Borderliners Read Online Free PDF Page B

tried to think what to do next. I tried to ignore the way Vince was staring at the cards, his body loose but his eyes immovable as he fixed them on the spectacle in front of us. If he turned his gaze onto me, I’d be at a loss. He was a difficult man to fool and his clear, shrewd stare often made me feel as if he could see straight through my adult facade to the confused and troubled child I’d left behind.
    I stooped to pick up the report, trying to quieten the pounding sensation in my chest. My fingers shook and when I crossed the room to stand within his shadow, I couldn’t look him in the eye. ‘Sorry. Here it is. Did you want to discuss it?’
    ‘No,’ he replied and, taking the report to sling under his left arm, he made to turn on his heel.
    ‘Oh, I nearly forgot.’ He stopped in his tracks, his face a mask, half bathed by deepening shadow. ‘I came to ask you something as well.’
    I stood in silence, waiting.
    ‘The girl who died - Martha, was it? I heard she was into black magic. That’s what people are saying around the village.’
    The hall contracted slightly. ‘She was a troubled girl. Are they saying that round the village as well?’
    ‘Well, they’re saying lots of things, that’s the problem. For example, people want to know what you were doing at that New Age shop when you found her? Also, wasn’t it a bit late to be visiting a shop?’
    ‘Vince, I went because she asked me to meet her. I thought she was in some kind of trouble.’
    There was silence as his eyes met mine. I opened my mouth and then shut it again, unsure of whether I could trust him, or even if I wanted to. His lip curled slightly.
    Eventually he spoke. ‘Nothing else you want to share with me?’
    I cocked my head onto one side, watching how he let out a long, drawn out breath before pulling his shoulders straight and shoving his free hand into his jeans pocket.
    ‘I’m not sure I can. I mean, I don’t know if the family would be comfortable if I divulged details of her life, of her issues.’
    I took a step towards him, but he was shaking his head.
    ‘I don’t know why I bother sometimes,’ he muttered. ‘Lots of people round here think you’re a nutter, worse than some of the people you counsel.’
    I didn’t like the nasty little smile which played around my lips as he said that, but I couldn’t help it.
    ‘Why would they think that?’
    ‘One of your neighbours’ friends Googled you a few months ago, and what came up was all round the village, or at least, round that lot. I get to hear their rumours sometimes - I have my sources.’
    I felt sick. If I’d been Googled, then someone might have found that old article I’d written for my student newspaper about some of the more experimental research run in psychiatry over the last two hundred years. In the hands of others who read widely or studied the field, the piece might not have looked untoward, but the thought of my patients in the village getting hold of it made me feel dizzy. I slipped past him to open the front door.
    ‘Oh, you probably mean that article from my student newspaper about Carl Jung and the experiments of the early twentieth century. They were odd times, but much of what they did was significant.’
    ‘Yeah, well. You want to be careful around here with stuff like that.’
     
    After I'd let Vince out, I paused for breath. The giddy feeling returned as I sat down to study what lay on my coffee table: five cards from my own Tarot deck laid out in a pointed formation. In the middle lay The Hanged Man beside which were The Hermit and Death. Below them sat The High Priestess and The Moon. I took a picture, watching as the image froze in the memory of my smartphone before sitting in silence. I needed to think.
    In the Tarot The Hanged Man indicated a moral compass which was off kilter, and a time in which decisions would become clouded and truth unknown. I remembered this from my grandmother’s explanations all those years ago. Adjacent to