Not That Kind of Witch E-Book

Lucy Felthouse

• Herausgeber: Lucy Felthouse
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Can Willow let go of her fears and begin living her life again, or will her issues get the better of her?

Willow Green is having a hard time of it. Losing her job at the beginning of the pandemic and her elderly grandmother’s ‘clinically vulnerable’ status have resulted in her becoming housebound. While her entrepreneurial, hard-working spirit and the knowledge passed down through generations of green witches in her family mean she has solved her employment problem, her fear of going out, of allowing the dreaded virus into the house she shares with her grandmother, is far from resolved. In fact, it seems worse than ever.

That is, until Joe Lane comes along. The handsome care worker turned delivery driver does Willow a favour, gaining her attention and reluctant admiration. He’s got plenty of baggage of his own, but he also has the skills and temperament to help her with her problem—and he really seems to care.

The question is, will she let him get close enough to try?

Not That Kind of Witch is a standalone M/F steamy contemporary romance.

Leseprobe

Not That Kind of Witch

By Lucy Felthouse

Text Copyright 2024 © Lucy Felthouse.

All Rights Reserved.

With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the aforementioned author.This book was created without the use of AI. Scanning by AI for training purposes or derivative works is strictly prohibited.

Warning: The unauthorised reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s written permission.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Dedication

To Victoria Blisse—fellow Northern Bird, partner in crime, fantastic friend and many other things besides. The world is a duller place without you in it. Rest in power, mate.

To the Greig family. Thank you for letting me borrow your beloved Buttons for this book. I hope I did her justice.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

About the Author

If You Enjoyed Not That Kind of Witch

Chapter One

Willow Green had just stepped into the kitchen from the back garden when there came an almighty hammering on the front door. Panic and irritation flared in equal measure and she dumped her loaded wicker basket on the huge farmhouse-style table before hurrying through the house towards the source of the noise.

Another hammering. The irritation started to outweigh the panic. Whoever was there was in danger of waking the dead, never mind disturbing mostly-deaf Grandma Annie, whom Willow had left happily knitting in the conservatory with a cup of tea on the table at her side before she’d headed out to the garden.

Willow cast her gaze to the ceiling and grunted with frustration. The whole point of installing the smart doorbell and having it set to onlysound an alert on her phone had been to prevent Grandma being tempted to get out of her chair and make her way to the door, putting her at risk of a trip or fall along the way, or placing her in a vulnerable position with a complete stranger. The added bonus being, Willow could be at the furthest reaches of the garden, and her phone would cleverly let her know someone was at the front door.

Had this person not seen the sign? Smack dab in the middle of the door: Please use doorbell. With an arrow pointing to it. Couldn’t they read?

Then she remembered. The last time this happened, which had been a while ago, prior to getting the doorbell camera in the first place, it had been kids at the door. Kids who, once she’d opened up, backed off down the path and began flinging jibes and questions at her from what they considered a safe distance.

Hey, witch.

Been out flying on your broomstick?

What’s bubbling in your cauldron?

You gonna turn us into toads?

Did your ancestors get burned at the stake?

Where’s your black cat?

Her heart sank. She sighed and prepared herself for more of the same. It was unlikely, after all, they’d have come up with something new or more original—despite the astonishing wealth of information the human race had at its fingertips these days. Perhaps they hadn’t bothered to look, to educate themselves, or simply thought it was fun to torment a forty-year-old woman who’d never harm anything or anyone—not even if it was possible to turn people into toads. Though, admittedly, if she were a lesser woman, she’d be sorely tempted to throw out a few fake incantations to scare them, make them think she’d cursed them.

Maybe she should. Yes, it was stooping to their level, but if it stopped them coming back…

No. I’m not going there. She briefly considered not answering the door at all. She could access the doorbell speaker and tell them to clear off from the safety and comfort of her hallway, but she didn’t want them to think she was weak, or frightened. That’d just enhance the thrill for them, encourage them to harass her more often. Not happening. Not on my watch. I don’t have time for that kind of idiocy.

