Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered Read Online Free PDF Page B

work,’ she frowned. ‘A few days up here will see you right.’
    I wasn’t sure, but I couldn’t help smiling. I adored Eva. While Mum and Suky are undoubtedly kind-hearted and generous, they both have a spiky side. Eva –emotionally and physically – was all soft edges.
    My Granny had started the café years ago, selling traditional teas and cakes to tourists. There wasn’t a whiff of magic about the place, not then. Although she did – obviously – help people with their problems on a personal basis.
    When Suky had Harry she came home for a while, and as Harry grew, Suky’s contribution to the café grew too. She began dabbling in tinctures and tonics, selling them to locals for all sorts of ailments. And she persuaded my mum – who’d done a business course in Glasgow and who was running from an unhappy love affair – to come home too. So they all rubbed along – Mum, Suky and Gran, and Harry and me. Then, when I was twelve, and high-flying Harry had just started an MBA in the States, Gran died and the magic at home leaked away, just a bit but enough for Mum and Suky to know they were in trouble. Harry was committed to her studies, and I was too young – they needed to find another witch.
    As the last guests departed after Gran’s funeral, Mum, Suky, Harry and I sat at the kitchen table feeling a little lost. At least I was. I remember Harry barely lifted her head out of the economics book she was reading. Then there was a knock on the back door and when I opened it, there was Eva.
    ‘Hello,’ she said in her matter-of-fact way. ‘I think I’m supposed to stay here.’
    It sounds crazy, just opening your home up to a stranger. But in the world of witches, it’s actually not as weird as it could be. Suky and Mum had sent out a kind of call for help – a celestial SOS – and Eva had answered. So when she arrived on the doorstep, they knew exactly why she was there. Basically, Mum and Suky grinned at each other, and that was that. Eva moved into the outbuilding at the bottom of our garden with her husband Allan. They patched it up at first, then slowly made it their home, and even added a studio for Allan, a landscape artist, and a kiln for Eva’s ceramics.
    Eva says she’s not sure what made her come to Claddach. She and Allan were in a bad way back then. Their teenage son Simon had been killed in a car accident a couple of years before.
    ‘Existing we were,’ Eva once told me. ‘Not living.’
    Allan had stopped painting, Eva’s magic had all but burned out.
    ‘I couldn’t see the point,’ she said. ‘My magic couldn’t save Simon and I didn’t want anything else.’
    And then one morning, the morning of Granny’s funeral though of course she didn’t know that at the time, Eva woke up with a new sense of purpose.
    ‘We are needed in Scotland,’ she told Allan, sweet, unquestioning Allan. And they packed their bags and left – driving all day to reach us.
    Shortly after they arrived, Allan sold a painting to a card company – then another and another. Suddenly he was in demand and, for the first time, comfortably off. Eva’sceramics sold well to tourists all over the Highlands and as soon as she met up with Mum and Suky her magic came back in abundance. And so they stayed, and they were happy. And their home became a refuge for teenagers – some placed there officially by social services and some who just found their way there looking for Eva’s non-judgemental affection and Allan’s calm, steady care.
    When I’d left home, angry and upset with Mum and betrayed by Harry, I’d cursed the universe that had led Eva to our garden. If she’d lived further away, she could have been my refuge, I’d thought at the time. But now, I was simply pleased to see her.
    Eva smiled at me.
    ‘Is it like you remembered?’ she asked.
    I nodded, looking through the café’s long windows and out over the loch.
    ‘It’s like I’ve never been away,’ I said, bewildered by how little had