Chapter One

“You’ll die when you’re 56 you know. Cancer of the liver.” The fortune teller threw out the prediction almost nonchalantly as Eva sat across from her, perched on the edge of an overstuffed armchair. Diana was the fortune teller’s name, a very attractive woman in her mid-forties wearing layers of lace and florals and heavy eye make-up, all set off by a scarf wrapped turban style over her messy black curls. Eva had come to see her with her friend Fiona who was now waiting in the outer room. Diana had made some impact among Fiona’s friends, telling them of past lives, surprising them with facts too many to be merely coincidence.

That prediction hadn’t bothered her too much, it seemed so far into the future. By that time she’d probably be ready to go. Anyway she didn’t think fortune tellers were supposed to tell you things like that, so negative. Don’t they always tell you you’ll win the lottery or meet a tall dark man from a foreign country? What sort of fortune teller tells a 22 year old the reason and date of their death!

Eva thought her liver was okay although she did have a pink ridge along the outside of her palms and that’s supposed to be a symptom of liver problems. She was thinking how it was against her principles to go to a doctor unless she was in agony. Which meant she rarely got to see one. Her GP Roger, had a medically incurable eye disease and was slowly going blind so he became a homeopath as well in an effort to cure his own illness. It hasn’t worked. He looks over your shoulder while he’s talking to you and it’s quite frightening to ever think of him doing anything surgical. The one time she needed an ear syringed he had trouble finding the opening in the side of her head to put the syringe nozzle.

She sat back in the bus, conversation with self going on in her head as the lurching passengers standing in the aisle grabbed at the side of her seat when the driver took a corner with a bit more than the speed required. Often her inner dialogue took rambling paths as she let it roam where it would. It broke the monotony of the journey from the city to Drummoyne and was sometimes quite entertaining. She didn’t know why the fortune teller’s words came into her head then for she hadn’t worried about them at the time. It was just that they occasionally popped unbidden into her mind when she wasn’t focusing on anything in particular.

Finally the bus pulled up at Eva’s stop and she pushed her way through the bedraggled looking commuters to alight and make her way down the street to her own semi detached house at the end of the row.

“Eva!” she heard, and looked up to see her friend Velma hanging around outside her gate.

“ I thought I’d catch you now. I’m on my way home so thought it was time we had a coffee together”.

“Hi Vel, what are you up to?” As Eva spoke she felt a ripple go through her, a walking-over-the-grave type of feeling. She mentally shook herself and smiled at her friend. The feeling of unease stayed with her as they went up the short path to the front door, as she fumbled for her keys to let them in to the dark hallway. All the houses in this street had dark interiors, joined along one wall with few windows on the other side and Eva turned the lights on in each room as they walked through the living room into the kitchen.

They sat at the small dining table, with coffee in the plunger and Tim Tams in container Eva remembered to take out of the fridge. She’d won a case of Tim Tams in a competition a few months earlier as runner-up prize for a car she’d wanted to win and even having given packets of biscuits to everyone she knew and some she didn’t, like the woman in the Post Office, there were still too many Tim Tams in the house and now they’d gone past their best use by date. She didn’t particularly like them herself so was trying to remember to pass them off to unsuspecting visitors. Velma picked one up, turned it around to inspect it then took a small bite. Eva looked at her chewing and thought she’d never noticed before what a small tight-lipped mouth Velma had in her otherwise pretty face.

“How’s Pippy?”

Velma’s pride and joy was her miniature black poodle. Pippy ate sautéed chicken breasts and poached chicken livers while Velma cooked mince and frozen fries most nights for herself. Eva had often thought she’d rather eat dinner with Pippy than Velma. Not that they ate often in each other’s houses. Their friendship, formed when both were in the freshman nursing class for 6 weeks at Gladesville Hospital , was more a casual coffee chat every few weeks. Velma had been calling in more often over the last few months saying it was on her way home, she was just dropping in to say hello. Eva wasn’t really sure why their friendship continued. They didn’t seem to have a lot to talk about and made do with small talk about work and what was happening in the lives of people they both knew from the hospital.

Velma took a deep breath and was about to launch a detailed description of Pippy’s latest cuteness when they were interrupted by a male voice. “Hey Eva, I’m home’, and Rod walked into the room.

