2

I knew my first instinct about education was right: talk about regimented! I was expected to dress up in a uniform that made me look exactly like everyone else. In loads of the schools I’ve been to students have been allowed a bit of creativity and personal expression in their clothes, but not here! I hate uniforms, they’re so militaristic and they suck the flair and individuality out of anyone - but that’s just me having my little soap-box moment!

There’d also been a couple of sticky incidents with the teachers in the first week. In English, Mrs Mitchell asked us to write an essay on To Kill a Mocking Bird - but my argument that it’s never acceptable to take the life of another living creature, didn’t seem to be what she had in mind. I ended up doing a detention - which, actually didn’t turn out so bad because she said I had to use it to familiarise myself with the book. A whole hour to sit and read! You see, the Universe knows what it’s doing.

Plus, Wanda had acquired an old bike for me to get around on, but college was at the top of this whacking great big hill and there was no way I was going to cycle up that in a morning. In fact it’d taken me so long to push it up there, I’d been late every day and had ended up having an unpleasant encounter of the military junta kind with Miss Basham. So, all in all, I was relieved when it was Friday. And I’d been really looking forward to the downhill ride after school. I’d even bought a couple of those kiddie’s windmills to stick in the basket on the front so that they’d spin round as I went whizzing along.

‘Hey, Mimosa! Wait!’ It was Kameran calling after me.

He’d been really sweet all week. Two girls in my tutor group, Milly and Amanpreet, had been assigned to showing me round and Kameran had asked if he could join them. So, I’d got to know him a little bit but even so, I was surprised to see him running across the grass towards me on a Friday afternoon. He was still in his basketball kit and a group of girls by the wall were practically dribbling as he ran past them.

‘Hi,’ he said to me. ‘Do you mind if I walk with you?’

What a dilemma - the chance to build a friendship or five minutes of free-flow exhilaration? ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Normally, I’d say yes, but I have a hill to freewheel down.’ He looked a bit disappointed, so I added. ‘But maybe we could walk half way.’

‘Thanks,’ he smiled. ‘Hey, listen - Milly Ventress says that you told them in RE that you can read tarots. Is that true?’

‘Of course it’s true!’ I was a bit cheesed off that he had to even ask. I mean, why would I lie about it? Especially the way that old fossil Miss Devine practically had one of those appo-plastic fits, or whatever they’re called. ‘The occult, the occult!’ she started wailing, the minute I got out my cards. ‘I will not tolerate devil worship in my lessons.’ I did tell her that she needn’t have worried because I don’t believe in any sort of worship, but that just seemed to make her worse. Two girls had to carry her out to the medical room to recover. Anyway, Miss Basham thinks it’s probably best if I don’t take RE as one of my options now, which is fine by me - if option is supposed to mean choice, then it wasn’t one of my options anyway. In fact this whole going to school thing, is definitely not my option at all, but there you go!

‘Would you read my tarots?’ Kameran asked.

Phew, what a relief - at last, someone who was open-minded. ‘Sure. I charge thirty Euros for a full reading but I could do you a short one for ten.’

He did a quick calculation then said, ‘That’s about six pounds seventy-one pence. Will you do it for a fiver?’

Hmmm - nice negotiation! I grew up bartering in the bazaars of Marrakech - until Wanda and I had to make a hasty exit across the desert on camels one night - so I was impressed with Kameran’s easy bargaining. ‘Six pounds, to stay as near to the original price as possible but I’m rounding it down to keep the math simple,’ I replied.

He grinned at me. ‘A fiver for me and I’ll drum up more clients in school and you can charge them six quid a piece?’

Quite the entrepreneur! ‘Done!’ And we shook hands.

‘Excellent! Can I come round tonight?’

I wrote the address of our cottage on a page in his rough book and, by the time Kameran came round, I’d persuaded Wanda to let me use the front room for the reading. She’d designated it to be her ‘parlour’ but she didn’t have any clients that night. Anyway, it was so rare for me to have people round, I think she was secretly relieved that I seemed to be doing ‘normal’ teenage stuff. And I must admit, it was nice to have someone I could call a friend.

