'Behind you…The Lovers inverted. You've been unlucky in love.'

Then work slithers between them and slowly pushes them apart.

First, it's 'The Avengers Affair'—as Joan has dubbed it. She is told that Morse is away from the Cowley nick along with her Dad, and fearing goss that might embarrass him, she doesn't leave a message when she calls. It's bad enough sensing Jim Strange's blatant curiosity on the other side of the line. Besides, late night phone calls are out of the question when Endeavour might be dead on his feet after a busy day.

Afterwards, Morse fends off her repeated offers for lunch, tea, dinner, supper or whatever. Each time she gets him on the phone, his voice is cranky and wintry despite the late summer heat—not even his I'm-speaking-in-my-DC-official-voice tone but truly remote—and each time, he flatly tells her that 'something came up and demands my immediate attention.'

Work is well and good, but he's going on too long. Using it to push her away. Or is she getting paranoid?

The third time, in a huff, she threatens under her breath, 'Endeavour Morse, another bloody excuse and I'll camp out on your doorstep until you come home.'

That does the trick. He agrees to meet her at his flat for an early breakfast in the morning. She'll bring it, she stresses, so he'll have something solid in his stomach to begin the day. He's probably as little desirous as she is to have Jim Strange playing duenna again and dropping a word en passant to their Governor: Joan sitting out the night on a DC's doorstep would probably provoke a call to the police from a nosy neighbour for vagrancy.

Joan hangs up the receiver with more vigour than necessary. The sound of a throat clearing makes her look up sharply from her in-progress checking list forms about to be sent to storage. The face of her employer appears between neat stacks of early twentieth-century newspapers and rolls of microfilms.

'Joan, any messages while I was out?'

Joan digs up a notebook under two open folders. 'Claudine sent her excuses and declines the photo shoot offer. Says she has a freelancing opportunity. Will probably go back to France, as "something's brewing" in Paris.' She adds helpfully, 'She didn't say what.'

'Hmm, better this than Vietnam for her. Everybody isn't fit to follow in Bob Capa's footsteps. Can you call Dexter for me? Or rather Jenkins? Could be interested in the job. Anything else?'

Joan jots it down, before replying, 'Yes. Someone's secretary called about Goldfinger—err, sorry…' She laughs, and it rings a little hollow. 'Golden—that's it, Goldenrod.' She finds a leaf torn from a notebook and browses its contents. 'From a Mr. Blake, Elliott Blake. Confirming the interview. Phone number's over here.'

Dorothea's face brightens. 'Ha! About time. Their new reactor's becoming operational next weekend.'

In answer to Joan's wordless interrogation, she clarifies, 'Bramford power plant,' and observes with attention Joan's sudden interest. 'Concerned by the atomic industry?'

'Have I cause to be?' says Joan. 'No, I felt I'd heard the name somewhere, that's all.'

'Well, if you recall where and why, don't hesitate to tell me.'

Dee has no shame pumping for information, recollects Joan. First and foremost a reporter, even if she's become a friend too. She shrugs, 'I will, but don't hold your breath.'

Dorothea takes the scribbled messages from Joan's extended hand. Before she exits the archivist's corner, she turns around.

'By the way, you all right? You don't look as though you've been sleeping well.'

'I'm fine,' prevaricates Joan, although since last week she passed more time tossing and turning in her bed than getting some shuteye.

'Boy trouble?'

'I'm not so sure I still have a boy,' she admits.

'Maybe that's the trouble,' says Dee, and Joan doesn't know if that's the editor speaking through her usual quips or if that's the friend worrying about them both. She truly likes Endeavour, too, Joan recalls.

'Whatever happens, take tomorrow morning off. It will do you a world of good.'

'Especially if I manage to get a hold of Morse,' Joan thinks gratefully. She nods agreeably.

'This can wait a while.' Miss Frazil's gesture encompasses the piles of papers surrounding Joan—all these dead loves, politics and human sufferings which can do nothing to help her out of her present quagmire.

