Free Spellweaver by CJ Bridgeman Page A

stepmother over Christmas and new year, so Jamie
was being forced to stay with Hollie and their mother.
    “It’s always the
same,” he told Felicity at lunchtime one day. “Mum makes jibes at
Dad that she thinks are subtle and it’s so agonisingly blatant that
she wants me to pass them on. Then she spends the rest of the time
making sure I’m doing my homework and that I know all my topics for
next year. One time she even gave me a quiz.”
    “Doesn’t she check
Hollie’s homework?” Felicity asked, aware of her friend’s talent
for avoiding deadlines and skipping lessons.
    Jamie laughed. “Yeah,
right. Hollie’s going to be a model, as far as our dear mother is
concerned. Apparently that makes homework redundant in her case. As
for me, well, I’m destined to become whatever requires the most
training, the most qualifications and the most intelligence. One
week it’s a doctor, the next it’s a lawyer... she has only the
highest expectations of me.”
    Felicity had wondered
then what expectations her father had of her. He hadn’t mentioned
any since she had moved in. He dutifully checked her homework
planner and regularly asked how school was going, but Felicity
sensed that he did so because he felt he should, rather than
because he actually cared, and even this had become less and less
of a priority as time went on. Had she been so inclined, she could
have easily hidden homework tasks and lied to him about her
progress, but she didn’t want to risk another confrontation like
the one that had come from her going to the Talk, and she certainly
didn’t want any trouble from the teachers, however ineffective some
of them were.
    Felicity and her
father had never really recovered from that exchange, in spite of
the time that had passed. She had been spending even more time in
her bedroom than she used to, if that were even possible, but not
only in an effort to avoid her father, but because she still had
her mother’s journal. Every night before she went to sleep she
would flick through the worn pages, reading the words and studying
the strange pictures. She never made any more sense of it, but she
was glad just to have it.
    Mr Oakley had not
returned to Greenfields, and nor had Oliver. Hollie had been upset
for a week or two and had tried in vain to locate him using various
social networking sites, but no one had seen or even heard anything
from him. What was even more curious was that no one even seemed to
know where he had come from. It was quite a mystery, which made it
all the more enticing for Hollie. Still, as the weeks rolled by and
they heard no news, she stopped talking about it
altogether.
    Felicity was relieved,
though she said nothing. Although she could not fully recall the
events of that night, Oliver still unnerved her, and she felt much
more relaxed now that he and Mr Oakley were gone. No one seemed to
know much about the school counsellor, either, but then his work
was not limited to Greenfields; it had been his job to visit
students in all of the schools in the area. The students didn’t
much care that he wasn’t around at present, and Felicity didn’t
show how much the counsellor bothered her. She was just glad that
he had not come back, and given the fact that she had heard nothing
from the head teacher regarding the apparent theft of her mother’s
journal, she guessed that he had not reporting her for
stealing.
    It was snowing on
Christmas Eve. Felicity’s father was working late, so she took the
opportunity to spend time outside her tiny bedroom and watch some
television. There had been many festive films on. For the most part
Felicity had avoided them, but as the snow floated down outside and
the coloured lights adorning the neighbouring buildings twinkled in
through the windows of the flat, she found herself entirely
absorbed in the story of a little girl trying to prove that Father
Christmas really did exist.
    When
the film ended, Felicity went to bed. Dressed in her pyjamas