‘Cool sneakers,’ I said when he arrived, but he looked at me as though I’d just said something in a foreign language. ‘Your sneakers.’ I pointed to his footwear. ‘I like them.’

‘Oh - my trainers,’ he corrected. ‘Thanks.’

Pardon me for not speaking the Queen’s English! I thought - but I didn’t say anything. I beckoned him inside. ‘Come through and take your jacket off.’

I’d lit the fire and drawn the curtains in the parlour so that it looked really cosy. And I thought I’d got everything prepared but, when we sat down, my tarot cards weren’t there. Which was weird, because I distinctly remembered placing them in the middle of the table before I answered the door.

‘Hold on a sec,’ I said, leaving Kameran alone.

Wanda was baking muffins in the kitchen. ‘You haven’t seen my tarots have you?’ I didn’t have to ask if she’d moved them - Wanda knows better than anyone that you never touch another person’s cards.

‘I thought you’d taken them into the parlour,’ she said through a veil of flour.

Hmm! So did I! ‘Never mind, I’ll just have to use my Astrological ones.’

But when I got to my room, the strange thing was, the little carved Burmese box that I keep my runes and tarots and everything like that in was wide open - and both my packs of cards were sitting right in the middle of my bed! I was sure I’d only taken out my regular pack.

I did a mental re-play - open box, take out cards, close box, go downstairs. Nope - nowhere in my memory banks was there the tiniest recollection of putting both packs on my bed. Oh well - maybe I was losing my marbles as well as my tarots? Which is a little bit worrying because Wanda told me that Grandma Goodfox (that’s my grandmother on my father’s side) ended up in an institution for the criminally insane - something to do with a pick axe and an obsession with the cable guy. But Wanda’s almost certain it’s not hereditary.

Just let it go, I told myself, giving my head a little shake - it’s just a few colly-wobbles because this is your first reading in a new town. And, of course, it’s always more nerve-racking when you’re working with a friend - if Kameran counted as a friend after only a few days. I wasn’t sure.

And when I got back to the parlour, I started to think that maybe he didn’t count as a friend yet because he seemed to have done a runner on me. I was three hundred per cent positive I’d left him sitting at the table when I’d gone off card hunting and yet, hey presto, here he was - gone! Hmm! Now, forgetting where you’ve put your cards is one thing, but forgetting where you put your client is way more worrying!

‘Kameran?’ I made a mental note to ask Wanda for more facts about Grandma Goodfox and the warning signs of insanity.

‘Yes, sorry,’ said a voice from behind the old armchair next to the fireplace. ‘I’m here.’

I peered over the back of the chair and saw Kameran, huddled in his coat, crouched down practically in the fire. He was way too old to be playing hide-and-seek, so unless he was a secret pyromaniac, I guessed he might have been searching for a lost contact lens or something like that.

‘I got a bit cold,’ he explained, standing up and moving over to the table. ‘OK if I keep my jacket on?’

‘Fine,’ I replied. And, I must say, as I crossed the room, I was starting to feel a bit chilly myself. ‘I’ll put another log on the fire.’ I picked up one of the lumps of wood from the basket next to the hearth, but before I could put it into the flames, a huge black cloud of smoke billowed out of the fireplace.

Kameran leapt back. ‘Whoa!’

‘Soot belch,’ I said, fanning away the smoke. ‘It means the wind’s in the wrong direction.’

‘It wasn’t windy when I was coming here. It’s probably the chimney that needs sweeping,’ he suggested as he coughed his way out of the smog and sat down at the table.

I shook my head. ‘No, it was almost the first thing Wanda did last week. She’s very particular about chimneys - ever since the one where we were staying in Canada caught fire and burnt down the whole log cabin.’

Kameran smiled. ‘Is there anywhere you haven’t lived?’

I shrugged. ‘Oh, loads of places, I expect. Now, shall we get started?’

I picked up the tarots but, no sooner had I begun unwrapping the silk scarf that I keep them in, than something else strange happened; the curtains started flapping about. At first it was just a gentle flutter but then they whooshed right out into the room. It was like there was a hurricane blowing outside. Oh boy! For my first reading in a new town, this was not going according to plan at all.

