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.