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

that the older kids have all gone on to college, but they still let her hang around and even be in their plays.

“Fiona’s your name, too?” She looks confused.

“No, your name is Fiona. My name is Maeve.”

“I know what my name is.”

“Do you want something, or…?”

“I heard you were doing tarot readings.”

“Uh…” I stall a bit and try to wonder whether or not I could really read for someone I don’t know. “Do you want one?”

She nods. “I want a career reading.”

“I see,” I respond. “Well, come and find me at lunchtime.”

“No way,” she says, folding her arms like I’ve just asked her to take her knickers off. “You’re not supposed to do readings in public. Don’t you know that? They’re supposed to be private.”

“You already seem to know a lot about this.”

“My tita used to do readings back in Manila,” she says, and then clocks my confused face. “My aunt.”

“Oh, right. Why don’t you just ask her, then?”

“Because she’ll tell me to do something boring, like law or medicine.”

“Right. OK.” The bell goes for class, and I’m still bursting to go to the toilet. I push into one of the cubicles and pull down my tights. Fiona lingers outside.

“So will you do it?”

“Yes!” I call, conscious that she can hear me pee. “The Chokey, lunchtime!”

“I’ll cross your palm with silver!”

For a moment, I’m sure I’ve misheard her. “What?”

“I’ll pay you!”

At lunchtime, Fiona is at the Chokey. I still have the key Miss Harris gave me, and we sit cross-legged on the floor with our phone torches on, our faces ghoulish in the darkness.

As I shuffle, I can’t help but look at her curiously. It’s a genuine surprise to see her here. She’s not a mean girl, exactly, but definitely distant. I can’t say I blame her. Her mum is Filipino, and as one of the few non-white people in our school, she gets a few comments about her looks. Last year when we got back from summer holidays, a few of the other girls asked her to hold her bare arm out against theirs, so they could all compare tans. Her shiny black hair is complimented constantly, but almost always with a weird qualifier. Something like: “Well, I bet it’s because you eat a lot of fish.”

I pass the deck back to Fiona, asking her to shuffle and separate. She picks her cards. I take one look at them. For a second, I don’t say anything.

“Are you … OK at the moment?” I ask tentatively.

“What do you mean?”

“Your cards just seem a bit … sad.”

“I asked you about my career.”

“Yes, but…”

I wave my hands over the cards. Five of Cups. Sadness, anxiety, loss. Three of Swords. Heartbreak. Nine of Swords. Worry.

Her lip twitches. I’ve always seen Fiona Buttersfield as a bit full of herself. Someone too good to mingle with the unsophisticated masses.

“It just seems there are other things on your mind that aren’t your … uh, career.”

She gazes at the cards for a long moment, and I assume she is about to call off the reading.

“I’ve got this boyfriend,” she finally says. “He’s older.”

“Oh,” I say. I try to keep my cool. Like: Oh yeah, sure, I have plenty of older boyfriends, too.

“He’s twenty.”

“Wow.”

“We met in the theatre,” she says, putting a little breathy voice on. There’s something intensely annoying about the way she says “theatre”. Like there’s no “r” in it. The-ah-tah.

“He wants me to…”

“Have sex?” I venture.

“Yes,” she responds, grateful.

“And you…”

“I don’t know!” She suddenly explodes, raking her fingers through her hair. “But, you know, we’ve been going out for three months. It would hardly be scandalous.”

“Uh-huh,” I say again, thinking, This is already way above my pay grade. I’m an amateur tarot reader, not a therapist. I do my best. “Well, the cards are clearly trying to tell you something here.”

“What?”

I pick up the Nine of Swords. “This is a picture of a

woman who is literally crying in bed at the thought of a man getting into it.”

And she laughs. Not a fake little titter, but a real, full laugh.

“Shut up, it does not mean that.”

“Just tell him you’re not ready.”

She twists her mouth and looks at the card again. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think I’ll ever be ready. I don’t know if I even fancy him that much. But he’s in the theatre group, and they’re all older…”

I think for a moment. “Well, you could always say that romance is distracting you from your … your craft.”

She nods, considering this. “That’s not a bad shout.”

“Or you could break up with him.”

She smiles and looks at the ground. “That’s not a bad shout either.”

At that moment, there’s a knock on the cupboard door, and there are two first-year girls standing outside.

“We heard you were telling fortunes,” the braver one says.

Fiona pushes past me. “She is,” she says. “Two euro, ten minutes.”

She whips her head around back to face me, her smile full of mischief. “I’ll take care of appointments if you give me free readings. Deal?”

“Deal,” I say, uncertainly.

“Every star needs her own psychic.”

She’s trying to sound casual, but underneath the bravado I’m starting to spy something that I can only recognize because I possess it myself. Fiona is lonely. Every star needs her own psychic, and every girl needs someone to talk to.

And that’s how the Chokey Card Tarot Consultancy begins.

That night, I spread every card out on my bedroom floor. I decide to test my knowledge, to make sure that I can remember every one. If I’m going to go into business with this, I need to know that I won’t be stumped, regardless of what card comes out. I point at them, saying each meaning aloud as though I were weaving a magic spell.

“Ace of Cups, compassion! Two of Cups, romance! Three of Cups, friendship!”

How is this all so easy?

Once I’ve been through every card at least three times, something weird happens. There’s a spare card, stuck to the World, the final card of the Major Arcana. It