She shook her head, unlocked the door and yanked it open, her annoyance already spilling forth. Generally speaking, she was an incredibly placid person, and slow to anger. But she didn’t want these kids to think this house was an easy target. She’d kept the previous incident from Grandma, not wanting to worry her, and had hoped the addition of the doorbell camera might deter them from returning. “Have you horrible toerags seriously got nothing better to do? You should be ashamed of yourselves, pestering people like this! I’ve a mind to contact your parents—”

She stopped dead as the door swung wide enough to provide a view of who was on the other side of it. Not kids—horrible or otherwise—but a man. With a large cardboard box at his feet, bearing a familiar logo. Uh-oh.

A glance past him to the gravel lane leading to her house confirmed her fears. A white Transit van sat there.

She cringed and forced her gaze back to the man. A navy-blue T-shirt bearing the delivery company’s logo was stretched over his muscular biceps and chunky abdomen—a dad bod, she supposed it’d be classed as, though she didn’t really agree with the terminology—as well as a pair of tan shorts and some beat-up looking trainers. He was tall, well over six feet, and she had to crane her neck to meet his eyes. “I’m so sorry. The last time someone hammered on my door like that, it was a bunch of kids shouting abuse. I thought you were them. If you’d just rung the doorbell, like the sign…”

The frown that appeared on the man’s face as she spoke made her shift her attention to her right, a sinking feeling taking over. Where there should have been a sign attached to the centre of the door, were now only six evenly-spaced blobs of Blu-Tak.

Heat flared into her cheeks, and she let out a groan and closed her eyes momentarily. “Well, there was a sign. It’s obviously fallen off. I had no idea. Or I wouldn’t have… never mind. I’m really sorry. And now I’m waffling.” She gave a pained smile, her face threatening to burst into flames. “Anyway. You have a parcel for me?” Her voice went so high at the end she was surprised she hadn’t summoned the neighbourhood dogs.

To his credit, the man simply shrugged. “No worries. I’ve been called worse. You’re…” he consulted the screen of the smartphone in his hand, “Willow Green?”

Given the circumstances, she let the slight waver of amusement in his voice at her name slide. “Yes,” she replied resignedly. “That’s me.”

“Great. It’s a tracked parcel, so I need to take a photo to prove I’ve delivered it…”

“Okay. Go ahead.”

He tapped his phone screen a few times, then lifted the device and stepped back, presumably ensuring he got the right angle so his image would contain both the parcel and her feet inside the open doorway. Pressed the button. “Got it. Thanks. Do you want me to bring it in for you? It’s pretty heavy.” He pocketed the phone.

“No,” she said quickly, recoiling as he approached and made to pick up the box. “I mean, no thank you. I’m fine. I need to find the sign before I go indoors, anyway. Don’t want to shout at any more undeserving delivery drivers, do I?” The chuckle she let out sounded forced, even to her own ears.

“Guess not.” He backed off and clasped his chin, then stroked his thick beard, more grey than black—the colour of his thick, plentiful hair, which had only a dusting of grey at the temples. He glanced at the doorbell and wrinkled his nose. “Should’ve spotted that, really. Especially when no one answered after I knocked a few times. The Blu-Tak should have provided a clue that maybe there was a sign there, and I could have put two and two together. I’m sorry. Such an idiot. Won’t make that mistake again though, will I?” Despite the weakness of his smile, it transformed his face enough that Willow’s stomach flipped. Goodness, he’s handsome.

“N-no.” She shook her head, surprised at the sudden current of electricity running through her body. Swallowed hard. “And that’s the main thing. That we all learn from our mistakes. Don’t worry about it. No harm done. I got my parcel, so it’s all good.”

He nodded. “And I know for next time, sign or not. Also, if those kids do come back, you could always pull the footage and audio from the camera and submit it to the police. Unlikely there’d be any criminal charges for the toerags to answer for, but it might be enough to stop them bothering you again. Anyway, you take care and enjoy the rest of your day.” This time his smile was wide, genuine, crinkling up the corners of his eyes and revealing lovely straight, white teeth.

She found herself very much hoping there wouldbe a next time. For him, that was, not the horrible children—though he had made a good point about the footage. If a visit from the police scared them into stopping, that’d be a win.

Thankfully, he spun on his heel and jogged away before he could see her gawping shamelessly at him. The view from behind was just as good—his shorts fit beautifully over his backside and he had wonderful broad shoulders and the lean, strong-looking calves of a cyclist. “Yes, you too,” she barely remembered to call after him. “Thank you. Drive safe.”

