Page 37 of Date with Destiny

Toni leans in to inspect the position of the glass. She frowns. ‘It’s stopped just under the C,’ she says. ‘What does that mean?’

Hazy with booze, I start singing ‘Under The Sea’ fromThe Little Mermaid, and Myfanwy gasps. ‘That’s definitely a message for me! Didn’t we literally just decide earlier that I’m a mermaid from Wales? Under the sea!’

‘That’s SO weird!’ Toni declares, but I pout. ‘What does that tell you though? What does itmean?’

‘Maybe I should go for a swim?’ Myfanwy muses and I shake my head vehemently.

‘If that’s the message, it must be from a demon. We should not swim after eight pints of Guinness.’

Toni has lost interest. ‘My turn. Will I marry Shawn?’ She smiles eagerly and the glass shoots immediately over to no. ‘Oh.’ She observes the answer without much reaction.

‘Do youwantto marry Shawn?’ I ask her carefully. She blinks at me with surprise.

‘Of course?’ she says with a definite question mark. ‘I mean, I guess I do.’ She pauses. ‘Mum says he’d make a great husband and father, and I should be dropping hints about a proposal. She says three years is too long just to be dating.’

‘But you’re onlytwenty-three!’ Myfanwy cries. We try not to comment too much on her relationship, but sometimes it’s too much to resist.

‘That’s what I thought, but what do I know about love?’Toni tinkles at this, failing to see the irony of her sentence. ‘Plus,’ she continues, ‘I’m almost twenty-four! That’s, like,wellgrown up.’ She looks at us both anxiously, adding, ‘Isn’t it?’

God, I thought Gen Z were all supposed to be brimming over with certainty. They’re supposed to know what they want and who they are. I thought they took no shit and were going to save us all from ourselves. Turns out they’re as insecure and broken as the rest of us.

‘Your turn.’ Myfanwy nods at me encouragingly and I swallow.

‘OK, um,’ I pause. There are too many questions and I don’t know if I want the answers. At last I settle on something important. ‘Is Diane OK?’

Nothing happens for a few seconds, and then the glass moves slowly, more gracefully than before. It lands softly onyes.

‘Shit, you guys, it’s 3am!’ Toni pronounces suddenly, leaping up out of her chair. ‘We’ve got to be at the airport in a few hours!’

‘Crap,’ Myfe mutters, reaching for her drink and draining it.

My young paramour Matt bounds up as we gather our bags. ‘You’re not leaving, are you?’

‘Yes, sorry!’ I tell him. ‘We’re heading back to England today and—’

‘Or,’ Myfanwy interjects happily, ‘under the sea, for some of us.’

Smiling at her, I continue. ‘We have to go pack. Our taxi is picking us up in a few hours.’ I pause. ‘Also I’m super freaked out. We just did a Ouija board and it said some weird stuff.’ Matt looks baffled and I explain nicely, ‘A Ouija board is a kind of talking board where you can speak to ghosts.’

He nods. ‘Oh, yeah, I know what a Ouija board is! My dad is a professor of neurology, he says it’s all just the ideomotor response.’

I squint at him, ‘Ideo… what?!’

‘It’s a psychological phenomenon where a subject makes unconscious muscle movements. It’s something a bit like a dissociative state. Lab studies have measured people moving the glass in a séance without having any idea they’re doing it.’

The three of us gape at him as man-child Matt continues, ‘Anyway, Ginny, d’you want my number or what? Be great to bang when you’re back in England!’

I blink, taking all of this in as he rips off a piece of the Ouija board and scribbles down his number.

I don’t look at it until we’re in the taxi on our way to the airport two hours later. The number is there in big loopy handwriting, beside his name: Matt Williams.

Yet another Williams. Flo Williams, Zach Walliams, Matt Williams. What is the universe trying to tell me?

My head sags back into the headrest, as exhaustion overwhelms me. I feel surprisingly calm.

Maybe this didn’t need to be a life-changing trip in a huge sense, because in a way it does feel like my life has shifted. Maybe that’s all it means, that prediction – that it would belife-changing in a small way. Small changes can be just as important as big ones. Maybe I only need small shifts – several small, life-changing moments – to find my happiness. To get everything I want.

And maybe I should WhatsApp Matt Williams for a bang.

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