‘Mummy?’ She whispered the word into the quiet room, lit only by the dull moonlight at the window and the bedside lamp with its aged ivory shade. ‘Mummy, are you there? I need to talk to you.’
Again there was no response. She picked up the stone and held it in her hands. ‘Why aren’t you working?’ She carried it over to the window and held it up to the moonlight, angling it back and forth to catch the pale gleam on its surface. With a sigh she left it on the window sill and finally climbing into bed she switched off the lamp and lay there staring up at the ceiling.
‘Athena isn’t in today.’ Bella glanced up from her magazine as Abi went into the shop. ‘Sorry.’
‘Do you know where I could find her?’ Abi was amazed at the lurch of disappointment she felt at the news. She had counted on speaking to the woman again. Her combination of certainty and doubt, of knowledge and ignorance and reassuring experience of life suited Abi’s mood perfectly.
Bella shrugged. ‘I don’t know if I should tell you.’ She looked anxious suddenly.
‘Her phone number then?’
Athena sounded as though she had just woken up. With a groan she gave Abi the address. The flat was only minutes away, reached by an iron spiral staircase which led up out of one of the attractive little courtyards lined with small shops, which lie behind the high street. On the inner corner of every other step there was a plant pot. Athena opened the door dressed in an exotic black housecoat decorated with scarlet dragons and led the way into her kitchen. It was small and chaotic. Abi liked it immediately. Heavy greeny-blue pottery, plants, jars of herbs, a crystal ceiling chime, a lump of wood for a breadboard, still with her breakfast loaf, seedy, crumbly and smeared with Somerset honey. It was exactly the sort of kitchen she would have expected this woman to have.
Hitching herself onto a stool at the breakfast bar she watched as Athena brewed fresh coffee. ‘I’m sorry to come so early.’ It was nearly eleven. ‘But I had to talk to you. The crystal still isn’t working, so maybe you’re right and it is all imagination. And I know you said I should rely on myself now, and not the crystal anyway, but I’m obviously not working either. Nothing is happening, and I have to know. Did he kill Mora? I haven’t slept all night.’
Athena grimaced. She reached onto the counter for a pack of cigarettes and shook one out. ‘Sorry, I know it doesn’t go with the image, but I can’t think straight until I’ve had one.’ She struck a match and lit up, inhaling deeply. Then she shook her head, eyes closed. ‘Abi, dear, don’t you think it would be more sensible to worry about real people and real things?’
Abi’s mouth fell open. ‘I’m sorry.’ She felt ridiculously chastened. ‘But I thought you understood.’
‘I do understand. All this crap is too beguiling, isn’t it? Romantic. Wonderful. It seduces you away from the real world. Then you turn back and find the real world has moved on and passed you by. That’s Glastonbury for you all over. Bloody Avalon!’
Abi was silent. ‘What’s wrong, Athena?’ she said at last.
‘Someone died.’ Athena was staring out of the window. A basket of pink pelargoniums hung there, from a brass hook.
Abi sighed. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She watched as Athena poured the coffee and hauled herself onto a stool next to her. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked at last.
‘That’s your job, isn’t it. Talking to the bereaved.’
‘It was part of it, yes.’
‘Do you still believe in it all? Heaven, I mean. Now you’ve seen the poor buggers hanging around in the ether acting out their lives again and again and again!’ Athena took another drag on the cigarette.
Abi put her hands around her mug, warming them. ‘It’s something I have been thinking about a lot. My faith has had to change over the last few months. I haven’t lost it.’ She hesitated. ‘At least, I don’t think so. But I am having to adapt.’
‘How bloody convenient!’
Abi bit her lip. ‘I don’t think it’s just convenient,’ she said after a moment. ‘It’s taken a lot of heart searching. I’m not there yet.’ She took a sip from her mug.
‘Tim. That’s who died. My husband. My ex,’ Athena said after another long pause. ‘Cancer.’
‘You still loved him?’ Abi said cautiously.
‘I suppose I must have.’