But Kameran seemed to find the whole thing funny. ‘Oh, I get it - these are all part of the special effects, right? You know, mysterious things happening to create a creepy atmosphere. I expect your mum’s hiding in a broom cupboard somewhere and, any minute now, she’ll be knocking three times pretending to be some long lost auntie from the other side.’

I must say, I was disappointed in him. I’d thought Kameran had been genuine when he’d asked me to read his cards, but now he was taking the baklava like everyone else.

I gave him one of my looks - Wanda says they’d scare the bejezzus out of Old Nick himself. ‘This isn’t Hollywood, you know. Tarots should never be treated lightly. If you’re not serious there’s no point in going on.’

He held up both hands in a gesture of submission. ‘Sorry, it was just all the stuff with the fire and the curtains and everything.’

‘Like I said, it’s the wind, OK?’

He cocked his head on one side and smiled. ‘I guess I’ve just been watching too many scary movies, eh?’

‘Something like that,’ I said, shuffling the cards. ‘Now, is there anything in particular that you want to know the answer to? Or is it just a general reading you’re after?’

‘Well...’ Kameran lowered his eyes and looked embarrassed. ‘There’s someone that I really fancy and I want to know if it’s likely to go anywhere.’

‘OK.’ I gave a little shudder. Even though the fire was roaring, the room was feeling icier than a freezer in Antarctica. I reached over for Wanda’s shawl that she’d left over the back of the chair and wrapped it round my shoulders before carrying on. I handed the cards to Kameran to shuffle too, but I could see that he was shivering so much his hands were shaking.

When he’d finished I spread out the cards on the chenille tablecloth that Wanda takes everywhere with her and asked him to pick out five cards with his left hand. As I turned them over, I looked at the cards in front of me; they were nearly all from one suit.

‘Oh wow!’ I exclaimed. ‘So many cups - including the ace! Boy are you in for some serious love!’

He looked at me sheepishly and grinned. ‘Cheers! It’s been worth my fiver just to hear that.’

I went through the meaning of each card with him and, as I was explaining the reading, it occurred to me that I was pretty sure I knew who it was he fancied. If I were a betting person, I’d have put my bottom Euro on it being Milly Ventress, the girl who’s been showing me round. That’s obviously why he’d been hanging around with us all week. And I had an amazing idea - how fantastic would it be if I could get them together - as a sort of thank you to them both for being so kind to me? Oh wow, that would be so brilliant. I always think it’s good to have a project on the go and Kameran and Milly were going to be mine - for as long as it took Wanda to get us evicted from Whitby, anyway.

I was feeling quite excited about my new goal and was just standing up to let Kameran out, when there was another blast of wind and the metal latch on the door began to rattle as though someone was trying to come in.

‘It’s probably just Wanda,’ I explained. Then I called, ‘It’s OK. You can come in now. We’re finished.’ But when I opened the door, Wanda wasn’t there. She wasn’t even near by because I could hear her chanting in the back room. How bizarre!

And at that minute, there was a crash from over by the window. I looked down and saw the pot plant that Teddy had placed on the window sill for Wanda was lying in a mess of terracotta and soil on the floor.

‘You got a cat?’ Kameran asked.

I shook my head, puzzled. Then the curtains blew right out into the middle of the room again, till they were almost at right angles to the floor. Ah, that explained it!

‘Boy do we need to get some industrial strength draught excluder in this place!’ I said to Kameran.

He gave me a sideways look. ‘You sure your mum’s not hiding behind there with a hairdryer?’ But the minute he’d said it he held up his hands again. ‘Just kidding!’

I walked him to the front door and, as he left, he told me that he’d put the word about and get me some more readings - which was a relief. It’d been such a strange evening, it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d never wanted to have anything to do with me or my tarots again.

‘Night,’ I said, waving him off down the steps. ‘See you at school on Monday. And mind the geraniums.’

I watched him walk down the alley towards Church Street. At the bottom of the steps, he turned to wave back at me, slipped off his jacket and tossed it over his shoulder. ‘It’s warmer out here than it is inside,’ he called as he broke into a jog and disappeared from view.

He was right; it was mild. And not a breath of wind, either. Weird!