Christmas Magic. Cathy Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ Madame Lucia

      Stanley Maguire hadn’t planned on renting out the upstairs office. A large, L-shaped room on the floor above Maguire’s Travel, the office had just been vacated and Stanley had finally decided that the time had come to extend his travel agency empire on to the second floor. The architect had already drawn up the plans and Stanley could see himself in a spacious room overlooking Main Street, with cool green walls and a couple of cream leather couches perhaps, for valued customers to sit on. It was time to make a statement about the success of Maguire’s Travel.

      And then the woman had come into the travel agency and asked him, in a quiet but somehow steely way, if she could rent the office out for a couple of weeks. Stanley had meant to say no. He’d done his best, in fact, but the words wouldn’t come. There was something about her smiling round face and those warm brown eyes that made him lose the run of himself. No had become yes.

      ‘No bother at all, Sister,’ he’d said, because she had a look of a nun about her with her tidy grey hair and the sober navy suit. Sure, what harm would it be to have a nun in the place while he was away on holiday? He even heard himself offering to send the office cleaner up to dust and vacuum.

      ‘Thank you, Stanley,’ the brown-eyed woman said, clasping his hand. ‘You’re a kind man: I can tell.’

      Stanley beamed like a schoolboy even though it was at least thirty years since he’d graced a schoolyard. It was only when she was gone that he realised that she hadn’t told him her name or what she wanted the office for.

      The girls in Maguire’s Travel were fascinated when the small card went up above the doorbell for the upstairs office.

       Madame Lucia: fortune teller

      ‘I thought Himself was going to turn it into a posh office,’ said Carmel, who’d worked in Maguire’s longer than anyone else and who’d had it up to the tonsils with men and their empires. ‘Wait till he comes back from his holidays and sees this! I suppose she’ll be some flamboyant type who’ll stick exotic lights in the window and have a stream of lunatics dropping in and out.’

      But there was no stream of lunatics. There was only the neatly dressed figure of Madame Lucia herself going in and out quietly during normal business hours. Flamboyant was certainly not a word that could have been applied to her. Her hair was a soft grey, her dress was unremarkable and the only detail that stood out was that she appeared fond of sensible, lace-up shoes.

      Between customers, Carmel, Gwen and Selena discussed how they didn’t trust fortune telling.

      Carmel didn’t even read her horoscope any more. All the magazines had told her that Geminis and Libras could be a good match, but she and Michael had fought like cats and dogs and now Michael was back living with his brother while Carmel had their apartment to herself.

      She was thirty-four and her mother kept making snide remarks about how living with a man before marriage hadn’t been the gateway to anything but ruin when she was a girl.

      ‘When you come to your senses, your old room is there for you,’ her mother, Phil, said at least once a week.

      Carmel knew she couldn’t afford to pay the rent all by herself for much longer but neither could she face living with her mother again.

      Phil wore her bitterness like an Olympic medal. It was the only thing she’d been left with when Carmel’s father had walked out on her thirty-two years ago. She had seemed almost triumphant when Michael had moved out of the apartment he shared with her daughter.

      History repeats itself, Phil had remarked grimly. Under the circumstances, Carmel had no interest in hearing that red was her lucky colour or that Saturday was her best day of the week. Such frivolity didn’t cut any ice with her any more.

      On the third day, Gwen decided to risk it.

      She was ready for Madame Lucia, she told her colleagues confidently. Fortune tellers were canny and could read clothes, handbags and jewellery with as much skill as they could supposedly read the cards. Gwen’s good leather handbag and her engagement ring would have given the game away.

      She’d left her handbag and the ring with Carmel and she’d taken off her navy uniform jacket with ‘Maguire’s Travel’ embroidered on one pocket, so there’d be none of that ‘I see you going on a foreign holiday’ malarkey. Madame Lucia would get no clues from her.

      Upstairs, lemon aromatherapy oil was heating in a small burner and the air was redolent with scents of somewhere far away. Madame Lucia sat at a table with a crystal ball in front of her. She smiled silently at Gwen, who sat down politely and looked into the crystal ball too. They both gazed at it for ages.

      Gwen did her best to see whatever it was that people saw in them. Fog or swirling mist. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to see? Gwen tried hard but all she saw was a fat globe that smelled strongly of the window cleaner her granny was always using. Madame Lucia was not a million miles away from Gwen’s granny, now that she thought about it.

      Sensible beige cardigan, cream blouse buttoned up to the neck, a kind smiling face and not a jangling gypsy earring in sight. She even had the same sort of gold-rimmed glasses Granny wore but without the gold chain. Behind the glasses, Madame Lucia’s eyes flickered, but she said nothing. Could Madame Lucia see something? Maybe it was all a con.

      ‘You’ll be married within the year,’ said Madame Lucia. ‘I am seeing San Francisco, I think. Yes, that’s it.’

      Gwen rolled her eyes. So much for fortune telling. She and Brian were going to Sardinia on their honeymoon.

      ‘No, San Francisco,’ Madame Lucia said firmly, as if she could read Gwen’s mind.

      Gwen blinked.

      ‘I know you’ve booked somewhere else, but it’ll be San Francisco in the end. There’s a bit of a shock coming and you have to make a decision, but I think you’ll take the right road. It’s all for the best, really. You’re a strong girl.’

      ‘What about other things – money, family?’ Gwen wanted more than this limited vision of the future.

      ‘You came to ask me about love,’ said Madame Lucia simply. ‘That’s what I saw for you.’

      ‘I didn’t say what I came to you for –’ began Gwen, but she stopped.

      Because she had come to find out about her and Brian. Not that she’d have admitted it to anyone, even her closest friends, but there was something not quite right. Brian was so distant these days.

      He looked uncomfortable when she began going through her wedding notebook, listing all the things they’d done and all the things they still had to do. Gwen was worried about the wedding cake. Was it unlucky to have a pyramid of profiteroles instead of the traditional fruitcake?

      Madame Lucia smiled a kind, granny-ish smile. ‘You’ll do what’s right,’ she said.

      ‘Well?’ Carmel and Selena were curious when Gwen arrived back at work.

      ‘Oh, you know, the usual rubbish,’ said Gwen, searching in her handbag for her mobile phone. She might just send Brian a text message about this evening.

      Gwen and Brian met in Mario’s Coffee Shop after СКАЧАТЬ