Although Maude set out to be scrupulously honest in her narration of the Zing Family Secret, she did not tell Cath everything. For example, she did not tell her that, once Cath had been transferred to Valerio’s people—after which the Zings returned home from the seaside—Maude ignored the garden shed for weeks.
Instead, she lay in bed, and only got up to do the ironing. David slept on the living-room couch at this time. He made sausages and tomatoes for dinner each night and did the girls’ homework for them.
In the bedroom, Maude lay still with her eyes open wide, exhausting her imagination by forcing it to hold, steady on her chest, the image, weight, fragrance, and warmth of her baby girl. A soft little cat pressing itself ever closer.
When she did fall asleep, she dreamed that she was standing in the basket of a hot-air balloon. Behind her was her baby in a bassinet, and Maude, without pausing, gathered up the bassinet and tipped it over the side. A parachute opened as it fell, and Maude caught her breath: The child is saved! But then she saw that the parachute was upside down. The bassinet crashed to the ground and was smashed to pieces.
Day after day, Maude lay in bed, snapping in and out of this nightmare: the balloon, the bassinet, the baby rushing to the ground. Each time she woke in horror at the sound of the crash, and each time she sobbed, I changed my mind, I changed my mind, I changed my mind.
One night, waking from such a dream, she regarded the circle of the moon through her bedroom window.
I have given my child away, she thought, but the dream means more than that.
Why, she asked herself now, did I do it? The answers rushed to her at once: You were on the verge of bankruptcy! You couldn’t afford a third child! The child was born of scandal! You gave her the gift of a normal life! It was all for the child.
She stared at the moon, and blinked. It was so sharp-edged, she realized with a start, it would sever the tendons in your hands if you reached up to hold it. The sharp edge cut into her soul, and she thought: It was for the money.
That was the reason.
She had thought herself on the verge of a life of balloons and adventures with Nikolai Valerio. She had believed that the baby was her ticket into that life. Instead, the baby had frightened her dreams away.
She remembered sitting on the couch in that house by the sea, her average husband beside her, profoundly depressed at her romantic loss, and resentful of her unborn child. Nikolai’s men sat opposite and promised her immense wealth.
Well, at least I could be rich. That much I deserve. The thought had flickered across her mind. She remembered throwing the thought away, and gathering sensible reasons in its place.
What she saw now, however, was this: By accepting Nikolai’s offer to conceal the birth of their child, she had agreed to live in a fictional world in which she herself was wealthy, but her child did not exist.
I accepted a bribe to deny my child’s existence.
It was like realizing she had murdered her own baby.
Maude wrote the entire Spell Book on her bedroom floor that night.
She typed with trembling, urgent fingers, knowing that her words were frenetic. She had to write spells that would bring Cath back to life. She had to undo her denial.
The story of Cath began, she recalled, on the day that her husband, David, telephoned a taxi and left her (A Spell to Make Someone Decide to Take a Taxi). Then she had discovered the pie-chef job in the Trading Post when looking for a new vacuum cleaner (A Spell to Make a Vacuum Cleaner Break). She had won the boat-scene role in the film when the leading lady fought with the director (A Spell to Make Two Happy People Have a HUGE Fight over Absolutely NOTHING) and in such a way the affair had begun. The affair had ended, effectively, when Nikolai asked the set supervisor to send her an artificial rose (A Spell to Make Someone Give Someone a Rose).
At this, Maude had plunged into despair.
She had yearned to be seen, to be acknowledged as Nikolai’s true love, and had fantasized that that reporter might find more concrete evidence of their affair: a note in a jeans pocket; a sock in the hotel laundry (A Spell to Make Someone Find Something Unexpected in a Washing Machine). She had been furious with Nikolai, and imagined him eating chocolate cake laced with walnuts, so that his lips would swell like balloons (A Spell to Make Somebody Eat a Piece of Chocolate Cake).
The filming moved to Lord Howe Island. Rebekka was flown in, and those famous publicity shots were arranged. Nikolai and Rebekka, laughing together, barefoot among the bees in a meadow. The tender shot of Nikolai carrying Rebekka in his arms, anxious eyes on her throbbing toe (A Spell to Make a Person Get Stung by a Bee).
She had received the first offer from Nikolai’s agents while staring at those photos in a magazine. The offer seemed innocent enough. “Get your husband home from Ireland,” the agent suggested, “and we’ll send your family on a holiday by the sea.” It was too late in her pregnancy for David to be plausible as the baby’s father, but the agents wanted Maude’s marriage resumed, so that the reporter would lose interest in her. (It never occurred to them to doubt her story that David was actually in Ireland.)
Why not? she thought despondently. If Nikolai is rescuing Rebekka from bees, I, at least, deserve a holiday.
So she telephoned David at his apartment and asked him to come home. He only came, he admitted afterward, because he was low with a fever and sore throat. Otherwise, his pride would have kept him there until his elusive invention was complete (A Spell to Make Someone Catch a Cold).
Once at the house by the sea, of course, the agents had arrived with their briefcases. The final deal had been made.
Now Maude paused again. She had re-created the circumstances of Cath’s birth and Maude’s betrayal. But she needed one more spell. She needed a resolution. It was too late to get her baby back. All she could really do for Cath was to carry out the terms of her agreement. She would secretly keep an eye on her and send reports to Nikolai.
No! she thought, suddenly dizzy. No! I will do more than keep an eye on Cath! I will watch her constantly! I will find ways to solve Cath’s problems and guide her through her life. I will not spend a single cent of that money on myself or my family! All of it would be for Cath!
Her family’s focus from now on, she decided, would be Cath. This secret would become their center.
To achieve this, of course, she would need her family intact. She and David would have to be a loving couple, loving parents, once again (A Spell to Make Two People Fall in Love Again).
She wrote the final spell. She stapled the pages together with lime green cardboard, folded at the edges for a cover, and printed the words “SPELL BOOK” on the front.
This book, she thought, would bring Cath back to life. But it would also re-create her own heartbreak and loss. For Cath, she wanted the opposite. She turned the book over and wrote on the back cover:
This Book Will Make You Fly, Will Make You Strong, Will Make You Glad. What’s More, This Book Will Mend Your Broken Heart.
She climbed into bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The next day, she set to work painting the garden shed and writing lists of potential recruits. She forgot about the Spell Book, and it got lost somewhere, probably mixed up with Marbie’s schoolbooks.
She also forgot her revelation of that night. Within days she was convinced that she had given Cath away in order to protect her. If anyone had dared to suggest she had done it for the money, she would have thrown a potted plant at their head.