“I absolutely will not have my ears pierced,” I said, as firmly as possible. I clutched my bag, which was on my lap, and which helped to centre me. “I don’t want to behave badly, I don’t want to cause a scene in the street or in the shop, but I will if I have to, Aunt Anthea.”
As I was talking, I put one hand on the lever that opens the car door, ready to leap out if I had to. I had another bag in the boot, with books and some clothes in, but everything I really needed was in my bag on my lap. I’d be sorry to lose some of the books, but you can always buy them again if you have to. Heinlein says you have to be prepared to abandon baggage, and I was. I know I can’t literally run, but I thought that if I leapt out of the car and hobbled down the street, she’d have to chase after me, and there might be people she knew and she’d be embarrassed. There were already some people about, though it was quite early. If it came to physically fighting, there was for the time being only one of her. I might have a bad leg but that also means I have a stick.
We sat like that for a while, and then she grimaced and turned the key and drove off. We came to the station where she bought my return ticket and then kissed my cheek and told me to have a good time. She didn’t come up to the platform. She looked—I don’t know. I don’t think she’s used to being thwarted.
Magic isn’t inherently evil. But it does seem to be terribly bad for people.
FRIDAY 28TH DECEMBER 1979
By the time the train got to Cardiff it was raining, and all the exhilaration of frost on distant hills was lost in city rain. Auntie Teg wasn’t in the station to meet me. I thought she must be too cross with me not coming to help on Christmas Day to want to see me at all. I walked out of the station and across through the bus station to find the bus up the valley and realised that I still only had 24p, two tens and two twos in my purse, big as cartwheels and just as useless. I couldn’t think how I could get some more money. I have a few pounds in the post office, but I didn’t have the book. There are people I could borrow money from, but none of them were in Cardiff station today at lunchtime in the rain. And my stupid leg was stupidly hurting again. Fortunately, before I got to the point where I started hitchhiking, which I have done but only when I was running away, I spotted Auntie Teg’s little orange car turning in to the car park. I limped across slowly to intercept her before she put money in the meter. She was very pleased to see me and didn’t reproach me. She’d been expecting me to come on the next train. I think I probably caught the earlier one because of Anthea wanting the time to have my ears pierced.
This is the second time, the second time running, that I’ve got off a train and not been met and realised I can’t cope. I have got to stop doing this. I need better organisation and I need more money. I need to keep emergency money in my bag. As soon as I get some, I’m keeping at least five pounds for that. And maybe I should keep a pound in the back of my purse too, in case I use the other, or only need a bit. Also, maybe I should start saving running-away money again, just in case. It would be lovely to have my life in order enough not to need it, but let’s face it, I’m not there yet.
Auntie Teg lives in a little modern flat in a neat modern estate. It was all built about ten years ago, I think. There’s a little curving parade of shops, including a terrific bread and buns shop, and blocks of six flats, each three floors high, set out with grass in between them. Her flat is a middle one. It isn’t—I mean, I’d hate to live there. It’s very new and clean and smart but it has no character and the rooms are all rectangular and the ceilings are very low. I think Auntie Teg chose it because it was what she could afford at the time and a safe place for a single woman. Or maybe because she wanted to make her own place something really different from home, with modern furniture and no magic. She had always, logically, sensibly, associated magic and fairies and everything like that with my mother, who is four years older than she is. Auntie Teg therefore wants nothing to do with them, any more than she does with Liz. She lives on her own with her beautiful but incredibly spoiled cat Persimmon. Persimmon goes out through the window, jumping down to the awning over the front door and from there to the ground. She can’t get back in that way, though, she comes up the stairs and cries outside the front door.