‘Did anyone ever fall into the water and disappear?’ I asked.
‘No.’
I looked down at pale shapes in the water. The feral cat freckled in lime. The cloth doll I once cuddled, its button eyes now stone.
‘Everything was here? The bird, the shoes near the house…’
‘You know any other way to make people think you can turn them to stone?’ she said.
I didn’t. For years I’d looked away whenever I passed the small stone clothes and toys outside the house, afraid to ask where they came from. I didn’t want to know.
‘Come,’ she said. She walked around the cliff face to a crack in the rock. It was dim, water seeped and dripped into the cave onto several large rocks, all chalk white. The witch walked among them, stroking each. One was a girl asleep. One hand bigger than the other, her palms were together, pressing a prayer to her cheek. Beside her, a younger girl sat hugging her knees, one hand with six fingers clutching creases in her skirt ironed into place by lime. Everywhere, there were imperfect children — all stone.
‘You’re not the first girl I took in,’ the witch said. ‘Their mothers were fallen, simple, superstitious. They asked me to cure their cursed children. And when I couldn’t…’
‘You took them in to make them witches?’ I said.
She rubbed her head like it ached.
‘There’s two ways to be a witch, lass. You can not know it until they come with torches, or you can be ready. If folk fear you enough, they won’t touch you. Come plague or taxes, when people look for someone to blame, you’ll be safe.’
She ran a hand over stone tangles on the sleeping girl’s head. ‘It’s not much of a life, being a witch, but it’s a life,’ she said. ‘I did all I could.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘I didn’t do enough. Some died in the woods trying to escape, others got older and lonely for love. They wasted away. They were witches who just wanted to be girls.’
I thought of how she never held me as a child, all the times she snatched her hand away. I was like that feral cat she left food out for but never spoke a good word about. She knew he could go at any time.
‘Why didn’t you ever tell me?’ I said, looking around at the stone girls: so many clubbed feet, crooked spines and small hands like mine.
‘How could I?’ she said. ‘How?’
Everywhere You Don’t Want to Be
I saw the other me on a rainy morning — at least, I did the first time. The city dripped and surged. Everything smelt of wet dog. She was huddled in the doorway of a pawnbroker’s with a bin bag and a blanket. Her voice creaked when anyone passed by.
‘Spare change?’ she asked a guy in a suit. ‘Spare change?’ she asked the jogger with the bouncy ponytail.
I was walking to work balancing coffee. I averted my eyes from her, loath to see.
‘Nice shoes,’ she said.
I looked down at my shoes, and glanced across. She was familiar, sort of. I supposed I’d passed her before. She wore a baseball cap and a coat like a half-inflated life raft. She was filthy and had a scar on her cheek; there was nothing remarkable about her. Some people all sort of look alike. In the morning I saw her again. Spare change. Spare change. Spare… People rushed. Men with newspapers tossed coins.
‘Nice bag… real nice,’ she said to me.
Something in her voice bugged me. Mocking, judgemental even. My fingers rubbed the phone in my pocket. Silent. Still. I stormed on, then doubled back.
‘Why don’t you ever ask me for change?’ I demanded.
I glared into blue eyes, sort of like my mother’s, but hard as frozen water.
‘You? You never gave me shit.’
She laughed, then coughed. Laugh, cough, laugh, cough. Who was she to judge? It was one of those moments when everything that’s wrong in the world took the form of one person, one old woman in a doorway with the wrong tone.
‘You don’t know I wouldn’t give you money,’ I said.
‘Of course I know. You only give to guys with dogs. Sometimes buskers, if they’re cute.’
She was right. I rifled for change, finding only cash cards and gum. I tossed the gum at her like some sort of horrible-woman repellent and ran.
‘See you soon, Zoe,’ she called after me.
Not if I saw her first.
It hadn’t been long since my birthday, not that it matters. It was all good, as they say. Christian sent yellow roses. It was a sign. I’d been seeing him for months, off and on, but the flowers had to mean something, if nothing more than ‘I’m sending you flowers’. It’s a start.
‘Happy birthday,’ he said.
‘Thanks for the roses.’
‘Now, if you want your real present…’ He took my hand and tilted his head towards the restaurant door. I knew what he meant.
The rain mizzled out. Drops clung to ledges of buildings. Wobbled. Dropped. I stepped out for lunch. How did that old woman know my name? I was sure I’d misheard. I’d decided to switch my panini supplier from the café with the steel tables outside to the sandwich shop with the hippo on the sign, just in case. I turned right instead of left. I was waiting to hear from Christian (Status: In a relationship, without a name.) Instead, I got a message from Louise.
Once, Louise and I had shared a flat at the bottom of a hill. Nappies flowed down the drains from the big houses. Ours were blocked. We peered into the manhole outside like sisters at a rock pool, narrowed voices tunnelling underground, swimming away from us like silvery fish. I held a net on a stick of bamboo. Louise looked down beside me.
‘What do you think’s down there?’ she asked.
‘Could be anything: alligators, drugs, CHUDs,’ I said.
‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we fished out a tiny mermaid?’
‘Like a goldfish? Yeah, I bet people flush mermaids all the time.’
The net scooped up wet wipes, but for a moment we were catchers of mermaids, the only two people in the world fishing a drain who wouldn’t have been too surprised to find a shitty little mermaid on our hands.
I stared at the text from Louise. I only heard from her now when she wanted something. She was moving house and wanted someone to carry her shit. The phone felt heavy in my pocket. So many people carried around all day. Where was Christian? I hadn’t heard from him since… I stepped under the scaffolding in front of the pizza shop. And there she was again, the homeless woman, everywhere you don’t want to be, and on me in a heartbeat.
‘He’s not going to call,’ she said. ‘Tosser.’
She sat with her back to the cushion of a bin bag, an empty burger carton on the floor freckled with copper and silver at her feet. I glanced at my phone, just Josh dressed like Thor. Gotta love a guy with a hammer? (Status: Nice guy, train wreck of a wardrobe, unfortunate goatee, good in bed.) Pending reply: smiley face — the yeah, whatever of our age. Josh wasn’t who I was waiting for. I put the phone away, staring at the woman, eyes the colour of mine, that nose. I recognised it, I recognised her. The bag lady. It was horrible. She looked just like me. She was me, in how many years’ time? I gripped my phone, waiting for a ring to wave in her face. Not a peep.
‘All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey…’ she started to sing as I walked away. ‘I went for a waaa…’
Cough. Sing. Cough. She was singing my ringtone, a throat full of rusty autumn leaves.
So, this is what thirty-three feels like. Birthday cards jostled over the fireplace. Seven. If I was a maths person I’d work it out. One card = one friend retained per X amount of years of my life, but I’m not a numbers person really. My wall online was full of greetings from strangers. Roses were starting to unclench in the vase. I took off the same shirt I had worn at thirty-two, got in the bath and placed the phone on the wire rack near the shampoo. Christian was away at a wedding. The invite included a plus one.