Free Every Woman for Herself by Trisha Ashley

stood up abruptly. ‘No, I’m off to the pub. Coming?’
    ‘How can I leave the girls?’ she shuddered.
    ‘I’ll listen out for them,’ I offered.
    ‘But
you
killed someone …’ she began.
    ‘And I’m Spawn of the Devil,’ Emily finished for her.
    Father sighed. ‘Lock up the pans, Em, and don’t sacrifice the children. Satisfied, Jess? Come along!’
    There was a brief internal struggle as Jessica’s maternal feelings fought a losing battle, and then she hurried out after him.
    ‘Tell me more about this
Skint Old Northern Woman
magazine,’ Em said, passing the port.
    In the woods the wild violets bloom.
    From a distance,
    the crumpled cigarette packet
    is no less beautiful.
    From ‘Words from the Spirit’
by Serafina Shane
    Serafina Shane’s first book,
Womanly Wicca Words of Spiritual Comfort
,
is available, price £5.99, from the Fishwife Press
.

Chapter 8: Dangerous to Melons
    Skint Old Northern Woman: The Love Quiz
    Would you exchange your husband/boyfriend/significant other for:
    1. A box of chocolates?
    A) Yes
    B) No
    C) A big box
    2. A bag of pork scratchings?
    A) Yes
    B) Snatch your hand off
    C) No, I’m Jewish, but try me with pistachio nuts
    3. A night with Robert Plant?
    A) Yes
    B) Never heard of him, but yes anyway
    C) No, never liked blonds/heavy metal/men even older than my father, but try me with Johnny Depp
    I’m afraid our resident thespian caught me taking a swipe at a large yellow melon with a frying pan the following morning, so now probably thought I was demented, which I wasn’t: merely obsessed.
    It was not the
fatal
frying pan, of course, because Miss Grinch cleaned that up once the police had finished with it, and sent it off to a jumble sale.
    I hoped it wasn’t haunted by the red, bloodhound face of an elderly roué. I mean, imagine
that
materialising by the cooker, just as you were getting your omelette all puffy.
    The melon was balanced on the gatepost, and I was standing on a large crate. It wasn’t ideal – the relative heights were wrong, and the melon kept trying to roll off the perfectly flat surface as though possessed.
    I’d just started the downward swing on a ripe yellow honeydew when I caught the glint of weak sunlight on raven’s-wing hair above the stone wall that separated my strip of garden from the track, but by then the momentum was unstoppable: the pan connected with a meaty
thunk
! and the melon bounded past me and ricocheted off the veranda.
    Mace North stopped by the gate, and surveyed me briefly with unsurprised, world-weary dark blue eyes. (Funny, I sort of expected them to be brown.) His black hair looked as if it had been casually hacked off with a sword – something fancy in gold, with a jewel in the end – and covered his head with feathery artlessness.
    Then there was just the clatter of loose pebbles as he headed for home.
    Good morning to you, too.
    From my vantage point on the box I’d seen becoming strands of purest silver among those black locks, so he was no spring chicken, though I didn’t think the weary look was an age thing – he’d probably always looked like that.
    Isn’t it odd how much you can notice about someone in the briefest moment, even when you’re not particularly interested in them?
    He certainly made off quickly enough, probably afraid I’d fling myself on him pleading for his autograph, or something. But he could be permanently incognito, as far as I was concerned, and I didn’t expect he would be bothered by crowds of admiring followers up here unless he was in a popular soap.
    Still, I didn’t suppose that, as an actor, he found my behaviour in any way unusual.
    The previous night Father, who has got acquainted with Mace up at the Black Dog, warned me that he liked to be treated just like everyone else (although not, perhaps, to the point of being struck by a frying pan). That was fine by me – I wasn’t about to follow him around with an autograph book clutched in one sweaty hand and my tongue hanging