‘I guess … but Mitch, is this really for you? You don’t sound yourself.’
‘I’ve never been more myself.’
‘But is it necessary to move into this commune? Can’t you practise whatever you’ve been taught at home?’
I could. I knew I could. Many of the members of the Rainbow Children lived normal lives; some were married with kids, had jobs, and they incorporated what they learnt into their everyday lives. But I wanted to do more. Fi and Lesley didn’t understand. Sara didn’t understand. We didn’t talk for long. What do they know? I thought. They hadn’t been there, under the stars, in what had been – until the Delhi belly hit – such an amazing, enchanted atmosphere. I didn’t listen to them. I felt I had found my purpose, and that was to spread the message that peace was possible and change was coming.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sara
Present day, February
The first few days of having Jo and Ally staying at my house were bliss. There was a lot of laughing over shared memories, terrible past haircuts and awful dress sense evident from the photos I pulled out from albums showing our teen years. We stayed up, feeling like teenagers, talking into the early hours of the morning, drinking wine, reminiscing.
‘Remember the scarf incident that time we all got stoned?’ asked Jo.
‘Oh god yes,’ said Ally. ‘It was when we were in the sixth form and we’d been at a concert at UMIST and were walking home. Mitch was as high as a kite and convinced that her feet were making too much noise on the pavement and would wake people up.’
‘She took her shoes off, insisted we did the same, then laid her scarf out on the pavement—’ said Ally.
‘And made us walk along it to soften the sound,’ I said.
‘And we did it too,’ said Ally.
‘And when we got to the end of the scarf, she picked it up and laid it down and off we’d go again. Tiptoeing our way home.’
‘Took blooming ages,’ said Jo, ‘but it made perfect sense at the time.’
‘We must have looked insane,’ I said.
‘And remember the time we were at that student house with Timothy Nash and all his mates?’ Ally asked. ‘We used to go and hang out there whenever we could …’
‘I thought they were so sophisticated because they were in their first year at university,’ said Jo.
‘We all fancied Timothy,’ I said.
‘He looked like Marc Bolan but taller,’ said Jo. ‘He fancied Mitch, didn’t he?’
‘Everyone fancied Mitch,’ said Ally.
‘It was the burn-your-bra time and they insisted we took our bras off and be liberated women,’ said Jo.
‘Trying their luck, more like,’ I said.
‘I remember creeping around the house, hoping my mum wasn’t up when I got home in case she noticed,’ said Ally.
‘And the time we took LSD …’ said Jo.
‘I didn’t,’ said Ally. ‘Drugs were never my thing.’
I burst out laughing. ‘Two times with Mitch and Jo. Mitch was so sure she’d found the secret to the universe the first time, but when the trip was over, she couldn’t remember what it was. So a week later, when we took it again, I made sure she had a pen and paper and—’
‘She wrote it down,’ said Jo. ‘I remember. We all gathered afterwards to read what she’d written. It was like a sacred moment as we waited for all to be revealed.’
‘What was it?’ asked Ally. ‘I’ve forgotten.’
‘The secret of the universe revealed itself to be …’ I paused for effect. ‘… I was there and now I’m here.’
‘Woah,’ said Jo. ‘Deep, man.’
We laughed. ‘There is some truth in that, I guess,’ I said.
‘We used to be such ravers, didn’t we?’ said Jo. ‘Curious and open to new experiences. I feel I’ve lost that somewhere along the way. God, I keep wishing Mitch was here. She ought to be here with us. We haven’t been together like this since school and it just feels like someone’s missing.’
‘I don’t think she’s in the UK or even Europe,’ said Ally. ‘We’d have heard something, surely, if she was nearby.’
‘The third psychic said he sensed she wasn’t in this country,’ said Jo.
‘That’s my gut feeling too – that she got married and is living abroad somewhere,’ I said.
‘Mine too,’ said Ally. ‘But where and doing what? That celibate lifestyle just wasn’t her, not for ever. I really can’t imagine her giving up men for all her life. Has she loved? Lost? Found The One we all used to talk so much about.’
‘Maybe she felt that the three of us had let her down in some way, but it wasn’t as if we were in touch with each other either, particularly in our twenties,’ said Jo. ‘We three drifted apart from each other as well as her.’
‘I spoke to her when she joined the Rainbow Children.’ I thought back to that conversation we’d had on the phone and remembered asking her if she’d really needed to do that, go to that extreme. ‘She’d said she wanted more than just to practise the teachings at home, but when I think about it, she didn’t really have a home. So maybe it was a place to belong for her, to be with like-minded people. I remember we finished the call quite abruptly, and I’d felt like I’d said the wrong thing. It was almost as if there was a part of her that had already made the decision to cut us out. Perhaps if I’d tried a bit harder, gone to see her at that time, things would have been different.’
‘And it wasn’t as if we were anti what she was doing,’ said Ally, ‘There were a lot of different groups doing it – some political, some spiritual – the Rainbow Children were just so all-consuming.’
‘True,’ said Jo. ‘I do mindfulness now, though more often than not it’s mindlessness – a good excuse to have a snooze.’
‘I wonder if Mitch had kids,’ I said. ‘I sent her an invite to my