The relativity of human distresses, Joan reflects. In a few centuries, her heartaches and self-questionings won't mean more than those of a fly squashed on a window. God, Morse's doom and gloom is contagious.

With determination, she focuses on her lists. There is no gain to worry oneself in advance about which she can do nothing about right now. But it's heavy doing.

Joan doesn't like the sight of him when Morse opens his door. The hazy early morning light does nothing to hide his weariness. At her close scrutiny, colour rises in his cheeks and a slow smile eases the tired lines of his mouth. However, there is a slightly feverish glitter in his eyes, and he shouldn't stand there in his shirt sleeves in the moist air.

She waits for him to shut the door on the outside world, and without a word flings herself into his waiting arms.

'Ouch,' he exclaims when the content of her mesh-net shopping bag swings about and connects with his hip. In her impatience to embrace him, she has forgotten to let go of it.

Seeing her contrite face, he grins. 'Missed me?'

'What do you think?'

'Let's put it to the test—' he suggests with a voice made suddenly rough with longing.

He pries the groceries bag from her hand, chucks it onto the table and swiftly proceeds to show her how much he wished for her, winding one arm round her waist and with his other hand, cupping her chin. His lips are warm and demanding, and she wholeheartedly reciprocates the fervour of a man not that given to outward passions. When he finally releases her, embers have sparked into intensity in his gaze.

Joan puts out her hands and flattens them against his chest, pushing back a little so she can move away. Gasping for breath, she whispers with an uneven voice, 'Breakfast—' before he finds her mouth again and gently silences her.

The second time, Joan places her fingers on his lips laughingly. 'I'll start breakfast.'

The gaze he returns makes it obvious that he's not hungry for her groceries, but he complies without any demur.

Her lips still tingling, Joan takes slices of bacon and sausages wrapped in greased paper, eggs carton, fresh butter, strawberry jam pot and loaf of bread out of her shopping bag. Morse looks at the appearance of edible food on his coffee table and counter doubtfully, his head tilting in that endearing way of his he adopts when he's deep into his thoughts. From his expression, he has never seen that many provisions all at once in his flat at half past six in the morning.

Without paying attention to his inspection, Joan gets busy in what passes for a kitchen in his bed-sit while he takes care of the tea. Soon, scents of frying food permeate the room and water is on the boil, while tea leaves are waiting for their drowning in the teapot. When the last of the scrambled eggs have joined fried bacon and sausage on Morse's mismatched plates, Joan sits next to him. The smell of toasted bread makes her mouth water, although some of her previous anxiety regarding the much anticipated conversation with Endeavour hasn't been totally dispelled by his fervent welcome.

At first, Morse's fork hovers over his plate as if the food heaped on it was an unaccountable sight. However, he scarfs it down without compunction. It isn't lost on Joan. She frowns. 'When did you last eat?'

He blinks and considers his almost empty plate with some bewilderment. 'Yesterday morning?'

He doesn't seem quite sure of it either, so she chides softly, 'Endeavour, you must remember to eat sometimes.'

Morse nods absently and washes down his sausage with half a cup of tea. There is some colour back in his face now, but the bruised look around his eyes is still conspicuous.

'Really, you work too hard,' Joan insists. Another suspicion enters her mind. 'At least, did you sleep enough?'

'No,' he replies, and adds with a touch of surprise, 'I've been thinking.'

The absurdity of his disconcerted statement is such that she nearly laughs aloud. But seeing his troubled face, she abstains and instead places her cup carefully before her on the table. 'Not an unusual exercise for you, surely?'

He passes a tired hand over his face. 'I mean—Strange told me that a mate of his is forming a new unit.' His voice is reasonable and quiet, but there is an undercurrent of unease coursing beneath this announcement.

Joan doesn't understand where it's leading, but her breath hitches. This is momentous, she can feel it. Her hand flies defensively to her throat, and she hears herself say in a voice she doesn't recognise, 'Go on.'

'Strange recommended that I call DI Craddock. Moving might mean more money, promotion.' Morse's jaw clenches. 'I've earned it ten times over and yet…Even Mr. Bright agrees.' His tense shoulders speak anger now, mingled with incredulity. 'My sergeant's exam was the only one that went astray!'

