“Dora Hannides, PHd, Clairvoyant from California,” said the sign on the window of Mysteries, a new-age shop in Covent Garden I sometimes went into. It was dark and crammed to the gills with crystals and self-help books and tarot cards and incense and amulets and shop assistants who looked like dried out ghosts, as if they had been pressed between the pages of a book of spells. I’m surprised I saw the sign, there were so many others  – so many people available to tell me the secrets of my ascendant, the answers to my prayers, the meaning of my life –  this life – or if I preferred, the meaning of my past lives;  I could meet with the dead, I could find out who my spirit guides were – I had three, apparently, a Japanese woman, a Zulu warrior and a Native American (it seemed to me that dead native americans were very busy with this spirit guide business); I could find out the name of my soul-mate. John, a woman in Dublin had breathed into my ear. You’ll meet a John. He is your soulmate. She grasped my wrist with twig-like fingers until I gave her a coin. To this day I’ve never had a lover, or a good friend, called John. Perhaps he’s still waiting for me, just around the corner, all honey-eyes and muscle. Dora held my wrist too. But lightly, her fingers cool and feathery. She stared over my shoulder as she talked, as if the real me were there, a few inches outside of my skin. Dora told me a story. A story I knew already, for it was the story of my life: with one difference: in her mouth this life was a beautiful thing. A meaningful thing. Every twist and turn and collapse necessary and valuable. Not one single event, not one single action, not one single thought, was wrong. I was not wrong. When Dora finished her tale, she turned her head and looked me in the eyes, as if I had entered my skin.

My girlfriend and I planned to make a lot of money. We would set ourselves up as high-class prostitutes. It would be safer in twos, one could keep guard, while the other did the business – keeping an eye out in case anything untoward happened. We did not discuss what ‘untoward’ might mean. I was eighteen and bulimic. She was my best friend and Irish. We drank rum and cokes and flushed with excitement with all the possibilities. The things we would do with the money. It would just be for a little while, of course. A small curve in the straight and narrow path to successful adulthood. I saw that adulthood quite clearly: fame, fortune. I’d be a dancer, an actress, a writer, a poet. I’d be a journalist, an architect; I’d photograph the moon from a space ship, I’d go to Tibet and become one with everything. The world was my oyster, and I was licking at her briny, sharp edges. I had no doubts, none at all. That I would be fine. I would. So she and I, my best girfriend who is no longer my best girlfriend, and nor me hers: we catastrophically failed each other’s expectations of each other – discussed into the night how we’d proceed. We were all talk of course, and the talk was good, until I woke up the next morning, my head a chainsaw massacre, my only thought of where and when and how. My month’s allowance was spent. My credit card maxed. The kinds of foods required were hard to steal. No slipping a box of creampuffs into your handbag. Not easily anyway. My best friend lent me money. She did not know I spent it on fast food, food that went fast in and fast out. And later, when I returned from ‘lectures’ (I hadn’t been to any for several months, she did not know), we’d discuss our plan. We needed beautiful clothes, a quality advertisement, our hair cut, our nails painted. By four am we’d fall into bed – the same bed, it was big and there was only one in the apartment – certain that tomorrow we’d do all these things. But we didn’t. What I did do was answer a small advertisement in the back of a newspaper for ‘photographic models’. It was not exactly what I expected. A married man, short, fat and kind faced. His wife much in evidence. After one roll of film he persuaded me to take my clothes off. “I’m going to do something naughty” he said, and before I knew it he’d tweaked my nipple. Hard. “That’s better,” he told me, and the flash went off, blinding. My mother has one of his photographs on the wall of her spare room. It is not one of the nudes. I never told her about that. I’m looking over my shoulder. I’m wearing a red satin blouse. My mother put it in the spare room – where she would not see it every day – because, she said, “You look so terribly sad.”

An assignment I set on Diving Deeper: A Writing Workshop is to write a page a day for a month (or more…) I thought I’d post my contributions here…

One page, just one page. If I could write one page a day in less than a year I’d have the first draft of a novel. If I wrote one page a day, I might feel better about myself. As it is I don’t feel better at all, and I’ve written three lines. Surely I should be part way there already, some iota of feeling better? But no. I’m certain this is not going to achieve what I set out to achieve. And what is that, prey? Health, wealth and happiness? Or is it ‘pray’? Yes, I’d better start praying. What if I’d started this whole caboodle earlier? Like when I was seventeen? Would I be a better, happier person? A book-published writer? Instead I lived the stories I’m now writing. There’s something to be said for that, I suppose. And now what? What if I had a different life? How would that look. Richer, and I don’t mean money. I mean – dinner parties, laughter, people, family, my brother. His children. I’d see them grow, and perhaps they might even call me auntie. Instead all I see are photographs. Pixels, in fact. My nephews are pixels. My niece is made up of fewer pixels because she’s smaller. I look at my life with surprise. I wasn’t meant for this, I’m sure of that. Parts are fine, parts are not. What happened? I got sick. Ok, so start there: What if I hadn’t gotten sick? Now there’s a thought. It pains me to think of this. It’s too big a what if. Maybe nothing would be different. Perhaps it’s time to try a different tack. What if has an underlying, what, something. It assumes the ‘what if’ could never happen. If. Not a good word really. I should eradicate it from my vocabulary. I have to stop now, I can feel myself getting melancholy. This is not helping, just as I expected. Too much thinking. I’ve got an idea, a different approach. Positive what ifs. As in  things narrowly missed, thank God. What if my father had not died? I’d have been sent to boarding school and I’d probably be .. what… I wonder. Generally in the family – the family sans father – this possibility was thought of as Not A Good Thing. I’d have ended up – what?  a wreck or a whore ? Well, inspite of never going to boarding school I’ve been both. I once made a list of all the boys I’d slept with. The list was long. It gave me a certain sense of achievement.