Chapter 1 #2
‘This is Amy,’ she says to a group of ladies busy unpacking sheaths of corn for decorating the venue.
‘Oh, how kind of you to come and help,’ says one of the ladies, shaking my hand. ‘You were James’ wife, is that right?’
‘Just his girlfriend,’ interrupts Carol.
‘Oh.’ The lady looks a little uncomfortable at the correction. ‘Well, I’m very sorry for your loss. James was such a lovely young man. Always happy to help us out – but of course you’d know all about that.’
I nod and do my best to smile. I can feel the familiar lump forming in my throat, but I mustn’t cry, not in front of Carol, the stoic.
The thing is, because I was ‘just his girlfriend’, I’m meant to be over him already.
It’s like there’s a hierarchy for grief, and if you’re not high enough up it, you don’t get to be sad for long.
Even though we’d been together for years.
To be fair, Carol does walk the talk. I mean, she’s his mother and yet she moved on from the grief ages ago. But I really don’t know how.
‘Come on, now, Amy,’ she says to me, ‘you’re just a youngster. You’ll have to make a fresh start sometime, find a new boyfriend. Now’s as good a time as any.’
But now isn’t a good time. Now’s a terrible time. Because my head and my heart are still filled with James.
The irony is, we did talk about getting married, but James wasn’t keen.
Not because of us, our relationship was fine.
More than fine, it was wonderful. It was because he said he’d not been brought up with a good advert for marriage – he said his parents were the opposite, a kind of advert for avoiding marriage completely.
It never bothered me. I honestly don’t mind either way about marriage.
It’s being together that matters. Of course I’d have married him if he’d been really keen.
But a big white dress, confetti and cake – well I can take it or leave it.
Actually, that’s not completely true, I do like cake – in fact I love cake.
But not the dry, fussily-iced fruit cake you usually get at weddings.
No, give me a slice of chocolate cake any day.
So, now I am living with a gaping hole in my life.
A James-shaped hole, that can never ever be filled.
Some days I think surely I will die of a broken heart.
But it never happens. I keep waking every morning, keep breathing, keep going through the motions of living, as though somehow my body didn’t get the memo that my heart has powered off.
And the only thing that keeps me going is the hope that there’s more. That there’s another life to come, an afterlife of some sort. And that I can find James in that life and we can be together again. But how can I be sure he’ll still want me? What if I take years to die? I’m only twenty-six.
I’d be lying if I said there haven’t been days when I’ve thought about joining him.
There are times when I feel like I’ve died on the inside anyway, so I might as well make it official.
But even at my very lowest ebb, something holds me back.
Maybe it’s the feeling deep inside that seems to be telling me it’s not my time.
Maybe it’s just my body’s pesky will to live.
Or maybe it’s the nagging fear that if I did something like that, if I failed to live out my life, I’d get sent to the bad place for all time.
And then I’d definitely never see James again.
Because James was lovely and wonderful and good.
So there’s no way he’s gone to the bad place.
Whatever the reason, I’m still here. For now. And whether it’s my time or not, I have this real conviction deep inside that it wasn’t James’ time to go. He was way too young. It all feels so wrong. And no matter how many months go by, it never seems to get any easier to deal with.
All I want to do right now is find a way to reach him, to know for certain that he’s out there and he’s okay, and to somehow connect with him.
I mean, we’ve done long-distance before.
Sometimes he was away for weeks or months with the army, and we managed to make that work.
So I just need to find a way to connect with him in the next place, like psychics do.
He’s got to be out there somewhere, right?
Unless it really is all over when we die.
The optimistic side of me refuses to believe that it’s the end.
But then there’s also a nagging doubt in my mind that maybe actually this life is all there is.
And I can’t bear for that to be the case.
I need there to be more, I need there to be an afterlife, because otherwise I’ll never see James again.
I wasn’t brought up with any religion. My mum used to be a Christian, but she abandoned her faith the day my dad abandoned us.
I don’t really remember him. He just walked out one day when I was two.
We never heard from him again, and Mum never stepped foot in a church again.
‘His loss!’ she used to say. I think she meant my dad, but it could equally have been God she was talking about.
The thing is, if James is out there, why don’t I hear from him? Why is he not somehow contacting me, sending messages? Or something? But there’s been nothing. Radio silence.
Perhaps he’s too busy, hanging out with some of his old army mates. Sadly, some of them didn’t make it back. It’s not that I’d begrudge him having a good time with them. I just want him to spend some time with me too. Surely I’m meant to be his unfinished business, after all?
So, I’ve decided I’m going to take matters into my own hands.
I can’t just let him walk out of my life.
I need to know he’s okay. And he said he’d love me forever, so I need to hold him to it.
Trouble is, how on earth do I reach him?
I don’t even know where to start. I Google ‘contacting lost loved ones’.
‘Contacting the dead’ sounds a bit brutal, and a bit vague – and I’m not trying to reach just anyone who’s died. Just James.
Séances, that’s what keeps coming up in the search results.
So that’s what I need to start with. I mean, we’ve all seen séances on TV.
They look straightforward enough. How hard can they be?
All you need is a strange board and a glass – oh, and a few willing friends.
Actually, that might be where things get tricky.
None of my friends are into that sort of stuff.
They’re into taking me out drinking, and to spa pampering sessions and, worst of all, a speed dating night.
How I let myself get dragged along to that I’ll never know.
I must have hit a really low ebb that weekend, all out of energy to try explaining to friends, who mean well, but simply don’t understand that this sadness is never-ending.
Let me tell you, speed dating is just as terrible as you’d imagine – and more.
To be fair, on paper they probably thought it didn’t sound so bad – a smart boutique hotel in the city, free champagne and canapés, ‘an evening of meeting like-minded young people’, according to the flyer.
But in reality, it was one of the worst nights of my life.
Admittedly I didn’t go in with the right attitude.
I wasn’t wanting to find a date. It was my friends who were wanting to find a date for me.
But honestly, it was truly awful. I’ve never seen so much desperation crammed into one room before.
So, anyway, back to the séance thing. I’ve had an idea.
I have some new friends I’ve made since James went.
A whole new crowd. Maybe I can convince them to help me out.
I hope so because I desperately need to find James, to know for certain that he’s out there and to know that he’s okay.
Because otherwise all hope is gone, and then how on earth do I carry on?