Read Online The Cinderella Reflex by Johanna Buchanan - Free Book Online Page B

door there and stepped into a room flooded with sunlight.
    A shabby floral sofa was angled to get a perfect view of the back garden through white French windows. Fat red tulips sprang upwards in joyous clumps among the fading daffodils. Tess stared at it for a moment overcome with nostalgia. The garden reminded her of her parents’ house in the country with its big rambling back garden.
    She sat gingerly on the edge of the sofa, shoving her satchel under the scratched oak coffee table. Something soft brushed against her leg and she looked down into the green eyes of a very black, very fat cat. Tess was delighted to have something to distract her and she felt herself relaxing slightly as she moved her fingers through the black fur.
    She wondered what its owner would be like. Her own maternal grandmother had died before Tess was born, but her paternal grandmother, Nan Teresa, had worn her steel-grey hair in a bun pinned back with silver clips and was never seen without her apron with the pots and pans pattern on it. She had baked bread and scones and cooked a dinner for her large family every day of her life. She would have laughed out loud if she’d known Tess was visiting a fortune teller. Tess could almost hear her now “A fool and its money are easily parted” but she would have been smiling when she said it.
    She smiled at the memory of her departed grandmother. Of course, she was right. Tess didn’t believe in fortune tellers – this visit was light relief from all her problems at work. She had spent the last few nights studying the agony aunt columns of newspapers and magazines and as far as she could see the problems all boiled down to three basic dilemmas: dysfunctional families, unrequited love and meeting and finding the One. But how could she turn that into a radio slot?
    “That’s odd, Millie likes you – she never likes strangers.”
    Tess turned to see where the voice was coming from and started at the sight of the woman strolling into the kitchen. Grandma Rosa looked to be in her seventies but any similarity between her and Nan Teresa ended there. Her hair was a strange shade of plum, with huge chunks of grey peeking through a very badly done home-dye. She was wearing denim jeans, a white frilly blouse – and were they Ugg boots? The only thing that looked remotely like Tess’s notions of what a fortune teller might wear were the enormous pair of silver rings dangling out of her ears.
    Rosa caught her staring and looked down at her boots.
    “What do you think?” she demanded. “Do the boots work?”
    “Er ... work for what?” Tess asked uncertainly.
    “I’m aiming for a funkier, younger image. This is what young people wear, isn’t it? Uggs?”
    Dear God, did the whole world want to look younger? Tess wondered wildly, thinking of Helene and her ten years younger project. And what would Grandma Rosa say if she heard Sara’s rumour that anyone over thirty might be getting booted out of Atlantic 1 FM?
    “Young people wear Uggs.” Tess nodded. “But er ... why do you want a new image?”
    “It’s to do with my career. I’m trying to diversify and
this
is part of it,” Rosa pointed her hands vaguely towards her hair. “You’re a young person. What do you think?”
    “You look ... fine. But isn’t a fortune teller meant to look ... well, old ... and wise?”
    “That was the old way all right.” The older woman rubbed her hands together. “But at the psychic club night all they ever talk about are the new ‘in’ things. Aura readings. Angel card therapy. Coffee cup readings.” The woman’s mouth curled with derision. “Coffee readings? Seriously? And that last client who was in with me? That was Mrs O’Brien. She’s been coming to me for over twenty years for readings. I was the one who told her that Alfie, her late husband, would never come out of the hospital and that she should find a new direction for herself for when he’d gone. I told her that her son would go off to