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filled a bowl with mint choc chip, Cam kissed Katie on top of her head. ‘I’ll leave you two with your cauldron.’
    ‘Funny,’ Katie said.
    After Cam had gone upstairs and Katie and Gwen had bowls of ice cream and spoons, the odd atmosphere dispersed enough for Katie to relax.
    ‘What do you want to do this week?’ Gwen already had a notebook open on the table. ‘Have you been practising the heart’s ease?’
    Katie wrinkled her nose. No matter how hard she tried, she didn’t seem able to make the remedies. She didn’t seem to be cut out to be a healer like Gwen, which wouldn’t be so bad if only she knew she was cut out for something.
    ‘You’ve got to practise,’ Gwen said. ‘You can’t do this stuff halfway. All or nothing.’
    ‘I know,’ Katie said. She sat down and tried to follow the preparation for Mr Byres’s foot cream. The finished product was the right colour but it was runny where it should be gloopy. Gwen peered at it. ‘I have literally no idea why that didn’t work.’
    ‘I’m useless,’ Katie said, throwing herself backwards in her chair.
    ‘No, you’re not.’ Gwen stretched. ‘Maybe your heart isn’t really in it. Do you want to try something else or call it a night?’
    Katie sat forward. Incensed. ‘But my heart is in it. I promise. I’m trying really hard.’
    ‘I know you’re trying, honeybunch,’ Gwen said. She scooped the failed remedy into a plastic bag and tied the top. ‘But sometimes trying isn’t enough.’
    ‘That’s depressing.’
    ‘Sorry,’ Gwen said. She threw the plastic bag into the bin. ‘It needn’t be. If you want this badly enough then you won’t give up, anyway, and if you don’t want it badly enough then you’ll stop trying and find the thing you really want to be doing and that can only be a good thing.’
    ‘You don’t think I should be doing this?’ There it was, the thought she’d been avoiding. If she wasn’t going to come into a power, a gift, and she was useless at the herbal stuff, then she had no place. No purpose. Katie saw the future closing down like a thick forest growing over a path.
    ‘I have no idea what you should be doing,’ Gwen said, her face a perfect blank.
    ‘I don’t believe you,’ Katie said. Being around a wise woman was hard work. You had the feeling that they knew more than they were saying, and it was hard not to resent that. Sometimes, just sometimes, Katie could see why people were wary of her family.
    ‘Look,’ Gwen put the kettle on, then turned to face Katie. ‘I had the weight of expectation from my mother. She trained me, she told me every day that my destiny was to be just like her and I ran away from that. I’m not going to make the same mistake and tell you what you should be doing with your life. You can’t fix things for other people. It doesn’t work that way.’
    ‘You fix things for people all the time,’ Katie said. ‘That’s why they come to you.’
    ‘That’s different. You can’t tell people what to do with their lives.’
    ‘But Gran was right, wasn’t she? You stopped running and came back and everything got better. You and Cam got together and you have a home and a life and you’re happy. I don’t want to run away.’
    Gwen smiled but she looked sad. ‘It’s not a map. You can’t follow my footsteps, you have to make your own path, make your own decisions. Maybe you should leave town, travel a bit, see the world.’
    Katie felt as if she was going to cry. ‘Why are you pushing me away?’
    ‘I’m not. I swear I’m not. I just want you to be happy.’
    ‘You don’t think I can do it.’ Katie knew that she sounded like a child and her voice wasn’t helping any, cracking like that and making her sound pitiful and teary, but she couldn’t help it.
    ‘It’s not that. I just think that you’ve been pushing on this particular door for a long time and that maybe it’s time to try another one.’
    ‘Fine, point taken,’ Katie said. She stood up and