Identity Cards

Ruth Amery tells fortunes at the annual village fete. She has done for thirty-seven years, long before I was even born. And she’s rubbish at it: she relies on variations of ‘meeting a handsome stranger’, ‘finding something that was lost’, and ‘exciting changes in the near future’. Ruth is nothing if not predictable, but Ruth is everyone’s friend, so Ruth gets the gig.

The incomer is no one’s friend. I’m not sure most people even know her name: if I hear anyone talk about her, she’s ‘the incomer’, or ‘her in Raven Cottage’, or ‘that weird woman.’ She keeps herself to herself, which doesn’t go down well in our little community. No one’s even seen inside her house, except the young women I sometimes see arriving on the back of her bike on a Friday night, or getting the bus back to town on a Saturday afternoon. Those girls spark some very lurid gossip from the old biddies.

So she’s a loner, a biker, and probably a lesbian. I only know two other things about her: she claims to read palms better than Ruth, and she doesn’t care who she pisses off. So I like her, and the fete’s got two fortune tellers this year.

Ruth has been doing her usual steady business, but I haven’t noticed anyone going into Madame Potenza’s tent all afternoon; it’s like there’s a magical field repelling people. I don’t know what attracted me to it, except I felt like spiting the old biddies. And I’m…