I pop round to Kate’s house for a cup of tea on the way home. I’m thinking about sharing my concerns about Alicia with her. Maybe she can tell me if I’m worrying over nothing.
“Come on in!” she says, as she answers the door. “Alicia’s just made some tea.”
“Alicia’s here?”
I don’t know why I’m even surprised anymore. She seems to pop up everywhere I go these days. I’m tempted to leave, but I make myself sit down at the table. I’m determined to play nice.
Alicia smiles at me.
“Would you like a cup, Isabel?”
For a moment, my suspicious mind works overtime, wondering if she’s somehow poisoned the tea, or if she wants me to leave fingerprints on the cup so that she can plant more evidence at crime scenes. Given my misgivings, I should just say no, but instead I nod, numbly.
I watch as she pours the tea and swirls the leaves around in each cup, muttering something incomprehensible.
“What’s she doing?” I whisper to Kate.
“She’s going to read our tea leaves.”
“Seriously?”
“It’ll be fun!”
Reluctantly, I agree. I’m not sure I trust Alicia as far as I can throw her, but what harm can she do with a few tea leaves? And besides, it would be good to know what fate has in store for me, for a change.
We gulp our tea quickly, eager to get to the leaf reading. I’m not used to drinking tea made with loose leaves, and I splutter a bit as some of it goes down the wrong way. Kate pats me on the back.
“Do me first,” she says eagerly, once I’ve stopped coughing.
Alicia leans forward and examines the little patterns in her teacup.
“What can you see, Kate?”
Kate scrunches up her face in concentration.
“Looks like a present?” she says, hopefully.
“Yes!” Alicia takes a closer look. “A parcel. That means a surprise.”
“A good surprise or a bad one?” I ask.
Alicia shrugs. “It doesn’t say. Maybe that depends on you.”
Kate raises her eyebrows at me and I smile.
“So what about yours?” I ask.
Alicia gazes down at her own cup and a slow smile spreads across her face.
“I see a lover,” she says, blushing.
“Ooh!” Kate claps her hands together. “Maybe it’s that hot new pizza guy!”
Alicia giggles. “Let’s do yours, Isabel.”
I offer her my cup.
“What can you see?” she asks, as the three of us pore over the splattered tea leaves in the bottom of my cup. Mine looks a bit messier than the other two.
“Well, that blob looks a bit like Fluffy,” I say eventually.
“Yes, a cat.” Alicia confirms. “And next to it is a wolf.”
“What’s that, then?” asks Kate, pointing to the biggest shape of all.
“That’s an hourglass.”
“So what does it all mean?”
Alicia takes a deep breath. “Well, the cat is for deceit, or a false friend.”
“Oh.”
“And the wolf?”
“The wolf is for jealousy.”
“And what about the hourglass?”
“Yes, the hourglass,” Alicia looks me right in the eye. “That means that time is running out.”
“Time for what?”
“Who knows? Maybe it means you need to make a change in your life, or get something done. The signs can be very vague.”
“You couldn’t magic up a couple of lovers for us then?” I ask. “Not that I’m not grateful for my assortment of strange animals and warnings about punctuality.”
Alicia laughs her squeaky little laugh. “Maybe next time. I can only work with the what the tea leaves give me.”
“What do you think?” I ask Fluffy that night, as we watch Neighbours together.
“Can she really read tea leaves, or was she making it all up? ‘The cat is for deceit, or a false friend,’” I say, mimicking her high-pitched voice. “She’s obviously not a cat lover then.”
Knock! Knock!
Who’s that?
“I’m coming,” I yell. I don’t know why people don’t just use the doorbell. There’s nothing wrong with it.
I undo the latch and the door swings back.
It’s the police. DS Penney and the other one.
“Who were you talking to?” Penney asks, looking around.
“Oh, just my cat,” I say, gesturing towards the sofa, but Fluffy has already gone into hiding, the false friend that he is.
“So how can I help you?” I ask, glancing at my watch. It seems a bit late to be making house calls.
“We just have one question for you, Isabel. What happened to Rose Cottage?”
Chapter Six
The summer I turned eighteen, Kate and I worked as play leaders at a children’s holiday camp called Camp Windylake. While Kate’s group charged up and down the football pitch, mine were more stylish and artistic. We had the best times in the arts and crafts tent, fashioning intricate hats and gloves from old scraps of material and decorating them with sequins, buttons and beads. We customised jeans and T-shirts with safety pins, ribbons and lace. Every one of my charges made something they could be proud of that summer, culminating in a big fashion show on the last day, where the kids strutted their stuff down a makeshift catwalk to Right Said Fred.
I started smoking that summer, actually. I know, most people start much younger than eighteen, but smoking had never interested me before. Yet somehow, sitting round the camp fire one night, I found myself accepting a cigarette. And despite many, many failed attempts, I’ve never managed to quit since. Not even after what happened to Rose Cottage.
The day camp finished, Julio picked us up in a cherry-red convertible he’d been working on, drawing numerous wolf-whistles from the girls, fellow camp leaders, and even one or two of the mums. This was way before he and Kate were ever an item, of course.
After dropping Kate off home, we returned to Rose Cottage, the holiday home Dad rented every summer since we were little. I dumped my bag in the hallway and ran upstairs to take a shower. Dad was out on a date that night (what can I say? Like father, like son) and Julio suggested we go out for a few drinks and catch up.
“How about here?” he said, as we walked down the High Street, in the direction of the Millennium nightclub.
“No,” I said, glaring at the long-haired bouncer. He looked particularly smug that night, organising the crowd into an orderly queue and deciding who could go in and who couldn’t. “I hear there’s a new Turkish place that’s just opened across the road. Let’s go and have a look.”
The raki poured freely that night, and it was gone midnight by the time we finally stumbled home along the beach.
Julio sniffed the air. “Hmm, smells like barbecue.”
I blinked at the unfriendly lights ahead of us. “I don’t think that’s a barbecue. Something’s on fire!”
We strained our eyes to see, and, perhaps because we’d had quite a bit to drink, we still failed to realise that the source of all the commotion was our very own Rose Cottage. Until we saw Dad, that is. He was walking across the sand towards us, his arms crossed, his expression as dark as the thunderous clouds of smoke above us.
“OK, which of you did it?” he demanded. “I’ve just been speaking to the fire crew and they think it was probably started by a cigarette.”
Julio and I looked at each other in horror. We had each had one before heading out that night. But I’d stubbed mine out, I was certain of it. Poor Dad, he had no idea either of us smoked.