Eglantine by Catherine Jinks

her cousin’s life work. She even managed to talk while she was drinking a glass of wine. Clacking about on her high heels, she cooed over Mum’s Tasmanian-ash kitchen cupboards and explained that she was late because there had been a pile-up on the freeway, and a huge traffic jam.
    ‘Oh, thank you, sweetie!’ she exclaimed, when I presented her with Idylls of the King . ‘This was hers, you say? Oh, good.’
    ‘There’s her name,’ I pointed out, turning to the flyleaf.
    ‘Yes, I see. I didn’t even know if I’d make it at all , because my car, I tell you, it’s falling apart, it’s such a bomb . . .’
    Everyone sat around dumbly as she raved on. We were trying to be polite, but wondering all the time when she was actually going to knuckle down and do some work. Finally, however, she finished her wine, set the glass down on the kitchen table, and declared, ‘Right. I’ll be back in a minute.’
    Then she left the room. We could hear her noisy heels on the staircase.
    ‘What’s she doing?’ Bethan asked Mum.
    ‘I – I don’t know.’ Mum looked at Ray. ‘Do you think – I mean -’ ‘She’s probably going to the toilet,’ Ray retorted, drily. ‘Don’t worry. She’ll be back. There’s no one up there to talk to.’
    ‘She’s not at all what I expected,’ Mum remarked, and turned to Richard. ‘Are psychics usually like that?’
    But Richard just giggled nervously, and shrugged, and pushed his glasses up his nose.
    ‘Well . . . I suppose I’d better get on with dinner,’ Mum sighed. ‘Thank God it’s spaghetti. Looks as if we might be feeding her , as well.’
    Delora was upstairs for nearly an hour. After about fifteen minutes, Mum began to get worried, but Ray told her not to fret, because if Delora needed anything, she would certainly ask for it. (‘I don’t think she’d be backward in coming forward,’ he said.) At six o’clock, Mum served up the spaghetti and salad, insisting that Richard join us, even though he protested that he didn’t want to put her to any trouble. As we ate, we kept listening for footsteps on the stairs. Mum, I think, listened particularly hard; at one point she made a comment about Delora stealing her jewellery, and she was only half-joking.
    Nobody else talked much. Richard told us a story about an English goldsmith named Frederick Thompson, who in 1905 suddenly found himself painting pictures. At the same time, he began to suffer from hallucinations – visions of country scenes – which became the subjects of these pictures. A year after he started to paint, he went to an exhibition of works by an artist named Robert Swain Gifford, who had died some years earlier. He heard a voice in his head say, ‘You see what I have done. Can you not take up and finish my work?’
    It was soon discovered that Frederick’s paintings closely resembled scenes which had been well known to the painter Robert Gifford – but which Frederick himself had never seen.
    ‘Lordy,’ said Ray, when Richard had finished. ‘I hope I don’t start getting hallucinations. That’s all I need.’
    ‘The moment anyone starts getting hallucinations, we’re moving house,’ Mum declared. Then she caught her breath, as high heels sounded overhead. They began to rap briskly down the stairs, signalling Delora’s return.
    We waited anxiously, our mouths full of food.
    ‘Well,’ Delora said brightly, upon entering the kitchen. ‘That was interesting.’ I noticed that, despite her encouraging smile, she looked different. Less bouncy. Her eyes seemed tired – almost dazed – and her hair was ruffled. Her wrinkles were more obvious.
    ‘There’s a massive amount of disruption up there, really massive,’ she went on, collapsing into a chair. Gratefully, she accepted Mum’s offer of another glass of wine. ‘I could feel it the minute I walked in.’
    ‘That room has an electromagnetic reading of point twelve,’ Richard observed, but Delora didn’t seem to hear. She swallowed a