The slam of his van door snapped her out of her reverie, and she used her foot to manoeuvre the heavy parcel over the threshold so the door couldn’t swing shut and lock her out while she looked for the sign. Blasted thing. Perhaps it was time to figure out something more robust than a piece of paper and some Blu-Tak. The door might be somewhat protected by the open-sided porch, but the changing climate meant storms, along with high winds, were becoming more frequent, so she could end up replacing it on a weekly, if not more frequent basis. And that would be defeating the object of the smart doorbell being more convenient really, wouldn’t it?

As she searched around the bushes next to the porch, the delivery guy started his van, and she couldn’t resist looking up. He was looking back, and he flashed her a smile and a cheery wave before taking off to the soundtrack of crunching, popping gravel. She waved dazedly at the spot where he’d been, then blinked and shook her head before resuming her hunt.

What was it about him? Granted, she didn’t get out much—at all, actually—but one fleeting encounter with a good-looking guy and she’d gone completely ga-ga. A tall, good-looking guy with a smokin’ bod… No. She shook her head again, more firmly this time. Get a grip, woman. You’ve got much more important things to be getting on with than mooning over some bloke.

With that self-scolding in mind, she continued scouting around amongst the trees and bushes along the front of the house. She’d calmed down by the time she found what she was looking for. The hand-written sign was crumpled, and somewhat grubby, but it’d do for now. She received so many deliveries to the house that not having the notice up for any length of time wasn’t an option. It’d result in Grandma attempting to answer the door, if she was close enough to hear someone knocking on it—which today, thankfully she hadn’t been—or parcels being returned to the depot, dumped on her doorstep, or left with neighbours. None of those possibilities were desirable. The vast majority of the parcels contained supplies for her work, so she needed them pretty much as they arrived—and preferably in one piece. Any delays in receiving them could impact her output, and therefore her income.

She braced the sheet of paper against the side of the house and flattened it out as best she could, before moving to the door and lining it up over the blobs of Blu-Tak and pushing hard on each one through the paper, hoping to get it good and stuck while she worked out an alternative.

That done, she headed indoors, where she shoved the parcel away from the door before closing and locking it. She rarely knew who was delivering what, and exactly when, but from the logo on the box and the considerable weight of the package, she suspected her dried ingredients—citric acid, bicarbonate of soda and the like.

She bit her lip. At least it hadn’t been her empty bottles and jars. They would have rattled and clinked, and the delivery guy would have been forgiven for thinking she was a drunk. Their encounter had been quite humiliating enough, without adding that to the equation, thank you very much.

As she bent at the knees, ready to heft the package the correct way so as not to risk hurting her back—she couldn’t afford to be out of action, not when Grandma relied on her so much—a black shape streaked along the hallway and wound its way around her ankles, purring madly.

“Hey, sweetheart,” she said, immediately melting at the sight of her black cat, Buttons. Abandoning the box for now, she squatted down and scratched her beloved pet behind the ears, which ramped up the volume and intensity of the purring considerably. Willow smiled. If her owning a black cat—albeit one with the tiniest patch of white by her back legs—was a cliché, then so be it.

Actually, it was silly to think she owned Buttons, when it was really the other way around. The adorable creature had had Willow wrapped around her paw from the moment they’d met eight years ago, when Buttons had been a tiny kitten, gambolling around with her brothers and sisters in the utility room of the farmhouse where they’d been born. The minute Buttons’ amber eyes had met Willow’s green ones, she’d been a goner. A couple of weeks later, when Buttons had been eight weeks old and ready to leave her mother, Willow and Grandma Annie had brought her home, and they’d been inseparable ever since.

Stroking the soft fur of Buttons’ back, all the way to her impossibly fluffy tail, Willow asked, “Is Grandma okay?”

When she’d left the old lady settled in the chair earlier with her knitting, Buttons had been in one of her favourite spots—draped across the back of Grandma’s neck and shoulders, like some kind of living scarf. It was summer, plenty warm, and even with her advancing years, Grandma had absolutely no need of a scarf, particularly one giving off heat, but the old lady adored Buttons just as much as Willow did, and wouldn’t have had the heart to move her. The cat’s response was to execute a sharp one-eighty and shove her head almost forcefully under Willow’s hand, demanding more strokes and scratches.

