nature, their way of dematerializing and leaving bits of themselves behind, or entangling themselves with your inner organs. She talked about her sharp earsight and voices she heard in the wall. About the deads’ propensity to fib and confabulate. Their selfish, trivial outlook. Their general cluelessness.
Colette was not satisfied. She rubbed her eyes; she rubbed her forehead. She stopped and glared, when she saw Alison smiling at her sympathetically. “Why? Why are you smiling?”
“My friend Cara would say, you’re opening your third eye.”
Colette pointed to the space between her brows. “There is no eye. It’s bone.”
“Brain behind it, I hope.”
Colette said angrily, “It’s not that I don’t believe in you. Well I do. I have to believe in what you do, because I see you doing it, I see and hear you, but how
“Oh, those,” Al said. “Are you sure we have them anymore? I think it’s a bit of a free-for-all these days.”
They had arranged, on the Saturday of the princess’s funeral, to do an evening event in the Midlands, a major fayre in an area where psychic fayres were just establishing themselves. Mandy Coughlan said on the phone to Al, “It would be a shame to cancel, sweetie. You can take a sick bag in the car if you’re still feeling queasy. Because you know if you pull out they’ll charge you full price for the stall, and some amateur from up the M6 will be straight in there, quicksticks. So if you’re feeling up to it? Good girl. Do you think Mrs. Etchells is going?”
“Oh yes. She loved Diana. She’ll be expecting a contact.”
“Joys of motherhood,” Mandy said. “Of course. Perhaps Di will come through and let her know if she was up the duff. But how will Mrs. Etchells get to Nottingham? Will there be trains, or will they be cancelled out of respect? You’re not far away, maybe you could give her a lift.”
Al dropped her voice. “I’m not being professionally divisive, Mandy, but there are certain issues around Mrs. Etchells—undercutting on tarot readings, slashing prices without prior consultation, trying to lure other people’s clients—Colette heard her doing it.”
“Oh yes. This person Colette. Whoever is she, Al? Where did you find her? Is she psychic?”
“God, no. She’s a client. And before that she was a client of yours.”
“Really? When did we meet?”
“Last year sometime. She came down to Hove with some cuff links. She was trying to find out who her father was.”
“And who was he?”
“Her uncle.”
“Oh, one of those. I can’t put a face to her.” Mandy sounded impatient. “So is she mad with me, or something?”
“No. I don’t think so. Though she is quite sceptical. In patches.”
Al said her polite goodbyes. She put the phone down and stood looking at it. Did I do the right thing, when I took on Colette? Mandy didn’t seem keen. Have I been impulsive, and is it an impulse I will regret? She almost called Mandy back, to seek further advice. Mandy knows what’s what, she’s been through the mill: thrown out a lover at midnight and his whole troop after him, some dead druid who’d moved in after the bloke, and a whole bunch of Celtic spirits more used to life in a cave than life in Hove. Out they go with their bloody cauldrons and their spears, Lug and Trog and Glug; and out goes Psychic Simon with his rotting Y-fronts dropped out of a first-floor window, his Morfesa the Great Teacher statue chucked in the gutter with its wand snapped off, and his last quarter’s invoice file tossed like a Frisbee in the direction of the sea: and several unbanked cheques rendered illegible and useless, speared by Mandy’s stiletto heel.
That was how it usually went, when you were unguarded enough to get into a relationship with a colleague. It wasn’t a question of personal compatibility between the two of you; it was a question of the baggage you trailed, your entourage, whether they’d fight and lay waste to each other, thrashing with their vestigial limbs and snapping with their stumps of teeth. Al’s hand moved to the phone and away again; she didn’t want Colette to overhear, so she talked to Mandy in her mind.
I know it’s bad when you go out with someone in our line, but some people say it’s worse to get into a thing with a punter—
A thing?
Not a thing, not a sex thing. But a relationship, you can’t deny that. If Colette’s going to live with you, it’s a relationship. God knows you need somebody to talk to, but—
But how can you talk to the trade?
Yes, that’s the trouble, isn’t it? How can they understand what you go through? How can they understand anything? You try to explain, but the more you try the less you succeed.
They haven’t got the language, have they? Don’t tell me, sweetheart. They haven’t got the range.
You say something perfectly obvious and they look at you as if you’re mad. You tell them again, but by then it sounds mad to you. You lose your confidence, if you have to keep going over and over it.
And yet you’re paying the rent, mortgage, whatever. It’s fine as long as everything’s humming along sweetly, but the first cross word you have, they start casting it up, throwing it in your face—Oh, you’re taking advantage of me because you’ve got all these people I can’t see, how do you know this stuff about me, you’re opening my mail—I mean, why should you need to open their bloody mail? As if you can’t see straight through to what they are. I tell you, Al, I went out with a punter once. I let him move in and it was murder. I saw within the week he was just trying to use me. Fill in my pools coupon. Pick me something at Plumpton.
Yes, I’ve explained it to Col, I told her straight off, I’m no good for lottery numbers.
And what did she say?
I think she could understand it. I mean, she’s a numerate woman. I think she understands the limitations.
