The Second Life of Amy Archer

by R. S. Pateman

  ‘Give it a bit longer. Please.’

  I stare at Amy’s picture, hoping to project it on to Ian’s third eye, but once again he says that nothing’s coming through. I curl into myself to muffle my frustrated sobs.

  ‘I think we’d better call it a day,’ he says, stifling another yawn.

  ‘Wait. Do you . . .’ I sit up and catch my breath before I can continue. I’m scared of what he’ll say, what it will mean for me, where it will lead. ‘Do you believe in reincarnation?’ The words come out in a rush. They sound to me like a dare.

  ‘Reincarnation?’ His intonation gives away his surprise. There’s a moment’s pause, and then he continues. ‘Well, I’ve read some impressive recollections of past lives. And seen some of my peers do regression sessions with amazing results. So, yes, I do believe in reincarnation.’

  ‘Regression sessions?’ My eyes widen.

  ‘Where people recall past lives under hypnosis.’

  ‘That’s it!’ Bagpuss and the essay fall from my hands as I stand up quickly, but my grip is firm on Amy’s photo. Hope and tears choke my voice. ‘That’s what I need. That will sort everything out.’

  ‘You sound . . . overwrought, Mrs Archer,’ he says. ‘If you’re thinking of trying regression therapy, it’s probably best to steer clear until you’re more yourself. It can be a tricky business at the best of times.’

  But I’m too excited to be stalled by his reasoning.

  ‘Can I make an appointment? Right away?’

  ‘Like I said, I’m going on holiday. And anyway I don’t do regression work. I’ve not had the training.’ He sighs. ‘I really have to go now. I need some sleep. You can send me a cheque care of the Association.’

  I hang up and wipe the tears from my eyes with my sleeve. I don’t know what I expected from him, but that doesn’t stop me feeling disappointed. Anything would have been better than silence. Even the tiniest hint from the other side could have tipped the balance either way, but the silent void leaves me teetering on the brink.

  I put Amy’s picture back on the mantelpiece. Her smile no longer seems so sweet and carefree. I place Bagpuss on the sofa. Beaded eyes bore into me. The words from Esme’s essay seem to slide off the page as I drop it on the table. I grab my coat from the rack in the hallway and run out of the front door.

  My footsteps are metronomic, quick and even, then hurried and frantic. I don’t even know where I’m going. I stop and catch my breath, look around to see if anyone is watching. To see where I am. What I might be doing. But there’s no one around. The entire city has been put to sleep by the spell of New Year’s Day.

  Yet I think I hear footsteps.

  I run down the street. As I get closer to the river, I pick my way through empty champagne bottles, beer cans, burger boxes and soggy fronds of party streamers. I walk down roads I never knew existed before, turn right or left when my feet decide I should. All that matters is to keep moving.

  In Borough High Street I sidestep an unruly conga.

  ‘Happy New Year!’ one of them shouts.

  I put my hand against the wall and feel my way along it, not daring to look at the revellers.

  ‘Christ, state of her.’

  ‘Whatever she had last night, I want some right now!’

  Their laughter rips through me. I run on, finally emerging at the entrance to Borough Market.

  It’s deserted, the stalls shut up, candy-striped canvas awnings curled under the dark railway arches. The ground is littered with empty bottles and cans, the mess made festive by sparkly confetti and a battered plastic trumpet. The smell of beer and urine mixes with the residual scent from a thousand years of market trading: sawdust, rotting vegetables, blood. It is the smell of something enduring colliding with the transient. Of celebration and decay.

  The bells of Southwark Cathedral strike eight. The peals thunder in my head. I run on, magnetised by the promise of sanctuary. Of salvation. Truth.

  I dash round the corner, praying the cathedral will be open. The beige and grey edifice thrusts into the lightening sky, as if trying to get God’s attention. The heavy wooden doors are ajar. They creak as I yank them open and burst through the inner door, startling a woman in an overall dusting the pews.

  ‘Oh, you gave me a fright!’ she says, smiling at me nervously.