Willow tutted and rolled her eyes, but did as she was commanded. Yep. Under the paw, that’s me.

Since the cat obviously wasn’t going to provide an update on Grandma’s wellbeing—she didn’t talk, like Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, thank goodness—she straightened, wincing as her knees cracked, then made her way in to the conservatory, Buttons by her side. Crumbs. I might be going to check on an old lady, but with knees making a racket like that, it seems I’m turning into one myself.

Her eyes much sharper than her ears—though not nearly as sharp as her wit—albeit with the aid of glasses, Grandma turned immediately to look at Willow as she entered the room, her wrinkled face breaking into a smile. She finished her stitch, shifted the knitting needles into one hand, then used her free one to twiddle with each of her hearing aids in turn.

“Hello, love,” she said, resuming her knitting. Many people might consider it rude to continue crafting while talking to someone, but Grandma was such a skilled knitter she didn’t even need to look at what she was doing. She did it on autopilot, and could read a book, watch TV, or hold a conversation with someone at the same time—the last two providing her hearing aids were on, of course. For some reason known only to herself, she often switched them off when she didn’t actively need them. An easy way of ensuring peace and quiet, perhaps? On this occasion, at least it meant she hadn’t heard the cacophony at the front door and come to investigate.

Willow returned the smile. “Hi, Grandma. You all right? Need anything? Another cup of tea?”

Her hands were almost a blur as she worked the needles, which resulted in a gentle, rhythmic clacking. “Ooh, yes please, love. And a couple of those ginger biscuits we made yesterday.”

Grandma was being generous, as she so often was. She was an incredible baker, and she had made the biscuits while Willow had hovered around her, handing her ingredients and implements, making sure she was okay and taking care of the clear up, since by the time the tray of biscuits had gone in the oven, Grandma was tired and needed to go and rest. Or maybe she’d just pretended, to get out of washing up—but Willow didn’t mind either way. She thought the world of the old lady, would do anything for her. A spot of washing up and putting away was the least she could do, considering everything Grandma had done for her.

She popped back into the hallway and availed herself of a couple of pumps of the hand sanitiser she had on the table by the front door before returning to collect Grandma’s empty cup. “Coming right up.”

With Buttons still glued to her, she made for the kitchen, where she filled and set the kettle to boil. As Willow tossed teabags into hers and Grandma’s cups, then added sugar, the cat sprang effortlessly onto the worksurface before settling into another of her favourite spots—this time the windowsill, where the sun beat down on her inky fur. Far from being too hot, the feline relished the heat. She was a regular sunbather and could be found hogging patches of sunlight throughout the house and garden all year round. Willow had caught her on more than one occasion emerging from the greenhouse, panting, her tiny pink tongue hanging out, but appearing content, rather than agitated. Crazy cat. She’d probably sit in a sauna if given the opportunity.

While she waited for the water to boil, Willow returned to the hall, retrieved the parcel and hauled it into the kitchen, where she placed it with a sigh of relief on the table beside her basket. The brown paper tape peeled off easily and in one long, satisfying strip—another benefit of shopping only with eco-friendly companies; not only was it better for the environment, but the tape was so much easier to remove than the traditional clear plastic stuff. She balled it up, then made a kissy sound in Buttons’ direction.

The cat languidly turned her head.

“Hey, sweetie. Look what I’ve got for you!” She pitched the ball towards the windowsill, where it landed a short distance away from the cat. Buttons peered at the ball, then glanced almost disdainfully at Willow, before settling back down and continuing to soak up the sun.

Willow shook her head and chuckled to herself, not taking offence to the rejection of her offering. Mostly because she knew perfectly well that, when Buttons wanted to, she would love playing with the sticky-tape ball. But the key was whenButtons wanted to. Only then, and not one second before.

The kettle rumbled and clicked off, and, having touched the parcel, Willow sanitised her hands from the bottle they kept by the sink before setting about making the two cups of tea. While they brewed, she retrieved the requested biscuits for Grandma and swiped a couple for herself. She set a tray with two side plates containing the biscuits, then finished up the teas and added them, before carefully lifting the tray. Buttons was so relaxed—or possibly asleep by now—that she didn’t move a millimetre, despite the kerfuffle.

