Twinned (6 page)

Two days later and my mood still hasn’t lifted. I feel wronged. Screwed over. Like a piece of crap. As far as work is concerned I have a migraine. I have put off mum from visiting - I can’t see her like this when I can’t tell her what’s really wrong - but excuses won’t work for much longer.

The doorbell rings and I heave my blanky-covered, dressing-gowned, miserable heap of a self to the front door. It’s a florist delivery - really, really lovely flowers. The note says ‘To my bride to be, I miss you and can’t wait to see you, much love, Richard xxx’. I send him a thank you text.

That afternoon, I look back at old photos and try to remember why we are together. He is a really good guy. But why oh why am I so
tired
? I look like hell. It’s only six pm when I get into bed with a cup of hot chocolate. I flick through the channels and find ‘Brief Encounter’ just starting on Film 4. The perfect angst movie for the moment. I snuggle down to watch. She has a secret, just like me.

But my mind won’t let me concentrate on the film. I feel really guilty for not telling mum the truth and for not telling Richard about Joel. I can’t face the world right now. My stomach feels sick, it’s in knots. I feel a creeping disgust. Joel thinks I am either some sort of hideous demon or a crazy stalker.

Maybe I am?

How can’t Joel feel the way I do about our connection? To me it’s become the highlight of my life, albeit bloody inconvenient at times and duplicitous. But I have been good. I haven’t tracked him down, stalked him, I have respected his marriage. And he started this - the visions - standing under the tree. And that kiss...!

He
kissed
me
.

Still, I feel like a really crap person.

Days go by. As I start to feel better I try to immerse myself in work. I know I said I loved my ordinariness but I was wrong. It is so ‘blah’. This life, this normal life that I used to be content with, well it sucks. God, how do regular people do it? Even surrounded by people, I am lonely.
So
lonely. Every hour of every day I am waiting. Waiting for Joel to change his mind and pop into my head. Waiting to see him under the tree. Waiting with my eyes shut for a glimpse of his world. A world of sunshine and hope and excitement.

I furiously check the band’s page on Twitter, Facebook and My Space hourly, searching for news. I am just not used to this lack of connection with Joel. I can’t get used to the quiet in my brain. No fragments of snatched conversations. No visions. No sensations I can’t explain. Just normal
brain stuff
.

After a while I start to doubt everything. Did I imagine it all? Am I sick? These feelings confuse me further. How fickle am I? How can I doubt my sanity when just a few days ago I was 100% convinced that it was real? Perhaps I really am crazy.

In a way I suppose the emptiness kind of demonstrates that the communication with Joel was real. Surely if this was some sort of mental instability or hallucination I would still be seeing things, because I still
want
to? If it’s not real, what’s stopping me from imagining it?

Each morning I lie in bed past eight am despite work starting at nine, dreading getting up. I feel like there is no point. Nothing to look forward to. I am not special anymore.

Days pass. I barely eat. I have no time for breakfast because I am so late out the door to work. Lunch is skipped because I don’t want to pass the lonely Sycamore tree to walk to the canteen. Mid-afternoon I grab a sandwich from the shop to stop desperately loud hunger growls. Then maybe some comfort food, a chocolate bar. I only eat a proper evening meal if Katie and mum are with me.

Within three weeks I have lost 6lbs. Mum is impressed, thinking this is part of my pre-wedding diet. And then finally, finally Richard returns home.

*****

Heathrow airport is quieter than usual but still far busier than you would expect for 11 pm UK time. I’m not tired; I’m just so excited to see Richard. I scan the people crowding through, past taxi drivers holding placards. Standing on tiptoes, I stretch to see over the top of a couple kissing.

I feel a tap on my shoulder.

“Richard!”

“Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” he smiles, opening his arms to welcome me to him.

“I missed you so much.” I breathe the words into his ear, as he envelops me in a hug that lasts longer than usual.

