08/08/1980
Loveday had slept in the basement that night, curled up on her ripped up sofa. She hadn’t wanted to see the wizard no doubt sitting in front of living room fire. In fact, the following morning she rose with the sun, and rolled onto the floor. Her stomach was still sore from the day before, but the scars had already turned a stark white.
She got ready in the outhouse, grumbling under the spray of ice-cold water. The boiler only served the bathroom in the house. Still, the cold water brought some energy back into her stuff body, and she felt all the better for it. She twisted her hair into two tight braids, scowling at herself in the dusty mirror the entire time. Her face wasn’t as bad as her body – she’d somehow managed to keep the scars down to what she considered the bare minimum for someone of her sort. A harsh white line cut across the bridge of her nose, another through her right eyebrow. A claw mark made up of a series of parallel white lines curved around the edge of her jaw. She supposed if she had to pick a favourite, it would be the straight line that ran through the exact centre of her bottom lip, ending halfway down her chin.
She supposed that to someone like Regulus Black, who thought that anyone without a wand was likely a savage, she must have looked exactly as expected.
She had nothing to sell for the rest of the week, so instead she picked up an empty string bag and put her hiking boots inside. She’d put them on closer to town – she liked the feeling of the grass and pebbles under her feet well enough. An easy solution to the problem of the scars on her wrists was to adorn herself with various woven and beaded bracelets she’d acquired over two decades of living on a Cornish island.
Heading to the village and back would take till lunch at the very least, so she jumped the fence to Moody’s section of the garden and patted her on the head.
“Be good, yeah,” she whispered to the goat. “If the wizard bothers you, you give him a good kick in the bollocks, ok?”
Moody bleated and Loveday took that as a yes.
She supposed she should have checked whether her guest had managed to find anything for breakfast. Maybe he’d finally be brave enough to open the fridge and help himself to the fruit salad she’d made. He looked skinny enough to begin with; if he didn’t start eating properly, he’d end up vanishing in thin air. Loveday snorted, giggling at her own joke. He could probably vanish in thin air with a flick of his wand.
She was still rather surprised that he hadn’t started stinking up the house yet – he’d been wearing the same clothes for days. And yet, he still smelled fine – strange, but fine.
Shaking her head, she wrestled her curls back with a floral claw clip she kept on the side of her bag. It was humid, and her hair was already starting to puff up. She should have wrapped it back with a scarf before leaving, but all her things were upstairs in her room – and stupid Regulus Black had been in between her and the stairs. Damn Caradoc. And Moody, for that matter.
Her first stop in town was the second handbook shop – which housed an eclectic mix of old books, antiques and for some unknown reason, surfboards.
“Morning, Darla,” she called out in an overly pleased tone, grinning sarcastically at the 16-year-old teenager at the counter.
Darla looked up, jaw working overtime on the two pieces of pink bubble-gum she seemed to permanently keep in her mouth, She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow and sneered.
“Dearborn,” she grunted, eying her up and down. “Be quick. You’ll scare away the other customers.”
Loveday rolled her eyes and headed to the messy bookshelves along the far wall. An atlas of the world, dated back to 1939; poems by Emily Dickinson; a worse for wear history book on the second world war. She held the pile of books in one arm, the weight of the atlas barely noticeable in her strong grip She flinches slightly, her ears picking up the obnoxious sound of Darla chewing her gum. Wrinkling her noise in disgust, she began to walk over to the counted, only to stop as one final book caught her eye.
Cooking, for idiots. Perfect.
Grinning to herself, Loveday through the book onto the pile and slammed it down in front of Darla. She glanced around the counter and her smile widened.
“What’s this?” she asked, picking up the little voodoo keychain in a box next to the till. “Did you know I was coming, Darla?”
Darla glared back at her, eyebrow twitching. “You’re a right freak, Dearborn.”
“I know,” she shrugged. “I’ll take it please. And a bag.”
Darla practically ripped the five pound note out of her hand, shoving it into her pocket rather than putting it into the till. Loveday grabbed her bag and headed over to the door, happy to leave the sickeningly sweet-smelling shop.
“Don’t miss me too much, Darla!” she called out, catching the whispered “witch-bitch” that followed her out the door.
Her shoulders dropped as soon as the shop door slammed shut behind her. If only.
Her next stop would be over at Bill’s. She moved quickly through the streets, ignoring any odd stares, or whispered comments. She wondered what the people of World’s End would say if they knew that she’d heard every single snide insult said behind her back.
She could practically smell the incense down the street from the music shop, and she had to stop for a second to compose herself enough to only breath through her mouth.