Her next question is obvious, and yet Joan waits until the very last second to utter it. 'Where?'

'London. The Met. I would be Craddock's bagman.'

The sheer enormity of it pierces Joan's brain when he adds in the same precise tone of voice, 'At Tintagel House.' His voice seems to come from afar; very, very far away.

'You'd leave Oxford?'

'You'd leave…me?' her mind shrieks. The pain explodes in the region of Joan's ribcage, yet she manages to articulate, 'Is your career that important to you?' She'd rather ask, 'Is it more important than us?' but doesn't dare; she's afraid of his answer.

'A career won't hold you at three in the morning when the wolves come circling,' he says quickly and reassuringly. He reaches out and his hand lightly strokes her cheek and traces the curve of her neck, pushing back her hair over her shoulder. The coldness of his skin seeps into hers. 'If I had—with…someone, all of this wouldn't matter at all to me.'

Joan's throat is suddenly dry as sanding paper and she craves a sip of her tea. But instead of getting her cup, she sits staring at it with painful concentration for what feels at least a minute.

Morse slowly withdraws his hand and heaves a long, frustrated sigh. 'But love is a luxury on my wages. Money is necessary to—to a family.'

He casts a significant look at his drab surroundings: the ordinary furniture, the single bed, the cramped kitchen corner, the tiny bathroom, the used wallpaper and the uninspiring drapes in a maroon palette.

Joan suddenly remembers how he seemed miffed when she made him understand that his bed sit was on the small side for them both. The implications are so overwhelming that her head whirls and she inanely says, 'I didn't take you for a family man.'

No sooner have the words fallen from her mouth that she wants to swallow them back, as Morse turns whiter than white. She wants to offer some sort of retraction for her ill-judged comment, but he offers quite tentatively, as if neither he nor anything he did could matter to her now, 'It entirely depends on you.'

The intensity of his gaze is frightening. A whirl of sky blue verging on cloudy grey slowly mesmerising her will; so that she almost says, 'yes, I'll go with you anywhere,' before she takes a hold of herself. She lowers her eyes to escape this temptation, but not before she sees something twitch in his jaw.

The silence sluggishly thickening between them is unnerving. Joan must break it. She has to, so she darts a look up. But thoughts can't coalesce in her brain while he's looking at her with soulful eyes filled with such hope and ardent enticement. All his life seems to have gathered in them, and she feels drawn in despite her best judgment.

As she stays silent, trying to digest all of it, he sighs wretchedly then adds yet another variable to the equation. 'There's another opportunity. Teaching. They need a Classics master at a boys' school called Coldwater.' He pauses, deep in thoughts, and his tongue wets his lower lip. 'Back to the old masters for me, in this case. Lodgings would be provided.' His tone makes obvious what he really thinks of living in backwater country for long.

Joan's eyes are staunchly focused on her cup: a tiny tea leaf escaped from the strainer and is now floating at the surface; its darker hue a stark contrast against the white china and the lighter brew. Its circumnavigation around the rim of the china suddenly engrosses all her attention, while contrary feelings fill her mind like moths flapping around a candle.

Seeing that she's determined not to look at him, Morse doggedly goes on, 'But it would be only for a year or so. I could put something away and we—I should have enough for a deposit on somewhere two years from now.'

'You'd go alone?' Joan probes when her voice decides to make its reappearance.

'Not alone,' he answers, and his look of entreaty apprises her of the company he hopes for.

This is moving too fast. Much, much too fast.

In the space of four months, Morse has gone from her father's shy and elusive bagman to potential flirt to trusted friend to…what? Boyfriend, not quite fiancé, but behaving as if she was already shackled to him? Making plans without talking it over with her beforehand? Getting interviews out of Oxford without mentioning it to her, although he knows she's trying to sort out her life here?

