Page 48 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
‘No it didn’t, because I told him I was leaving tomorrow.’
‘And are you?’ I asked hopefully.
‘Yes, I’ve booked the train, and Clint’s meeting me. You can drive me to the station in the morning, can’t you?’
‘Gladly!’
‘Well you needn’t sound so pleased about it. You’relucky anyone comes to stay, when you’ve got no food in the house and only a manky outside toilet!’
‘The toilet’s right outside the back door, Jane, so I really don’t see your problem. I mean, it’s not like I hand you a spade and a roll of loo paper when you arrive, is it? And I have got an indoor bath and washbasin.’
‘You must be mad and I can’t imagine why Max never made you install an insidetoilet in all these years!’
‘He couldn’tmakeme do anything to my own house, and anyway, it doesn’t bother me. Although the Plague of Frogs the year before lastwasa bit of a nuisance,’ I conceded. ‘I don’t knowwhatI did to deserve that.’
Jane shuddered melodramatically. ‘Oh, don’t! I can’t even bear to think about it.’
I’d forgotten that one of her rare visits to me had fortuitously coincidedwith the frogs. It was one of her shortest visits ever, and clearly she’d never forgotten the experience.
‘There were frogs on the seat, frogs in the pan, frogs on the floor … ugh!’ she said.
‘They were cute little green ones, though,’ I pointed out. ‘I managed to get them all out eventually, three whole bucket-fulls, and took them up to the pond in the woods. The garden was still covered inthem even so, and I had to block up the gap at the bottom of the outhouse door until they’d all gone. Where they appeared from in the first place is one of life’s great mysteries. Didn’t you see I’ve given my cottage a name sign on the door?’
‘No, what?’
‘Frog’s Bottom.’
‘You are joking aren’t you, Cass?’
‘No, I really have. Go and look if you don’t believe me.’
… their soft jewelled greenbodies gave under her feet as she drew closer to her goal, each shuddering, crunching step a small, precious life extinguished …
‘Cass? You’ve gone into a trance again. Isaid, the vicar also phoned, to remind you about the slave auction. Is he mad? What on earth did he mean?’
‘It’s a charity thing. Every year some of us put ourselves up for auction and people bid for our services for a dayof their choice.’
‘Sounds weird. Whatkindof services?’
‘Just any skills you might have, like gardening, cleaning, babysitting, that sort of stuff.’
‘What on earth couldyouoffer!’
‘Light cleaning, dog-walking, chauffeuring, and shopping, though old Miss Gresham bid for me last year, under the mistaken impression that I could read fortunes, and invited all her cronies round to have theirbumps read.’
‘Youcanread fortunes – and minds.’
‘You know I can’t read fortunes in the “crystal ball, cross my palm with Euros” way like a party entertainer. It’s just that if I take someone’s hand and concentrate hard, sometimes I get a flash of premonition. But, of course, that’s onlybecause life is a sort of Mobius strip, and what goes around comes around. The Newsflash from the Futureis also a Newsflash from the Past … sort of.’
‘You areseriouslyweird. Did they know you could read their minds too? And doesn’t that work the same way, so you don’t know which you will get?’
‘No, it’s a different door in my head to the Newsflash door, and it just gives me a sort of random sample of what emotions are bubbling under the surface, not really what they arethinkingabout.’
‘Pity!You could make a fortune in blackmail if you could read minds!’
‘Only if you were morally depraved,’ I said coldly.
My Romany gift – if gift it was – was quite enough. I suddenly remembered reading Dante Chase’s exceedingly chill undercurrents and shivered: touching him that time had been like dipping my hand into dark, cold water, not knowing what was swimming around in there with me. Well,that time it had; but touching him later had been equally amazing in its way, but quite, quite different …
I shook the forbidden image away and said briskly: ‘I don’t do it much, because I don’t want to know how people feel … mostly.’
‘You should try Max if he deigns to visit on Friday,’ she suggested. ‘Could you tell if he’s been faithful to you, or is going to marry you or dump you?’
I didn’tanswer, because I’d already decided I was going to, even though I’d once promised Max I wouldn’t do it again.
But then, he’d promised me a lot of things too, and now I needed to know how he really felt. This was the best way.
Mind you, it was just as well this mind-meld thing wasn’t a two-way street, or I’d be in big, big trouble.
