The silver locket hangs on the edges of the mushroom-shaped white lampshade on their desk. They rarely pause to read the inscription but it looks good when it catches the light when working at night, or the way it sparkles in the sunlight in the morning. The bestower of the necklace is long gone; too broken to fix. It’s not their fault she’s not what they want.
“Honestly, Rach, it’s not something I’m doing on the spur of the moment.”
Even her clients, the seekers and believers for divination from the soothsayer, or the patients for medication from the herbalist, still prefer to pay what they can afford to him being her, not her. She hates herself because she can’t hate them; it would be rude. And so the darkness seeps in. Then she goes for a marching stride in her nearby park, randomly shouting“Fuck You! Fuck You”.
On those days she doesn’t take Dusty, her grey whippet, a creature of poise and beauty. She wouldn’t want to embarrass her.
On those days she can’t make her medicines. They require love as much as medicinal and herbal know-how. She lies on the sofa watching Netflix Anything with Dusty, dozing off and being woken by sudden noises, such as male teenage banter passing her window and girls shouting after them and laughing.
A window above opens: “Tyrik!”
Mum?
“Mind yerself, she’s got one of her headaches.”
“Who? Ruby?”
“She’s been out in the park, shouting again.
Aw. We love you, Ruby!”
Ruby, three metres behind the window, shouts back “I love you too!” through a snuffly nose and blocked throat. She is holding her hand over her heart because it genuinely hurts. And yet she is the heartbreaker? She knows that the trick is to make herself a herb tonic with a pinch of something for the anger; the glue that needs to be there. If only she could get up and muster a little bit of jolly for self-love. How hard can it be just to walk to the next room?
There is banging on the ceiling from the floor above.
“Don’t let the bastards grind you down now Ruby!”
Ruby gets up, opens her window and shouts up that she promises she won’t. Sorry if she was wailing.
“You don’t want to be their friend Ruby!
I know.
“So remember how lucky we are that we don’t fit into some people’s worldviews because”
It saves time, Ruby choruses.
Ruby gives her a thumbs-up and closes the window.
Now she’s up she may as well get on with it; the coffee pot is on and Radio 4 chatters next door in her office. The blue bottles and jars of herbs and herbal medicines stored on high shelves of a dark wooden dresser need a dark dusty room where happy plants in pots keep out the sun. A selection of tarot card sets sits in a drawer wrapped in cloth like rare artefacts. The Ryder cards aren’t often requested, mostly the Cat Tarot. She conducts feminist readings. Well, she’s not going as far as giving herself one. She knows what it will say.
But she sharpens her pencils, carefully placing them back in their jar one by one, talks to the radio host (in a whisper in case Charlotte upstairs hears in and joins in) and makes a couple of social media posts to promote her business. On the way to her laptop, she knocks the desk on purpose to watch the necklace swing.