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Something else swirled around her heart, cinching it in like Stevie had cinched her waist last night. It was like watching a beautiful, priceless vase on the edge of a high shelf teetering back and forth, back and forth: the terrible dread that a smash was coming, you just didn’t know exactly when. Someone was in trouble, someone close by. Someone important.

Susie.

Temperance quickly stashed the remaining ten bags of sweets under the bench – sod the kids, they wanted easy wins anyway, didn’t they? And she whipped her head round to face The Witch’s Nose again, and seek out her baby sister.

But there.

Standing in the fairy stone circle.

A very rumpled, slightly irritated – twelve years older but unmistakeably – Abel Gulliver.

The belt around Temperance’s heart loosened by one notch.

Chapter 6

Of all the things Temperance had ever imagined saying to Abel if she ever saw him again, ‘You’re in the fairy ring,’ was not at the top of the list. She’d rehearsed angry things, cutting things, flirty things and faux-nonchalance, but never sounding like a deranged children’s TV presenter.

‘Oh, what?’ He took a huge step to the left, as if she’d pointed out he was about to tread on a rattlesnake. ‘That’s . . . that’s new.’ He nudged a toadstool with the toe of his boot. The hollow paper shape wilted to one side.

‘Well, don’t knock it over,’ she tutted and bent down to straighten it, congratulating herself on morphing seamlessly into a nagging children’s TV presenter. She stood up again and became very aware of her hands just hanging there, obvious and awkward. She shouldn’t hug him. Should she? Did you hug your ex-best friend and one-that-got-away after they deserted you? Was that a thing?

‘Sorry. Sorry.’ He shoved his hands into the pockets of his grey jeans.

Temperance didn’t want to care about how he looked, but she’d already memorised his entire outfit: authentically worn-in jeans, workmen’s boots, a cobalt blue checked flannel shirt over a grey T-shirt. He looked really good. She was suddenly really aware of how stretched out the neckline on her favourite Blondie T-shirt was, but she’d only been able to think of very strong builder’s tea and toast this morning, not looking casually yet effortlessly hot.

And Temperance wasn’t just taking in the detail of what he wore, she was greedily noting how his eyebrows had filled out, now he was a proper grown-up; the pattern of his stubble, a little patchy at the hollow of his cheeks; the way his mouth now held itself entirely flat, whereas all her memories of him were smiling, talking, always in motion.

She realised she’d been holding her breath. She still didn’t know what to do with her hands.

Even though she was full-on staring at Abel, he wouldn’t make even the most fleeting eye-contact. His eyes darted over the green, to her fluffed-up bedhead, over to the pub then down at her baggy grey joggers. It was as if the state of her was too much to bear, but too gross not to goggle at, all at the same time. Eventually he ran his hands over his mouth and chin, and spoke.

‘Hi, Temperance.’

‘Hi.’ Somehow she dragged the one syllable into three nervous gasps of sound. And still her hands dangled there in confusion.

‘I um—’

‘What are you-—?’

She laughed as they spoke over each other, expecting that the old Abel she’d known would laugh too.

Abel let out a sigh. ‘Strange to be back here.’ He looked over her shoulder at the pub again. As if Temperance was hardly even there.

‘Twelve years.’

He nodded. ‘I know.’

Temperance tried to steady her breathing, somehow giving herself a bubble of heartburn, which she swallowed painfully. ‘So what are you doing here?’

His brow furrowed. ‘This . . . is going to sound weird. Pretty weird.’ He shuffled his feet on the spot. ‘I had a dream last night. This massive storm wrecking the village, and I sort of knew there was trouble coming. I woke up thinking—worrying maybe something had happened to Gran? She didn’t answer her phone this morning, so I jumped in my car and came straight here. I just parked up two minutes ago.’ He pointed his thumb to the right and a dented white van on the thin strip of gravel by the green. ‘I know it sounds insane.’

You have no idea.

Temperance pushed down the stickiness in her throat. ‘Margie is fine – I’ve been with her this morning. She probably didn’t hear the phone, what with all the festival stuff going on at the pub.’

Abel closed his eyes for a beat. ‘Thank Christ. Wait, what festival?’

‘The Fairy Festival. It’s become quite a big deal over the last few years. I’m surprised Margie hasn’t chewed your ear off about it.’