I can’t stop smiling. It’s
so
good to see him. I step back and take him in. He looks quite different. Yes, his hair is cut differently. Otherwise, he’s my Richard, same as always. He takes his backpack off his shoulder and puts it on top of the luggage trolley. He unzips the backpack and takes out a package.

“This is for you,” he says, offering a Christmas present wrapped with green paper and a red ribbon bow. “Thank you!” I say, taking the package and smiling, warmly.

“Can I open it at home?” I ask. “I have a present for you too at home. I thought we could have a mini-Christmas dinner tomorrow and then open them together.”

“Great idea,” he says. “Lead the way, my beautiful fiancée.”

*****

The next few days are bliss. Sort off. Richard seems to have forgotten how to load the dishwasher having had maid service for the last two months. We have a few days off work together to enjoy each other’s company. I trawl through the mountain of washing he’s managed to store up for me. His gift to me was a white gold charm bracelet, with heart, book and music note charms. I got him a DVD box set and some retro cufflinks that I knew he would love.

When I go back to work, it reminds me again of Joel. I suppose the lonely atmosphere all day gives me time to think, which is not such a good thing. Over the next few days, with Richard tied up in meetings and frequently out with clients until midnight, the feelings for Joel start to resurface.

I try to push them out of my mind but it isn’t easy. Sometimes, when Richard is with me, I wonder how he doesn’t notice that I am not really present in the conversation. I’m not entirely listening, not in the moment the way he is. But I suppose I have never really been any more involved with his life than I am now. He is used to me this way. Maybe he likes me being so disconnected, because it comes across as independence, which is something he admires.

I always had other things on my mind before now; work, travel, writing. I’m just a different kind of distant. Hollowed out.

The night before my interview with the medium David Nash, Richard and I go to the cinema. We eat out first, in a Chinese restaurant that does an ‘all you can eat’ buffet. It’s our shared guilty pleasure, that much fried food must be wrong, after all. He is looking really smart in a new navy jacket. I love his smile. We are talking and I suddenly realise that I have not been very fair on Richard. He thinks he is marrying the girl he fell in love with. Me before Joel crept into my head. I have been acting like a shell of that person. Why does he still love me? What if I lose him too? Swearing on my plate of duck rolls, I make a resolution to try and be a better fiancée. I will forget about Joel, concentrate on Richard.

I try something; I imagine I am out for a date with Joel and try to act that way with Richard. My body language changes; I sit straighter, I smile widely, my eyes take on a flirtatious glint. Richard seems to appreciate this. He smiles warmly, puts an arm round me and tells me I look beautiful.

I ignore the guilty feeling that tries to tell me it is not fair to marry a man when I love someone else. Surely it doesn’t count when the someone else is as unobtainable as Joel? Anyway, I do love Richard. I do. I really do.

Suddenly I know what to do. It’s over, me and Joel. From now on I will be the perfect fiancé; the best ever wife. I will be what Richard wants. I will forget about Joel. I will. I will.
I will.

We finish our meal, Richard gets the bill. We leave the restaurant together and walk to the cinema; his hand in my jeans pocket, my hand round his waist, gazing at each other adoringly. Our strides in time, albeit his a little longer than mine.

Off we go. Looking, to all intents and purposes, like the perfect couple.

David opens his bright blue Camden door to reveal sparkly blue eyes that defy his sixty or so years of age and a salt-speckled, distinguished beard.

“You must be Beth!” He exclaims warmly, shaking my hand vigorously and welcoming me in to the hallway, "Come in out of the cold!"

I remove my coat and scarf, taking care not to drop my Dictaphone on the tile floor as he closes the door behind me. He takes my coat and scarf and hangs them up, then steps ahead of me, motioning me to follow. I am nervous. I don’t quite know what to expect.

“I thought you might like coffee, so I have some brewing - but if you’d prefer tea...?”

“Coffee is great,” I smile and he leads the way into a bright oak kitchen with yellow walls and huge triple doors out to a
well-manicured garden beyond. "What a beautiful garden," I marvel. "It must keep you very busy." He nods and smiles.

