Chapter 13
Amy: Never Gonna Give You Up
I’m piling on the make-up this morning, particularly around my eyes.
They are looking so bloodshot right now – too much crying last night and again this morning.
I’m just so gutted about the séance. I’d pinned all my hopes on it, and I’d somehow convinced myself I was going to get some clear sign that James was out there.
But I’ve gone over and over it in my head, and truthfully I can’t believe he was.
Despite the raccoon. I think that was actually a bit of a red herring.
I know Elsie said she couldn’t be certain who the messages were from, apparently everything was a bit foggy, but nothing really sounded like the sort of thing James would say, and he definitely doesn’t have a high-pitched voice, like Elsie was describing.
His voice is deep and sexy, well, to me it is.
Probably not so much to the guys he shouts commands to at work – or used to.
Anyway, I’m not going to give up hope of reaching him.
I’ve got to try again. I’ll find another way.
Somehow these attempts to make contact with him do help to ease the grief a little.
They make me feel more positive because I’m actually doing something, and they help me hang on to this crazy hope that I really will get to hear from him and make him remember me, and that I really will see him and get to be with him again one day.
So now it’s time to get on with the next phase of this mission.
I need to treat it like a military operation, like he would.
Because if I don’t get focused I’m never going to reach him.
And I hate the not-knowing, the uncertainty.
I need the reassurance that there is more, that he is out there, that I will get to see him again one day.
So, really, mediumship is the only solution.
I know the séance wasn’t a resounding success, but I’m putting that down to the fact that Elsie was, without my wishing to be unkind, a bit past it.
She may have been a good medium in her day, but that day has definitely been and gone.
There are other mediums – or should it be media?
There’ll be someone out there who’s good at contacting people on the other side.
And I’m hoping one of them is the woman I came across online yesterday.
I’d woken up early and couldn’t get back to sleep (that happens a lot these days), so I spent some time trawling the internet before I needed to get ready for work.
One of the search results was for a spiritual church.
I wasn’t too sure about the idea of actually joining a church, but then I spotted the Events tab, and that gave a list of one-off events you can go to without actually joining.
So, one of the events they’re advertising is an evening of spiritual mediumship, and it’s being held in a theatre near here quite soon. It could be just the thing.
So, I’m going to talk to the FFC about it.
But first I need to get on with something for Olive and Joe’s wedding.
I’m quite an organised person, and it’s good for me to keep busy in my spare time.
It saves me from ‘getting maudlin’, as my next-door neighbour would say.
So, I’ve volunteered to put together a project plan.
There’s quite a lot to arrange – invitations, flowers, a car, the dress, the cake, the list goes on.
Thankfully, Sarah is going to take care of the catering for the reception, so that’s one thing ticked off.
And she’ll no doubt offer to make the cake too.
The FFC are at varying levels of ability when it comes to technology, with a fairly low base level, so paperwork is the only way to go, if I’m going to get everyone on board with the plans.
At work almost everything we do is digital, which is fine, but it’s actually really nice to use hard copy documents for a change.
I know it’s a bit old-fashioned, but I’ve always preferred having real things you can hold.
Like books – I’d much rather have a paperback than try to read a book on a device.
And photos – I love taking the time to arrange them in beautiful albums with captions beneath.
It’s all very well having them in the cloud, but there’s something lovely about browsing through the memories captured on a page.
And now James. It feels like James is in the cloud, and not only do I not have him here for real, to hold, but for some reason I can’t even access the cloud. But I will. Somehow. One day.
So, back to the wedding plans. When I get to the crem, I put out a pile of copies of the FFC Project Plan for Joe and Olive’s Wedding on a table in the café just before everyone is due in for coffee at eleven.
‘Is it still going to be all right for you to take a break and join us?’ I ask Sarah.
Sarah’s busy carefully sliding a coffee and walnut cake onto a pretty china cake stand.
‘Yep, all good. Paul said he’ll manage the café for half an hour.’
‘Oh, that’s lovely of him.’
I was hoping Sarah could join our wedding planning meeting, as she’s become a sort of honorary member of the FFC.
She’s only a couple of years older than me, and I think everyone in the group likes having another younger person around.
Her boss, Paul, has been such a treasure.
I think secretly he’s really thrilled that Joe and Olive want to hold their wedding here.
It’s a reflection of how fabulous a job Paul has done of making this place warm and welcoming.
At first glance, you might think it’s a place filled with death, but you don’t have to be at the crem long to realise it’s actually a place filled with love.
I guess that’s a part of why so many of us come up here so often.
So much thought and care has gone into creating this place.
It’s privately run, but there’s not an ounce of commercialism about it.
Cathy and Giles, they’re the owners, first decided to set it up because they were so upset about the poor quality of burial facilities in the area when they had to face laying their teenage son to rest. They had wanted somewhere beautiful and peaceful, as you would, but there was nothing they liked at all in this area.
In the end they either had to settle for a not very well-maintained place to the south of Bristol or do something radical.
And they decided on radical. So, they had their son cremated, kept the ashes at home for over a year, and in the meantime bought this piece of land in the countryside just north of the city, got planning permission, and set to work to transform it into the crematorium and cemetery it is today.
That was twenty years ago. And today it really is lovely.
The buildings are made from wood and honey-coloured Cotswold stone.
They look completely at home in the surroundings, and the grounds are just gorgeous – a blend of pretty memorial gardens, then some more natural grounds where there are also some memorials, and beyond that an area of woodland, where they allow green burials.
It’s quite thinly planted, so on a sunny day you get this kind of magical dappled light in amongst the trees, with lots of little areas like clearings where you can sit on one of the rustic benches and absorb the peace and serenity, and drift off into memories of happier times.
So yes, this place grew out of love and has become a place of love.
Okay, we’re all dealing with grief, but grief is just a kind of love, a really deep kind of love.
Vision from the Marvel series Wandavision was so right when he said that grief is just love persevering.
And although some people say Wanda is not a victim, but a villain, I disagree.
I completely get where she’s coming from.
She is riddled with grief. And I sometimes wonder, if I had Wanda’s powers, if I could somehow bring James back to life, back to me, even if it meant harming the lives of a whole townful of people, would I honestly be a good enough person to resist the temptation?
But right now, back to the matter of the wedding.
We need permission from Cathy and Giles for the wedding to be held at the chapel here, but they’re on a charity trek at the moment.
It’s a long event, lasting several weeks, in Peru.
They’re raising money for a local hospice.
They say they had so much support from them when their son got ill with leukaemia, and since he passed they have done loads of fundraising activities to try to give something back to the charity and help others going through what they did.
Paul is determined to let them enjoy their holiday in peace (does a trek really count as a holiday?) and he is only willing to contact them in an emergency.
Although this kind of feels like an emergency, I know it’s not what Paul meant, so I’m not going to try to persuade him.
So, the long and short of it is that we are going to have to wait until they get back before we know how things stand.
But in the meantime, we’re going to hope for the best and get some wedding planning underway.
So now the FFC members make their way into the café, picking up their drinks from the counter before sitting down at the table. We’re such regulars, Sarah knows what everyone wants and has the drinks ready for eleven o’clock.
Bob picks up a copy of the FFC project plan. ‘Just as well we’re a club and not a society,’ he comments.
We all look blankly at him.
‘Sorry, what did you say, Bob?’ asks Olive.
‘I said it’s just as well we’re not a society,’ repeats Bob.
‘Why?’ Janice asks.
‘Well, FFS – For Fuck’s Sake.’
Janice looks completely taken aback. ‘I was only asking,’ she retorts. ‘And I don’t see what’s so funny,’ she glares at the rest of us, who are trying not to laugh.