The room was the same. Evelyn was the same. I wasn’t.

‘How can I help you today, Grace?’

I crossed my legs.

‘I’m not sure you can,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I need this anymore, so . . .’ I shrugged. ‘This is my last session. I just came in to say goodbye.’

She didn’t give any reaction – at least none that I could spot.

‘Well,’ she said finally. ‘All the best. It’s been good talking to you.’

I suppose I could’ve just got up and left, but I was a bit curious why she wasn’t curious.

‘You don’t want to know why I’m pulling the pin?’

‘Do you want to tell me?’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I mean, we have fifty-three minutes left of the appointment, so I’m happy to listen.’

I could have talked. I could have told her about how my nightmares were perhaps over, how the experience in the swimming pool showed me that the guilt I had been carrying for so long was probably unfounded. I’d thought about that. Dreams, or hallucinations, are by definition removed from reality, so what I saw wasn’t necessarily what had happened the day of the accident. But it felt right. That was good enough for me.

I could have talked about Gran, how she was walking around without, it seemed, a care in the world, that she was off pain meds entirely, that her physical condition was a source of wonder and amazement to the medical experts. That she seemed to think I had performed a miracle and wouldn’t go into hospital for any more tests because, according to her, there was no point.

Gran was dying – I knew it and she knew it – but I liked how she was living life as if it would go on forever. Maybe she’d be gone in the six months the doctors had predicted. Maybe she’d last a little bit longer. Or she could drop dead any minute. There’s never any guarantee of how much time we have left – just ask my father and my brother if you can track them down, though I guess Jake wouldn’t be very forthcoming. But Gran seemed to live in the moment and not think about what lay ahead. Hours or months? That was the uncertainty she’d faced before. When I think about it, it’s the uncertainty all of us face.

Here’s something weird. I now thought of Simon as a friend. No romance, I should stress. But he had been good to me and I still couldn’t work out what his angle was, no matter how hard I thought about it. So I consideredgiving him the benefit of the doubt. If I’m honest it felt good to have a friend – my first real one – though I’d die rather than tell Simon that. And I would never call him Si. It’s called having standards.

I looked at Evelyn. She had asked me a question a long time back and it took a while for me to remember.

‘Not sure if I’m in the mood for talking,’ I said.

‘You’re never in the mood for talking,’ she pointed out. But she smiled when she said it.

‘I could show you a magic trick or two, if you want,’ I said.

She spread her arms.

‘I’d like that.’

So I got out a pack of cards – no magician leaves home without one – and turned them upside down, spread them to show her they were a regular pack and the cards were in no particular order.

‘All good, yeah?’ I asked. She nodded.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Now, although the cards are already mixed up I’m going to ask you to shuffle them again because maybe you don’t trust me.’ She smiled. ‘Can you riffle shuffle?’ I asked.

‘What? No. I don’t know what that means.’

‘No problems,’ I said. I cut the deck in two, placed them in two piles on the desk and spread them out in lines, face down. ‘Just scrunch them together. You know, bring the two lines together so they form one pile.’

Evelyn nodded. It was a bit messy, but she managed to get them back into one complete deck. I picked them up again, showed her that the cards were well and truly jumbled and then cut the deck, gave them back to her.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I now want you to deal two separate piles, alternating. Keep the cards face down and stop whenever you feel like it. You see?’

‘I think so,’ she replied. ‘Like this?’

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘And stop whenever you want. Ten cards, twenty. It doesn’t matter.’

She stopped after about ten cards on each pile.

‘Happy?’ I asked. She nodded. ‘And you’ll agree that I had no control over how many cards you chose and that I could not influence the order.’ She nodded again. ‘Fine. Choose one pile for yourself and one for me. Then hand over your pile without looking at the cards and we’ll play a little game. A spooky game, testing your psychic abilities.’

She handed me her pile and I placed mine in front of her.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I am going to pick up the first card in your pile and hold it against my chest, like this.’ I showed her. ‘Stare at the back of the card and see if you can see right through it, see the colour. When you’ve made up your mind, tell me if you think it’s red or black, I’ll turn it over and we’ll see how you go.’

Evelyn laughed.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Er . . . black.’

I turned it over. ‘Wrong. Next card.’

Evelyn got four right and six wrong.

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Less than the law of averages.’

Evelyn laughed. ‘My psychic abilities must be a little off today,’ she said.

‘I have a feeling mine are doing just fine,’ I replied. ‘Your turn. Hold the first card of my pile against your chest, so there’s no chance of me seeing it.’

She did. I cradled my head in my hands, fingers on my temples, and stared at the back of the card. Like I really was trying to see through it.

‘Black,’ I said. It was. ‘Black again.’ It was. I got all ten correct, of course. That was always going to happen.

‘That’s amazing,’ said Evelyn. She looked genuinely impressed too, which pleased me. ‘How did you do that?’

‘I’m always asked that,’ I replied. ‘And I rarely tell. But I’ll give you a clue. The Galbreath Principle. Look it up if you’re really curious. There are YouTube videos explaining it.’

