Midsummer Magic. Julia Williams
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For Dot with love and gratitude
‘You want to know how it’s done? I can’t tell you that. Shh, or you’ll spoil the magic.’
Freddie Puck: The Art of Illusion
Table of Contents
Prologue
1982: Tatiana
Halloween
Part One: There May I Marry Thee
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
1983: Tatiana
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
1986: Tatiana
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
1988: Tatiana
Part Two: Ill Met by Moonlight
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
1992: Bron
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
1995: Bron
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
1998: Bron
Part Three: The Course of True Love
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
2002: Tatiana
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
2007: Tatiana
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
2012: Tatiana
Part Four: And All is Mended
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Now: Bron
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Now: Bron
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Now: Bron and Tatiana
Epilogue: Three years later
Acknowledgements
Afterword
‘Thou speakest aright:
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile’
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II, Scene 1
‘“Lord what fools these mortals be …” You could say that’s my mantra. It’s easy to hypnotise the gullible, but I’ve managed to hypnotise sceptics too. I like to think Shakespeare knew a thing or two about hypnotism.’
Freddie Puck interviewed in The Sun, June 1982
‘You’re late,’ Freddie Puck was standing languidly by the stage door, as Tatiana came flying down the street straight from dinner with her agent, Susan Peasebottom, where she’d both eaten and drunk more then she should have. He was smoking a cigarette, and as usual, looked calm and in control. She hated the way he always did that; she always felt ill at ease around Freddie, as if he knew a secret about her that she did not. But then that was part of what he did, play mind games on people to screw them up.
‘You’re lucky I’m here at all,’ she muttered. After the offer Susan had put to her this evening, she had been very tempted not to turn up.
Freddie looked her up and down quizzically – honestly, sometimes she felt like she was just a lump of meat to him.
‘You done something to your hair?’
Tatiana blushed. She wasn’t sure about her new haircut, a drastic departure from the Farrah look she’d been sporting for the last couple of years. Her hairdresser, Julie, had produced an article from an American mag which pronounced that long flickbacks were out, short was in, and hair for some reason should be red. So Tatiana had been persuaded to have it dyed, trimmed and hacked, so now she had a longish piece at the back, but the hair at the top was cut short and swept back in waves – or it had done when she’d come out of the salon this afternoon. After a couple of hours in a smoky dive with Susan Peasebottom, followed by an undignified race up the road, Tatiana felt sure her hair wasn’t quite the crowning glory the article had promised.
‘Yes,’ she mumbled, almost wishing he hadn’t noticed.
‘Nice,’ said Freddie, nonchalantly flicking out his ash as she walked past him into the theatre, and as usual she had no way of knowing whether he really meant it, or whether he was just kidding her.
‘Tati, darling, love the hair!’ Damn. Bron came out of his dressing room (it still irked her that he had his own dressing room, while she had to share) and gave her a hug. ‘How was dinner?’
‘Great,’