Bringing day to night
Light to dark
Always it rises
THE RISING SUN
ANON
Winners of the St Jude’s WI wine-making competition, as judged by Florence Carter of the Daily Trumpet, were as follows.
1st Mrs Marjory Isherwood: (full-bodied and nutty)
2nd Miss Delia Scrimshaw: (mature and fruity)
3rd Mrs Nancy Sutton: (big, beefy and fleshy) Mrs Sandra Timms: (tart, but should improve if laid down for a month) was awarded the runner’s up rosette.
Chapter 17
7 September
Laurie lifted her fist to knock on the cyclamen-pink front door and then pulled it back quickly before it connected. This really was a bit drastic and desperate, she knew, driving all the way over to Leeds to visit a psychic, especially as she would be paying a hundred and fifty pounds to jump the queue. She rapped quickly before she had the chance to think about it, reason herself out of it. Within the minute the door was answered by a small, wide woman wearing a floaty kaftan, as pink as her door, her lipstick and her eyeshadow.
‘Come in, lovey,’ said Pat Morrison, psychic extraordinaire. ‘Take a seat in here for five minutes while I finish with my client.’ She led Laurie into a cosy sitting room that smelled strongly of strawberries. The room had pink walls and a pink suite and was the lounge equivalent of a womb.
‘Now, just hold this until I come in and fetch you,’ said Pat, placing a small but weighty crystal ball into Laurie’s hand. ‘And also’ – she put a tub of objects down on the coffee table in front of Laurie – ‘pick something out of here. The item that draws itself to you the most. Okay, lovey?’ She looked nothing like Vera Duckworth but sounded exactly like her, it was most odd.
Pat left Laurie alone then. Laurie tried not to listen to the muted voices filtering through the wall and concentrated on infusing the ball with her energies. With her right hand, she rifled through the motley selection of things in the tub: a lipstick, a brooch with the word ‘Mother’ on it, a baby’s bootee, a golf tee, a spent match, a pen, a condom in a packet, a menu . . . For some reason, Laurie was most drawn to the spent match so that’s what she went with. Too many of the items gave telling clues; she’d make Pat Morrison work to find out why she was here. She wondered if the psychic would deduce from her choice that she felt redundant, which wouldn’t be correct. Then she’d know that Pat Morrison was a fake.
It was nearer ten minutes when Laurie heard a door being opened, voices in the hallway: ‘Thank you, thank you so much, Mrs Morrison,’ from a man, one who sounded reassured. ‘Bye, lovey. You take care now,’ from Pat. The front door opened and closed and then Pat came into the womb-room.
‘Ready for you, now, lovey,’ said Pat. ‘Bring your object of choice and the crystal and come with me, please, then we can get started.’
Laurie jumped to her feet. She was a mix of curiosity, apprehension and excitement as she moved into a large sitting room, also pink, which didn’t surprise her at all. The air was thick with a pleasant scent of cherries drifting from a lit trio of pink candles on the table between Pat’s squashy armchair and Laurie’s sofa.
Pat smiled and held out her hand for the crystal ball. Laurie was temporarily fascinated by the length of her nails (pink, of course). She could have picked up a small child in them and carried it off.
‘The way I work is that I feel your energy, which you have sunk into this crystal ball by holding it, lovey,’ said Pat. ‘It acts like a magnet, drawing your essence in.’ She placed her other hand over it so it was completely covered, took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Pat Morrison had been a psychic for a year. She’d been advertising herself and working as one for many years, but really she’d been expertly insightful, gifted at reading people – she was her master-con-man father’s daughter. Then Pat had an unfortunate accident at the coming-out-of-jail party of her nephew, when she tripped on the dance floor doing the Birdie Song and banged her head hard enough to knock her out for a few minutes. From that moment on, Pat had never been quite the same. She hadn’t lost any of her intuitive abilities, in fact they had been added to. Now when she was reading people, pictures came into her head that were unbidden and unexplained. And they were right on the money. It was as if that bonk had unlocked a room in her brain where second sight really was alive and kicking. In conjunction with her mastery of body language, Pat’s predictions were more attuned with every passing day. So her prices went up. Ironically, she couldn’t have foreseen that spot of luck.
‘I’m seeing loss,’ said Pat eventually, opening her eyes. That information came from the old steady reliable place in her head. It covered a multitude of scenarios. Rarely did people come to see her when all in their gardens was lovely.
The sceptical part of Laurie was prepared to give away as little as possible by way of facial expressions or spoken word. She forced herself to stay blank, still.
‘You’re searching for answers,’ said Pat, aware that this piece of information had come from the new, strange place. She felt that through the crystal: a restlessness born from looking for something that refused to be found. An image appeared, sharpening like a developing photograph.
‘A maze,’ she said. ‘You’ve come to a dead end on what you’re looking for, lovey, so you need to try a different way. The answer is there in the middle’ – she drew a circle in the air with her nail, stabbed the centre of it – ‘. . . it’s right there. I can see it but it’s all wrapped up in fog’ – Laurie made a small involuntary noise in her throat – ‘so I don’t know what it is.’ Pat squeezed the ball again. Sadness, she could both feel it and see it etched into the woman’s skin around the eyes.
‘Someone you love has left you . . .’ Pat felt the warmth from the crystal. Since the accident she had realised that the ball felt cooler when someone’s heart was smashed by a living soul, death brought a heat. ‘. . . Left you permanently. Someone you love died.’ Another image, lit for a second as if by the flashbulb of a camera. ‘I’m seeing a crowd, noise, sirens, blue lights. I’m seeing . . .’ It was too ridiculous to say, but all the same she would. She shook her head, grimaced. ‘Sorry if this sounds odd, lovey, but I’m seeing a carrier bag full of food.’
Laurie’s hand shot up to her mouth and she gasped. She couldn’t help it.
Bloody hell, thought Pat. She wished she’d had that bang on the head years ago.
‘He was going to tell me something on the night he died, but I don’t know what it was. I hope I do, but . . .’ Laurie began, then realised she was giving up clues. She was, and Pat leapt on the word ‘hope’ that stood out from her sentence as if painted with a massive highlighter pen.
‘You’re right, he was going to tell you something, lovey,’ said Pat and smiled. She concentrated, wasn’t sure if those church bells came from her perception or the magic brain room. ‘I can see a ring. I can see a wedding . . .’
She noticed the corners of Laurie’s mouth twitch up. Yep – spot on with that one.
‘And a birthday,’ said Pat. ‘Did he pass on your birthday?’