‘In a onesie?’

‘You can get changed.’

‘I’ll think about it.’ She guessed she probably needed to dance off the wine and nachos – but wishing for a career boost was much more important than finding a frock and heels right now. She tried to picture herself in top-to-toe L. K. Bennett’s new season collection, powering past Sous Vide in a Porsche flicking Vs. Anything but a white overall and a kebab van. The candle flame leapt. ‘Now repeat this and stir that saucer of oil anti-clockwise three times with your ring finger – where was I? – We summon you to bring your all-powerful magick, Master, and fuse the union of spirits cast here. Who writes this shit? There’s another three verses. I’ll put some music on for atmosphere.’

Wolf Alice filled the cottage with haunting cries, while Bridge took a quick loo break – realising just how pissed she was when she couldn’t work out how to undo her onesie and losing another battle with doubled-up laughter – before completing the spell. She defied anyone to say, ‘Fill us with your amity, Master! We are receptacles for desire’ without hamming it up like Morgan le Fay.

‘Are you sure it was for a dream job?’ Carly looked sceptical afterwards. ‘What was all that stuff about orgasmic rainbows?’

Refreshing the page, Bridge realised she’d read out the love spell by mistake. Never mind, it was all good fun nonsense. Best say nothing, given Carly’s heebie-jeebies about her healing powers. ‘Just you fecking wait for the career offers to pour in.’

She felt fantastically liberated and full of mischief, her onesie-night stand hijacked by wine and witchcraft. ‘Now let’s quickly hex the pub then we can go over to the village hall to dance our tits off; it’s got to be almost midnight.’

*

‘Your name, Teeshy, it ees like a sneeze, no?’

‘Yes, ha ha!’ Pax heard her own canned laughter on cue, politely light-hearted.

Being chatted up in a bar full of strangers felt like playing a cameo in a B-movie: woman from out of town perches on bar stool and attracts the attention of a lonesome cowboy at the pool table or, in her case, a short, lascivious Frenchman with over-whitened teeth and extremely hairy wrists. For her last vodka shots as an unhappy, drunken wife, she figured she might as well use Mack’s loathsome pet name for her. He thought Tishy was with another man tonight; now she was.

‘Teeshy. Pretty, like you.’

She had no idea what her admirer was called; he’d introduced himself as something Gallic and unpronounceable, but he was getting on her nerves with his roaming eyes and uh-hu uh-hu laugh.

Short, swarthily good-looking and dressed expensively, he’d hit on her straight away, reeking of Joop! Homme and self-satisfaction, as flirty as Pepé Le Pew. His plans to join old friends in Paris for New Year had been scuppered by the fog, he’d explained. Like her room and bar bill, he was entirely complimentary.