All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O’donoghue (ink ebook reader txt) 📕

oven. She screams and instinctively clutches her skin, dropping the entire tray of batter on the floor. I grab the kitchen roll and start trying to clean up the sticky yellow globs.

“Stop!” she shouts, pushing me away. “Just get out. Get out, get out, get out! Go to your room.”

“I’m trying to help, you cow,” I say, my eyes tingling already. God, don’t cry. Don’t cry. Nothing worse than being the baby of the family and crying. “And you can’t tell me to go to my room. You’re not Mum, so piss off.”

Now Joanne is crying. Sometimes I think that she spent so long being the baby of the family that she’s even more sensitive than I am. She had her baby status taken away from her, after all, while I’m desperately trying to leave it behind.

The kitchen door swings open and Mum’s there, holding the dog’s lead and looking exhausted by us already. The dog charges in and dives for the batter, stuffing as much as he can into his mouth before Mum starts shrieking about his irritable bowel syndrome.

“GRAB TUTU!” she yells. “Maeve, get Tutu AWAY! Tutu, STOP! Tutu, BAD! Joanne, is there butter in this? I am not cleaning up rancid dairy diarrhoea. Do you have any idea how that’s going to smell?”

We lock Tutu outside while we clean up the mess and Joanne tearfully explains what a bitch I am.

“I can’t believe you,” I snap at her. “You’re in your twenties and you’re snitching.”

Then I say a bunch of horrible stuff about her and Sarra that I instantly regret but will also never apologize for. Tutu and I go to my room, two outlaws.

There are fifty WhatsApp notifications on my phone, but all of them are from groups I’m part of. Niamh Walsh and Michelle Breen @’d me a few times, asking what Miss Harris made me do during my first day of suspension.

I cleaned out the Chokey, I write back.

Lots of emojis.

What a bitch, someone says.

I found so much crap, I type. I send a picture of the Walkman with the grungy mixtape.

They all register their surprise, but quickly move on to something else. There are at least fourteen of us in this WhatsApp group, so it’s hard for everyone to keep up. I find myself wishing, not for the first time, that I had a best friend to talk to.

I had one, once. But that whole thing with Lily is over. It’s been almost a year and a half, now.

Then I remember the cards. The brilliant reds and purples, the serious expressions and strange symbols. I pull them out of my bag and start sifting through them, laying them out in numerical order.

1. THE FOOL.

A guy with a dog and a flute. He’s kind of hot in that long-haired Prince Valiant kind of way.

2. THE MAGICIAN.

A guy at a table, mixing a potion.

3. THE HIGH PRIESTESS.

A woman with a moon on her head. She reminds me of Miss Harris, beautiful and stern.

I peer at each one, hoping that I’ll get some kind of psychic vision if I make close-enough eye contact with the people in the cards. Nothing happens. Eventually, bored of my own ignorance, I open my laptop and search: How to teach yourself tarot.

And then, the evening disappears.

CHAPTER THREE

“HEY, GUYS, WELCOME TO MY CHANNEL. I’M RAYA SILVER of Silverskin Magic, and today we’re going to learn how to give a standard three-card tarot reading.”

The woman in the YouTube video is sitting cross-legged in a wicker armchair, impossibly gorgeous in the New Orleans mystic shop that is also her family home. Raya has two kids, a dog, a cat and a third eye.

It has been two hours, and I am obsessed with her.

I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned that the “face” cards – like “Death” and the “Magician” and the “High Priestess” – are like main characters of the tarot, and they’re called the Major Arcana. The rest of them are suits, just like in regular playing cards, and they’re the Minor Arcana. Cups represent emotions. Swords represent the mind. Rods represent passion. Pentacles represent money.

“Swords, cups, rods, pentacles,” Raya’s e-book says. “Head, heart, loins, feet.”

“I want you to get warmed up with a nice juicy shuffle,” she instructs, her cards slipping through the air and into her fingers like silk scarves. I mimic her movements, and the cards splay out of my hands, falling onto the bedspread. I’m still trying to get the hang of my shuffle technique.

“Or, if you’re reading for someone else, get them to shuffle. The cards are living, breathing things. They need to soak up all the energy from whoever you’re reading for. Then, ask the client to cut the deck into three with their left hand, and put it back together. Fan the cards out so they have plenty of choice.”

I do as she says.

“Now pick three. They represent past, present and future.”

I pick carefully and turn all three over. The Moon, the Chariot and the Tower. The Moon is just the Moon, a big luminous, pearly illustration. The Chariot is a man on a two-horse chariot, and the horses look mad as hell. The Tower is the only one I’m anxious about. It looks horrible. A medieval tower is broken in half, orange flames licking the stone. Two people are falling out of it, plunging to their deaths. It gives me a chill. But I trust Raya. She says there are no truly bad cards, that there’s a good side to everything, and I believe her.

Pausing the video, I consult my Kindle to see Raya Silver’s descriptions of the cards. All of Raya’s interpretations are friendly, text message-length and written in ordinary language, not in some weird obtuse magical language. It’s why I like her so much. She feels like a friend.

THE MOON: The Moon rules over our periods, so there’s a lot to be mad about here. This card represents deep subconscious energy, maybe even stuff that you are suppressing. Remember, all