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hide behind her mother, then peered at me from around that bulk with wide eyes. “Is it glass?” I asked, fascinated at how it held everything inside it-the balcony, its owner, a plane tree-but upside down.
    “Nope, it’s the real thing-crystal. A thousand years old. Seen everything, has the Glass. I don’t use it much, it’s like a fit of the dry horrors.”
    “Dry horrors?” How many questions were there to ask?
    “The gin jitters, the whisky wackos-delirium tremens. With the Glass, youse never knows what’s gunna come screamin’ up to push its face against the inside of the outside. Nope, I use the cards most. And for me ladies, Flo.”
    The moment she uttered Flo’s name, I knew why I was being made privy to all this. Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, for what reason I had no idea, had decided that I must be told about this secret life. So I asked the ultimate question.
    “Flo?”
    “Yep, Flo. She’s me medium. She just knows the answers to the questions me ladies ask. I wasn’t born with the gift meself-it just sorta snuck up on me when I was-oh, Harriet, desperate for money! I started the fortune telling as a racket, and that’s honest. Then I discovered I did have the gift. But Flo’s a natural. Scares the bejeezus outta me sometimes, does Flo.”
    Yes, and she scares the bejeezus out of me too, though not with revulsion. I could believe it all. Flo doesn’t look as if she belongs to this world, so it isn’t much of a surprise to find that she has access to another world. Maybe it is her natural one. Or maybe she’s an hysteric. They come in all ages, hysterics. But knowing, I simply loved Flo more. It answered the riddle of the sorrow in her eyes. What she must see and feel! A natural.
    After drinking a full glass of brandy, I got down the stairs rather clumsily, but I didn’t flop on my bed to sleep it off, I wanted to get all this down before I forgot it. And I’m sitting here with my Biro in my hand wondering why I’m not outraged, why I’m not of a mind to give Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz the sharp edge of my tongue for exploiting her weeny daughter. I do have a sharp edge to my tongue. But this is so far from anything I know or understand, and even in the short time I’ve
    lived here, I’ve grown a lot. At least that’s how I feel. Sort of new and changed.
    I like that monstrosity named Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, but I love her child.
    What stills the sharp edge of my tongue, Horatio, is the realisation that there are indeed more things in heaven and earth than Bronte’s philosophy ever dreamed of. And I can’t go back to Bronte any more. I can never go back to Bronte.
    Flo the medium. Her mother had implied that she herself communicated with the dead through the Glass, but she hadn’t really described Flo’s mediumistic activities as concerned with the dead. Flo knows the answers to the questions “me ladies” ask. I conjured up visions of “me ladies” and had to admit that they didn’t look like women chasing beloved phantoms. All different, but none with that air of unassuaged grief. Whatever drove them to seek help from Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz was, I somehow knew, connected to this world, not the next. Though Flo was not of this world.
    Perhaps in the beginning, when it was a racket to earn the money she was desperate for, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz valued money. I imagine it bought her The House. But these days? In that bare, bleak, awful surrounding? Mrs.
    Delvecchio Schwartz doesn’t give tuppence for comfort, and nor does Flo.
    Wherever they dwell, it isn’t among pretty dresses and comfy couches. I can even understand why Flo is still feeding off the breast. It’s a link with her mother she needs. Oh, Flo! Angel puss. Your mother is the whole of your world, its
    beginning and its end. She’s your anchor and your refuge. And I am honoured that you’ve welcomed me into your affections, angel puss. I feel blessed.

Monday
February 8th, 1960
    I started in Casualty X-ray this