Chapter Fourteen
‘That’s the death card.’ The woman in front of me is staring down at what she’s just turned over.
‘I’VE ALREADY HAD MY DEATH QUOTA, THANK YOU.’ I can’t help that I’m shouting. No more death – please no more death.
‘No, no,’ she says kindly. ‘That card just means that one phase of your life is over, and a new one is beginning.’
Daniel.
I glance up at Myfanwy, who looks unbearably smug. I still can’t believe she managed to find a tarot reader in Madeira.
We’ve been here for four days now, and so far it’s been exactly the lovely, relaxing trip I so badly needed. We’ve spent our days wandering around the little local town, relaxing by our hotel pool, and getting drunk on the island’s namesake wine. Yesterday we took a two-hour boat trip to Porto Santo to visit the most gorgeous of beaches, where Myfanwy and Toni both got tanned, and I burnt my feet and knees.
OK, so the weather hasn’t been totally ideal. It’s been around 20 degrees every day, which would be fine by me – it is October now, after all – but apparently, back home, they’re having an unseasonable heatwave.
We’re all raging about it.
Today, Myfanwy’s taken the lead, and after a long lunch at the hotel, we headed to Funchal, where we met up with this woman down by the lido.
She’s watching me intently now as she prepares to turn over another card. I’m supposed to be focusing on my questions, what I want out of this reading, but there’s a bird that keeps circling overhead and I’m convinced it’s about to divebomb our whole group. Or maybe poop on us.
‘This is a conduit for your innermost thoughts,’ she reminds me now. ‘There is no need to be nervous. You have to be open.’ She turns over another card, from a different pile this time. ‘Ah, you have the Here and Now card.’ She points to the small images. ‘There’s an open door.’ She looks at me. ‘I feel that you are caught between the past and the future. One is not better than the other, but you’re struggling to fully enjoy your life in the here and now. If you obsess over what’s happened or what’s to come, you can never live in the moment. I see you are stuck in your sadness; you must let go of what’s happened and what might happen.’
I feel a lump in my throat.
‘I’ll try,’ I whisper, trying not to cry.
‘Amazing things are coming for you,’ she tells me in a low voice. ‘But only when they’re meant to happen. There is an ebb and flow, and if you’re in a low point, there’s no point trying to rush through it. Don’t push. Don’t let expectations or fear make you take the wrong path.’
The wrong path.
I picture Daniel, standing there before me at the wake a few weeks ago. I re-feel all those weird bubbly feelings I felt seeing him. For the first full minute, neither of us said a word. We just stared at each other.
I couldn’t really understand how he was there. I wondered if it was a coincidence – if he’d wandered into that very pub, into that very wake, at random, and simply happened into me.
He eventually spoke.
‘I had to come,’ he’d said, nerves jangling in his voice. ‘I’m so sorry about Diane.’
He reached out for me then and I fell into his arms, crying for the first time that day. I hadn’t cried as they brought in the coffin, I hadn’t cried during the service, I hadn’t cried during Celeste’s eulogy, but in that moment outside the pub loos, everything hit me all at once. All that loss and all that sadness. I had sunk into his familiar arms, smelling his familiar smell, and sobbed for what felt like a really long time.
When we at last drew apart, I saw him properly: the man I’d loved, who had left me so abruptly and so horribly, but I couldn’t feel any anger.
‘Thanks for coming,’ I’d said, wiping my face, embarrassed.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t make it to the service,’ he said then, his eyes darting side to side. I understood immediately that he was trying to avoid my family – Celeste, probably, in particular. It wasn’t a coincidence that he’d found me here by the loos, away from everyone else.
‘Can we talk…’ I began and he shook his head.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t stay.’ He’d hopped from foot to foot, nervous energy bouncing off him. Full of beans, even on the darkest of days. ‘I have, er, work,’ he added and I recognized his excuse voice.
‘Oh,’ I nodded, hope draining out of me. He hadn’t come to beg me to take him back. He hadn’t even come to apologize.
Why had he come?
The woman before me continues speaking now, telling me about cards and cups, but I struggle to focus, thinking of Daniel and that bird above, closer now, ready to poo.
She’s right, I feel so stuck. I know I shouldn’t be obsessing over what has happened or what might happen, but how do you do that? How do you let go? How do you not fear what’s to come? Especially when it feels like it’s been laid out for me my whole life.
Minutes later, as we pay the woman and walk away, I turn back. ‘Do you have any specific predictions for me?’ I ask desperately. ‘Do you have, like, six predictions or something?’
From her seat, the woman looks at me quizzically.
‘That’s not how it works!’ Myfanwy hisses. ‘Thanks again, Benediata!’ she calls, hurrying me away.
We head back to the hotel in silence, each of us thinking about our own readings.
I have to admit, it was an interesting experience. She was interesting, the cards were interesting. And I believed in what she said. Or I believed that she believed in it. But god, how are you supposed to know?
‘Did it help you feel any better about things?’ Toni asks nicely.
I look out across the water as we walk.
‘I don’t know,’ I tell her honestly, wondering to myself when the life-changing part of this trip is supposed to happen. And that’s when the bird poos on me at last.
Fair enough, I think, and keep walking.