Up til now, none of the girls had paid much attention to the Witch’s Tree itself.  Three of them still lived nearby, and they passed the tree and the hill now and then, but none of them had thought much about it.  Until one day Ellen pointed up at it, and told Amy a story she’d overheard at school.

Amy and Ellen had, separately, worked out that they could hide from their parents for a couple of hours every afternoon if they went round a friend’s house and claimed to be doing homework.  If the friend had a big house, then that was better, and if they had parents who worked late, then that was best of all.  For a little while every day, Amy and Ellen felt a little more free.

They were on their way to Amy’s when Ellen told her about the old woman who’d lived on that hill a century ago, who’d been the exact person to go to if you needed a cure for an ailment or a way to get a certain person to notice you.  (Some versions of the story went on to say that the townsfolk had burned her alive and she’d cursed them in revenge, but no-one really believed that.  For one thing, she wasn’t the kind of woman who cursed people, and for another, she wasn’t the kind of woman who let a bunch of stupid townsfolk get the better of her.)  Anyway, the tree had been her main source of ingredients, and, in return, it had absorbed some of her power.  They said that even today, if you needed a cure or a love potion, you could do a lot worse than getting hold of some of those leaves.

Amy listened to Ellen’s story, but she didn’t give it much thought.  Until recently, she hadn’t dared to give much thought to anything, in case she thought the wrong thing and it led to disaster.  But she never seemed to make quite as many mistakes when she was spending the afternoon at one of her friends’ houses.

At around the same time, Orla’s parents suddenly became very disappointed in her.  She used to love reading, they said, but now all she cared about was TV and magazines and pop groups.  She was trying to fit in by pretending to be something she wasn’t, they said.  She was dumbing herself down and turning herself into just another shallow little bimbo, they said.  Orla didn’t say anything.  She was just glad they didn’t know about her and the boy from down the road.

Unity’s parents were also disappointed.  Not in Unity herself, obviously- you can’t be disappointed when you never had any hope to begin with- but in her sister.  The girl had begun slacking off and getting into trouble.  Every so often, they threatened to send her off to her grandma’s, too.

When Ellen complained about the pains in her stomach, her mother told her to stop overreacting.  Some people had real problems.

Unity’s grandmother rewrote her will to leave the house to Unity, who had practically rewired it from top to bottom at this point.  Privately, she gave her granddaughter permission to burn the whole place down after she died if it looked as though her parents were going to get their grubby hands on it.  Unity found, to her surprise, that she was a little offended by the suggestion.  Why would she burn it down after she’d worked so hard on it?

Ellen’s mother told her that she didn’t have time to take her to the doctor’s for every little ache and pain.  Instead, Ellen’s PE teacher called an ambulance when she collapsed in the middle of a netball match.  Amy thought about asking to go with her to the hospital, but then changed her mind and headed to the Witch’s Tree instead.

She knew it was just a stupid story.  She knew she was supposed to be in school.  She knew she was making her parents and teachers worry themselves sick.  She knew she was doing the wrong thing, again, for the millionth time.  But it was the only way she could help.

The Witch’s Tree held its breath when Amy approached, but she didn’t do too much harm.  She broke off a small twig with a couple of leaves hanging off it, then rushed to the hospital.

The nurse on duty probably wouldn’t have agreed to take the twig into Ellen’s room if Amy hadn’t mentioned the Witch’s Tree.  The nurse had grown up in this area, and she’d seen a few things in her time.

As Ellen recovered, her mother complained that the nurses here had no respect for people’s feelings, leaving scraggy little bits of weed on patients’ bedside tables because they were too cheap to buy real flowers.  Ellen, still only half-awake, told her to give it a rest.

(To be continued)