‘Are you OK?’ Jo asked.
‘I am communing,’ said Rain.
‘OK, but where is Mitch, I mean Phoenix?’ asked Jo.
‘She will come to you,’ said Rain.
‘Where from?’
‘Too many questions. Be still. Orion says she will find you.’
‘So she’s still alive?’ asked Jo.
‘Most definitely.’
‘So why can’t you tell us where?’ Jo persisted.
‘Seek and you will find,’ said Rain.
‘But you just said we should be still and she would come to us. So which is it? We stay still and she finds us, or seek and we will find?’
Rain collapsed down onto one of the cushions on the floor as if all the air had gone out of her. ‘Any journey contains many contradictions. It is the task of the traveller to interpret these contradictions. Now I must rest.’
We took that as an indication that we should leave, so we got up and made our way out.
‘Well that was weird,’ said Jo when we got out onto the street, ‘but kind of fun.’
‘I’ll kill Gary and Lauren. I swear they sent us there for a laugh.’
‘Worth it just to watch your faces in there,’ said Ajay and winked. ‘See you at the next one.’
*
The third session was in a church in Muswell Hill and, as we had a couple of hours between appointments, Jo and I took a quick detour home to find a photo of Mitch.
Ajay was waiting for us when we got to the church. He was with a spindly, tall man with thinning hair, who introduced himself as Eddie, shook hands and led us inside where we sat on a pew at the back.
‘You have come about your friend,’ he said.
‘We have,’ I said as I handed over the photo of Mitch. ‘We’d like to know if you could help us find her.’
Eddie glanced at the photo. ‘What are the circumstances of her disappearance?’
Jo quickly filled him in.
‘So you haven’t seen her for forty years?’ he asked.
We nodded.
‘Have you tried the usual routes? Old contacts? Family? Other friends?’
‘We have, but so far no luck.’
The man nodded, held the photo and closed his eyes.
‘I sense your friend is still with us on this plane of existence,’ he said. ‘The energy around her is bright and vibrant.’
‘That was Mitch,’ said Jo, ‘but can you sense where she is?’
The man shook his head. ‘People often come to me when someone has disappeared, run away, been kidnapped or even been murdered. They come when other ways of searching have been exhausted. Sometimes I can feel the spirit of the missing person trying to reach me so that their story may be told. I sense no such urgency or distress with your friend, nor trauma. I sense she is no longer in this country but I suggest you search for her through the more traditional methods – records, schools, hospitals and, in this day and age, with DNA you may be able to trace her easily. I suggest you try those routes. I am sorry I cannot help you further.’ He looked intently at Jo for a moment. ‘You recently spent time in the spirit world, yes?’
‘I … Yes, I did,’ said Jo.
He smiled. ‘Take heed of what you learnt there; such experiences are a gift.’ Eddie got up indicating that the meeting was over, so Jo, Ajay and I filed back out onto the street.
‘Of the three, Eddie was the most convincing,’ I said.
‘Shame he couldn’t tell us more.’
‘But he’s right. I told Gary weeks ago that it was futile to go and visit psychics.’
Ajay grinned. ‘TV gold, though.’
‘I don’t think so. Not one of them gave us a clue about where Mitch might be.’
‘Maybe a banshee will come and tell us later,’ said Jo.
‘I really really hope not.’
‘Me too.’
On the way back to the station, Jo attempted to sing Rain’s song, and in the end I had to join in with her. Strangely, it made us both feel quite good.
‘Eddie said she might not be in this country. Do you remember she went to India at one point? I don’t remember much of what she did there, though. Maybe she went back there, which would explain why she’s hard to trace.’
‘Maybe.’
‘And now to the commune,’ said Jo as we got back into my car.
‘Commune?’
‘Your place. You, me and Ally all bunked up together. Maybe we’re following in Mitch’s footsteps after all.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mitch
December 1974
A short time after my meditation session, there was a trip planned to India to stay in the foothills of the Himalayas and to meet our guru, Sadhu Devanagari. He was to be staying in an ashram near the Ganges and would be giving a series of talks. It sounded so romantic. I saved every penny, borrowed a little from Tom and flew with him and a group of twenty other followers.
We arrived, hot, dusty and thirsty after a nine-hour flight and hour-long bus journey. Vans and coaches were pulling up and people of all races were spilling out, many greeting each other as long-lost friends. Our accommodation was not, as I had imagined, a room in an ancient and atmospheric monastery, but a sea of tents in a campsite at the back. I didn’t mind. It was all new and exciting, and felt like an adventure far removed from the grey streets of England. The atmosphere was reminiscent of a pop festival, full of anticipation as the colourful followers, most of whom had adopted Indian dress of kaftans and kurtis, dyed in rainbow colours, settled in for the week. Some would sit chatting, smoking bidi cigarettes, others playing guitars or drums, other singing, others working in make-do kitchens preparing massive pots of vegetables and rice, enough to feed an army, always the scent of jasmin or sandalwood joss sticks wafting through the air. The