‘That’s hard.’
Athena nodded. She sniffed. ‘I can feel him here. In the flat. Through there in the living room. Every time I go in there I can see him sitting at the clavichord; I never knew why he didn’t take it with him, he was the one who played it. I’ve never even tried. Not after he went. I always thought he would come back for it, but he never did.’ She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, slid from her stool and went over to the kettle. ‘This coffee’s cold.’ She flicked the switch. ‘He loved that thing.’
‘Would you like me to say a prayer?’ Abi asked cautiously. She gave a half-smile and shook her head. ‘It’s what I do. Sorry. Perhaps not.’
‘Say one in there if you want.’ Athena indicated a door across the narrow passageway opposite the kitchen. ‘I’ll stay here if you don’t mind. Abi, the goddess thing. I don’t think I ever really believed it. I tried to. I enjoyed all their rituals and stuff to start with, or most of them,’ she said, grinning. ‘But then I started to have problems with it all. For instance, I could never bring myself to sit on the egg-stone! Did you see it, the Tor Bur behind the abbots’ kitchen in the abbey grounds? Someone has left it there at the foot of the wall and so many legends have built up round it. There is a depression in it which could look as though it was made to hold your crystal! Don’t even ask what they use it for. It would really upset your vicarly susceptibilities. I had swallowed the whole “this is the authentic religion of the British Isles, it is as ancient as time itself” thing for a while, but it wasn’t. I began to feel a shallowness. It was all made up. Part of the feminist movement. It had no substance. They wanted it to be real so badly, and who knows, perhaps I’m wrong and it is, but it just didn’t do it for me.’
Abi didn’t know what to say. She slipped off her stool. The main room of the flat was large with full-length windows leading onto a narrow wooden balcony which overlooked the courtyard below. On it a cluster of ceramic pots held a riot of flowers. The curtains and drapes were all shades of the same green-blue as the mugs and plates in the kitchen. She looked round. There was an old sofa, spread with a sequined shawl, piled high with cushions, a couple of soft armchairs, a low table, loaded with magazines and books and a huge chunky candle, an ancient TV and a modern sound system, and against the wall the small keyboard instrument, its lid open, music on the music rest. Abi went and stood looking down at it. Mozart. She reached out a finger and stroked one of the keys. The sound was so quiet she barely heard it.
‘He’s gone, hasn’t he.’ The voice behind her made her jump.
She glanced round and nodded. ‘I think so. Perhaps he just came to say goodbye.’
‘I wonder?’ Athena’s voice was bitter. ‘More likely, “Now I can really fuck you up, Athena! I’ll come and haunt you for the rest of your days. That will be fun!”’ She threw herself down on the sofa.
Abi perched on a chair opposite her. ‘It sounds as though you two had a lot of unfinished business.’
‘You could say so.’
‘You’re a wise woman, Athena. You know what to do. Let it go. Let him go.’
‘Do you think I don’t want to?’
‘I think you didn’t want to.’
‘And now I do?’
‘Now you can.’
Athena leaned back, studying her face. ‘I suspect you were a bloody good vicar.’
Abi gave a rueful smile, shaking her head. ‘Obviously not good enough. But this I think I do understand. Whatever unfinished business there was between you is over now. It’s up to you to forgive him and send him on his way with your blessing. It will free you both. Then you can move on.’
‘The usual, sadly rather trite piece of advice. Next comes, “Get on with the rest of your life”. Counsellors’ psychobabble.’
‘It’s a bit of psychobabble that works.’ Abi shrugged. ‘If you nurture your hurt it will stay with you. Spoil your life. That would be your fault, not his. You’re worth more than that, Athena. You are a strong woman. You can do it.’
‘Why did you come here this morning, Abi? To ask me what to do about your vanishing ghosts? It seems to me you know all the answers yourself.’ Athena gave a quiet chuckle. ‘OK. Give me a few minutes to get dressed and we’ll go out. Leave Tim to tinkle away here if he wants to.’ She went over and threw open the windows. ‘There.