“Two visits in one week?” Bill asked, eyes shining brilliantly behind his glasses as he watched her walk in. “My my, Loveday. You’re turning into a right little socialite.”
Loveday frowned but hopped up to sit on the counter all the same, turning to show Bill her book haul. The man shifted through her selection – as usual, he seemed confused, but too polite to say anything about the odd choice of literature she’d chosen that day.
“Do you like my voodoo doll?” she asked, showing him the raggedy little thing. The teasing grin on her face as she waved it in the air was enough for him to bark out a laugh.
“You’re not exactly helping yourself there,” Bill chortled.
Loveday shrugged and tucked it back into her pocket. She liked coming to see Bill, especially now that the three friends she had that were actually her age barely ever came home. He treated her like any other person – and there was something so oddly familiar about him. Something she’d never been able to place.
“Let me have my fun,” she smirked. “All I can do on this island is swim and scare the locals.”
Bill smiled and handed her back her stack of books. She wondered how he wasn’t boiling hot in his shirt, buttoned up to his neck and cuffed at the wrists.
“Just be careful with the tourists,” he told her seriously. “You never know who they are – what they’ll do.”
Loveday nodded, thinking back to the brothers from the other day. It seemed that Bill hadn’t forgotten in the slightest. At least she knew someone in World’s End was looking out for her – him and Pol.
“I will,” she nodded. “I just have to go to the grocer’s and then I’ll be right back off to my hermit’s cave.”
“Where you belong,” Bill said seriously, before bursting out into another unstoppable round of laughter. Loveday smiled at him and hopped of the counter, heavy back of books in one hand and her empty string back in the other.
She’d regained the spring in her step by the time she made it to her final stop in town. She hated going into the town store, but she needed meat and flour and sugar – things that didn’t grow in her little garden.
The shop bell rang as she walked in, shopkeeper barely glancing at her as she mumbled a ‘hello’. She tossed a couple bags of flour and sugar into her basket, briefly stopping to drop in a couple bars of dark chocolate, before heading straight for the refrigerated section.
After spending a good three and a half minutes choosing between chocolate and blueberry yogurts (and taking both), grabbing a large stack of ready-made pizzas and four cartons of pineapple juice, she finally reached her favourite section.
Loveday licked her lips, eyes widening as she started down at the selection of steaks and joints of beef. She knew she wasn’t exactly the most subtle person in the world, but as far as she was concerned, the people of World’s End already thought she was a freak.
“Hi there, I’m William.”
Loveday blinked once, and then twice, before turning around to stare at the boy stood behind her. She recognized him instantly, just from his voice – the older brother from outside Bill’s music shop. With a scoff, she turned back around and started chucking a variety of steak cuts into her basket.
“Are you sure you need that much meat?”
Loveday rolled her eyes, moving onto the soap aisle. She pointedly stared at the shelf of tampons, hoping that would be enough to get rid of the boy with an accent as posh as Regulus Black’s. She dropped a box into her basket and shifted over to look at the shampoos.
“Are you ignoring me?” he asked, and Loveday wrinkled her nose. He smelled too nice – like lemons. Artificial.
“Was I not obvious enough?” she muttered, turning to glare at him. “Go away.”
He smiled nervously at her, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“Look – I just wanted to apologize for my brother. I don’t buy into any of that crap,” he said smiling widening as he spoke. “I mean it’s 1980, not the fifties.”
Loveday’s eye twitched. She rarely had problems like this during the year, having lived on World’s End for her entire life – but when the tourists showed up in July, well she ended up turning quite a few upper-class heads.
“Look, Walter – “
“William,” he corrected patiently. “And I didn’t get your name.”
“Yeah, ok,” she groaned, and started heading over to the till, heavy basket dragging on the floor behind her. “Listen, in the nicest way possible, just fuck off.”
She hauled the basket up onto the counter, thanking God, Mary and Jesus on the cross that there wasn’t a queue to pay. “A bottle of rum too, please. Spiced.”
She stared blankly at the shopkeeper as he eyes her up. “ID?”
Loveday crossed her arms across her chest and scoffed. “Are you taking the piss, Credence?”
The old man shrugged and turned to get her rum from the shelves behind the tills. Anyone on World’s End who was lucky enough to have a passport, or even a legal driver’s license was a rare sight.
“So you’re a local?”
Loveday huffed and span around to glare at William. He was too – hopeful looking. As if he was sure she’d want anything to do with him. She didn’t.
“Yeah,” she snapped. “And you’re not. Like I said, fuck off. It’s not all that hard to mind your own business. I do it all the time.”
