Chapter 32

On the way back to the car Diane took the girls into Waterstones to buy another copy of Sylvie’s book so they didn’t have to share. They didn’t have one in stock, but they found a copy in another store which would be delivered to Lucy in a couple of days.

After that Diane took the girls for a coffee and a chat about the session.

“How do you feel about opening up like you did Lucy?” Diane asked.

“Strange at first, but then once I’d told Sylvie about Steve, and the trouble with Logan, it’s like something lifted. I’ve told a stranger about my illicit affair with my brother, and it actually felt good doing that. Is that how you feel talking to Sylvie?” she asked Gabbie.

“I’m not going to say it feels good, because I generally feel drained, physically and mentally straight after I speak, but I can feel a bit of weight lifting with each memory I let go.”

“When we meditate, Sylvie said you should basically shout out ‘I know what you did, you can’t hurt me anymore’” Lucy said, “but we can’t do that in our room, Mrs Heald will hear us.”

“Ahh yes, and we can’t have music on to cover the noise, because Sylvie’s book says we’ve got to have silence or just quiet ambient sounds, or we can’t concentrate.”

“We’ll have to ask Millie if there’s a room we can use in the house.”

“Yes, she’ll know of something, in the meantime we can just practice getting inner peace first, I like that idea. The first exercise needs a candle for focus though, I don’t think we’re allowed candles in the rooms.”

“Oh, I know what you could use instead of a real candle, I saw some LED imitation candles in a shop the other day,” Diane said, “you just need a dim light to focus on, these will be perfect. There’s the same shop just down the street, I’ll be back in minute.”

Later that evening, after tea and prep, Lucy and Gabbie were sitting crosslegged on their bed, Gabbie had found a Durutti Column album on Spotify and it was playing quietly on their Bluetooth speaker, the room was dark apart from the LED pillar candle Diane bought them along with a tall wroughtiron candlestick.

The candle flickered gently just like a real candle, it was quite pretty in the otherwise dark room, and provided the focal point required by their first meditation lesson.

“Do we hold hands?” Gabbie asked.

“I don’t know, it doesn’t say yes or no in the book. Maybe we try holding hands and not holding hands, see which works best.”

Gabbie held Lucy’s hand, “I’m going to think of the woods at home, I know you didn’t see them much, but try and image densely packed trees, the sun playing through the leaves, conkers and acorns on the floor, and squirrels, that’s my happy place. If we can both think of that for now, see how far we get. This album is 45 minutes, then we come back to the real world.”

Gabbie restarted the album and put her phone on silent so they wouldn’t be disturbed, then she gave Lucy’s hand a quick squeeze and they both looked at the candle as they cleared their minds.

Lucy emptied her head of thoughts, watching the gently flickering light as her eyes slowly lost focus and she turned her thoughts to Gabbie’s house. In her mind she walked around the house, she could see the land at the side of the house rise towards a small hill, as she walked up the hill she could see densely packed woodland, she could smell earth, dead leaves and the heard a gentle breeze blowing through the leaves. She heard a rustling and saw a squirrel. As she watched the squirrel scurry through the leaves in search of acorns she saw a caravan, it must be Chelcey’s, so in her mind she wandered up to the caravan and had a look through the window, it was small but neat, the bed was tidy, soft toys were spread out across the duvet, which had a unicorn and rainbow design cover.

Lucy stepped back and looked around some more, she saw some rabbits in a clearing, and as she walked through the clearing, she saw a large shed. She approached the building and looked through the window, it was too dark to see inside so she tried the door, it wasn’t locked. The door creaked open and she saw a selection of tools and a small tractor, this must be the groundskeeper’s shed, Gabbie never mentioned a groundskeeper though. Lucy stepped out of the shed and closed the door. It was like she was in a computer game, she was looking around a place she’d never visited, like she was looking through someone else’s eyes.

Lucy turned and walked back towards the house, she took a walk around the back of the house and found the door into the larger kitchen Gabbie mentioned, it was standing open so she walked in. Passing through the kitchen she found the billiard room, the one with the portraits on the wall, she looked around the walls at the portraits, Gabbie was right, the men looked stern, with fat faces, red cheeks, piggy eyes. The ladies though, they wore beautiful gowns, their hair arranged in fancy styles, and they were pretty, more than one of the ladies looked like an older version of Gabbie.

Lucy thought of the time, she must have been in Gabbie’s world for over half an hour. She knew the album Gabbie was playing, so she drifted back for a moment and realised it was playing the last track, so she let her mind drift all the way back to their bedroom, she refocused her eyes and was immediately awake and feeling refreshed.

As she waited for Gabbie to return she thought about the experience, how had she envisioned so clearly things she’d never seen before, was she just making them up? And the smells, she could smell the woods so vividly, in fact she still could sense an earthy aroma.

Gabbie jerked suddenly as she came out of her trance much more suddenly than Lucy had, possibly because the song had ended.

“Wow, that was amazing!” Gabbie said, panting a little.

“Everything was so clear, I could visualise things I’ve never seen before, I could even smell the earth. I saw rabbits and squirrels.”

“Did you see Chelcey’s caravan?” Gabbie asked.

“I did, I looked inside.”

“Did you see the unicorn bedding? I gave her that.”

Lucy jumped off the bed and started to pace the room, “I did, how could I know about the unicorn bedding? The groundskeeper’s shed, I found that and wandered around inside. How could I find my way to the billiard room and see the paintings of your ancestors?”

“You were in my head Lucy, I watched you, you were looking at my memories.”

“No way!” Lucy cried, “how could I be in your memories?”

“It’s our link, Sylvie found it, the link must be stronger than she suspected.”

“Oh shit, so if we meditate together to find your abusers, I’ll see them to?”

“Yes, I think you will, if we’re together and holding hands.”

Lucy was clearly upset by this idea, she paced faster, thinking it through.

“Will I feel what you’re feeling, when we’re down in the cellar?”

“Oh, I see what you’re getting at. Could you see me before? When you were wandering, could you sense anyone else?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Ok, do you feel up to another experiment, just a short trip around my old school, the one I was at before here. You’ve never been there, so imagine a building like our music studio, you’ve been in there haven’t you?”

“Oh yes, we all did music in Year 9.”

“Great, our Classics block was just like that building, but you know, desk filled classrooms rather than music rooms. So we’ll go there, then I’ll lead you around, when we come out I want you to tell me the colour of the front door, and who’s in the big painting. Is that ok, nothing scary I promise.”

“Ok, that sounds like a fun experiment.”

Lucy climbed back on the bed, sitting cross legged next to Gabbie and holding her hand.

“Super, this is so much more exciting than I thought it would be. I think 10 minutes will be enough, so the last two tracks on the same album, it seems to be perfect music for meditating.”

Lucy waited for the music to start, then she shut down her mind so there was just the gentle arpeggiated chords of Vini Reilly’s guitar and the ever flickering LED of the fake pillar candle. As her mind emptied and she lost focus on the light she could see the school music building, although as she concentrated on the building she noticed slight differences, the wheelchair ramp at the side of the building was gone, the driveway was longer, and it wasn’t paved, just gravel.

As her feet moved over the gravel she could hear the crunch, she saw the double front doors, they were a deep forest green, not the red of the music school doors, and behind the doors the floor was highly polished wood, not mosaic tiles. There was a big mirror on the wall opposite the door, Lucy looked in the mirror and, she wasn’t there, but Gabbie was, she was looking through Gabbie’s eyes. She paused for a few moments while she came to terms with the realisation she wasn’t there, she was inside Gabbie, controlling Gabbie with her own mind.