“Find the right john and lock him in,” Lalita supplied.

“Right,” said Nong.

So it all pointed to luck after all. For luck you needed an expert. The monk at Wat Tanorn was from Surin; he spoke to her in her own Khmer dialect and liked to discuss the rice harvest and other agricultural matters. “The sow under the house is pregnant,” she told him, “due in a week’s time.”

Phra Tanatika knew Lalita’s mother and father, both of whom were highly respected: poor but devout and dependable. Nobody wanted to see her mother go blind, or her father die, if it could be helped. In other words, he had to balance spiritual duty with community service. He tried to use his gift of clairvoyance wisely, in a way consistent with spiritual evolution. Lalita never told him she was a prostitute: she didn’t need to.

“I’m having trouble making ends meet but I do work in a field where I meet farang men quite a lot and I’m wondering if astrologically this is a moment when I can expect to meet my Number One, or someone close to it,” Lalita explained.

“Tell me again, your date and time of birth?”

In Thailand everyone uses the Chinese horoscope, with some Hindu flourishes. Lalita was born in the year of the metal rabbit. This meant that although sensitive, smart and more than a little inclined to freak out when life got tough, nevertheless there was about her a persistence, even a stubbornness, which no one ever saw except in extremis. Then there was the hour of her birth, which in the young was at least as important as the year. Phra Tanatika was impressed with her dragon rising. It was tremendously well aspected at this moment and he told her so. But when she looked up at him, there was something else in her eyes, something that made him very sad.

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