William sighed, scratching at the back of his neck, before folding his hands behind his back. He was wearing one of those pale-yellow dress shirts his sort liked to wear on holiday. “I was just trying to be nice. To make amends.”
“And yet you never told your brother to shut his mouth, did you?” she asked, with a raised brow. “Actions speak louder than words, Wilson.”
“It’s William,” he was saying, but she was already speeding out the door of the shop, heavy shopping bag slung over one shoulder and bag of books in the other. She already had one posh twat at home – she didn’t need another bothering her around town.
She barely broke a sweat on her way home despite the weight of her bags. Fiona had teased her during school, urging her to join all boys’ weightlifting team. Of course, Loveday never did – she was already the island freak. She’d joined the girls’ volleyball team though, and she was proud to say they’d won the county championship. No one had ever stopped to ask why her reflexes were so quick, or why she could jump quite so high – and Loveday had enjoyed being praised for once. Even the children who would have sneered and whispered behind her back had congratulated her when the team returned from their trip to the final held in Truro.
She kicked the door to Hawthorne House open, coming in through the front for once. As expected, Regulus Black was curled in front of the fire, eyes sadly boring into the flames. He’d added firewood, she noticed.
“Aren’t you too hot down there?” she frowned, instantly feeling rather sweaty once she’d shut the door. “It’s boiling out there – and now it feels like a furnace in here.”
He shrugged, only half paying attention to her as she dropped her bags down on the very rarely used dining table. The dining table was for family, and what was the point if she was dining alone. Besides, she’d kept Georgie’s highchair in the kitchen until Caradoc had taken it (and him) away to London.
Loveday sniffed the air, squinting down at the boy. He smelt like campfire. It was a nice smell – nostalgic, really.
“I went shopping,” she said.
Regulus Black nodded slowly, and Loveday couldn’t tell whether he was a snooty git or severely depressed. Maybe a little bit of both.
“I’m not a house elf,” she snapped. “Are you going to help me, or am I going to have to kick you up the arse?”
At that, the wizard boy’s head snapped up. “You’re not very ladylike,” he muttered, stiffly getting to his feet. “And not very nice either.”
Loveday rolled her eyes and glared at him. “Because you’re a right ray of sunshine, aren’t you?”
Grumbling under her breath she began to carry her stockpile of meat into the kitchen, using her foot to open the freezer so she could drop her packets in before Regulus noted the inordinate amount of meat. The dark-haired boy ambled in after her, and it was only when Loveday turned around to face him that she noticed quite how tall he was.
How peculiar he looked, the dark wizard he was, clad in such warm clothes in the middle of summer, chocolate yogurt in one hand and a stack of pizzas in the other.
“Do these go in the frodge then?”
Loveday blinked, then a wide grin spread across her face. “The frodge? You mean the fridge?”
“Whatever,” Regulus grumbled, edging closer to the fridge. Loveday watched him as he cautiously poked at the handle, before opening it suddenly and taking a quick step back.
“It’s a fridge,” she giggled. “Not a cursed tomb, or whatever you’re used to.”
Regulus turned to squint at her, angry glare faltering at the sight of her bright smile, realizing she was just pulling his wand. “I’d like to see you using wizarding apparatus. You wouldn’t last five minutes.”
Loveday shrugged and went to get the pineapple juice. “Actually, I have a cauldron in the attic. I can make a mean sleeping draught.”
Regulus cocked his head to the side and stared at her curiously. “How – I thought you were a – “
“A squib?” she asked, the word itself tasting bad in her mouth. “Sure I am. But quite a few of your fancy potions are just basic herbalism recipes written down in a fancy book. I just kept my sister’s old cauldron and I can forage most of the ingredients I need.”
Regulus eyed her nervously as she went up on her tiptoes to put the flour up on the highest shelf of the kitchen cupboard. With a wince he gently shoved her to the side and put the flour and sugar away for her.
Loveday glanced up at him in surprise, scarred lip dropping slightly. “Uh, thank you?”
“So um,” Regulus Black started, and Loveday instantly knew he was after something. A deep frown immediately settled on her face. “Well, would you possibly, maybe be willing to let me – could I please use your cauldron and ingredients – from time to time, at least?”
Loveday bit down on her lip and frowned up at him. “I mean, I suppose. It’s not like you could poison me without me knowing about it. You’re going to have to help me forage for whatever you need. I’m not your servant, whatever you might think.”
Regulus Black managed what Loveday thought might be the beginning of a smile.
“The deal’s a deal,” Regulus Black told her and even though he didn’t take her hand to shake, Loveday couldn’t help but feel as though the glint in his eyes was genuine. Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as she’d initially thought.