A Witch In Winter Read Online Free PDF

recycling. ‘She wasn’t a witch, was she? Probably just some poor old biddy with a squint and nasty neighbours.’
    ‘It was all drugs, according to this book I read.’ Liz began to sweep crumbs off the table. ‘They rubbed something on to their broomsticks – belladonna or something – and it gave them illusions they could fly.’
    ‘Just goes to show there’s nothing new under the sun,’ said June. ‘All Mr Harkaway’s doom-monger predictions about the youth of the town wasting their education to drugs, and it turns out they were all at it back in the seventeenth century anyway.’
    ‘Yes, you haven’t had the treat of one of Mr Harkaway’s assemblies on the Evil of Drink, have you?’ said Prue.
    ‘Oooh! Talking of which,’ I suddenly remembered, ‘Dad said we could drink one of the bottles in the fridge. Do you want to?’
    In the end we drank all three, two of cava and one of rosé wine. We ate nearly the whole tray of brownies plus a tub of icejusa tub o-cream, then swapped rude jokes and commiserated about each other’s love lives. Liz and June were going to the Young Farmers’ May Ball in a few weeks, and they were both very pessimistic about finding a partner.
    ‘I went with Mark Pargiter last year,’ Liz said, ‘and it was awful . He just ignored me all night and spent the whole time talking to my brother and eating canapés. Then at the end he said “Are you going to let me do tongues or what?” Honestly. What. A. Tit.’
    ‘Why don’t you just not go?’ I asked.
    Prue rolled her eyes. ‘You may well ask.’
    ‘Look, it’s just not that simple,’ June moaned. ‘Mum and Dad are on the committee so I can’t just sod off for the night. And there’s always the faint, faint hope that Philip Granger might get over himself and ask me.’
    ‘Why don’t you just ask him, woman?’ Prue said, her words slurring slightly. ‘The boy’s got such a stiff upper lip it’s become a medical condition. He’ll never unbend enough to ask you – you’ll have to ask him. It’s no reflection on you, he’s just constit …’ She hicupped. ‘Constit-tit … Consert …’
    ‘Liz is no better with James,’ June shoved in crossly. Liz went scarlet and shook her head violently.
    ‘Completely different, June, and you know it.’
    ‘I know he’s going out with someone else, but personally I think you just pick these unattainable types to moon over so you don’t actually have to do any asking.’
    ‘I think I might be sick,’ Prue said abruptly, at which point the lights went out.
    ‘Oh arse, it must be a power cut.’ June’s voice was suddenly very sober in the darkness.
    ‘Hang on, I think there’s a torch on the window sill.’ I groped my way over to the kitchen window and felt along it. It was all unfamiliar in the dark – strange lumps and bumps, dust under my fingernails. No torch. Just the intense darkness of the countryside pressing in on me, so thick it was almost palpable. Air so dark was hard to breathe somehow.
    Then my fingers touched a bit of scrap paper, rough and thick, like a torn bit of wallpaper. I felt my way along the counter to the cooker and lit the edge of the paper on the gas ring. It flared into life, illuminating the room just long enough for me to see the torch, right where I had thought it was. I grabbed for it, just as the paper singed my fingers, and I dropped it. As soon as I had the torch safely lit I bent down and picked it up.
    ‘I hope this wasn’t anything important.’ I peered at it in the torchlight.
    Prue looked over my shoulder.
    ‘Is it a letter or somethtster or hing?’
    ‘I have no idea. Oh no!’ I suddenly realized what it was. ‘It’s a piece of Dad’s cookbook.’
    ‘A cookbook?’ Liz looked at it, the torchlight glinting off her glasses. ‘It doesn’t look like a cookbook. What does it say?’
    ‘The rest of it’s here.’ I showed the bundle of charred scraps. ‘Dad found it while he was redecorating. He thought it might