  Her eyes flick either side of me, as if checking her escape route should she need one. I try and catch my breath, tuck some loose hair behind my ears. Smile as best I can.

  ‘Is it okay to come in?’ I whisper.

  ‘We’re getting ready for a thanksgiving service later on.’ Her tone is clipped, officious, as if I’m being intrusive and impertinent.

  ‘Please,’ I say, my hands stretched out towards her. ‘I just need to sit down. Think. Pray.’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman says slowly. ‘I think you might.’ She shakes out her duster and sneezes. ‘Well, if you don’t mind the vacuum cleaner . . . God’s house is always open, as they say.’

  She plugs in a Hoover and pushes it around the base of the font. I walk down the nave’s central aisle, the gaze of the stained-glass saints subdued by grimy light. My head bows under their scrutiny. Jesus looks disdainful.

  I tiptoe towards the altar, but a woman buffing the railings with a duster reroutes me along a pew to my left, outside a small chapel. The sign on the door explains that it is the Harvard Chapel, reserved for private prayer and quiet meditation.

  I step inside and sit down on a chair at the back, glad of the support provided by an adjacent pillar. I rub my temples, will the Hoover to stop. A moment later it does.

  The chapel is so perfectly still and hushed that I think I can hear the altar candles melting. I stare into the arch of the window until its colours run and swamp the stiff little figures kneeling at the feet of a smug-looking Jesus.

  An inscription explains that the original window was destroyed in the Blitz. Staff and alumni from Harvard University raised money for a replacement in honour of the university’s founder, who was baptised in the cathedral. Fate stretched across a vast, untamed ocean to distant worlds, reached through time to repair and replace. To heal. Maybe God has done the same by sending Amy back wrapped up in Esme. Perhaps He has finally heard my prayers and considered my penance spent.

  A sudden surge of sunlight makes the window glow, a red panel in the middle burning brightest. Veritas, it says. Truth.

  My heart throbs. I pray for guidance as hard and as long as I prayed for Amy’s safe return. Bitter tears burn my face.

  ‘Help me,’ I sob. ‘Please, help me.’

  I sense a movement to my right and my gaze jerks away from the window. A young man in a grey shirt and white dog collar stands at the door, his face soft with concern.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says, stepping into the chapel. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say, and dab my eyes with my coat sleeve.

  ‘If you’d like to talk . . .’

  ‘No,’ I say quickly, forcing a smile to try and soften my reproach. ‘But thank you.’

  He takes out a box of votive candles from a small cupboard and lights one with a match. The candle flame is dull and tentative, then grows longer and brighter.

  The young cleric replaces the box in the cupboard and smiles.

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘I’ll leave you in peace.’

  If only it was that simple.

  ‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Please.’

  My gaze drops to the seat beside me and he accepts my invitation.

  ‘How can I help?’

  I bite my lip.

  ‘You’re going to think I’m a mad, desperate woman, and God knows, maybe I am, but . . .’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Go on,’ he says gently.

  I can barely bring myself to look him in the eye as I ask him if he believes that reincarnation is possible.

  He raises his eyebrows.

  ‘I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting something like that.’ His smile seems more receptive than a
mused or mocking. ‘But it’s not such a daft question. Not at all, in fact.’ The chair squeaks as he shifts in his seat. ‘You see, I suppose anything is possible, maybe even reincarnation . . .’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But I don’t think it’s likely.’

  My heart sinks.

  ‘Is that logic or belief?’ I say, although I’m not sure if it makes any difference either way.

  ‘Both. It undermines the basics of the faith.’ He puts a hand on his heart. ‘Of my faith. But there are millions of practising Christians who see it differently. Ours is a broad church in every sense – so there’s room for people to have beliefs that others might regard as silly or abhorrent.’

  I swallow and nod.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ he says, cocking his head to one side.

  ‘No reason,’ I say quickly. ‘Not really. Just all this talk of the new year. You know how it goes. New beginnings. Endings. Dreams. Everyone questioning and analysing everything.’

