Carla inched back. “What is it?”
Myrtle winced and rubbed her own elbow. “You had an accident while you were traveling, a couple of decades ago. I can see you lying on the ground with people looking down at you. You hurt your arm.”
A hazy picture began to form for Carla, of staring up at the blue sky, unable to move because of pain searing through her body. She’d fallen from a horse and broken her arm while riding in Spain.
But how could Myrtle possibly know about this?
“You met a man of great importance to you, during that time,” Myrtle continued. “You’re destined to be reunited and he holds the key to your true happiness.”
Carla wrinkled her nose in disbelief. During her gap year from university, she’d visited several places, including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Sardinia, Majorca, Portugal and Paris, and had enjoyed a few fleeting romances along the way. None of the men she’d dated had been particularly important to her. “I met my fiancé before then,” she corrected.
Myrtle shook her head, her tasseled earrings swinging. “You met someone very special to you while traveling, a once-in-a-lifetime connection.” She paused for effect. “It’s not Tom.”
Carla’s pulse rocketed and she swept a hand under the table, trying to grab hold of her handbag. “Thanks for your...insight. I think my gran’s next to see you.”
“There’s more,” Myrtle said. “I can see more things...”
But Carla stood up abruptly, almost knocking her chair over. More images were filtering back to her from her accident and she headed blindly toward the door.
“You met a man you’ll love forever during your gap year. You didn’t return to finish university.” Myrtle’s voice followed her. “He’s still overseas, waiting for you. He’ll help to end your family curse...”
Carla stumbled into the waiting area, trying to feign composure as her gran, sister and aunts looked up at her expectantly. She fumbled to stop her phone from recording.
“Told you she was amazing,” Jess said. “What did she tell you?”
Lucinda craned her neck. “Um, are you okay, honey? You look a little washy.”
Carla took a deep breath and held the air in her lungs. She counted to ten to compose herself and brushed an imaginary speck of fluff off her trousers. There was no way she was going to give credence to anything Myrtle had told her, especially because Jess, Lucinda, Mimi and Evelyn would hang on to every word. They might pass the story along a chain of relations, where it could twist and take on a new narrative.
“Nothing very exciting.” Carla plastered on a smile, trying not to think of the various old flames she’d met while traveling. “Myrtle just told me what I already know. Tom’s my soulmate, we’re getting married soon, and we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together.”
Four
Predictions
For the rest of her evening in Silverpool, Carla felt like her pendant chain was fastened too tightly around her neck, making it hard for her to breathe. She couldn’t focus on mixing cocktails—the next activity Jess had planned for the evening. The guy serving them had a shaved head and sleeve tattoos that made his arms look embroidered. He referred to himself as a mixologist.
“I’ve studied and practiced skills for mixing and creating drinks,” he said as he poured spirits and fruit juices into a silver container and shook it with great flourish. He explained how cocktails are made up of three elements: the core base spirit, the balance of sugar and then bitters used for seasoning.
Carla would usually have loved learning about the chemical element of the activity. She liked knowing how things were constructed, and as a child had been known to dismantle radios to see how they worked. Now her thoughts couldn’t settle. One moment they were back in Myrtle’s hut, with the fortune teller’s violet eyes piercing into her soul. The next, she desperately wanted to see Tom, so he could reassure her the predictions were utterly nonsensical. Of course Carla hadn’t met her perfect match while traveling during her gap year. It was a ridiculous, laughable claim, and their Logical Love statistics proved it.
Carla pictured Tom at home with his scalpel, sheets of paper and card, carefully cutting out and assembling his board games, and she chanted their percentage match in her head, Eighty-four, eighty-four. Myrtle must have gathered information about her prior to the reading and invented the rest. It made her feel like a little girl again, standing in front of the eerie Vadim.
The rest of her family were enjoying themselves. Evelyn had treated herself to a raspberry mojito, which gave her cheeks a bubblegum-pink flush, and Jess flirted with the mixologist, offering to read his palm. Mimi mixed exotic spirits, adding sprigs of rosemary and slices of pineapple, and Lucinda took command of the cocktail shaker. Her wedding ring winked as she poured herself a nonalcoholic margarita.
When Ted had passed away six years ago, Lucinda’s house had been flooded with her friends and family. They huddled together like penguins in harsh weather conditions, bringing her lasagna and herbal tea. They gave Lucinda manicures, ran her bath and combed her hair to help her through the dark days, just as they’d done when Suzette died. They looked through photo albums with her and brought cotton handkerchiefs to mop her tears.
Ted had been a solid presence in all their lives, an amiable, quiet man with ruddy cheeks and a shock of white hair. He kept colored pencils in his jacket pocket and showed Carla how to draw cars and rabbits. He always smiled at Lucinda as if he’d won the top prize at bingo.
Even as a girl, Carla knew she wanted a relationship just like her gran and granddad’s, a caring, warm mutual love that would last for a lifetime.
Her subsequent marriage to Aaron must have been a moment of foolishness, a rush of hormones, or even a bout of rebellion against the superstitions and worries her family had instilled in her. After her divorce, Carla’s skin had felt sore and pitted, like she had deep acne scars that were impossible to get rid of.
Sometime later, she’d watched a TV dating show where a woman had compiled a long list of things she looked for in a partner, and the host had ripped it up, saying it wasn’t realistic. Yet, it had planted an idea in Carla’s head. What if both parties had a list of questions? What if their answers formed a solid ground for dating? A lightbulb had flicked on in her head, and the idea for Logical Love was born. Working on questions, research, probability and branding, then locating premises and more had taken her mind off her failed marriage.
Did Carla herself have an ideal type? She’d say it was someone who was calm, stable, kind, friendly and not Aaron.
Carla gulped down one cocktail after another, not bothering to listen to their names or to identify the flavors. She hoped the alcohol would get rid of Myrtle’s words in her head, but it only made them more vivid.
“I think that’s enough for you, honey,” Lucinda said, taking a glass from her hand. “Try one of my alcohol-free cocktails instead. You don’t want a fuzzy head in the morning. Are you thinking about Myrtle’s reading?”
Carla’s brain was cannonball-heavy in her skull. “No.” She glugged one of her gran’s concoctions instead, not wanting to share that the fortune teller had pretty much condemned her upcoming marriage. “Nothing to declare.”
During the drive back home, her relatives chatted and laughed around her about their own predictions. Carla smiled and tried to seem interested but she’d heard enough about fortunes to last a lifetime. She leaned against Mimi’s shoulder, and her eyelids started to flutter.
The next thing she knew, someone was prodding her knee. Carla hazily opened one eye and found herself alone in the car with her gran, parked on the drive of her bungalow. “Where’s Jess?” she asked with a yawn.
“I dropped her off, along with your aunties. You’ve been having a good old snore.”
“Oops, sorry.”
“You’d better sleep at my place, so I can keep an eye on you.”
Carla agreed this was a good idea. It was already past midnight, too late to call Tom, who was usually in bed before eleven o’clock. He was an early bird rather than a night owl.
He hadn’t messaged her, and she wondered if he was curious about where Jess and Gran had taken her for the evening. He viewed her family with a mix of warmth and amusement, coupled with bewilderment and slight fear.
In comparison, Tom’s folks were rather ordinary. He was an only child from a tiny family and Carla had only spoken to his parents via video calls because they lived in France, where they ran a small hotel. She’d get to meet them in person for the first time just before the wedding.
