waking up looking, through some random overnight miracle that would transform a short, curvy ginger girl into a tall, slender dark one. It had never happened, of course (barring the one time, best forgotten, when I’d attempted to dye my hair black using a kit in a box from Boots) and I’d long since grown to accept and even like the way I looked. But still, Indigo awakened teenage insecurities I’d thought were long gone.
‘Hello!’ She reached out and hugged Jude, then hugged me too. She smelled of fags and musky perfume. ‘Come in! Welcome to my humble abode! You’re my first visitors.’
‘We brought a bottle of cava,’ I said, humbly offering it.
‘Lovely.’ Indigo led the way into the flat. Although the day was bright and sunny, in here it was almost dark. Only thin slivers of light managed to slip through the edges of the windows, which were hung with heavy drapes in various mismatched pieces of fabric. There was no furniture apart from a single upright wooden chair, a pile of cushions on the floor and an easel holding a portrait of a woman with a green face, who bore a passing resemblance to Indigo herself.
‘Make yourselves comfortable,’ she said. ‘I’ll just get some glasses.’
Jude and I sat down on the floor, our backs against the wall, and he put his hand on my knee and squeezed it reassuringly. After a couple of moments Indigo reappeared with the open bottle and three empty jam jars.
‘I’ve used these for paint water,’ she said. ‘But they should be reasonably clean. I’ve cold running water but no hot, so I have to borrow friends’ showers.’
I almost said politely that she was welcome to add me to the roster, then thought better of it. The last thing I wanted was this woman floating alluringly round my flat in nothing but a towel.
‘So how did you two meet?’ She lowered herself gracefully down onto a cushion without using her hands, splashed wine into the jars and passed one to each of us.
‘At the climate-change demo a few weeks back,’ Jude said. ‘It was love at first sight, wasn’t it, Zoë?’
I laughed. ‘Lust, maybe. But then I’d just fallen over and taken all the skin off my knees and I wasn’t myself. Jude rescued me.’
‘And Zoë insisted on knowing my star sign before she’d get on the train with me,’ Jude said.
‘And we’ve been together ever since,’ I said, omitting to mention the four-week hiatus when I’d neither seen nor heard from Jude.
It was the first time we’d talked about this to anyone apart from each other, and I could imagine the story becoming a familiar one, which we’d embellish and improve over time – part of the mythology of us. The thought was an odd mixture of thrilling and comforting, and I guess Jude must have felt it too, because we met each other’s eyes with a smile that was as intimate as a caress.
‘Cute,’ Indigo said, not very enthusiastically. ‘So you believe then? In the science of the stars?’
‘Well… kind of. I mean, I’ve got an app on my phone and I was doing online dating and I thought it would be kind of interesting to see what happened if I went out with guys with different star signs.’
She raised an eyebrow, a skill I’d never mastered and always envied. ‘An app on your phone. That’s not very scientific, is it?’
‘It uses data provided by NASA,’ I said defensively. ‘And it’s actually been surprisingly accurate. In fact, on the day I met Jude, it said…’ I tailed off, because I couldn’t actually remember what Stargazer had said on that particular day, only that, with hindsight, it appeared to have foretold exactly what had happened.
‘Indigo’s all over that stuff,’ Jude said. ‘She reads tarot cards and does palmistry and everything. She used to do readings at parties to earn extra cash at uni.’
‘Until I realised that I shouldn’t cheapen my gifts in that way. Now I just practise occasionally, as a favour to friends. I could do your charts, if you like? See how compatible you are on a deeper level?’
‘I… thanks for offering,’ I said.
I wasn’t sure why, but suddenly the dark room, Indigo’s shadowy face and the stifling air was making me feel slightly sick and definitely unsettled. I sipped my fizzy wine and tried to fix the bright smile on my face again.
‘That would be amazing,’ Jude said. ‘Come on, Zoë, you’re up for it, aren’t you?’