‘But you could see?’

‘Sometimes,’ I say. ‘And sometimes, like with the cards or with the charms, you get a glimpse of what might be. And sometimes you show yourself only your own desires. And sometimes – though very rarely – you can put your heart in your own desires and bring them about. Take the dream and make it come into being.’

‘By magic?’ she breathes. She is quite entranced at the thought of it.

‘I don’t know,’ I tell her honestly. ‘When I knew that your father was in love with me and I was in love with him, I wanted him to marry me and make me his wife and bring me to England but I knew that he would not dare. He thought I was too far above him and he would not be my ruin.’

‘Did you make a spell?’

I smile, thinking back to the night when I brought out the charms but realised that I needed nothing but my own determination. ‘A spell and a prayer and knowing your desire are all the same thing,’ I say. ‘When you lose something precious and you go to the chapel and you kneel before the little glass window of St Anthony and you pray to him to find the thing you need, what are you doing but reminding yourself that you have lost something and you want it back? What are you doing but showing yourself that you want it? And what is that but calling it back to you? And so often, when I pray, I remember then where I left it, and go back to find it. Is that an answer to prayer or is it magic? Or is it simply letting myself know what I want and seeking it? The prayer is just the same as a spell, which is just the same as knowing your desire that calls the thing back to your mind, and so back to your hand. Isn’t it?’

‘A spell would bring it back to you, you wouldn’t just find it!’

‘I believe that a desire and a prayer and a spell are all the same thing,’ I say. ‘When you pray you know that you want something, that’s always the first step. To let yourself know that you want something, that you yearn for it. Sometimes that’s the hardest thing to do. Because you have to have courage to know what you desire. You have to have courage to acknowledge that you are unhappy without it. And sometimes you have to find courage to know that it was your folly or your wrongdoing which lost it; before you make a spell to bring it back, you have to change yourself. That’s one of the deepest transformations that can be.’

‘How?’

‘Say one day, when you are married, you want a baby, a child?’

She nods.

‘First you have to know the emptiness of your womb, of your arms, of your heart. That can hurt. You have to have the courage to look at yourself and know the loss that you feel. Then you have to change your life to make a space for the child who will not come. You have to open your heart, you have to make a safe place for the baby. And then you have to sit with your longing and your desire and that can be the most painful. You have to sit with your longing and know that you may not get what you want; you have to encounter the danger of longing for something without the expectation of getting your desire.’