“Oh … hi Velma”

“Hello Rod”

“Coffee?” Eva asked, and she made a move towards him then thought better of it and sat down again. She’d wait to see the mood he’d brought home with him. Not worth the humiliation of being rejected in front of someone else.

A curt, “No”, and he was out of the room and walking down the hall to the bedroom. Eva knew it was going to be one of those evenings when she felt the house filling with a black cloud atmosphere. Such a moody man. And yet, ironically probably the reason she’d first been attracted to him. His smooth-talking, woman-wooing friend Peter had met her first, at a local café, and later turned up with his friend Rod, trying to talk her into going out to look at an exhibition of Yoko Ono’s art with them. Peter did all the talking while she was looking past him at his tall dark friend. She thought he looked mysterious, so silent, such brown eyes with lashes a mile long. She went with them and managed to spend most of the time near Rod. Peter got the message and left them to get to know each other enough to plan another meeting. Rod never spoke much but the mutual attraction was strong and it wasn’t long before they’d slept together and were spending a lot of time together. He took her home to meet his parents, ultra conservatives who hated her immediately because they could see she wasn’t a good catholic girl.

“Are you liking your new job Eva?” Velma had continued her nursing career after Gladesville and was now a nurse-aid at a private hospital. Eva had dropped out after her 6 weeks nursing school, deciding she wasn’t nurse material, and since then had about 10 jobs. Her latest one was at an advertising agency in the city, learning to ‘spot’ negatives and do general tasks nobody else wanted to do.

“Today I was answering the phones at lunchtime and cut the manager off in the middle of an important call. He screamed at me and I thought he would fire me but he didn’t.,” Eva hooted at the memory.

Rod came back into the kitchen, changed from his work clothes into jeans and a blue t-shirt. Eva thought again what a good looking man he was.

“I’m going now. Do you want a lift Vel?”

“Thanks, it’s getting dark and I hate crossing that busy road at night. Pippy will be waiting for me”

“See you Eva,” Velma threw over her shoulder as she headed for the front door. Rod gave her a peck on the cheek and followed Velma out to the car. He hadn’t said where he was going or when he’d be back.

When they’d left Eva unzipped her boots and left them on the floor, went into the bathroom and stripped off her skirt and shirt before stepping into the shower. The water gurgled and spat out of the old pipes and unwillingly gave her a dribble of a shower. She stepped out, wrapped her wet hair in a towel and looked at herself in the fly-stained mirror. She looked at her face, good skin, even features but her eyes looked tired. She hated the way they turned down at the sides when she was tired. They looked like birds eyes she thought, green and slanted down at the edges. The fortune tellers words came back to her as she looked into her own eyes. If she believed the prediction would that make it happen? She pressed her nose against the mirror and stared deep into her own irises. A mirror could be a portal to another plane of existence. Squinting to see deeper, to see if she could see her own future in her soul. Was that a tiny face she saw in the depths of her pupils? With a tiny mouth open as if screaming. She was open to the message but it wasn’t clear. Sighing she stepped back and bumped into the old washing machine crowding the bathroom. She hated that washing machine, ever since her long hair had got caught in its rollers and then her arm as she’d pulled the hair free. And instead of thinking clearly and hitting the stop switch her arm had gone through the rollers up to the elbow before it stopped. It was almost funny to think of it now, the way she had put the rollers in reverse and wound her arm back out instead of releasing the roller mechanism, and the hand and arm red and swollen and pulsing, like the arm of a cartoon character. It was high on her list to get a new washing machine.

She was asleep when Rod came in. Fitful sleep punctuated by dreams of half-recognised faces and voices calling out in words she couldn’t quite grasp, blurred faces with mouths wide open, vaguely conscious of him getting into the bed with her. In the morning she stumbled out to the kitchen to make coffee before she could talk. She lit her first cigarette of the day.

“What time did you get in?”

“It wasn’t that late. Before midnight. Some of the guys went to Theo’s to play cards but the stakes were too high for me.”