We continued staring at each other. I’d thought when I came in today I’d just say what I had to say and get out, but for some reason I felt okay being here.

‘Can I ask you something, Grace?’ said Evelyn eventually.

‘It’s a free world.’

‘Why have you never trusted me?’

I frowned.

‘I never trust anyone,’ I said. ‘It’s not just you.’

‘Why?’

I laughed, pointed towards the cards.

‘You should know better than to ask, Evelyn,’ I said. ‘This is what I do, this is what I’m good at. I’m a master of deception. You thought you were in control throughout this little trick, but you weren’t. I was in control. That’s how you were fooled. I know all the tricks people play. Words in particular.’

‘Words?’

‘Yeah. I know how slippery and untrustworthy they are.’ I put my hands on the table. ‘Think of television commercials using words to trick you into buying stuff you don’t need. Think of shows and movies that fool you into believing they represent truth. Consider books, fiction and non-fiction, but especially fiction, that use words to manipulate you into thinking that worlds that don’t exist, have never existed, are somehow real.’ I leaned back, put my hands behind my head. ‘Suspension of disbelief. That’s what one of my teachers called it. How the punter fools themself into accepting lies as truth.’

‘That’s a little . . .’ My therapist shrugged. ‘Cynical.’

‘Not cynical,’ I said. ‘Realistic. You can’t trust words. And that means you can’t trust people. What is that saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I don’t buy that. I will not be fooled once.’

Evelyn rubbed at her face.

‘I know how you did that trick,’ she said.

‘Oh yeah? How?’

‘You marked the cards in some way. The pattern on the back.’

‘Nope. Not how it was done. It’s a regular deck, trust me.’

‘I think you’re lying.’

‘I’m not.’

She leaned forward.

‘Why should I believe a word that comes out of your mouth?’ she asked.

It took me a little while to see where this was going. I laughed.

‘Fair point,’ I said.

She leaned back. ‘If you don’t trust words, or people, or . . .’ she indicated the pile of cards, ‘what you can see or, presumably, what you can smell or touch or experience in any way, then how do you live, Grace? If everything is a lie, or possibly a lie, how do you see the truth, the goodness in people? Because there is truth, you know. And goodness. It might be in short supply, I’ll give you that, but it’s there. Why cut yourself off from it?’

We sat for a while in silence. It was me who broke it.

‘I’ll think about what you said. I promise.’

‘That’s all I can ask.’

More silence.

I considered telling Evelyn about my birthday. It had been a week ago. Mum and Gran and Uncle Mike had put on a party, with streamers and cake and ice cream and every other cliché you could think of. I had presents. Clothes from Mum that I would have to take back and exchange, a bunch of magic equipment from Uncle Mike that I had to admit was pretty cool. And a letter from Gran. A letter in impenetrable legal language that told me I was the beneficiary of a trust fund to the value of twenty thousand dollars, set up by Uncle Mike from a bank transfer from Gran’s account. And a share of her estate when she died. I could use it, Gran said, to travel or use for educational fees or put down a deposit for a place to live when I was ready.

Not that I would do any of that. It would help me, sure. Help me to become the best magician I could be. I could learn from the masters. I could . . . I could . . . I could do anything.

I’d looked at Uncle Mike’s face as he’d explained the details. There was happiness stamped on it as he talked. Could that be misdirection? Like I’d said to Evelyn, I’m an expert in that area and I hadn’t seen anything. And Grace McKellon isn’t easily fooled. Unless she’s fooling herself.

I stood and held out a hand to my therapist.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I know I keep things close, but you’ve helped me. Seriously.’

My therapist took my hand and squeezed it.

‘It’s been a pleasure, Grace. Look after yourself.’

I walked out into a fine day, dusts of cloud moving leisurely across an impossibly blue sky. I was going to Gran’s house to pick up my stuff and move back in with Mum. Uncle Mike had said that there was no need for me to be there any longer, that now Gran was able to wash herself and get to and from the bathroom without help, he could cope with the rest.

Gran was cool with that as well. I wondered whether I should feel bitter at being told I was no longer of service, but somehow I didn’t. I’d drop in every day, after all. And it would be good to get back to normal – or what passes for normal in Grace McKellon’s life. Working on my magic in my own familiar bedroom, getting through school, orbiting my mother’s world, whether it sank into the pits of alcoholism or whether she finally managed to get her shit together.

As I walked, I thought about my therapist’s words. Apart from Gran, there’s never been a person I could trust. Mum, Simon, Uncle Mike. And maybe that was all my fault, that I always looked for the nastiness in people and couldn’t see the good. Perhaps my mother was not the architect of her own misery, but purely a victim of suffering beyond my understanding. Maybe Simon was just a nice guy who wanted to be a friend. Simple as that. Possibly I had misjudged Uncle Mike, a caring son and a caring uncle who wanted to do the right thing by everyone.

Yeah, I said to myself. But what if I was wrong? What if it was all a trick? Everything, the world and the people in it? One big sophisticated con.

Perhaps you could just enjoy the show, a voice inside said.

And maybe I could. Maybe, in time, that was a trick I could master. After all, I can always work them out.