  ‘It is a bit unsettling, isn’t it? Exciting too, though. Hopeful.’ He puts his hand on mine. ‘At the end of the day, we all find the comfort of faith in something – whether it’s Buddhism, Christianity or Man United. Believing in something is better than believing in nothing at all. It’s what feels right and true to you that matters.’

  ‘But how can we be certain that what we feel is right?’ Desperation has crept back into my voice.

  ‘Well, we all have doubts, of course,’ he says with a slow shrug.

  ‘Even you?’

  He stands up and smiles.

  ‘You’d be surprised.’ He taps his dog collar. ‘This doesn’t immunise me from little wobbles. And I wouldn’t want it to either. It’s God who steers me back to my faith each time – and knowing that makes it stronger.’

  As he walks past the candle, the flame bends and sputters. Smoke hangs in the air like a thin grey ghost.

  ‘You see,’ he says. ‘Even the Light of God needs to be rebooted once in a while.’

  He lights the candle again and leaves.

  Above the door there’s a red flag, with the syllables of a single word embroidered in golden thread.

  VER

  IT

  AS

  I look away quickly and stare at the relit candle instead. Its strong, steady flame mesmerises me. I’ve missed the clear bright light of hope and the heady warmth of love and want to feel the glow of both again. Esme may be my last chance. If I can allow myself to believe her.

  Her resemblance to Amy is striking. Her recall of events uncanny. Her accuracy baffling. None of the details she told me were reported in the media, other than Amy’s love of the Spice Girls, and that was hardly unique for a ten-year-old girl at that time. Esme said every word with an unwavering certainty, without a hint of hesitation. It was too accomplished and assured to be a performance, especially by someone so young.

  I tear my gaze from the candle and look up. The stones and arches of the ceiling are linked together like the fingers of a hand in prayer. One of the stones boasts a gilt hexagon, its blood-red centre traced by gold letters.

  VER

  IT

  AS

  I get up to leave and stop at the chapel door. I look at the flag above me, the stone in the ceiling, the glowing window panel.

  Veritas. Times three.

  A trio of affirmations.

  A trinity of truth.

  The echo of my footsteps chases me along the aisle towards the cathedral doors and out into Borough High Street. When I stop to catch my breath, I feel I’m being watched and look around nervously.

  The empty frames in an optician’s window stare at me. An advert for bifocals tells me I can see things differently. I feel madness twitch, like a spider in a corner. I take deep, slow breaths, just as Dr Morgan taught me.

  It was Brian’s idea for me to go and see a psychiatrist, a last-ditch attempt to get me to move on. We’d started out having joint sessions with a bereavement counsellor in a stuffy little room at our local clinic. It didn’t take long for Brian to point the finger at me, just like the press had.

  At first he told me to ignore their allegations, said they had to find a scapegoat somewhere seeing as the police hadn’t identified a culprit. I was a good mother, he told me, but his eyes said something different. Something dark and doubtful.

  It was my fault Amy had gone. Me who wasn’t looking, who wasn’t even there, keeping watch. Who let her go off, crossing a road, to play on her own, keen to get her out from under my feet.

  His litany of accusations brought my rote responses. The park gates were just fifty metres from the house, the road wasn’t busy, her friend was in the playground, she was ten years old, sensible, bright. She was being picked up by a responsible adult. How was I to know her friend would run off and leave her?

  And why was I busy that night anyway? Because I was getting us both organised for a party that was important to him and his business. And where was he? At work, on a pitch for a bloody toilet-roll campaign that could have waited for a day or two. Except maybe it wasn’t the pitch deadline that was so pressing, but some doe-eyed colleague eager to make her name. Neither of us was looking.

  The counsellor flapped and floundered, suggesting that we try separate sessions. Brian pulled out altogether.

  ‘Beth, all we do is go round in circles,’ he said, clenching his fists. ‘Painful circles. I need to work through this on my own. In my own way. Maybe you should try it too.’

  ‘I can’t. It helps to talk to someone about it. I wish that could be you, but . . .’

  I continued with the counsellor for a while, but when my state of mind showed no improvement, Brian suggested I try a psychiatrist instead. I resented the subtle criticism that it was all my problem, but I knew I needed help.

