Occasionally she palmed the cards she needed for a satisfying message, pushing them forwards to the querent to avoid an off-putting spread, full of minor cards, or trumps like Death or the Hierophant. They shrieked and oohed when Hal trotted out her well-worn phrases-the Fool for a new beginning, the Empress for femininity and fertility, the Devil for sexuality, the Lovers for passion and commitment. Not the tourists so much, the hen parties who came in for a giggle and just wanted to ask questions about the size of the groom’s dick, and the prospects of him coming up to scratch for the wedding night. She tried not to think of them as fools-but they were. It was the tarot she was best at, though, and people came from as far away as Hastings and London to get her readings, many of them coming back again and again-returning home to tell their friends about the secrets Hal had divined, the unknowable facts she had produced, the predictions she had made. From her little booth on Brighton’s West Pier, she told fortunes, read tarot cards, and made psychic predictions.

Because if anyone had the skills to turn up at a strange house and claim a woman she’d never met as her grandmother, it was Hal.

The death of mrs westaway