Chapter 11

Hiding here wouldn’t solve things. Before I’d moved a step, the tent opened and a figure appeared.

‘Why don’t you come in?’

The voice was velvet deep. It belonged to Miss Lilly.

I swear my own feet defied me, and before I knew it, I was inside her tent. On an old chest in the corner a lamp burned low. There was just enough light to see Miss Lilly. She wore her usual loose-fitting white dress. Her hair stood out wild from her head.

‘I should go,’ I said, wiping away my tears. ‘Mr Chipchase is after me.’

Her face was in shadow. Prickles ran up and down my neck.

‘Sit,’ she said.

Bracelets tinkled down her arm as she waved to her left. I sank into a seat full of cushions.

Miss Lilly scooped back her hair. Twisting it in a knot against her neck, she then lit more lamps. Except these weren’t normal lamps; these were fancy things made of coloured glass that glittered reds and blues and purples, making the room seem strewn with jewels. There were scarves hanging from the roof and more cushions scattered about the floor. The air smelled sweet, like spices, as though I’d walked into a scene from the Arabian Nights itself. Slowly, gently, I began to relax.

Miss Lilly slid into the seat opposite. A small table stood between us; underneath it her knees bumped against mine. I jerked back in my seat.

‘I won’t hurt you, child,’ she said. ‘No more than you’re hurting yourself.’

I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Your life is difficult. You face choices – about your past and your future.’

My fingers clenched and unclenched. I didn’t want to talk. This was best left inside my head. Looking up, I met Miss Lilly’s gaze. Her eyes were so dark there was no telling their colour. I didn’t want this strangeness. It belonged in Miss Lilly’s world. All I wanted was to live with Jasper and Pip, and be part of the circus. Now it seemed even that was too much to ask for.

‘Perhaps the cards hold the answers to your problems,’ she said.

‘No, ta,’ I said, shifting uneasily. ‘Not a reading. Not tonight.’

But Miss Lilly had already placed a cloth-wrapped bundle on the table. She shook out her hands as if she’d just washed them. Ever so slowly, she peeled back the cloth. I watched, nervously at first, then I felt myself being drawn in.

Beneath the cloth was Miss Lilly’s tarot deck. Face down they looked like normal cards, curled at the corners and with a dark swirly pattern on their backs.

‘Take them,’ Miss Lilly instructed.

I wiped my hands on my skirts, for my palms were sweating. As I picked up the cards, a tingling spread up my arm.

‘Ask them what you want to know.’

I drew a breath to speak but Miss Lilly cut in. ‘Don’t say it out loud. Say it in your head.’

So I did.

I handed the cards back to her. She shut her eyes and her lips moved silently. When she opened her eyes again, they were pools of black. She dealt the cards quickly, laying one on top of another in the centre of the table. Around them, she placed four more. Then down the right-hand side, she laid out a final four cards. These were all face down. The others were face up.

‘Are you ready?’ she said.

I swallowed. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’

Miss Lilly reached for the centre card and held it towards me. The picture was of a man with a knapsack, stepping off a cliff top.

‘The fool,’ she said.

‘Huh,’ I slouched back in my seat. ‘Might’ve guessed that one. Louie Reynolds: the great big idiot.’

‘That’s not what it means,’ said Miss Lilly.

‘Oh?’

‘It means you are young and naïve, but that adventure awaits you.’

I sat forward.

‘But,’ Miss Lilly raised her finger in warning, ‘you must choose the right path.’

Easier said than done. I sat back again.

The next card lay at right angles to the first. Miss Lilly peered at it. Her mouth twitched.

‘It’s bad, ain’t it?’ I said.

‘This card is your obstacle.’ She showed me. On it was a dark shape with leering eyes, standing over a woman. ‘The devil.’

I shivered. ‘Which means evil, surely?’

‘In a way. It means you’re miserable, and you’re suffering.’

My heart filled up with Jasper and Pip, and how I wanted to be a showstopper so much it hurt. ‘Yes.’ I bit back tears. ‘That does fit well.’

The next card was at Miss Lilly’s twelve o’clock. Her gaze swept over it, then she turned it so I could see too. ‘Your goal,’ she said. ‘The wheel of fortune.’

The card showed a yellow cartwheel spinning towards a cliff edge. Cliffs again. It was a good job I wasn’t scared of heights.

‘This is your destiny card. Your fortune.’

I laughed hotly. ‘My fortune? My luck? It’s bleeding lousy. I don’t need a card to tell me that.’

I got up.

‘No,’ she said, pulling me down again. ‘You must see all the cards, otherwise your reading is incomplete.’

I tried to shrug her off. ‘I have to get going, Miss Lilly. I’ve been here long enough.’

But she held me firm. ‘Stay,’ she said.

So I stayed, fidgeting nervously in my seat. It was flimflam really, this tarot lark. And any time now Mr Chipchase would find me here.

Miss Lilly took another card. Turning it over, her face suddenly darkened.

‘The tower.’

The way she said it made me more uneasy.

‘Your past,’ she said, and pushed the card towards me.

But I couldn’t seem to look at it, gazing instead at Miss Lilly and wondering why her eyes shone with tears.

‘You must look,’ she said gently. ‘You must face your past.’

My heart began to pound.

My past.

Two words that made me clench up inside. That made me hurt for the mother who hadn’t wanted me. Who’d left me at the circus and had never come back.

Miss Lilly tapped the card with her finger. In my head, I counted to three, then I looked down. It was a picture of a tower crumbling to pieces as lightning hit it. In among the flying bricks a body tumbled to the ground.

I felt suddenly strange. My head filled up with a whirling, rushing noise. I grabbed the table to steady myself.

‘Gently now, Louie,’ said Miss Lilly. ‘You’ve had a reaction to the card, that’s all.’

‘Please,’ I said. ‘I have to go.’

‘But we must finish your tarot reading. We will look to the future and find out what’s to become of you, my dear.’

She reached for a card. Then stopped. Outside the tent came a rustling sound – boots striding through grass. Her eyes locked with mine.

Someone was out there.

A shadow, two shadows, loomed across the canvas. I leaped to my feet. Too fast, too quick, for I almost lifted the table clean off the floor.

‘Your cards!’ Miss Lilly cried as they slid into her lap.

One card fell to the floor. It lay there, picture side up. I dearly wished I’d not seen it. My blood turned cold.

‘That’s my future, is it?’

Miss Lilly hesitated.

‘Is it?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

The picture was of a skeleton, the word ‘DEATH’ in big letters above it. Then two voices came from outside the tent.

First was Kitty: ‘She’s in there. I can hear her.’

Then Mr Chipchase: ‘Leave this to me.’

Miss Lilly was trying to tell me something. She pointed to the DEATH card on the floor and held up another with stars on it. I wasn’t listening. I had to get out of here. But how? The walls of the tent all looked the same.

‘Where’s the door?’ I hissed.

Miss Lilly pointed right at the spot where the shadows stood. I was cornered. There was nowhere to run.

The tent flew open. Two figures barged in, their lanterns blinding me.

‘Stay where you are!’ said Mr Chipchase.

Not likely.

I dodged him, ploughing straight into Kitty. Her hands snatched my hair and my head jerked back. I kicked out like a horse, landing a cracking blow on her shin.

‘You little bleeder!’ She let go of me as if I was poker-hot.

I ran for the showground gates.