The Clairvoyant

#1

The car smells of cheese and onion vomit.  On the back seat is a girl clutching a Quality Street tin and a packet of kettle chips.  The tin is full of green liquid.  Her face is also green.  The car is dirty – as though it has been used to store hay and dogs.  In the driver’s seat sits a beautiful woman.  She asks me to tip the sick into the gutter.  She scowls at me when I refuse.  Handing me a water bottle from the passenger side footwell, the driver gives me elaborate instructions on how to fill it with water.  I mentally erase each word as it is spoken.

#2

The back window is open and a gale blows through it.  It is thought that this will prevent the girl being sick again.  I say that removing the kettle chips from her grasp would be a more efficacious move, but her mother thinks that this will do more harm than good.  I pity the girl, but sincerely hope that in the course of the day, I will not be called upon to touch her.  Her already matted hair is embellished with chunks of partially digested food.  In the driver’s seat sits a glamorous woman.  She is telling me about sex with her latest boyfriend, but I am not really interested.

#3

For a long while, I stare out of the window.  We reach our destination.  It is a modern church, built of red brick and set in a garden.  The mother decides that we will take it in turns to mind the girl on the patch of grass.  The girl looks like a filthy broken doll.  It is my turn to stay with her.  She has a tendency to run away and I hope that I will not need to restrain or chase her.  I know from past experience that when her mother goes away, the girl will cry.  I show her how to make daisy chains, as a distraction.  The beautiful woman looks like a daisy; slender of stem, wearing a blouse of yellow broderie anglaise.

#4

When the beautiful woman returns, she looks wilted.  I can tell that she has been crying.  The clairvoyant evidently did not give her the news she wanted.  She wishes that she had taped the session, she says, so that I could hear it.  It was uncanny how the psychic could tell her new boyfriend is already married.  He’ll never leave his wife, she said.  I nod.  I’m not psychic, but I already know this.  It is my turn to see the clairvoyant.  I try to think of something important to ask her, but my mind is empty. The girl did not try to run away, but listened patiently as I named all the flowers.