If she agrees, what next? Will he morph into a husband whose possessive fervour looks upon his wife as an extension of himself? Will he consider that his love for her is a sufficient excuse for the dependency under which she'll live? Will she ever have her say or will Endeavour consider her a 'fair lady' to protect and to shield from the big bad wolves of life? She's not her mother. She won't live like this.

Or is she projecting her fears on him? After all, he's not her father, and she's not her mother. Hadn't Morse mention several times that he refused to do anything without her approval?

How can she answer him before solving these riddles?

So Joan merely asks, 'Does Dad know?'

'I haven't had a word with him about it yet.' He seizes his half-eaten toast and glowers at it as if it had sprouted new crust. His day hasn't really begun, and he already looks storm beaten.

Unsaid words can't remain pending. She must tell him—what must she tell him? That she'll consider the options? Endeavour hasn't precisely asked her anything. Just informed her that he will—what will he do?

But it's already too late.

Time is running out. Again. A quick glimpse at Morse's wristwatch tells Joan that they have to go their separate ways. He follows her gaze and realises it too. Impatience twists his mouth and his toast disintegrates into crumbs between his fingers.

'Please, Joan, think about it,' he pleads again, when she picks up her bag. And for a heartbeat, Endeavour's face loses its armour, as a quiver flutters at the corner of his mouth. Joan acquiesces because there is nothing else she can do at this point. There aren't enough seconds for anything else, questions, hesitation, acceptance or tantrum.

She steps closer to him, and raises her face up. He stoops down in order to kiss her, without lingering.

And so they part, two equally proud and stung people. One with ebony hair, the other with glints of brass in his. One severely gaunt, the other more curvaceous. However, in the fierceness of their first major misunderstanding, their faces are eerily alike, as though they were so akin that each had become the twin of the other.

Afterwards, the days drag on. Joan often wishes that she were working full-time. It would stop her mind brooding over that unfortunate breakfast.

She has no one to discuss it with, except her conscience. Speaking with her mother is out of the question—Mum would confide in Dad, and then the tiger would dash out of the bag—and the same applies to Dee—Joan won't expose Morse's plans to Miss Frazil's scrutiny.

With a pang, Joan also realises that she can't rely on her previous 'friends.' Their former shared fun and games are immaterial now. She's a different person; not the Joan who took up flirting as an amusing sport without substance and dated boys as agreeable escorts for an evening out.

Moreover, that fateful morning is slowly shaking all her recent certainties.

It even throws stones into her projects, and she can't gather enough grit to go on with her carefully crafted plans—to submit an unsolicited application to Viv Wall for a full-time job and to find a shared flat with girls she won't have the urge to murder the first time one of them forgets about their agreed house rules. Her present temp job is coming to an end in a few weeks' time, so Joan must find another, more permanent one. She can't rely on the kindness of friends and in no way is she going back to her parents or accepting Morse's…implied proposal out of desperation. She feels frozen in amber; sunlight reaches her, but she can't really feel the warmth anymore.

Yet, despite her best resolves, Joan knows that, unless something comes up, her life is now depending on Morse's future, Morse's reactions, and Morse's views. It is as if her whole world has shrunk down to one man.

When she realises this, her irritation redoubles. So much for her hard-won independence!

As for talking things over with Morse and reconciling their differences, forget it! Despite her best attempts to see him, her efforts are met with the same lack of success as before. Morse is busy and getting busier by the hour. It would seem Mr. Bright dumps all the paperwork available in the entire Thames Valley on his desk when Morse is not gallivanting all across the county.

So Joan stops trying to get a hold of him, and heaps half-baked reasons for her vacillations. She's still in the dark as to the future she wants with Endeavour, so what could she say to him? His apparent blind assumption that she'll do his bidding is still smarting, superseding all her other considerations.

One night, at one in the morning, she spends a good ten minutes contemplating if she should write a letter to Miss Ling, The Oxford Mail's agony aunt, 'Would a flaming row with your intended be preferable to a bloody sulk?' and ends up laughing at herself so hard that tears come to her eyes.

Maybe she should toss a coin. It'd be easier.

An alternative for that letter comes from an unexpected front.

