Chapter Three The Wrong Road
Chapter Three
The Wrong Road
‘A medium?’
‘Yes.’
‘That sounds a little . . . out there, Charlie, I’m not going to lie.’
‘You think? Zitana uses her skills to help a great deal of people with their issues.’
‘By reading tea leaves, and telling you how much your great-great-grandmother approves of your new haircut?’
My eyes narrow. ‘Zitana isn’t like that.’
Annie crosses her arms. ‘Isn’t she?’
‘No.’
My girlfriend gives me a quizzical look. ‘Didn’t you arrange that tour for her? I remember you showing me pictures, not long after we got together?’
‘I did, yep.’
‘Wasn’t it called “Zitana Joins with the Spirits”?’
‘It was.’
Annie expression changes from quizzical to extremely doubtful.
I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen that look on her face in relation to me, and it causes something cold and rather horrible to bloom into life inside my chest.
She picks at a thread coming out of her duvet. ‘I think it might be better if you saw a doctor, Charlie. Don’t you?’
I shake my head vociferously. ‘No, I don’t. Nothing is really that wrong with me . . . honestly. I’m just not sleeping that well, for some reason. Zitana does this kind of thing all the time. She can help me. It’s only one session. I want to see how it goes.’
Annie looks away from me. ‘I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do.’
Oh God. I hate seeing Annie like this. But what can I do?
I need to do things my way, and I just can’t let her think I’m so far gone that I need proper, professional help from a man in a white coat.
I’m just not sleeping. That’s all. And someone like Zitana can help with that.
Without the need for me to have anything go on my medical record, or have my girlfriend thinking there’s something seriously wrong with me.
‘It’s fine!’ I insist again. ‘I know Zitana well. And I know how to work with my clients. The free holiday I managed to get from Europe Unpacked for Conrad and Eloise certainly worked out well, didn’t it?’
I say this with no small degree of pride.
The damage I did to my relationship with the influencers was mended quite effectively, thanks to the week in Santorini I scored for them from the independent travel firm I worked with a couple of years ago.
Both parties got something out of it, and I got to apologise again for my grotesque error.
I did it all in the space of a week. Even with little to no sleep.
It’s not helped the fact that the steady influx of new clients I used to have has completely dried up, thanks to all those ever so lovely social media posts about my huge cock-up – but at least I’ve mended fences with the people at the centre of it. That must count for something.
‘That’s a very different thing, Charlie,’ Annie says. ‘You sorting things out with the Instagram nutcases is not the same as dealing with your own health issues.’ There’s now an adamant tone to Annie’s voice I’ve not heard before.
‘But I don’t have any health issues!’ I say in a voice that sounds falsely cheery, and genuinely brittle.
Annie gives me a look that cuts right through this facade. She’s very good at that kind of thing, I’m learning. Annie is so damned perceptive about me that I find it slightly scary.
She’s doubting me. Doubting whether I know what I’m doing or not.
I can’t have that. I can’t have her thinking I’m not
in control
doing something positive and useful.
‘Look, why don’t you come with me?’ I say. ‘You can see how useful the session is, and you can make sure I’m honest with Zitana about everything. You can see what happens, so I can’t pretend everything’s okay, if it isn’t.’
Annie thinks about this for a moment. ‘Alright, Charlie. That sounds like a good compromise. I’ll come with you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But if it doesn’t work . . . If Madame Tea Leaves is as big a crank as I think she’s going to be, then it’s off to the doctor with you, okay?’
‘Okay,’ I agree . . . quite hesitantly. There’s that adamance again.
I have some degree of confidence in Zitana’s skills – but have to confess that when I did arrange and promote her tour, I got a very good insight into what she does for a living.
And there’s a lot of oogie woogie going on.
Bagfuls of oogie woogie. A mountain of the stuff.
But on her website there are testimonials from many very happy people, who appear to have turned their lives around thanks to Zitana’s assistance, so that must stand for something, right?
Let the poor overworked doctors deal with people with actual, real problems. Folks like me, who just need to find out why they can’t sleep properly and have song lyrics stuck in their head, can easily be helped by a woman who speaks to the other side.
I mean . . . if anyone knows how to get a good rest, it’s dead people, isn’t it?
Dead people are also extremely profitable, it appears, because Zitana lives in a very nice, very large house, on a road that only has houses on one side, and a super view of the countryside on the other.
You know you’re doing well for yourself when you don’t have to look at your bloody neighbours when you stare out of the window.