Back in the conservatory, Willow popped the tray on the coffee table, put Grandma’s tea and biscuits on her side table, then settled down on the chair opposite Grandma’s. “There you are. Tea and ginger biscuits, as requested.”

The old lady bundled her knitting—which looked several rows further along than when Willow had left the room—into one hand again, then reached for a biscuit with the other, dunked it into her tea and took a bite. Her blue eyes—still lively and often full of mischief—closed for a second as she chewed and swallowed the morsel. “Thank you, love. You are a good girl.” She took in the second cup of tea, the second plate of biscuits, then slid her shrewd gaze to Willow, eyes narrowing. “Actually sitting down for five minutes, are you? Goodness. If I knew how to work one of those smartphone thingies, I’d take a photograph for posterity, put it on that social media wotsit. Nobody’d believe me otherwise.”

“All right, all right. No need to get sarky.” She rolled her eyes. Her grandmother often chastised her for being constantly on the go, beseeched her to slow down, take a break. The irony was, her grandmother was one of the main reasons she worked so hard in the first place. Yes, the enormous old house they lived in—way too big for the two of them and Buttons, really—was mortgage-free, but the bills weren’t cheap, and Grandma’s pensions didn’t go very far. But Willow knew how much the old lady loved the house she’d lived in all her life. In truth, so did she. It was her entire world. She couldn’t bear the thought of selling up and moving somewhere smaller, less expensive to run, as well as all the stress that would go with a move, and so she worked her backside off to bring in enough money to keep a roof over their heads—not just any roof, but one that had been in their family for generations.

“Me?” Grandma widened her eyes, held the hand containing the biscuit to her heart. “Sarcastic? I’m deeply hurt you’d say such a thing.”

Smirking, Willow shot back, “Be quiet and drink your tea, you old troublemaker.”

Grandma gave an exaggerated gasp. “First you accuse me of being sarcastic, now you’re calling me old and a troublemaker. I’m shocked at you, young lady.”

“You brought me up to tell the truth, Grandma. Perhaps you did too good a job.”

Mischief etched into every line of her face, the old lady replied, “Touché.”

A snort-laugh escaped Willow, and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth as she exchanged a humour-filled glance with her grandmother. She absolutely adored the quick, easy banter between the two of them. Deep down, much as she didn’t like to think about it, she knew it wouldn’t last forever and therefore appreciated it all the more while she could. If working hard and enduring frequent nagging about doing so was the cost of more moments like these, then it was a price she was more than willing to pay.

Grandma dunked and nibbled her biscuit a couple more times before polishing it off, then gave a satisfied nod. “Jolly good biscuits, even if I do say so myself.”

Willow grinned. “When are they not? I keep telling you, you’d smash it on The Great British Bake Off. You could be the next Nadiya Hussain. Your own TV shows, books, the lot. Oooh, you could be a guest on The Graham Norton Show.” Grandma loved the Friday night chat show, and Norton himself, with his quick, scathing wit and extreme skill at drawing information out of people. Willow did too, actually—though these days the programme was an almost painful reminder of what they were missing.

The old lady scrunched up her nose. “And as I keep telling you, I couldn’t be bothered with all that fuss, even if they did let a decrepit old crone like me into the tent. Cameras in my face, having to do things a certain way…” Her lips twitched up at the corners and her eyes twinkled with glee. “Mind you, I wouldn’t say no to much more than a handshake from that Paul Hollywood.”

Willow almost choked on her tea. She swallowed quickly, coughed, and banged her chest while giving her grandmother a narrow-eyed look. Once she could speak, she gasped, “Grandma! What are you like? He’s nearly thirty years younger than you.”

Grandma adopted an expression of pure innocence and shrugged. “Should have plenty of energy then, shouldn’t he?”

Willow gaped, unable to believe her ears. She blinked—then, as a thought occurred to her, sobered rapidly. Grandma would occasionally come out with utterly outrageous statements, purely to get a rise out of her granddaughter. The old lady had always enjoyed teasing her, trying to get her to be less serious. Mostly, it worked, but now all she had in mind was the image of her grandmother out in the world, charming all and sundry, as she was wont to do. Maybe even with a gentleman friend—albeit one with a few more years, well, decades, under his belt than the twinkly-eyed silver fox Mr Hollywood.