The idea first comes as a jest and then takes a life of its own when several girls at The Oxford Mail decide to give it a go. To begin with, Joan is reluctant, but she decides to join them as the location tickles her fancy. The fact that Bramford has a recent direct association to Morse weighs a lot in the balance. Not that she expects to run into him there, but knowing that he walked these lanes and talked to the village dwellers is an additional, irrational connection with him.

A part of her brushes away this lure with disdain. The girl who didn't want to get weighed down by a lover's decree rushing towards any reminder of him! Truly, she's pathetic.

In the afternoon, they pile up in a Mini which has seen better days, some of its most obvious bumps hidden by flower-shaped stickers. Linda drives. Ann, who planned it and knew about the wise woman from her cousin, occupies the front seat, leaving Joan on the rear—content to be left alone with her thoughts.

Bramford isn't much despite its antiquated charm: a post-office, a pub, a pretty church, and a town square. The cottages lining the main street are quintessentially English, with their dormer windows topped with red tiles. The pale red of their brick and the pale grey flint walls shine under the afternoon sun and it's challenging to associate this postcard prettiness with anything as weird as card readings and predictions.

Still, Ann parrots again, 'Mrs. Chattox's reading was absolutely accurate and it helped Babs getting out of it.' By 'it' she could be referring to anything from a failed relationship to a traffic jam, as Joan lets her mind float away from her incessant chatter and didn't quite pay attention her previous strings of words.

They park right in front of The Hanged Man. The main street is empty and quiet, the only muted sound is a staccato banging that grows louder when they reach the square. There people are dancing with dislocated steps, their faces hidden under wicker, papier-mâché, or wood masks; their stomping and clapping further dehumanising them. The few merely wearing straw hats have glazed, fixed eyes.

'Curiouser and curiouser,' Joan previously said to Morse; now she finds the quote totally unsatisfactory. 'Wacko,' 'spooky,' or 'freaky' would have been ideal terms.

When the young women leave civilization to walk into a copse, she isn't the only one looking relieved to leave the Bramford dancers behind. Light passes sparingly through the canopy of leaves, and their feet often trip over overgrown roots. No worn path leads to their destination, and after a while Joan understands that Ann is somehow counting their steps.

'If that's the only way Ann's got to get her bearings, we'll end up going round in circles in this patch of wood,' Joan considers with some misgivings.

Whatever made her join this…expedition? She ought to have followed her first impulse and try to secure an interview with Viv Wall. Maybe she could even negotiate a part-time trial period while she's still on Oxford Mail payroll.

The shadowy setting reminds her of lost treasure hunts tales, and also of others, more ghastly that she'd rather leave to her childhood imaginings. Nervously, she looks over her shoulder from time to time, but the monsters of her childhood have kept hidden under her bed and aren't creeping up after her.

Suddenly, the trees seem to dissolve in a dazzling beam of light. Half-blinded by the harsh daylight suddenly flooding into a clearing, Ann bumps into a wicket gate. In plain sight, surrounded by cropped dry grass and a low fence, stands the house of the alleged witch they came to see.

The wooden front porch is encumbered with a table surmounted by a giant succulent. Dead vines tangle around the pillars and the railing. New, luxuriant greenery fights to get the upper hand over the assembled man-made wooden construction. The planks sag a little under their soles when they climb the two steps leading to it and circle the house. There aren't a sound apart from faint chimes and soft clang. Above their head, some mobiles made of wood, straw and ribbons are dangling; swinging slowly with the breezes and tied under the beams of the projected roof. The house seems devoid of life.

'Hello,' Linda hails. 'Anybody home?'

Bringing up the rear, Joan wonders again why she agreed to come. Bramford is a place she doesn't quite like and it doesn't fulfill its object. There is nothing there that can distract her from her uncertainties or help her to make a choice. To Morse or not to Morse. The issue is still unresolved.

The old woman takes them all by surprise. The front door opens noiselessly, and there she is, looking at them with bright eyes. She wears an old beige cardigan over a flowered flowing dress bundled into a dark green apron. Iron grey hair frames her face in soft waves, but there is nothing soft in the grey stare that looks the three young women over from heads to feet.