He seemed in a better mood than the night before and even teased her while she was getting dressed. She loved him like that and lived in hope that he’d stop being moody and that some day they’d have wonderful, interesting, stimulating conversations and live happily ever after. Meantime she suffered an unease never knowing which mood he would shift to, or why, or whether it was her fault when he was black-browed and scowling.

“I’m working late tonight”, he said as he buttoned his workshirt and gave his hair a comb through with his fingers at the dressing table mirror. He worked from 7am until 4 at an industrial plant in Alexandria and had only lately started working overtime. She didn’t give it much thought. She had no inkling of how that would figure in her future.

“Okay, I’ll keep your dinner in the oven.”

“No, don’t worry I’ll grab something.”

And he was out the front door and she heard the car start up before she wondered whether she had time to make toast for breakfast. The phone rang and it was her friend Fiona.

“Eva baby .. are you home today? I have a day off and thought I’d come over”

“Fi, it’s great to hear from you and I’d love to see you. What the hell, I’ll ring in sick.”

Eva didn’t need much as an excuse to take a day off from a boring job, probably soon to end anyway. She lied her excuses to Alison and ignored the flash of guilt she felt for lying.

Fiona had been with her when the fortune teller had made her dire prediction. The two of them had explored lots of doorways into the unknown world of other dimensions and psychic realms. With lots of giggles and some awe inspiring moments they tried their own versions of clairvoyant visions, from squinting at each other by candlelight to see past incarnations superimposed on each other’s faces to gazing into a bowl of water for so long they finally exploded in laughter at themselves. They went to a spiritualist church with a flower to be held by the medium of the day. Fiona was singled out first, “You’re a pianist, I hear lovely music. You are a gifted musician.” Fi was a nurse too, a triple- certified private nurse who had never had the urge to play a musical instrument in her life. She was a morris dancer though. Eva tried to overlook that flaw in her friend.

When it was Eva’s turn the medium took a minute to study her flower and then looking straight at her, said, “When I look at you it’s like looking into a mirror.”

Eva wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. Did she mean that she reflected back whatever she saw? Was she shallow and shiny, or a pool of repeated images? Or did the medium mean she, Eva, was a mirror of the medium herself. There was no opportunity to ask questions before the medium had finished her readings and was gone. It gave Eva something more to ponder.

Fiona bounced in around 11, a big exhuberant girl full of attractive energy. She drank hard, swore hard and loved men, almost all men, sleeping with whoever happened to be around when she was drunk, with little thought about whether they were suitable. As a consequence she’d had her heart broken numerous times by men who turned out to be married or attached. Eva and Fiona admired each other for qualities they didn’t have themselves. Fi firmly believed Eva was psychic and simply hadn’t developed her powers. The times Eva had read her tarot Fi was impressed by some accurate readings like the year Eva told her she saw 3 illnesses in her family, the last one the worst, and that year Fi’s dad suffered 3 heart attacks, twice being hospitalised and the third time dying. Eva herself thought it more likely coincidence but Fi was convinced she had a gift. Eva admired Fi’s ability to say whatever she thought no matter who’s feelings she bruised. Not that she wanted to insult people, just be brave enough to speak her mind instead of keeping the thoughts to herself.

Rod didn’t approve of Eva’s friendship with Fiona. He thought she would be influenced to behave the same way, to be exposed to things that would make her lose some of the naivety she had. He knew Fiona didn’t like him and thought he didn’t treat Eva well enough. If she had her way, Eva would be single and fancy free like her.

“Evie … I’ve met this really weird man. He was at the café I go to for lunch last week and we started talking and he’s been buying me lunch every day! He really fancies me and yesterday he offered me $500 to go to bed with him, no sex, just lie in a bed. What do you think!”

“Oh Fi, be careful. What do you know about him? It sounds sort of sleezy to me. That does sound weird. What else is there about him, what’s his name?”

“Well he’s pretty ugly and he has a real gravelly sort of voice. Looks a bit like a TV gangster but a skinny one. He sure seems to have money to splash around. He won’t tell me his name.” Fi looked a bit unsure of herself while describing him. “Anyway I said I won’t do it by myself and he said if I want to bring a friend that’s okay.”

“You’re kidding!” exclaimed Eva.

……. To be continued one of these days or years when the author gets another flash of inspiration. You could take it on as an exercise in imagination to continue this saga!