Page 47 of Here One Moment

His wife tucked a long annoying curl behind her ear and said, “Is fortune-telling even legal? Isn’t it, no offense to your mother…fraudulent?”

I understood and fully accepted that this was her way of getting back at me for the way her husband had just looked at me.

“Of course it’s legal,” said Hazel. “Cherry’s mum had a sign out the front of their house.”

She was correct. The small handpainted wooden sign that hung on two chains beneath our letterbox read: Madame Mae—Palms, Tea-Leaf, and Tarot. No Appointment Necessary.

In fact, appointments were necessary, but my mother never liked to turn away a customer. During the years in which she became wildly popular, in fact briefly “notorious,” there were sometimes as many as four people milling about our tiny sitting room. I had to offer refreshments, which was stressful.

“I believe fortune-telling is technically illegal,” said the bearded man apologetically, but unable to resist sharing his knowledge.

Before Google you could toss about all kinds of unverifiable statements at dinner parties, but in this case he was correct. Fortune-telling was technically illegal but rarely if ever prosecuted. My mother certainly never encountered any problems with the police, although she knew stories from her childhood of police going undercover to try to catch fortune tellers. You could only be prosecuted if police witnessed money exchanging hands. Before women joined the police force some fortune tellers refused to see male clients to avoid this possibility. There are still some parts of Australia, and many places around the world, where fortune-telling is illegal. I recently read about convicted psychics in America sitting for interviews before parole boards. “It’s all baloney, isn’t it?” jeered the “commissioners” (who seemed to be all men), forcing the psychics (who seemed to be all women) to admit that, yes, it was “all baloney.”

There has always been a special kind of fury and contempt reserved for women perceived to have supernatural powers. The last woman executed for witchcraft in the British Isles was stripped, smeared with tar, paraded through the town on a barrel, and burned alive.

To be clear: this was a legal execution.

The attractive man asked if I was descended from “a long line of fortune tellers”?

I said I was not, although in truth my grandmother also read palms. No sign on her letterbox, just whispered referrals, and my grandfather never knew about it. He wouldn’t have burned her alive, but he would have put a stop to it. Grandma kept the money she made in a biscuit tin. Every Saturday afternoon, she’d go to the bookie in Jersey Street, a few minutes’ walk away from her house in Hornsby, invest two shillings each way, and listen to the horse races on the wireless back at home while she grilled chops for tea.

“Always find a way to make your own money, Cherry,” she would say to me, shaking her biscuit tin.

I hear the faint jingle of my grandma’s coins whenever I do my online banking: the sound of precious independence.

I did not argue the legality or otherwise of fortune-telling with the woman with the annoying curl. Instead, I shifted the spotlight of attention away from myself by asking the bearded man if he had any thoughts on how new technology might change our lives in the future. He had multiple thoughts, as I’d known he would.

He was explaining why the “mobile phone” would obviously never enjoy widespread use when the doorbell rang.

I wish I could say I felt a shiver of premonition at that moment, but I did not.

Chapter 39

It’s mid-May, nearly a month since their glorious trip around Tasmania, and Sue O’Sullivan is having a midweek dinner with her friend Caterina Bonetti at a dimly lit new “rustic Italian eatery” in Haberfield. They haven’t caught up for six months, so they have a lot to discuss—they practically need an agenda there is so much to cover. Their words trip, their thoughts veer, their voices overlap: Did I tell you, I’ve been dying to hear about, how was Tasmania, how was Cairns, your hair looks great, I love that necklace, how is your mum, how is your sister, how is your ankle, how is your knee?

An LED candle in a glass jar shines a spotlight on the white tablecloth and they lean forward, into the light and each other, and stir their ice-crammed bright orange Aperol spritzes with their environmentally friendly red-and-white-striped paper straws, and each time the waitress appears to take their order they say, “Oh, sorry, we haven’t even looked yet, too busy talking!” The first three times she said, “No rush,” but now she’s annoyed and is ghosting them.

They put on their glasses and swap phones to flick through each other’s photos: Sue’s highly successful Tasmanian camper van trip and Caterina’s mother’s highly stressful ninetieth birthday celebration. They move on to complaining about their daughters-in-law, which is always necessary for therapeutic purposes, as they would never criticize these delightful but maddening women to their lovely young faces.

Sue tells Caterina how she and Max are required by one daughter-in-law to ask their eighteen-month-old granddaughter for “consent” before picking her up and how another daughter-in-law has put her family on a sugar-free diet, so right now, not a word of a lie, the children are banned from eating, wait for it: fruit.

Caterina tells Sue her daughter-in-law keeps asking if Caterina might cut back her hours soon. Caterina is a GP, and the daughter-in-law, who is also a GP, is hoping to increase her working hours while Caterina enjoys the privilege of providing free childcare. The other grandmother is already doing two days a week.

“I do want to cut back on my hours,” Caterina confesses to Sue. “But not so I can look after toddlers! She told me the other day I could take the children to their swimming lessons, as if that would be a special treat for me! Didn’t you just hate taking your kids to swimming lessons?”

Sue actually quite enjoyed taking her boys to swimming lessons, chatting with the other parents, and she’d love the opportunity to take her grandchildren, but she pretends to shudder. “Oh, yes. So noisy. All that…chlorine.”

“Exactly. I’ve done my tour of duty!”

Caterina is consequently still working full-time, a ridiculous state of affairs: working to avoid her adorable, wicked grandchildren.

Sue tells Caterina to cut back her hours right now and who cares what the daughter-in-law or the other grandmother thinks?! Nothing wrong with day care. Caterina tells Sue to secretly feed those kids all the fruit she likes. Both of them know they will ignore each other’s advice.

They finally stop talking long enough to use their phone flashlights to read the menu. Caterina catches another waitress’s attention and instructs Sue to not start a conversation with her, so Sue resists complimenting the waitress on her lovely hair while they order bruschetta, garlic bread, butternut squash ravioli, pear and arugula salad, and a bottle of Tasmanian pinot noir in honor of Sue’s trip.

Caterina is cutting the bruschetta in half when Sue tells her about what happened on the plane. It’s been on Sue’s agenda the whole time, but she has held off. She doesn’t want to make it seem like a big deal.

“That is extremely creepy,” says Caterina. She leans low over her plate, carefully holding her piece of bruschetta aloft. It’s laden with tomato and basil and the whole structure implodes as soon as she takes a bite. “Right. I’m using a knife and fork.” She looks up at Sue. “I assume you’re not actually worried?”

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