Читать книгу Christmas Magic - Cathy Kelly - Страница 8

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 work. Brian had pulled a sweatshirt on over his plain bank cashier’s shirt and tie.

‘What’s up now with the wedding of the century?’ he said gloomily, stirring two fat sugars into his latte. ‘Don’t tell me: the florist can’t get the exact shade you want for the roses and everything’s going to be ruined. Can we talk about something else?’

Gwen looked at him, hurt.

‘How can you say that?’ she began, and then stopped. He was right. All they ever talked about these days was the wedding. Gwen had dreamed of her wedding day since, aged five, she’d seen Barbie resplendent in her meringue of crispy lace.

‘You’re fed up with all this wedding stuff, aren’t you?’ she said.

The question took both of them by surprise.

‘A bit,’ he admitted. ‘I feel as if I’m stuck on a roller coaster and I can’t get off.’

Brian looked at Gwen to see how she was taking this. She wasn’t gasping with shock or anything, so he took the plunge.

‘I always thought it would be nice to get married on a beach or somewhere simple. Without all the fuss.’

Gwen thought of the elaborate plans for a wedding feast that was going to cost a fortune and which made her break into a cold sweat when she thought about the inevitable drama of the table plans. Imagine her wild uncles sitting beside Brian’s beautiful but shy girl cousins? Or Brian’s brother telling risqué jokes as best man, jokes that would shock Granny and make her reach for her heart tablets?

‘If we had a quick, tiny wedding, just for immediate family, we could use the money we’ve saved for a huge holiday. Like …’ she searched for a place ‘… San Francisco. We could tour the area, drive up Highway One, go to LA, everywhere …’

Brian didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The huge smile lighting up his face said it all.

Selena passionately believed in fortune tellers. She always had, but she couldn’t say that because the girls would tell her to give it a go, and if Madame Lucia took one look at her, she’d know.

And Selena was terrified that someone would find out.

She still had the money, hidden in an envelope in her desk under a spare pair of tights so that anybody seeing the tights would know this was her personal drawer, and wouldn’t look any further. Because two thousand euros was a lot of money and anyone with half a brain would realise that Selena, the office spendthrift, could never have saved that much in her life.

She hadn’t meant to take it, she really hadn’t. She had never stolen as much as a notebook from the office supply box, but that day a month ago that Stanley Maguire forgot to put the money in the safe was coincidentally the same day Selena received the awful letter from the credit card people.

How could she owe them that much money? Yes, she’d bought the shoes and that long suede skirt that everyone admired so much, but surely she didn’t owe nearly two thousand?

She’d added it up with shaking fingers on her calculator. Incredibly, all those small amounts of money (€19.99 for sunglasses that were almost exactly the same as the ones all the Hollywood stars had; a yoga video; a new wallet) managed to add up to the same heart-stopping total on the bottom of the statement.

Which made it seem like fate when Stanley, who turned absent-mindedness into an art form, had opened the safe to put the morning’s cash in and had left one wad of notes on his desk.

He’d gone out to lunch then and Selena had picked up the money to give it to him later but somehow, once her fingers touched the cool, sleek notes, she’d known that this could solve all her problems.

Only it hadn’t. Guilt burned her soul like the fires of hell and she hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since.

‘I know you don’t believe in fortune telling,’ said Gwen, who looked utterly delighted with herself since she’d called off the wedding, ‘but Madame Lucia is different. She knows things. And she doesn’t tell you bad things; only good news.’

What if you didn’t have good news to tell? Selena thought miserably.

There was a lull in the office at eleven and Gwen urged Selena again.

‘Go on, I bet you won’t believe what she’ll tell you. Look at me and Brian and how it’s all worked out for the best.’

Selena kept her glasses on. She only needed them for the computer, but she thought that if she had a protective layer of glass between her eyes and the piercing gaze of Madame Lucia, the fortune teller mightn’t see the guilt and the misery behind them.

‘There’s no need to be nervous,’ said Madame Lucia pleasantly when Selena sat down, clasping and unclasping her hands anxiously.

Easier said than done, Selena thought. She tried to breathe deeply, but all that came out was a shaky, shuddering breath.

‘It’s not the end of the world, you know,’ Madame Lucia remarked, staring into her crystal ball. ‘Life tests us all every day: little temptations to see what kind of people we are. And you know what sort of person you are, after all. A good one.’