After a while, she humphs and nods vigorously. 'Come to have your readings, have you? To each her own.'

A curt beckoning hand gesture welcomes them inside and another sends Ann and Joan to a couch with their back to the door, while Linda sits docilely at the round table before the window.

Mrs. Chattox's eyes glitter with what seems like amusement, a stark fuse of a stare, which imposes silence on the daunted young women. A stare that shines oddly in the chiaroscuro of the room, lit more by subdued lamps than from the sun that comes up against the window panes.

Joan casts a discreet look around. The place is unusual in a common way: walls of panelled wood and raw bricks, more weird mobiles dangling, and netting over the window like a spider's web in the shape of a pentacle. 'Is that what Mrs. Chattox is?' she wonders, 'A crafty spider drawing in foolish prey who want to uncover their future for a few bobs?' Mismatched battered furniture features an old sideboard that displays some knick-knacks, farming tools, old and fairly new, old pictures, preserves in glass jars and a few plants in pots. Near the entrance, there is a painting of a guardian angel admonishing an errant child, his wide wings flapping wide and yellowish with age and cracks in the paint.

There's even a Winchester rifle hung on the wall. Suddenly the image of her hostess as the fabled Calamity Jane impresses itself on Joan' brain and she turns her head away to smother a bubbling laugh.

Seated by her side, and looking very much the downcast schoolgirl, Ann pouts in an undertone, 'I should have gone on first. After all, it was my idea!'

'Don't worry!' Joan soothes her. 'There're enough Tarot cards for us three.'

They sneak a peep over their shoulders. At the other end of the room, Linda leans over the table where cards are spread out before her, looking at them with round eyes. The occultist whispers to her, and Linda suddenly jerks back, blushing.

'What did she say?' asks Ann, 'Did you hear?'

'No,' says Joan, and she doesn't want to. If privacy's holding for Linda, it will presumably be good for her, too. And that's fine. She doesn't want Mrs. Chattox's fortune for her making the rounds during lunchbreaks.

After a while, Linda gets up and takes Ann's seat next to Joan, looking out of spirits.

'Nothing bad?' Joan asks politely.

'No, no.' Linda takes a compact from her handbag and touches up her make-up a bit before elaborating, 'Just surprised. It was very…accurate.'

'Oh!' Joan merely comments. No use to tell the girl sitting next to her that fortune tellers do a lot of their mumbo jumbo using subtle appraisals of movements and reactions from their customers. That and a pinch of common sense are the tools of their trade. Joan won't take any of it at face value, but her own reactions to it might teach her something about herself.

When her turn comes, Joan is dead sure that Mrs. Chattox won't tell her anything she doesn't already know, and that the rest will be hocus-pocus and cheap average warnings or predictions. Joan will go on a journey; she'll meet a tall, dark and very rich stranger and get hitched on the Riviera with releases of doves in front of the church. Or she'll win the sweepstakes and will go off into the sunset without a care.

Whilst she was compiling clichés in her mind, Ann and Linda had gone outside, their readings done. Joan can hear them giggling and comparing notes, the muted sound of their voices coming in drafts through the half-open door.

Mrs. Chattox gets up and closes it. 'There. We won't be disturbed.' She scrutinises Joan's face and laughs softly. 'You're a disbeliever in the power of the cards, aren't you?'

It's not surprising that she guessed it, Joan reasons. Something in her posturing or a smirk must have betrayed it. 'Let's say that I don't see how a pack of cards could foresee my fate, that's all,' she answers. 'It's…' Unscientific? Stupid? Her voice trails and she politely doesn't complete her sentence.

The old woman exhales but keeps on shuffling the Tarot cards. She must have seen Joan's reluctance often enough. Yet, she commands, 'Since you're here, you must ask a question of the cards.'

Joan hesitates, but the fortune teller urges her on. 'You came here seeking answers, so why don't you take a chance?'

