It seems to be a watershed. Today I spread the cards for the first time, after Flo had gone to bed, and The House lapsed into silence except for Klaus’s violin.

The House is happy. The Queens of Swords are very well placed, so are the King of Pentacles and the King of Swords. Only the Page of Swords—Flo—isn’t perfectly at peace. It’s the scribbling, it’s got to be the scribbling. There isn’t a card with a meaning I can pick as related to scribbling, but it all began to settle into place when I turned up the Six of Cups, reversed. Something is going to happen soon. Especially as the next card was The Fool—an unexpected appearance? Then three Nines and four Twos—conversation, correspondence, messages. Oh, pray all this says communication is on the doorstep!

Saturday,

June 3rd, 1961

It’s the start of winter, and it’s raining so hard that Toby and I have had to forego our weekend at Wentworth Falls. Flo and Marceline have been wandering around all morning looking thwarted. Though the front door is unlocked again these days, I put them under stern orders not to open it and go onto the verandah.

We were all gathered in my living room drinking coffee and planning what we were going to have for lunch. How nice this is, I thought, feeling a wave of well-being wash over me. Thank you, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, for giving me the opportunity to be who I am meant to be. You are ripper-ace, princess, ripper-ace. Oh, just when are you going to Pass Over properly?

Suddenly Flo stopped scuffing her feet through the carpet, raced to her crayons, chose three like lightning, and started to scribble on the wall. Flesh pink, then a pale, ashen blue, then a lot of dark purple.

And I knew. “A strange woman with blue hair and wearing a dark purple dress is coming up the stairs,” I announced.

No one moved. No one said a word.

A knock on the door made the lot of them jump. Toby leaped to open it. A strange woman with blue-rinsed hair and wearing a dark purple dress was standing on the threshold.

“I do beg your pardon,” she said, hesitating, “but I’m looking for Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz.”

They all pointed at me.

“That’s her,” Toby said, wriggling his brows at the rest, who rose to their feet in silence.

“I am Mrs. Charles Pomfrett-Smythe,” the stranger said, “and, um, I was wondering if—?”

“Come in, come in,” I said as the others filed out. “It’s a terrible day out there, princess.”

“Indeed it is,” she said, sitting opposite me on a pink velvet chair drawn up to the walnut table. “However, my chauffeur carries an umbrella.”

“Good help is worth hanging onto,” I said, patting the Glass.

Mrs. Pomfrett-Smythe gazed about. “I hadn’t thought, from what Elma Pearson told me, that your house was so pretty,” she said.

“Things change, princess, things change. A sudden abscissal astringency necessitated a new décor in order to return the chondral energy fluxes to normal,” I said smoothly. “So it was Mrs. Pearson put you in touch, was it?”

“Not exactly, no. Everyone seems to think that Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz has Passed Over, but I’m so desperate that I thought I’d try anyway,” she said, removing her dark purple kid gloves.

“There is always a Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. I am the, um, second edition. This is my daughter, Flo.”

“How do you do, Flo?” she asked nicely.

Flo stuck her tongue out, not rudely, but in that way small children do when they are weaving around Mummy’s legs trying to see the stranger from all angles.

“What’s wrong, Mrs. Pomfrett-Smythe?” I asked.

She grabbed her gloves convulsively. “Dear Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, it’s my husband! He took a chance on a particular stock—something to do with funny little gadgets that act like sheep culling gates, only not with sheep. With electricity, I think,” she said, very distressed.

“Sheep culling gates?” I asked blankly.

“Perhaps you don’t know how they cull sheep in the country, but I do—my father was a grazier. The gate swings between two stockyards, and whoever is on the gate can send a sheep into either of the stockyards,” she explained. “After my husband bought his first lot of stock—share stock, not sheep—he did some research and put everything he has into buying more.” She was growing more and more flustered, from which I deduced that the chauffeur with the umbrella was in danger of being lost, along with the limousine he drove, and the mansion in Point Piper.

“How about a nice cup of tea?” I asked soothingly.

“Oh dear, I’d love one, but there isn’t the time!” she wailed. “I had to come at once because he’s had an offer for the stock, and he has to give his answer by two this afternoon. I think he’s still keen on keeping it, but all his friends and colleagues are convinced he’s going to lose everything, so they’re pressing him to accept.” She started pulling her gloves through her hands and stretching them in a way Lady Richard would have deplored.

“Such a terrible dilemma,” I said.

“Yes!” Stretch, stretch, stretch.

“What baffles me, Mrs. Pomfrett-Smythe,” I said, frowning, “is why an eminent businessman like your husband is seeking his answer from a soothsayer. I mean, you’ve never been here before.”

“He doesn’t know I’m here!” she cried, utterly ruining the gloves. “He left the decision to me!”

“To you?”

“Yes, to me! He just doesn’t know what to do, and whenever he doesn’t know what to do, he leaves the decision to me.”

The lightbulb flashed on. “So if you make the wrong decision, he has someone to blame.”

“Exactly!” she said wretchedly.

“Well, we can’t have that, princess—can we, Flo?”

Flo carefully chose four crayons from her repository and went to the wall. This, I realised, was the tricky bit; Mrs. Pomfrett-Smythe’s attention had to remain focused on me, which meant some sort of mediumistic behaviour—a trance, certainly, mutters and moans, definitely, but how does one produce ectoplasmic drooling? Bubble gum and soap? Research, Harriet, research!

For today, I flopped back in my pink chair, sighed and sagged, gave little screechy squeaks. And squinted at Flo through half-shut eyes. She took the dark purple crayon first and scribbled. Mrs. Pomfrett-Smythe. Then she produced some wavy-edged rectangles in bottle-green. Money. Lots of bright yellow circles. Gold coins. And finally a pyramid of tiny pale ochre dots. A sand heap. Now that I know, it’s easy. Flo’s words are colours and shapes. As her drawing skills improve, it will be manifest. But the real miracle is that Flo can see the right answers to all the questions “me ladies” ask. Can see the torment in a soul, can see into every heart. Can see murder coming. My weeny angel, God’s new experiment. Well, with me, she’s safe. That’s what Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz understood. Knowing, I think now, that she herself would soon be ill-equipped to cope with all that Flo is going to become. She’d passed the task to a younger, better educated Harriet Purcell. Today I realised at last why the first Delvecchio Schwartz submitted to her fate so tamely. We’re there for our angel; she’s the one who really matters.

When Flo dropped the crayons, I groaned and emerged slowly from my trance. Mrs. Pomfrett-Smythe was staring at me as if I had sprouted an extra head.

“Princess,” I announced, “you tell your husband to hang onto his funny little gadgets for dear life. What the world has been waiting for is a way to sort the electrical sheep from the electrical goats. These funny little gadgets are sheer dynamite.” I stroked the Glass. “Silicon! Amazing stuff.”

“Are you absolutely sure, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz?” she asked doubtfully.

No, Flo is sure, I thought to myself. The sheep culling gates are transistors—very newfangled, but I’m technically trained. There are a few medical machines made out of them, and even a computer or two. Canny Mr. Pomfrett-Smythe! Clearly he’s latched onto some staggering advance in them, so maybe the days of vacuum tubes and thermionic emission are numbered?