We sip our coffees at a big, honest-looking table; the sort you can tell was made from reclaimed wood, perhaps railway sleepers or old church pews. There are some huge dents and scrapes in the table top. Without them it would be even more beautiful. Absentmindedly, I follow the line of a deep scratch in the wood with my finger. “Ever thought of sanding it down flat?” I ask. “This table would come up great with some TLC.”

Surprise registers fleetingly on his face. I feel like a twit. How rude of me. It was probably his grandmother’s or something. 

“The marks of age tell a thousand stories,” he says, smiling kindly like he knows how pretentious that sounds but doesn't really care if I think him so. “And I like listening.”

Oh.
Deep
. I think. I cradle my coffee cup, feeling like a fool. Then tell myself to pull it together. I am a professional.

“So tell me about what you do, David,” I ask.

He grins. “Would you like me to show you first?” he challenges. “With a reading for you perhaps?”

“OK – err – yeah that would be great, thanks.” And so begins one of the strangest mornings of my life.

David takes a pack of large pictorial cards out of the kitchen drawer. “These are archangel cards,” he explains reverently. I stifle an involuntary smirk. He starts to shuffle them while he continues talking about angels and orbs.

He hands them to me. “Hold the cards like this,” he says, cupping them in his hands, “and try to infuse them with your energy.”

I try not to giggle while I do what he says. And strangely enough, I really am able to imagine that my energy passes into the cards. A crazy kind of energy, bubbly and erratic. I hand them back.

He re-shuffles the cards, explaining that it’s up to me to tell him when to stop, or cut the pack, or do whatever I feel he should do with them. I let him continue shuffling for what feels like a polite moment
and then ask him to cut the pack and place the bottom half on the top. He misunderstands, removing the bottom half and almost shuffling them into the top half. I surprise myself by confidently intervening before he loses the place where I wanted the cut to be made. I help him re-cut the cards the way I meant him to and place them where I wanted them to be.

“I’d like you to deal from there please,” I say, wondering why I was so intent on those cards being at the top.

The cards lay in the following order: Clairvoyance, Counsellor, Death. I must look a bit shocked. “That doesn’t sound good,” I mumble. If he heard me he doesn’t show it.

“Okaaay... The Clairvoyance card can have a wider interpretation, for example using one’s intuition, gaining a deeper understanding of others,” says David. He looks down, waits for a moment, deep in thought. Then his eyes meet mine with a confident expression. “However, I would go so far as to say that you have been speaking with spirits.”

I am gobsmacked. I try
not
to react so as not to steer him one way or the other. I have heard about cold reading, where your own reactions to statements are used to help a pseudo psychic ‘reveal’ truths that you yourself have unintentionally given away.

“The second card is what you are doing now,” continues David. “You are being an emotional counsellor for someone. A person who needs you to be there for them, to hear their thoughts.”

Wow.

“The third card is Transformation.”

“It looks like it says ‘Death’ to me…”

“Every exit is merely an entry to somewhere else,” he says quite matter of fact. “So said someone or other. I don’t recall. But Beth, this card is about transformation, about the end of one era and the rebirth of something new. Strangely there is no birth card in Tarot but the white rose that the Devil is holding, see?” He shows me the card more closely. “That signifies birth, transformation. You will embark on a new journey free of your old constraints and bindings.” 

He pauses and holds my gaze for a moment. I try to keep my poker face on and fail miserably, I bet.

“But back to the Clairvoyance, Beth. Using these – powers – it is draining. You need to look after yourself. Protect yourself from bad spirits. Do you understand?”

Hot tears prick my eyes. I blink and look away. Outside the garden looks beautiful, in a rainy kind of way. A bird lands on the feeder, which is packed full of nuts. He eats; every now and then flicking rain water off his wings. A black cat watches from the neighbour’s conservatory roof.

“Another coffee? Or a biscuit?” David offers, rising from his chair.

Suddenly I feel brave, well either brave or just ridiculously scared.

“Can I tell you something crazy?” I ask.

He nods and sits back down. So I tell him. Pretty much everything, actually.