Page 33 of Date with Destiny

‘Right! Exactly!’

We go in and order our drinks. As Zach pays, his arm brushes mine. His closeness is suddenly too intense, it makes me dizzy. I continue quickly, ‘It’s funny because my mum is the verydefinitionof an extrovert.’ I pause, picturing Celeste last night, posing for the Yodel delivery driver, like he was a pap, as he tried to get a shot of the parcel in our doorway. Meanwhile, when I’m waiting for a delivery, I hover by the front door in a state of anxiety, trying to remind my body that the fight or flight response is supposed to be about life or death, not for the times when I might need to sign for something.

‘My family’s the same,’ he comments. ‘Sometimes I feel like I don’t really know where I come from.’

I suppress a shiver of recognition and watch him for a moment as he takes a sip of his drink. It’s all too much.

‘I just… I wanted to say how much I’m enjoying working with you,’ he says suddenly, looking at me intensely.

Oh god. I’ve just realized I want to kiss him.

‘Me too,’ I smile nervously, everything feeling charged. ‘I think it’s really making a big difference to the brand. And the customers have been raving about your designs…’ I trail off. Am I really going to kiss this man? At afuneral? No, of course not. That would be ludicrous and inappropriate and—

Yes? Oh god I think I am. I step a little closer, just an inch, but it changes everything between us. We’re both suddenly breathing faster, my neck is hot, my stomach doing somersaults. He moves another inch and I suddenly know with certainty that it’s going to happen. I’m going to kiss this gorgeous, film-star-handsome man at my dead Aunt Diane’s funeral. My eyes start to close. I’m really going to—

‘And I just want to say how great it is to be mates,’ he says and I open my eyes. He has moved away and is looking at me with pity. ‘I’m really happy to bemates,’ he repeats. ‘I think you’re really brilliant as a friend.’ Oh god oh god oh god.

I’m being rejected. Hard. This is so humiliating. There is no chance at all that he missed what I was about to do – what I wastryingto do. I am a blundering idiot, how could I have thought he was interested? A man this good-looking? I’m a fool. I’ve been with Daniel so long, I don’t know how to read signs anymore. Ofcoursehe doesn’t like me. The embarrassment stings so hard.

‘I’m just going to the loo,’ I choke out and he grimaces but looks relieved.

‘OK,’ he replies lamely and I feel his flustered eyes on me, watching me flee.

I practically run to the loo, my face burning. The Naughty Schoolboys are in the corner, very drunk now, loudly talking through watery eyes about what a woman Diane was. ‘Crap!’ I shout, bumping into someone in the corridor. They reachout to steady me and I recognize a small scar across the hand from a particularly vicious bramble three years ago.

‘No!’ I breathe out hard, because before me, after more than two months of nothing… is Daniel.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

‘That’s the death card.’ The woman in front of me is staring down at what she’s just turned over.

‘I’VE ALREADY HAD MY DEATH QUOTA, THANK YOU.’ I can’t help that I’m shouting. No more death –pleaseno more death.

‘No, no,’ she says kindly. ‘That card just means that one phase of your life is over, and a new one is beginning.’

Daniel.

I glance up at Myfanwy, who looks unbearably smug. I still can’t believe she managed to find a tarot reader in Madeira.

We’ve been here for four days now, and so far it’s been exactly the lovely, relaxing trip I so badly needed. We’ve spent our days wandering around the little local town, relaxing by our hotel pool, and getting drunk on the island’s namesake wine. Yesterday we took a two-hour boat trip to Porto Santo to visit the most gorgeous of beaches, where Myfanwy and Toni both got tanned, and I burnt my feet and knees.

OK, so the weather hasn’t been totally ideal. It’s been around 20 degrees every day, which would be fine by me – it is October now, after all – but apparently, back home, they’re having an unseasonable heatwave.

We’re all raging about it.

Today, Myfanwy’s taken the lead, and after a long lunch at the hotel, we headed to Funchal, where we met up with this woman down by the lido.

She’s watching me intently now as she prepares to turn over another card. I’m supposed to be focusing on my questions, what I want out of this reading, but there’s a bird that keeps circling overhead and I’m convinced it’s about to divebomb our whole group. Or maybe poop on us.

‘This is a conduit for your innermost thoughts,’ she reminds me now. ‘There is no need to be nervous. You have to be open.’ She turns over another card, from a different pile this time. ‘Ah, you have the Here and Now card.’ She points to the small images. ‘There’s an open door.’ She looks at me. ‘I feel that you are caught between the past and the future. One is not better than the other, but you’re struggling to fully enjoy your life in the here and now. If you obsess over what’s happened or what’s to come, you can never live in the moment. I see you are stuck in your sadness; you must let go of what’s happened and whatmighthappen.’

I feel a lump in my throat.

‘I’ll try,’ I whisper, trying not to cry.

‘Amazing things are coming for you,’ she tells me in a low voice. ‘But only when they’re meant to happen. There is anebb and flow, and if you’re in a low point, there’s no point trying to rush through it. Don’t push. Don’t let expectations or fear make you take the wrong path.’

The wrong path.

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