Carry On

“And I have plenty of girlfriends,” I say. “I wish I could go to school with them.” Not for the first time today, I think that I’m wasting a day with my real friends, my Normal friends, just to make nice with Penelope.

“Well, you’ll get to be with them next year, at uni,” her mum says to me. “What are you going to study, Agatha?”

I shrug. I don’t know yet. I shouldn’t have to know—I’m only 18. I’m not destined for anything. And my parents don’t treat me like I have to rise to greatness. If Penny doesn’t cure cancer and find the fairies, I think her mum will be vaguely disappointed.

Professor Bunce frowns. “Hmm. I’m sure you’ll sort it out.” The kettle clicks, and she pours her tea. “You girls want a fresh cup?” Penny holds hers out, and her mum takes mine, too. “I had girlfriends when I was your age; I had a best friend, Lucy.…” She laughs, like she’s remembering something. “We were thick as thieves.”

“Are you still friends?” I ask.

She sets our mugs down and looks up at me, like she’s only been half paying attention to our conversation until now. “I would be,” she said, “if she turned up. She left for America a few years after school. We didn’t really see each other after Watford, anyway.”

“Why not?” Penny asks.

“I didn’t like her boyfriend,” her mum says.

“Why?” Penny says. God, Penny’s parents must have heard that question a hundred thousand times by now.

“I thought he was too controlling.”

“Is that why she left for America?”

“I think she left when they broke up.” Professor Bunce looks like she’s deciding what to say next. “Actually … Lucy was dating the Mage.”

“The Mage had a girlfriend?” Penny asks.

“Well, we didn’t call him the Mage then,” her mum says. “We called him Davy.”

“The Mage had a girlfriend,” Penny says again, goggling. “And a name. Mum, I didn’t know you went to school with the Mage!”

Professor Bunce takes a gulp of tea and shrugs.

“What was he like?” Penny asks.

“The same as he is now,” her mum says. “But younger.”

“Was he handsome?” I ask.

She makes a face. “I don’t know—do you think he’s handsome now?”

“Ugh, no,” Penny says, at the same time as I say, “Yes.”

“He was handsome,” Professor Bunce admits, “and charismatic in his way. He had Lucy wrapped around his little finger. She thought he was a visionary.”

“Mum, you have to admit,” Penny says, “he really was a visionary.”

Professor Bunce makes a face again. “He always had to have everything his way, even back then. Everything was black-and-white with Davy, always. And if Lucy didn’t agree—well, Lucy always agreed. She lost herself in him.”

“Davy,” Penelope says. “So weird.”

“What was Lucy like?” I ask.

Penny’s mum smiles. “Brilliant. She was powerful.” Her eyes light up at that word. “And strong. She played rugby, I remember, with the boys. I had to mend her collarbone once out on the field—it was mad. She was a country girl, with broad shoulders and yellow hair, and she had the bluest eyes—”

Penny’s dad wanders into the kitchen.

“Dad!” Penny says. “Now can we talk?”

The other Professor Bunce fumbles towards the kettle and turns it on. Penny’s mum turns it off and takes it to the sink to add water, and he kisses her forehead. “Cheers, love.”

“Dad,” Penny says.

“Yeah…” He’s rummaging in the fridge. He’s a smallish man, shorter than Penny’s mum. With sandy blond-grey hair and a big squishy nose. He’s got unfashionable, round, wire-rimmed glasses tucked up on his head. Everyone in Penny’s family wears unfashionable glasses.

The gossip about Penny’s dad is that he’s not even half as powerful as her mum; my mum says he only got into Watford because his father used to teach there. Penny’s mum is such a power snob, it’s hard to imagine her married to a dud.

“Dad, remember? I needed to talk to you.”

He’s stacking food in his arms: Two yoghurts. An orange. A packet of prawn crackers. He grabs a gingerbread girl and notices me. “Oh, hello, Agatha.”

“Hello, Professor Bunce.”

“Martin,” he says, already leaving. “Call me Martin.”

“Dad.”

“Yeah, come on up, Penny—bring my tea, would you?”

She waits for his tea, then snatches a couple more gingerbread people—they’re eating them faster than I can decorate them—and follows him upstairs.

“Why did they break up?” I ask Professor Bunce after Penny and her dad have cleared out.

She’s staring at her laptop, holding her tea, forgotten, halfway up to her mouth. “Hmmm?”

“Lucy and Davy,” I say.

“Oh. I don’t know,” she says. “We’d lost touch by then. I imagine she finally realized he was a git and had to cross the ocean to get away from him. Can you imagine having the Mage for an ex? He’s everywhere.”

“How did you find out that she left?”

Professor Bunce looks sad. “Her mother told me.”