The young woman leans back in her chair. The ceiling, hung on with drapes and nets, is no inspiration and, in the spur of the moment, Joan decides that she'll play the game. She came this far, so why not take it seriously for a while?

'Will I reach the right decision?' she queries. There, that should do it. Nebulous enough.

Mrs. Chattox nods slightly, and with a flourish, her hand alights on the cards aligned in a row on the table between them. There are four cards on the tablecloth, facing down. Her hand turns the one farthest from Joan's right.

The card is timeworn, almost like a family heirloom. On the cardboard, the faded drawing is rough and the sparse colours badly applied. They bleed over the tracing, overlapping each other. The writing underneath the figure is in a foreign language. Italian? French?

'The first card stands for yourself,' Mrs. Chattox intones solemnly.

Great! If 'Le Fol' means 'The Fool,' that's an inauspicious beginning…and a proper depiction of what Joan feels like at the moment.

Her feelings must have shown in her face because Mrs. Chattox explains, 'It's not a bad card. Ruled by Uranus, "The Fool" is a symbol of the soul's journey. It stands for change.'

Joan's hands, which are folded on the table-top, jerk involuntarily.

The fortune teller darts a quick glance at them and clarifies with a smiling note in her voice, '"The Fool" proclaims a need for change and novelty. You want a new life. You're striving for it with raw energy, but you'll have to control it, if you want—' her eyes leave the card and she glances directly into Joan's widened eyes. '—if you want to avoid getting caught up in hasty decisions that may turn out negatively for you. You'll need to consider carefully before making them.' She sighs as if wanting to say, 'but the young don't often heed warnings.'

Joan doesn't say anything, her mind in turmoil. What where the odds of this card surfacing, unless there is some invisible marking on it? She can't calculate them, but her rational good sense holds determinedly onto that thought.

Without paying any mind, Mrs. Chattox goes on, '"The Fool" may also be the symbol of immature love or love at first sight, with a fierce need for freedom and change—'

Joan applies pressure to her hands to control their trembling, whilst she listens with rising dumbfounded astonishment.

'—or he stands for deep passionate love. That entirely depends on you.' Mrs. Chattox smiles wryly. 'Regarding your job, it heralds something new in your professional life. Change, again, sought after. But never forget to keep your free will; this is your strength.'

The spotted hand goes to the second card. 'Behind you…'

A flip of the hand, and the card facing Joan reveals a man standing between two women and surmounted by a hovering Cupid afflicted with a bad scoliosis. The little airborne god appears a second away of crashing down, his bent wings not strong enough to support his flight.

'Oh! "The Lovers" inverted. You've been unlucky in love.'

'Who hasn't?' Joan thinks belligerently. She not the only one, surely!

If that's supposed to be an earth-shattering announcement, it comes a little too late! From the postman she had a crush on when she was 11 to Paul Marlock, with some quite forgettable faces in between, her unrequited so-called love affairs have been numerous and as disappointing.

Will Endeavour join this sad cohort? She hopes not. She fears so.

'Unlucky in love, indeed. But more importantly, irresolute in your decisions. You're upside down, going through a period of doubts and hesitations.' Mrs. Chattox's voice is stronger, assertive. 'You must keep your self-confidence. All the more since you must listen to your inner self in a confused situation. You might certainly tread on a wrong path, so not making choices on a whim is doubly important now.'

'So the card's positive, even if it's inverted?' Joan questions, despite her better judgment.

'It hovers on a knife's edge. It is usually a positive one when one is prudent and wise, but here, it renews the warning: you do have to make a choice. Make sure it's the right one.'

'No unveiling of the future, then? Just the here-and-now?'

Joan can't keep the disappointment out of her voice. It surprises her: is she actually beginning to pay attention to this weird game? 'Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards!' she suddenly wants to cry out. Unexpectedly, she feels like Alice in Wonderland, bogged down in a warped reality grown too real and extensive for her full understanding.

It's with some trepidation that she awaits the turning of the next one.

'Now, before you… "Judgement",' Mrs. Chattox announces.

Weirdly logical. If she's supposed to make some choice, judgement is the next step. So what?