Selena’s eyes brimmed. She wasn’t a good person, she wasn’t. If she had been, she’d never have been tempted by the money.

‘You should talk to someone about a possible debt plan,’ Madame Lucia continued. ‘Pay off a little a week, that sort of thing. The banks are happy once you’re paying something.’

Selena realised the fortune teller was talking about the credit card bill. She didn’t know about the other money.

‘Spring cleaning,’ added Madame Lucia.

Mystified, Selena looked at her.

‘The office hasn’t had a good clean for ages. You’d be amazed at how things can fall down into drawers and filing cabinets and get lost. A good spring clean will soon restore everything to its rightful place.’

Her words sent a little jolt of excitement through Selena. Of course. It had been months since the office had been given a good sorting out. The back office was always cluttered with boxes and Stanley’s desk had a paper mountain as big as Everest on the floor behind it.

A wad of money could easily have got lost in the mess. A wad of money that nobody would ever suspect had been hidden in Selena’s drawer for a month.

‘You’ll talk to the bank, won’t you?’

Madame Lucia stared at her and Selena saw in that instant that the woman knew about the other money. But there was absolutely no judgement in Madame Lucia’s eyes. She was offering a way out, a solution.

Selena beamed at Madame Lucia. ‘Yes, I’ll talk to the bank. And thank you, for everything.’

She bounced down the stairs, her mind racing. A proper spring clean was definitely a good idea. Just because they’d all been busy lately didn’t mean that standards should slip.

Carmel’s asthma flared up halfway through Selena’s office spring clean.

‘There might’ve been money behind Stanley’s desk, but there’s nothing but dust in that corner,’ she wheezed as Selena cleaned like a woman possessed.

Selena had already filled two bin bags and had come up with a new office code of conduct for dealing with duplicates of documents already on the computer system.

‘If we back up the files on the hard drive, we needn’t keep any paper copies,’ Selena announced.

‘I’m going out for some fresh air,’ Carmel said.

Outside, she looked at the door that led to the upstairs office. Why not? she decided. She had a few minutes to spare.

She didn’t waste time staring at the crystal ball. She eyeballed Madame Lucia, who gazed back with a quiet intensity. Then, Madame Lucia took Carmel’s hand and gently turned it palm up.

Her unmanicured hand was cool and firm and Carmel felt some of the tension leave her.

‘The ball tells the future, the palm tells the past,’ the fortune teller said.

Carmel waited, not believing.

‘You’re carrying someone else’s pain,’ Madame Lucia said matter-of-factly. ‘It’s not your burden. You have to let it go before you can live your own life.’

Carmel held her breath. This was unexpected.

‘There are two good men in your life. One is far away but he’s never forgotten you. He prays for you.’

‘He can’t,’ said Carmel, shocked, but knowing exactly who Madame Lucia was talking about. ‘My father’s gone, he left years ago. He’s never written; he doesn’t care.’

‘He does and he has,’ insisted Madame Lucia calmly. ‘The other man cares deeply for you too, but there is this –’ she paused, considering, ‘this guard around your heart that keeps him away. It’s the pain you’re carrying, the other person’s burden. You have to let it go.’

Carmel was still trying to take in the first bit of information. ‘What do you mean, “he has”?’ she asked slowly.

‘He has written to you,’ Madame Lucia replied.

She squeezed Carmel’s hand, this time in comfort.

‘This is good news for you,’ she said. ‘This is a new beginning and you are in charge of it. You, not anybody else – not someone who is angry with the whole world.’

It was such a good description of her mother that Carmel smiled wryly.

‘What should I do?’

Madame Lucia’s mouth relaxed into a smile. ‘That’s up to you. The future is always up to you.’

Carmel’s mother was polishing the brass on the door when Carmel walked up the path. Everything in No. 9 The Crescent was polished to within an inch of its life. Phil used to say it was because that waster hadn’t left her much and she had to look after it. Carmel tried to imagine what it must have been like for her mother all those years ago. Alone with a small child and little money. Had that hard shell been her only defence?

‘What brings you here?’ demanded Phil, as if Carmel never visited rather than coming home at least twice a week.

‘I wanted to talk about my father,’ Carmel said evenly. She never called him Dad. Dad was for a person who had been there.