  And Dr Morgan did help, initially at least.

  In a tranquil study overlooking the lush, tidy garden of his Dulwich home, he listened attentively to my memories of Amy and absorbed my anger and anguish like water in a sponge. But when he tried to move me on, to look at my past and my relationship with Brian, I resisted.

  ‘None of that is relevant to Amy’s death!’ I said, hands out, incredulous that he couldn’t see my point.

  ‘But it is relevant to how you lead your life without her,’ he said, nodding his head for emphasis.

  ‘I have no life without her.’

  ‘You can do,’ he said, linking his fingers together. ‘If you want to.’

  He maintained that the trauma of Amy’s death was all the more profound because she was the only part of my life that had been working.

  ‘You gave up your career in advertising to bring her up. You lost the status it gave you, the independence. Your sense of place in the world. Without her, there is nothing but your marriage.’ He gave a little shrug. ‘Maybe that isn’t enough?’

  It wasn’t. It never had been. Never could have been. Not with me as one half of the equation.

  Brian and I had been thrown together by departmental reorganisation in a mediocre advertising agency. I was surprised and relieved not to be given my P45 and even more surprised to be hooked up with the agency’s hotshot.

  Instead of working in the office, he dragged me out to a nearby café. Our relationship played out against a backdrop fugged by steam and cigarettes and burnt toast. Everything smouldered, passion included.

  Sitting in a booth with flaky leather seats and a chipped Formica table, he spouted one catchy ad line after another. I was merely a secretary, taking dictation, dressing his ideas up to create ads that worked. Ads that won awards.

  He made me look better than I was and my gratitude fired my love. His love for me was rooted in my easy acquiescence – something that faltered once Amy arrived and shifted my priorities.

  What I saw as dedicated parenting, he saw as dogmatic control. I wanted the best for Amy and did all I could to make sure she got it. He wanted the same but thought she’d be happier getting there as a free spirit. Liberal, he called it. I ca
lled it lazy and dangerous. Disagreement and resentment seethed.

  ‘My marriage isn’t the problem,’ I assured Dr Morgan.

  ‘It’s part of it. Work on that and maybe you can fix the rest.’ He made it sound so simple.

  ‘It won’t bring Amy back,’ I said, my teeth clenched.

  ‘I’m sorry to say that nothing will. But if you and your husband start loving one another as deeply and as readily as you blame one another, you might, one day, start a new family.’

  ‘I can’t replace Amy!’ The thought of it caved me in, made me feel traitorous and flighty.

  ‘It’s not about replacing Amy,’ Dr Morgan said firmly. ‘It’s about finding you.’

  I didn’t go back. A few months later my marriage collapsed under the weight of Brian’s affair with a colleague.

  ‘Fiona’s not to blame,’ Brian said. ‘It’s you and your morbid obsession.’

  ‘It’s not an obsession!’

  ‘No? What would you call it then?’

  ‘Love.’

  I don’t have to wonder what he and Dr Morgan would make of me claiming that Amy had returned. They’d say I was deluded. Neurotic. Mad.

  Maybe I am.

  I press my head against the glass of the optician’s window. Its chill is soothing. My gaze rests on a sign for eye tests.

  What are you missing?

  Beneath it is a display of Clear View contact lenses.

  Look to your future.

  I lean my head against the shop window once more. The cathedral clock chimes the half-hour. I think of the message in the Harvard Chapel.

  Veritas.

  I hear the clergyman telling me I will know in my heart what I should believe. I see Amy’s initials scratched in the doorstep tile. The glint of her hair. I feel Esme’s tresses soft and warm beneath my hand. The kick of recognition, of hope for a future. The flare of a decision.

  I take my phone from my coat pocket. My text to Libby is written and sent in a flash.

  I believe.

  5

  I keep my phone in my hand the whole way home. I expect Libby to get in touch as soon as she receives my message, picturing the pair of them waiting in their hotel room, desperate to hear from me. But the phone is stubbornly silent.