‘Darn it, damn it. I have to go back,’ I said. ‘It’s not my time. I still have stuff to do.’
‘Your choice,’ I heard the voice say.
‘Hey, but before I go, where am I? Who are you? What’s it all been about?’
‘Love,’ was all I heard, as suddenly I was being pulled, hurtled, catapulted back into that fat piece of blubber that was me. Oomph. Landed. Back in the body. Back in the room. It felt so heavy after the sensation of weightlessness, like being in wet sand. Hurt too.
‘I think she’s coming back,’ said a voice. Not the kind one up above, not my astral chum. I opened my eyes. It was the medic with the plait. ‘Jo, are you OK?’
‘We thought we’d lost you for a moment,’ said the man with the topknot.
‘You did. I was watching.’
Jane was at the end of the bed. ‘Jo. It’s me. Thank god.’
‘It’s OK. I felt like I died but I was watching the whole thing from up there.’ I pointed at the ceiling.
The two medics exchanged glances, as if to say we’ve got a cuckoo one here.
‘I was,’ I said. ‘I could see you working on me. You’ve got a tattoo of a dove on your neck just behind your left ear.’
The male medic looked shocked and put his hand up to his neck. ‘I do.’
‘So how was it?’ asked Jane.
Suddenly, I felt drained. They were all staring at me, Jane and the two medics, with expressions on their faces as if they were indulging a fanciful child, but I knew what I’d experienced and it had been real. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself back to the sea of light, but all I could feel was a throbbing pain in my head, my chest, and my shoulder where I’d hit the floor. Damn it.
Chapter Eight
Sara
Present day, November
I flicked on the TV and watched Rhys for thirty seconds. He was in the bright studio kitchen watching Antonio, a celebrity chef, cook risotto. ‘Oo,’ he oozed as Antonio spooned food into his mouth, ‘aah, fabulous.’ Ew, I thought as the camera zoomed into a close-up of him masticating the food. In the press of a button, he was gone. Thank god for remotes. If only they worked in real life.
Back to my quest to reunite with my old friends. I hadn’t got far. I planned to visit both Jo and Ally and make steps to reconnecting, but there had been shocking news from both of them. Jo was now recovering in hospital from a heart attack, and Ally was reeling with grief over the death of her beloved husband. I’d sent cards and flowers and would travel to see them when they were both up for visitors. So much for my assumption that they were living happy, idyllic lives. The recent events had served to show how out of touch I really was and I wanted to make up for that when the time was right.
Next on the list was Mitch.
I went to my computer, found Facebook and typed ‘Michelle Blake’ into the search box. Hundreds with that name came up, pages and pages; some with profile photos, some without. I made myself a cup of tea and sat down to go through them properly. Depending on the privacy settings, I was able to look at some and eliminate them – too young, too old or nothing like her. Other pages I couldn’t get into but could see photos. There were no pictures of anyone looking as I’d imagine Mitch would now. Once I had been through all pages with the name Michelle Blake, I typed in Mitch Blake.
Next I tried Twitter. As with Facebook, there were plenty to choose from, all around the world, but none looking like my Mitch. It felt hopeless. She might have married, changed her name. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. As a last resort, I found an old photo of us from our school days, took a picture on my phone then posted it on my page with a tweet saying: Michelle Blake from Manchester. Where are you now? Responses were immediate, mainly from pervs who clearly liked the look of us in school uniform. I took the post down after a private message from a man who’d sent a close-up of his willie. Bleurgh.
Deli. An almond croissant was calling me. It had been calling me for years but I’d always resisted. TV can put weight on a person, so I could never take the risk of anything so indulgent. But I was no longer on TV. I had some catching up to do in the ‘piling on the pounds’ department.
*
I was at the cash desk at the deli waiting to pay.
‘Sara Meyers!’
I turned to see Gary Parsons from Little Dog Productions. He used to work at Calcot TV but had left years ago to start his own independent company and had been very successful in doing so. He was a cuddly bear of man with a bushy beard. He was wearing clothes that made him look as if he was about to go hiking: jeans and a red checked flannel shirt, probably Oxfam’s finest; army boots on his feet. I’d always liked him and he was one of the few people I didn’t mind catching me with no make-up wearing an old jacket, my slouchy pants and trainers. He had two Portuguese custard tarts in hand. ‘Hey!’
‘Just the person I wanted to see. This is synchronicity.’
‘I am? It is?’
He glanced at my croissant. ‘Let me pay for that. Time for a coffee?’
‘Absolutely.’
We found a table by the window and caught up on gossip for a while. Who was doing what. Who was working where.
‘So. Synchronicity?’ I asked, once we’d exhausted the gossip.
‘I was only talking about you this morning.’
‘Good, bad or bitchy?’
He smiled. ‘All good. We have a gap in our programming. A gap I believe you could help us with.’
I felt