She crunched on a biscuit, eager to distract herself from the despair hovering at the edges of her consciousness, just waiting for the opportunity to take over and wreak havoc on her thoughts and emotions.

The reality was, neither Willow nor her grandmother had set foot off their property in more than four years. And she couldn’t see them doing so any time soon, either. Not unless something major changed.

Namely her.

Chapter Two

Having hung up the lavender she’d harvested earlier in the pantry to dry, unpacked the parcel and put the contents away, Willow washed her hands before moving on to her next task—making a batch of lip balms. They were one of the most popular products she sold in her online store. While she was sure her loyal customers wouldn’t mind a slight delay on their delivery if she ran out of stock, she didn’t want to risk them cancelling their order and going elsewhere. They might not come back, and she didn’t want to lose a single sale, much less a regular buyer. She also didn’t want to turn folks off if they were new visitors to her site, only to see the item they wanted wasn’t available right away. So it was a delicate balancing act, keeping a close eye on stock levels at all times to ensure she was making the required products at the required time.

And there were a lot of products. Mainly because her overactive brain constantly threw up questions like But what if you made X, or grew Y, or developed Z? On the one hand, she spent a lot of time telling her brain to shut up and let her get on with it, but on the other hand, she was painfully aware successful businesses did innovate, change things up, add new products, retire old ones. It wasn’t possible to get anywhere by standing still. And so she kept moving forward.

She pulled on her apron, then set the beeswax to melt while she retrieved the rest of the ingredients and materials. Next she lined up row after row of tiny aluminium pots, the screw-on lids removed. It was at times like this she was eternally grateful for the vastness of their house. Trying to run her multiple businesses—she had her fingers in several pies, depending on the time of year—from a small place would be impossible. She needed the room to work, to store raw materials and completed products, packaging, orders ready to go out… the list went on.

It might be a lot of work to keep the property going, but having so much space fed directly back, since that meant it kept itself, too. If they didn’t have so much storage space, she’d have to make smaller batches of things, making production more expensive—meaning she’d either have to increase her prices or have a smaller profit margin. And if they weren’t blessed with such an enormous garden—incredibly well appointed thanks to generations of their family being in a similar line of work—she wouldn’t be able to grow so many flowers, herbs, plants, fruits and vegetables. She wouldn’t be able to keep her lovely bees.

This symbiotic relationship, this blessed feedback loop, was another of the reasons she worked so hard. She loved it, she was good at it—had grown exceptional at it since going full-time four years ago, when she’d been sent home from her job in a local independent travel agency thanks to the effects of the COVID pandemic on the tourism industry. Best of all, she could earn a reasonable living—though some months were better than others—from the comfort of her own home, and keep an eye on Grandma. The latter being something that had gradually grown in necessity over the years, coming to a head when a diagnosis of a lung issue meant that, particularly combined with her age, she was advised to shield as the pandemic took hold in the UK.

Nothing had been the same since. While no longer having to go out to work meant Willow’s contact with other people was minimised, further protecting her vulnerable grandmother from a disease which could easily kill her, it also whipped Willow’s low-level, perfectly natural anxiety about the old lady’s wellbeing into a frenzy. Having never known her father or grandfather—the former because reasons, the latter because he’d passed away before she was born—and having lost her mother at the obscenely young age of two, she had no other relatives, and therefore the idea of losing her grandmother at all, much less to something avoidable, was unthinkable.

While lockdown had come into force in the outside world, an even stricter version had taken place in their house. Willow had begun doing their grocery shopping online. When the deliveries arrived, she’d sanitised or washed every item that passed the threshold before putting it away—and placed items that couldn’t be sanitised or washed into quarantine for a certain amount of time before touching them again, allowing any potential virus on the surface to die off.

As the global death toll increased, her extreme caution tipped into out-and-out obsession. She kept the windows open as much as possible, answered the door wearing a mask, spent hours cleaning and sanitising door handles, light switches, anything that got touched regularly—as well as a bunch of stuff that didn’t.

There was an upside to the constant washing and sanitising—she quickly perfected a recipe for a cream to soothe and moisturise the dry, peeling skin of her hands, which had then become an overnight bestseller and drawn many customers to her little business. To her delight, many of them had stayed.

