shrugging sort of action with her good side and said, ‘Sadie.’ She made a move that looked like she was trying to shake her head, making an effort to form her lips and shape the words. Though her dark eyes were alert I couldn’t understand her, so I took her good hand and placed a pencil in it. Mum’s elegant fingers groped for the pad of paper that never left her side. It took her a while.
Her writing was getting worse. When she finished I tried to decipher what she’d written. I could make out a ‘B’ then an ‘O’ but the figure after it could have either been an ‘X’ or a ‘K’.
I looked at Mum. ‘Box?’
Mum’s lips suckered in. She looked more fragile than ever. Then she let out a wail and started to judder, her head shaking back and forth. It was so frustrating for her.
With the functioning side of her face she tried to speak. ‘Earme.’ Working hard to take in a good breath of air, she swallowed and said, ‘Portent.’ She was really het up. I hated to see her like that but I just couldn’t understand her meaning.
‘Sorry, sorry.’ I focused on the writing. Perhaps it wasn’t an X but an O and a K? ‘Book?’
She made a sound like the air going out of a balloon. I leant in and smiled at her. She was sweating and her hair was messed up. I pushed a couple of black strands away from her eyes. Despite everything, she still had only a dusting of grey.
Stiff creases divided her forehead. Her good hand was clenched into a fist. She was working out how to say what she needed to tell me.
I cut in, trying to relieve her of the effort. ‘Okay, the book. I know you don’t like the idea but Mum …’
She made a strangled sort of sound, then slumped back into her pillows, giving up communicating. But her hand crept into mine. I squeezed it. Gently.
See, I finally got my book commissioned ten days previously. It wasn’t life-changing but it was definitely a good deal. In between the various loops and curves of my volatile career as a freelance journalist, I had been writing a book on the Essex witches.
Mum always said she thought we were distantly related to one. And there was this song, an old Essex folk ballad, The Weeping Willow, which Mum thought was connected to an ancestor. And there was a game in the playground: the kids would form a circle around one blindfolded child, the ‘witch’, and then you’d all dance around. When the verse ended the blindfolded child would try to catch one of the circle dancers. Whoever they caught was out. I can’t remember all of it but there are a couple of verses that stick:
They kicked them off and laid them down
And put them in the cold hard ground
The summer wind blew long and chill
The Divil bade her do his will
Pale and wild pale and wild
The witch did down the child
She picked her up and put her down
The willow’s leaves wrapped round and round
Her evil cries filled the air
And so did end the bad affair
Pale and wild pale and wild
The witch did up end the child
I think it was the song that got me interested, even as a child. That, my mother’s proud connection to it, and the fact that Essex had so many witches. There was folklore and myths about them everywhere I turned. And, if I’m honest, I did seek them out. I was always a bit of a spooky girl, fascinated by rather macabre stories and shrunken heads. My dad tried to get me interested in Roald Dahl, but to his great disappointment I quickly cast off Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in favour of Tales of the Unexpected. As I got older, I started delving into the witch hunts. It turned out to be rather sobering. In fact I soon became both horrified and hooked. The statistics were phenomenal: between 1580 to 1690 the combined total of indictments for witchcraft in Hertford, Kent, Surrey and Sussex was 222. In Essex alone over the same amount of time it was 492 – although recent studies put the number at 503. More than most other counties in the UK, by a long stretch. All those poor souls put to death by superstition. And did we know their names? No. We knew about the Witchfinders: James I, Matthew Hopkins, John Stearne. But if you were