‘We’re very happy to be here,’ Nadia says.
‘Have you been to a clairvoyant before?’
We both shake our heads. Which clearly in itself tells a story because we’re obviously both old enough to have chosen to see one if we wanted to.
‘I have a queue.’ The woman isn’t looking too happy herself; she must prefer a more obviously receptive audience. ‘Let’s begin immediately. Show me your hands.’
We glance at each other and then put our hands out for her.
She bends her head over them and then says, very rapidly, ‘It’s clear that you have only been together for a short time but that you are very much in love with each other. You will remain together for the rest of your lives and will have two children, a boy and a girl. You will live long and happy lives. Thank you.’ She pushes our hands back towards our bodies and looks at the door.
‘Um, thank you.’ Nadia stands up and moves towards the door.
‘Yep, thanks.’ I follow.
Nadia’s giggling almost before we’ve closed the door. Which I’m delighted about, because otherwise things could have felt very awkward right now.
‘I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so thoroughly dismissed by someone,’ she hiccups. ‘And how long were we in there? Thirty seconds?’
‘Complete charlatan.’ I sound like my own father. Nadia just laughs more.
‘Let’s get some food,’ I say. ‘We’ve had a lot of drink on empty stomachs.’ And now I’m sounding like my own mother.
A few minutes later, sitting at a table with plates piled high with food, and glasses of wine, in the corner of a room with a long buffet down one side, Nadia says, ‘IfIwere going to say that I could read fortunes, I wouldn’t make a statement straight out that might be right or wrong. So silly. We might have believed her if she hadn’t told us first that we’realreadya couple.’
She looks up at me and freezes, her hand halfway to her mouth with a mini sausage roll. I freeze too.
‘I don’t meanwewould have believed her,’ she clarifies, and I relax. ‘I meanotherpeoplein our position, i.e. very much not, certainly not, a couple, but in there talking to her together by chance, might have believed her. But they wouldn’t have done because she made the incorrect statement before she said anything else.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, and take a really long slurp of wine, because for a minute there I had a vision of being old with Nadia, and our son and daughter coming to visit us with their kids, and I liked it.
17
NADIA
I chomp my sausage roll hard and hope that I just made a good recovery. My words came out very wrong and I definitely sounded as though I wanted the fortune teller’s words to be true.
I keep on chomping. Very attractively, I’m sure. I kind of do want her words to be true about us. Me and Tom. If I allowed myself to think about it, I imagine I wouldreallywant her words to be true.
But her prediction is not correct, and Tom and I have not spoken for a few weeks and he is clearly still hung up on Lola – which if I’m honest is kind of stupid because she’s clearly as interested in him as he is in me, i.e. not at all, and it’s just not going to happen – but whatever, the point is he’s not interested in me.
I swallow the last bit of my sausage roll and wash it down with quite a lot of wine.
Tom hasn’t said anything for a while. Nor have I.
‘So, poker,’ I say. ‘How much do you play?’
Tom returns from wherever he seems to have drifted off to in his mind – possibly wondering how he’ll get away from the deranged woman he’s with who wants the fortune teller’s words to come true, possibly thinking about Lola, possibly just grappling with a bit of indigestion – who knows – and says, ‘I’m not sure whether I should tell you that.’
‘And why would that be?’ I ask, pleased that he’s brought the conversation back to normality with his answer.
‘Because you are—’ he looks me right in the eye and empties his glass ‘—clearly a poker hustler.’
‘Me?’ I place my hand on my chest and feign hurt. And then laugh.
‘No, no. No laughing. This is a serious matter.’
I’m still laughing but I’m also staring at Tom. Because that seemed, almost… flirty.