Zitana holds her personal, face-to-face sessions (you can Zoom with her if you like, for half the price.
Though quite how the spirits are going to help you over a broadband connection is beyond me) in a stylised wooden tent in the garden of her house.
It’s called her ‘Place of Healing and Connection’.
‘Stylised wooden tent?’ Annie scoffs. ‘What you mean is, she works out of a bloody wigwam, Charlie.’
‘I’m sure she doesn’t call it that,’ I protest.
‘She can call it what she likes. I know a wigwam when I see one’ – she points towards the thing as we pull up onto Zitana’s drive – ‘and that’s a bloody wigwam.’
It’s kind of hard to argue, I have to admit.
The structure is much more than just a bunch of cloth and sticks in the shape of a cone.
It’s made of a very glossy, dark hard wood, and has several windows around the sides of it.
It looks like the type of executive office that people with money love to slap down at the back of their gardens to make it feel like they actually have to go out to work in the morning.
Except the fact that it is, undeniably, wigwam-shaped. It even has the sticky-up bits of wood appearing from out the top – though whether they are structural or purely decorative is anyone’s guess.
The wigwam is also covered in several bright illustrations of dream catchers.
There’s a few zodiac signs stuck on there too.
And for some reason, a surprised goat. I guess I’d be quite surprised if I was a goat that had been drawn next to a bunch of oogie woogie stuff for no apparent reason, so I can’t really blame it.
‘I can’t believe we’re actually doing this in a wigwam,’ Annie says, staring at it. ‘Sorry, I mean . . . the “Place of Healing and Connection”.’
‘Yep. It’ll be great,’ I reply firmly. ‘Her reviews are excellent.’
‘Are they from experts in the wigwam field? Because I honestly can’t see how anyone in their right mind could give her five stars otherwise.’
I sigh. ‘Please just give it a chance.’
Annie can see the look of slight desperation on my face that I’m trying very hard to hide.
She reaches out and pats my hand, which is still resting on the gear stick. ‘Okay. Sorry. Let’s go and find out if this woman can help you or not.’
‘Thank you.’
Annie leans over and kisses me lightly, which feels extraordinarily nice. A tension I didn’t know I had between my shoulder blades loosens a little. The world is a much better place after Annie kisses me. It’s like a magic trick.
Sadly, the tension returns in an instant when my phone rings.
We both jump.
Ring ring.
‘Bloody hell,’ I mutter, and pull the damned thing out of my pocket. I press the button to let the call go to my answer service.
‘You’re not going to answer it?’ Annie asks. ‘It could be work?’
‘No,’ I reply, a pulse of pain spreading across my left eye. ‘Not the right time at all. It’ll keep.’
She nods and squeezes my shoulder sympathetically.
‘Let’s go, shall we?’ I say, ramming the phone back into my jeans.
We both climb out of the car, and then make our way along a winding concrete path that snakes its way towards the wigwam. At the edges of the path are strategically placed tiny statues of what look like fairies. One is doing something with a trumpet that I’m not sure is entirely legal.
As we approach the wigwam, a series of lights around the entrance start to emit a rather lovely warm glow.
Ah, yes. Zitana does like her light shows. I remember that from the tour.
She would have appreciated the display of pink at Conrad and Eloise’s house – even if they bloody didn’t.
‘Oooooh,’ Annie moans in a spooky fashion, waggling her fingers around.
I give her a look.
From the door set into the side of the wigwam, a shape appears.
Zitana has not changed much from the last time I saw her, three or so years ago. She’s still a statuesque woman, whose sharp features are unmistakable, even in this relative low light.
The outfit hasn’t changed much, either.
It would be tempting to expect some sort of riff on a Gypsy fortune teller, but that would expose some prejudices and misconceptions that I don’t have time to go into here.
No.
Zitana is dressed in an elegant, but very formal purple suit. The white shirt underneath has many, many frills. The black pointed high heels are shined to the point of unreasonableness, and her hair is scraped back into a high ponytail, giving her a somewhat austere expression.
Look, there’s no getting around it. She looks like Prince.
Or Symbol. Or whatever the poor chap’s name was before he died.
I’m about to have my fortune told – and possibly my issues laid bare – by someone who looks more like they should be telling everyone about how she’s going to party like it’s 1999.
I have no idea whether the homage is deliberate or not, but I never quite felt comfortable enough with Zitana to ask.