He’d also left her a note.
Darling Carla,
You can play this game and pretend you’re on holiday! The stickers haven’t arrived yet, so I look forward to playing it with you properly—on our wedding night. I can’t wait until we’re man and wife.
Love you lots,
Tom x
Carla pressed the note to her chest. It should make her feel better, assuring her that everything was still fantastic between them. She wanted to picture them lying on a four-poster bed together, with white silk curtains billowing as they played his new game. But all she could do was cry.
She left Tom’s place, locked his front door and caught a taxi back to her own apartment. As she took a shower, she let the steaming-hot water run off her body until her skin was tight and numb. Her insides were tangled in a huge knot, and her concerns about her and Tom’s suitability grew bigger and stronger until she felt like retching.
Carla wanted to discuss things with him in person, a conversation not hampered by their work schedules or different time zones. If she waited until he returned, there’d only be a week or so until they married, to see if they really were still suited for each other. And then there was Myrtle’s insistence that a man she’d met two decades ago was actually the one and still waiting for her overseas.
What the hell was she going to do?
Carla called into work to say she was sick, something she’d never done before because she liked to appear invincible. With her stomach cramping, and unable to face Jess, she paced around her apartment, fretting about the couples she might have set on the path to destruction.
She called Arnie at Data Daze and ordered him to take the Logical Love entry form offline immediately and to run a full audit. She requested a list of the questions that had been mixed up during the system update and emailed her team with details on the issue.
Carla messaged Jess and instructed her to personally contact every couple who’d matched (or in fact mismatched) during the twelve-month problem period. Her sister was to say it was a courtesy call, to ascertain if clients were still together and if they were happy. Only then could Carla assess the full magnitude of the situation and decide on a way forward.
Jess replied, Okay.
Carla glared at her sister’s response, having expected an apology, assurances or a promise to keep her updated. Okay did little to stamp out Carla’s fears, about her business, her fiancé and her sister.
The couple of phone conversations she managed to have with Tom, after he’d arrived in America, were hampered by delays on the line and a crackling noise that sounded like cellophane. He gushed about the games he’d discovered, the people he’d met and the initial interest in his work. Whenever he asked Carla how she was, she didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth.
Her travel journal offered a welcome distraction, and she focused on the pages, pasting down corners of photos that had peeled away, looking up restaurants, bars and shops online to see if they still existed. She browsed photos of men she’d previously dated, trying to assess if any of the relationships might have been more significant than she’d originally thought before deciding that they hadn’t been.
She looked up a few of their names on Facebook, too, and it was strange seeing people who’d been a brief part of her life, and how they’d changed over time. Carla felt like a stalker, prying into their personal information, even if they’d displayed it for the world to see. A couple of them no longer lived overseas, so wouldn’t even count in Myrtle’s prediction.
More memories trickled back to her, of eating paella on a beach in Barcelona and admiring Salvador Dalí’s melting-clock paintings. She thought about the men she’d met and also about her previous self, the young woman who’d lost her mother and left England to travel for a year without much of a plan, except to escape her family superstitions for a while. It was like getting back in touch with a long-lost twin.
When Carla had finished her maintenance work on the journal, she tidied her apartment and found a box stashed away in her spare room that contained some of her mum’s belongings. There was a red dress, a straw hat and a worn brown leather luggage tag. They were musty and there were still grains of sand at the bottom of the box.
Carla washed the dress and watched it flap on the clothing line outside. When it was dry, she tried it on, and somehow the color made her feel braver, made her eyes brighter. And when she looked in the mirror, it was like Suzette Carter was staring right back at her, urging her to follow her own instincts.
Eight
Journal
On the third day of her self-imposed solitary confinement, Carla sported pink semicircles under her eyes, a dead giveaway of anxiety and lack of sleep. When her doorbell rang, she sat up from her slump on the sofa, hoping Jess had finally shown up to apologize. A glimpse of her gran’s ample shape through the patterned glass told her otherwise.
“Bacon hot pot,” Lucinda called out as a greeting, offering Carla a casserole dish. “I heard you two girls had a disagreement. Are you really sick, or are you hiding?”
Carla let out a sigh and opened the door farther. “Both.”
They headed to the kitchen, where Lucinda set the dish down on the countertop. “Jess said Myrtle’s reading has made you all nitpicky.”
“It’s not just about the reading,” Carla snapped then regretted it. “Sorry, Gran. There are other things, too.” She threw herself into a chair.
Lucinda surveyed her. “I’ll pop this in the oven, and you can tell me all about it.”
Carla’s stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten properly and she loved her gran’s cooking. There was nothing better than thin layers of potato, onion and bacon, cooked until crispy.
“Now, honey, care to share what’s been going on?” Lucinda asked, eyeing the travel journal that lay open on the dining table.
Myrtle’s predictions had continued to balloon in Carla’s head, on the verge of bursting. She glanced at her phone, knowing a recording of the fortune teller’s words remained there. She really hoped they were hogwash, but was increasingly unsure. “I hoped you wouldn’t ask me...”
Lucinda rolled her eyes. “Fat chance of that.”
Carla reluctantly picked up her phone and cradled it in her hands. She found the voice recording and pressed the play button. “Okay, you wanted to hear this...”
The two women leaned forward and Lucinda cocked her head.
Carla listened to Myrtle’s descriptions of the six tarot cards more intently this time, with the color draining from her cheeks. Each supposedly related to a man from her past.
“Good heavens,” Lucinda said when the recording ended. “That’s some proclamation. I don’t think Myrtle’s trying to irk you, though. She’s been helping people for many years.”
“Help isn’t the word I’d use. Look, I know Mimi loves spinning a yarn about our family curse, but you and Granddad were so perfect together. I thought Tom and I were, too, but now everything feels...foggy. Your marriage proves the jinx is nonsense, so why can’t our family draw a line under it and move on? Jess wants to meet someone special and needs to be sure of her choices, too. I don’t want her living in the shadow of some weird family legend.”
Lucinda smiled tightly. She raised her cup to her lips but didn’t drink. “Ted and I were happy,” she agreed. “But our marriage wasn’t exactly the one I wanted, the one people thought it was...” She let her words drift away.
Carla frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Your granddad and I were a great team. Heck, I even became pregnant on our honeymoon. But after your mum came along, our relationship changed. A lot.”