‘What about him?’ Her mother kept grimly polishing.

‘About the letters.’

The old yellow duster stopped moving.

‘How did you know?’

‘That doesn’t matter. I want to see them.’

Carmel waited outside until her mother emerged with a large manila folder crammed full of envelopes, some open, most untouched.

‘I didn’t want him in our lives any more,’ her mother said in a small voice, handing the folder over.

Carmel said nothing: she’d become good at that over the years. When Phil raged against Carmel’s father, Carmel had learned to hold her tongue until the anger had burned out.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Phil anxiously as Carmel walked down the path, holding her precious cargo of letters.

‘Home,’ said Carmel pleasantly. ‘I’ll talk to you later.’ There was no point in recriminations or bitter words. As she knew, that type of thing got you nowhere in life.

The most recent letter was dated the previous Christmas. Her father wrote every Christmas, despite never having had a reply in thirty-two years of writing. He’d worked it out, though. He knew his wife would never forgive him for walking out.

I hope that one day she’ll give you these letters so that you’ll know I’ve never forgotten you, he wrote. I would love to see you but you would have to want to see me and you might not, because I left. Your mother was a hard woman to live with but I should not have left you. I was young and stupid, and I regret that every day of my life. She didn’t want my money, didn’t want anything of me.

He lived in London, a city Carmel had visited many times, never knowing that her father lived just off the Hammersmith flyover and kept a picture of her as a baby in a frame by his bed. When she’d read the last letter, she’d phoned Michael, who’d come over immediately and hugged her tightly as she sobbed for all those lost years. Michael said she should write to her father. But Carmel wanted to visit him. Now, immediately.

‘I’d love you to come with me,’ she said hesitantly, not knowing if Michael would want to be involved any further because, after all, she’d pushed him away and they’d split up.

‘Why don’t we go tomorrow?’ said Michael, holding her tightly.

Stanley’s holiday in Florida had been fantastic.

‘The holiday of a lifetime,’ he said ruefully, patting his belly and remembering the pancake breakfasts he’d grown to love. ‘Two weeks isn’t enough, though. Two months would be better.’

He was delighted with the cleaned-up office, and even more delighted with the recovery of the missing two thousand euros.

‘Fair play to you, Selena,’ he said. ‘You’ve worked hard on the place and I like the new hard-drive filing system. I suppose you’ll be looking for some of that two grand as a raise?’

‘No,’ said Selena quickly.

He was less pleased to hear that Gwen wanted three months sabbatical to go to America.

‘Ah, Gwen, what’ll we do without you?’ he complained. ‘Anyhow, I thought you’d booked the Central Hotel for a big wedding?’

Gwen grinned. ‘We’ve got it all worked out. Carmel has had five applications from people looking for holiday work now that the college term is over, and she and Selena say they can cope if we take one person on.’

‘Where is Carmel?’ Stanley suddenly realised that his office manager was missing.

‘She had to go to London with Michael,’ said Gwen. ‘Something came up.’

‘I thought she’d split up with Michael?’ Stanley was getting very confused.

‘It’s all back on,’ said Selena.

Well, Stanley didn’t know what to make of it all, but if the women were happy, he supposed he was happy too. He looked at his watch. Half past nine. He had a meeting later with the architect about the office upstairs. It was time to get the Stanley Maguire – The Empire plans back on track. Then, he remembered that kindly woman who’d wanted the office for a couple of weeks.

‘Is the nun still upstairs?’

All the phones went at once.

‘She’s not a nun,’ said Gwen, leaping to answer a phone.

‘She’s a fortune teller,’ Selena added, before saying, ‘Hello, Maguire’s Travel, how can I help you?’ in her professional voice.

Stanley went out on to the street, then in at the door of the upstairs office. He marched up the stairs, feeling the weight of those extra pounds. There was nobody there, just a table in the centre of the floor with a chair on either side of it. A small card on the table caught Stanley’s eye and he picked it up.

On one side was inscribed a child’s prayer to a guardian angel and on the other was a picture of an angel, all flowing robes and wings, hovering on a cloud. Stanley smiled to himself and put the card in his pocket. Fortune teller, indeed. He knew she was a nun. Anyhow, she was gone, God love her, and it was back to work in the real world.