Free A Charm of Powerful Trouble by Joanne Horniman

afternoon with his crew and a van full of wet tents and a week's worth of washing.
    He exploded when he saw Artemis. ‘A bloody cat!’ Claudio often spoke with exclamation marks.
    Artemis perched on the refrigerator and glowered at him. She had a head for heights. Claudio glared back at her.
    â€˜She's a good ratter!’ Lizzie told him.
    â€˜Artemis, wasn't she some . . .’ - Claudio wrestled with a bottle of red wine and a corkscrew - ‘bloody . . . goddess of fecundity or something?We'll end up with thousands of cats!’
    â€˜She's desexed.’ Lizzie was at her most powerful when she spoke quietly.
    Claudio didn't push the point; the house was full of guests. The van had spilled them out, along with the wet tents and the washing, and a pile of film equipment. Damp people milled about with their hands in their pockets, gazing up at the impossible height of the ceiling and shrugging the rain off their jackets. Claudio and his crew were full of camaraderie after their week together in the mud and wet. I noticed a grl with a round face and hair bright with orange henna. There was also a thin, tall boy I liked the look of, with a pale, lightly freckled face and very pale red hair.
    Claudio seated his guests around the dining table, pouring wine for everyone. He downed a glass quickly and poured another, then leaned back in his chair.
    â€˜The cat's name is Artemis,’ he told the girl with orange hair. ‘Who, if I remember rightly’ (leaning towards her intimately) ‘was the goddess of fecundity There's some ancient statue (circling one hand in the air) - tits all over her chest! But -’ (he suddenly remembered) ‘bloody hell, wasn't she meant to be the virgin huntress? How could she be both?’ Claudio sat up and looked around at no one in particular, outraged. He hated ambiguity He hated a pause in the flow of his words even more. ‘Anyway . . . this Artemis is desexed, so there won't be much fecundity, but I'm told she's a good ratter - that's where the huntress bit comes in, I suppose!’
    He roared with laughter, and the girl with orange hair, whose name was Amanda, smiled uncertainly.
    â€˜Actually,’ said Lizzie, who stood with Artemis in her arms and regarded Claudio disdainfully, ‘Artemis's virginity wasn't about her sexual purity, but a reference to her being complete in herself, inviolate.’ Lizzie had been studymg up on Artemis; she'd known Claudio would make a thing of it.
    All the young men in the crew looked at her with admiration and lust. In the golden light from the lamps, with her hair shimmering over her shoulders, she had the kind of beauty and great height that made her scorn magnificent and imperious. But Lizzie didn't notice them. She picked up Artemis and stalked off to have a shower.
    My mother looked at the pile of washing that had been dumped on the verandah and then out at the rain. The crew stuck close by Claudio in the living room; you could see that, having endured the hardships of a protest camp for a whole week, they felt bonded together for life. Emma left them to it. She went into the kitchen and made food.
    â€˜And what do you do? asked Amanda, as Emma sat finally, exhausted, over a plate of pasta. ‘Are you a filmmaker too?’
    I watched. My mother hated this question: the assumption that because Claudio made films, she must too, except that she was so hopeless at it that no one had ever heard of her.
    â€˜No,’ said Emma. ‘No, I don't.’
    â€˜What do you do?’ said Amanda. She ate delicately and fastidiously.
    â€˜Oh, this and that,’ said Emma, vaguely, sipping her wine and staring out at the rain.
    The boy with the pale hair and skin looked shyly at me and smiled. He had been eating his meal with frank and grateful hunger. I thought that although he had looked at Lizzie with admiration as the others had, there had not been so much lust there.
    Claudio plunged the corkscrew