Willow had kept her over the top behaviour from her grandmother as much as possible. The old lady had enough to worry about given her age and health condition, and that of her friends of a similar age, without adding the burden of Willow’s increasingly fragile mental health to the list.

When the vaccine came along, Willow kept an eagle eye on the rollout, and got straight on the phone to their local doctors’ surgery the moment Grandma became eligible. Thanks to a mixture of luck and persistence, she managed to wangle a home visit, where the kind young GP jabbed both Grandma and Willow, before promising to return when it was time for their second doses. He made good on his promise and, while the rest of the country gradually returned to something approaching normality, the Green household… didn’t.

While Willow was able to relax the tiniest bit knowing Grandma had some help to fight off a deadly virus, she still couldn’t bring herself to increase the risk of either of them catching it. She would never forgive herself if something happened to the old lady, and it was her fault.

She kept on a brave face, hoping her grandmother wouldn’t notice anything amiss, and took solace where she could get it. Fortunately, the garden and her rapidly-growing natural herbal remedy and self-care product business provided just that. Willow had channelled her fear and frustration into her business and now, several years later, she was making and selling everything from charm bags and talismans to honey and jam, and had even ended up with a miniature plant nursery. It kept her busy—too busy, according to Grandma—but it provided the perfect excuse for her to remain with her head in the sand over what had now become full-on agoraphobia, as well as germophobia and a considerable dose of anxiety.

“Okay,” she murmured to herself, casting a critical eye over the assembled ingredients. There weren’t many, when it came to lip balms. The tins, of course, and the home-printed stickers that would go on the lids and bases detailing the product name and list of ingredients. As well as the beeswax, she needed only vegetable oil and essential oils—which in this particular recipe were lavender and vitamin E.

Satisfied she was prepared, she checked the beeswax and found it had melted. She removed it from the heat and turned off the hob. Added the requisite amounts of vegetable oil, lavender and vitamin E before stirring the mixture thoroughly, then started the fiddly and potentially messy job of pouring a small amount into each tiny aluminium tin. Luckily she’d perfected her technique over time and rarely had any spillage these days.

The delicious scents permeated the air, and she hummed happily as she moved carefully and rhythmically along the rows of tins. She might have her issues, but how many people could genuinely say they enjoyed their job as much as she did? She took a bunch of ingredients—many of which she’d grown and harvested herself—mixed them together and made products which other people wanted to give her money for. How amazing was that?

The fact it allowed her to stay safely in the home she loved, with the grandmother she loved, was the cherry on the cake.

She was just eking the last viscous blobs of liquid into the final tin—which didn’t contain quite enough to put on sale, so she’d throw it in as a freebie with the next large order that came in—when her phone trilled the familiar chime of the doorbell alert. She put the now-empty bowl down and fished the device from her back pocket, then swiped and tapped to open the relevant app. As soon as she saw who was at the door, she smiled, then selected the button on the screen to speak. “Be right there, Stacey!”

Stacey was one of their handful of regular posties. One of them swung by every weekday—and the occasional Saturday if needed—to collect the parcels she’d already packaged and labelled up, ready to go into Royal Mail’s system and start winging their way to her customers. She saw regular complaints about Royal Mail online and in the press, but the people she dealt with were brilliant—and only very occasionally was there an issue with a delivery. The fact they collected, rather than her having to go out to drop her orders off was a huge plus point, too.

Willow dashed into the small room where she kept her outgoing orders, grabbed the mail sack filled with packets and parcels, and headed for the front door.

She opened up with a smile. “Hiya, Stacey. How’s tricks?”

They executed a neat swap—Stacey taking the laden sack and passing Willow a replacement empty one—as she mirrored the smile and responded, “Hi, Willow. Good, thanks. What about you? Busy?”

“You know me, I’m always busy. Thank goodness.” She indicated the sack Stacey now held with a nervous chuckle.

“And you being busy helps keep me busy, so it’s all good. Speaking of which, better get on—they’ve got me going here, there and everywhere today. See you soon.”

“Thanks, Stacey. Drive safe!” She waved as the other woman, in her iconic red T-shirt paired with grey shorts and black trainers, returned to the matching red van on the other side of her front garden gate.