Joan says it.

'"Judgement" announces changes, new beginnings or new inspirations, but also the unexpected in your life. But it is rather favourable and will lead you to a quite positive life transformation…after a difficult and chaotic period. It will also open hidden doors to a part of you which you haven't discovered yet.' Mrs. Chattox shakes her head thoughtfully. 'More freedom. Which ties in with some of your aspirations.'

No foreign trip and no tall dark strangers on the horizon yet. 'And…l—love?' Joan probes after all.

'Hmm. This card divulges that even if you believe that everything is lost, there remain possibilities and solutions to give you the chance to start over, for the best.'

Will she? Maybe she must keep on and go camp on Endeavour's front steps.

'And now… The heart of the matter—' the oracle's attention fastens onto the next card, and then she frowns. '—"The Tower" struck down.

On the cardboard is printed a tower struck by lightning whose top is cut off like a soft-boiled egg. At its base, two men are flung away under the force of the explosion. Not a good omen, obviously.

'It must be destroyed to be rebuilt, this tower. Abrupt changes are coming your way, and they cannot be foretold.' Mrs. Chattox leans back in her chair pensively. 'You asked about love? "The Tower" is another warning: the moment of truth, a crisis and a requirement to change the bases of your relationship or else…it will go off. As for your job, it predicts an about-turn…but you'll have to invest yourself more in order to progress.'

Warily, Joan pushes her chair away from the table.

She needs to distance herself from the Tarot cards. She feels sucked in, as if she were becoming one of the figures drawn on the trump, as if she were falling from the tower, one of the coloured, festive balls of fire bouncing between earth and sky, another casualty of an unaccountable flare-up gone bad.

In a daze, she watches the wrinkled hand, made rough by farm chores, pick up the last card. The old woman begins, 'Crossed by—'

This Tarot card goes to rest over 'The Tower'. Mrs. Chattox withdraws her hand, and stares at the figure of a cross fashioned by the two cards. "—'The World",' she says, focusing on the pattern.

On impulse, Joan puts her hand lightly over it. The card on top displays a naked woman, standing inside a crown of leaves, while the four Evangelists peer at her with crossed eyes.

'Please don't. I don't want to know,' she says urgently.

Is the naked woman supposed to be her? Is nakedness symbolizing frailty? Naked before the world, for all to see? Full ignorance is way better than half clues. She doesn't want to know anymore.

'As you wish…' Mrs. Chattox baulks. 'But that's too bad. It could have helped you, to know.'

'I've already learned all I wanted to know. So I've got to make a choice—choices. I said it at first. Don't we all?'

Joan opens her handbag and finds her purse, but she doesn't complete the gesture.

'Don't,' Mrs. Chattox says, emphasizing her refusal with a sharp nod. 'I didn't finish the reading.' She shakes her head, vehemently. 'The cards never lie.'

'I'm sure they don't.' This time, Joan's answer isn't entirely incited by politeness. She slowly gets up and thanks the other woman.

As she goes out, meeting with Ann's and Linda's curiosity, the same unanswerable questions flip into her head: is that fish or fowl? Has she been taken for a ride?

At the end of their journey back to Oxford, she still can't decide. But unease remains.

NOTES:

'Like the out-bursting of a trodden star' is quoted from Thomas Lovell Beddoes's The Second Brother:

'[…] Love? Do I love? I walk

Within the brilliance of another's thought,

As in a glory. I was dark before,

as Venus' chapel in the black of night:

But there was something holy in the darkness,

Softer and not so thick as the other where;

And as rich moonlight may be to the blind,

Unconsciously consoling. Then love came,

Like the out-bursting of a trodden star,

And what before was hueless and unseen

Now shows me a divinity, like that

Which, raised to life out of the snowy rock,

Surpass'd mankind's creation, and repaid

Heaven for Pandora.'

The Tarot reading was based on real interpretation of the symbols of the cards… In the episode, Russell Lewis mischievously used the Tarot cards common symbolism to underline the events of the show. As the reading could be used in several ways, I made use of it.