in his arms. Then the past decade will melt away, and they’ll both admit they made a mistake, that it was always Tom and Carrie, asking themselves:How did we let it slip away? And Jess, with her meddling and her own wants and wishes, will be swept aside for this woman who has remained perfect in his memories.
Jess kneads her eyes with her fists, trying to banish her imaginings. He could be crashed out at his dad’s, and not for the first time. Drank too much and stayed there with his sour breath and fogged-up head, instead of bringing that back home with him.
But she still can’t help thinking Tom has gone to her. To Carrie. And that Carrie’s return this winter is a repeat of what happened last time. Does he still think about her? Does he cling to her memory the way she does, never able to stop thinking about her? Jess has never asked. Never had the nerve to bring her up, to invite the ghost of Carrie into their home from the cold edges to sit wedged between them.
Jess finally gets a handful of hours’ reprieve when her mind falls into a troubled slumber. She wakes at six, before Elodie is up, and shambles down to the kitchen in her old dressing gown and slippers. She finds Tom in the lounge, sitting on the edge of the sofa. His eyes when he turns to her are bloodshot and haunted. Fear clutches her insides, stilling the breath in her throat.
“Carrie’s back.”
Chapter 7
Carrie
When she awoke, the sky had changed. It was no longer blue. Everywhere she looked, blue was replaced with gray: her school dress, the wallpaper in her bedroom, the sky itself above her. Lillian Morgan had stolen the book and made a bargain with the mountains, and for that... she paid the price. Her bargain cost her the color blue, but it gave her the love of her life.
—Cora Morgan, February 15, 1984
“Bastarding thing,” I screech, dropping the wallpaper stripper on the floor. I place my hands on my hips, take a deep breath, and close my eyes. My wrists, my entire hands, are cramped up and aching, however often I swap the tool from left to right. And this is the first wall. The first bedroom. I have two more to go after this one, and this wallpaper is sticking to the plaster, stubborn as shit.
I eye the curls of wallpaper littering the floorboards, the ones I’ve managed to scrape away from the decades-old glue. Tiny flowers peep up at me, forget-me-nots, roses, and sprays of baby breath woven over a cream background. As I grit my teeth, my gaze travels to the ominous patch overhead. Damp. The mildew is spreading like an ink blot, steadily taking over an entire corner near the window.
“That’s a tomorrow problem,” I mutter, checking the time. It’s already eleven, and I’ve only had one coffee today. This feels likeat least a two-coffee, one-tea morning. I push back my hair and knead my left palm as I clunk down the stairs. All the while, the to-do list revolving around in my head is growing longer. Wallpaper stripping. Sorting out the damp. New soffits and fascias. Replastering? I fill the little travel kettle with a groan, then watch it until it rattles to a boil and I can make a cup of bitter instant coffee.
I fidget in my pocket, pull out my phone, and perch against the old farmhouse table. Every inch of me wants to open Instagram, to gorge on photos of other people’s lives, all the places they’re traveling to, the food they’re eating. To bask in the romanticized version of the day-to-day and let my own fall away. But I don’t. Instead, I pull up the notes app and do what I’ve always done when I feel the world overwhelming me like a wave. Like when my exams were coming up and all I had was a pile of half-read textbooks, not enough class notes, and too many doodles in my sketchbook. Or like when I first left Woodsmoke, money in my bank account, passport in hand, and bought an interrail pass on a whim to travel through the major cities of Europe. I make a list.
Walk around the cottage and make a list of things that need work.
Read the surveyor report. Properly.
Go food shopping.
Avoid the wine aisle.
Buy chocolate instead.
Call parents.
I open a fresh note on the app and stand up. There’s something about making a list that always grounds me. It reminds me of my purpose and gives me something concrete to focus on. I learned this trick—probably from the advice column in some magazine—aftermy brain felt scrambled and overwhelmed getting ready for school exams. Now, whenever I’m planning a backpacking trip, or relocating to a new country, or getting ready for a gallery showing, I make a list.
I pour the coffee into a travel mug so it will stay warm, swirling in a heaped teaspoon of sugar to hide the burned and bitter taste. As I walk around the cottage, the anxiety built up inside me unspools, turning into certainty. A plan. The list on my phone gets longer, but I categorize each point by room, order them, then color-code them. Pink, blue, green, yellow. Each area of the house sorted, stored, and assessed in priority order. When I finish with the list, I take a few pictures, then upload them to Instagram with cheery captions. I drop my phone back into a pocket and take a sip of the coffee. There. Ihavemade it.
This isn’t all a huge mistake.
I’m staring out the window, up at the mountains, when I hear the faint jingle of a FaceTime call. I muddle through the pockets of my denim dungarees for my phone, only finding it after I’ve missed the call. It was Mum. Again. I haven’t spoken to either of my parents since I left, haven’t wanted to admit that this isn’t going as well as I hoped it would. But I’ve been here a week. It’s time to put on a brave face and cross number 6 off the list.
There’s not enough signal in the cottage or the field for a proper video call, so I track farther from the cottage, toward Woodsmoke and the main telephone mast on the edge of town. When I’ve got it in sight, I down the last of the coffee (lukewarm and acrid—should have added an extra sugar) and press my lips together before clicking on her number. Mum answers almost immediately.
“Hello! Carrie? Blasted thing, it’s just a blank screen—”
“Mum, I’m here!” I suppress a sigh. Every. Single. Time. “You just need to turn the camera on! That’s it, yes, turn it on!”
They pop up on the screen, two furrowed brows with reading glasses perched on their noses, Mum’s with a purple beaded cord draped around her neck. Their faces are pressed up to the camera, squinting at it like it’s the world’s most complex invention.
“Aha! We got it, Lillian!” Dad lifts his coffee mug, and we pretend to clink on-screen. I hide my smile behind my travel mug. Give Dad a car to fix or a map to read and he’s brilliant. But hand him a laptop or a phone and he acts like he’s defusing a bomb.
“How’s the house going, love?” Mum asks, sipping her usual milky Earl Grey tea. “Not roughing up your hands too much, I hope. Hold them up to the screen, let me check...”
I roll my eyes, holding them up so she can inspect them. They’re chapped and dry, a couple of plasters on my fingers. My nails are cut as short as I can bear, and honestly, it’s the first time I’ve ever looked at them with pride. They aren’t covered in nail varnish, perfectly smooth and well moisturized, or flecked with paint or chalk from hours with a new canvas. They’re worker’s hands.
