The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1877 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

The beds and bedding had aired enough to make up two beds, and the heating meant the house was quite cosy as we sat and chatted about anything and everything. I hoped I convinced her I wasn’t the Messiah coming back in disguise–either that or the disguise was so good, even I didn’t see through it.

We went to bed at about half past ten and listened to the rain pattering on the roof. We might not get home tomorrow either. I’d call the college tomorrow and say we were stuck in Bristol. I called Simon and he said everyone sent their love to us and to wait until it was safe to travel–he rather see me late in this world than early in the next. I wasn’t going to disagree, wished him a good night and after reading for a short while went off to sleep.

The next morning after a shower, I dressed in a pair of jeans I’d left here last time I came, a sweat shirt and my flat shoes. The suit and heels went into a carrier bag. I started getting the breakfast when Phoebe came down, her damp hair showed she’d also been in the shower.

“There’s a hairdryer in the cupboard,” I nodded towards the glory hole as my mother used to call the kitchen cupboard which went under the stairs. She nodded, went and found it and dried her hair as I made some tea and toast.

Phoebe helped herself to some cereal as I switched on the radio which was tuned to the local station. It looked pretty hopeless, the motorway was still closed and the railway was still being cleared. I phoned the highways agency and could only get a recorded message. I assumed the agency was too busy. I found a website which reported on the roads and in our area the motorway was definitely still closed, a rail website confirmed the trains weren’t running either.

“I suppose I’d better call your college,” I suggested to Phoebe who looked at her watch.

“Too early yet, Mummy, give ’em another half an hour.”

“You realise we could be stuck here for another day?”

“Yeah, so, I found ‘Rebecca’ last night.”

“Didn’t know she was lost,” I said buttering another slice of toast.

“The book, by Daphne Du Maurier.”

“Oh that Rebecca,” I feigned surprise.

She gave me a glower then laughed. It was your book, wasn’t it?”

“I read it when I was about fifteen, why?”

“Because all the others in the bookcase I half fancied had your mother’s name written inside the cover. This one has just C. Watts in the girliest handwriting I think I’ve ever seen.”

“What? Show me.”

Still chewing on a piece of toast she ran upstairs and fetched the book. “There, Miss C. Watts.” She opened the book and presented it to me.

I examined it and blushed, it was awful, had I really written like that? Well seeing as neither of my parents did so, it must have been mine. I cringed. “I’ve got a feeling I only read it because it suggested that all girls should read certain novels, including Jane Eyre and Rebecca. You should find Jane Eyre there as well. I was only then coming to terms with the fact that I should have been born female.”

“You were, it’s your bits that were wrong,” chipped in Phoebe as I paused to sip my tea.

“Quite,” and before I could say anything else, she trotted into the lounge and a moment or two later came back with Charlotte Bronte’s magnum opus. She opened the book and sure enough in blue washable ink was inscribed, ‘C.Watts,’ in the same girlish script and written with the same italic nibbed pen. I still had it somewhere, a Sheaffer my dad gave me when I got into grammar school.

“Is your writing still like this?”

“No, of course not.”

“Prove it.”

“You’ve seen my writing.”

“No I haven’t.”

“Oh, okay.” I put my empty mug back on the table and went to collect my laptop bag. I pulled out a sheaf of papers including my notes for my talk yesterday, they were typed in large print in bold, with some alterations in pen by the side of them.

“That’s hardly enough to give a true impression, is it?”

I went through the sheaf and found a half a page of my scribble and passed it to her. “My goodness, Mummy, you write so girly.”

I looked at the scribble. It was very round script with all the loopy bits looped. It was upright and legible. I looked at a sheet of my dissertation that Tom had commented on and his writing was angular and leant forward and he pressed harder as well. The page was dented underneath. Mind you, I had a period of making rough notes on things in ball-pen which I wrote heavily on the page because when I went through the book later the page crinkled and rustled when I turned it over. It was part of my revision notes and I loved the way the pages of that notebook rustled as I turned them.

“So, at least you can read it.”

“It’s got smaller, hasn’t it?” she compared my writing from the fly leaf of the book to my notes.

“I think that’s normal.”

We finished and I cleared the table and started washing up, and as Phoebe offered to dry, I let her. “How did you sleep, were you warm enough?”

“Yeah, I was okay, thank you, though I had a funny dream.”

“Oh?” I rinsed my hands.

“Yeah, I saw my mum.”

“Yes, and?”

“She thanked me for her flowers.”

“Good, really she should have written, but given her circumstances...”

“Mummy, listen,” she said sharply.

“Sorry.”

“She thanked me for her flowers and told me that she was pleased I was living with you. She said you were an excellent mother for me, and she was happy for me to call you anything I liked that you were happy with, so Mummy is okay.”

“Right,” was all I could make my mouth say.

“It was so good to see her, Mummy,” she said and began to sniff and then cry. “I do miss her.”

“Of course you do.” I held her and patted her gently on her back.

“Did you ask her to come and see me?” She said with teary eyes looking straight at me.

“Not that I recall, sweetheart, so it’s nothing to do with me.”

“I just wondered if you could talk to the dead–you know like–your special powers.”

“Not that I’m aware of,” I rubbed her back.

“Oh, I wanted to tell her I love her.”

“I’m sure she knows, sweetheart.”

“D’you think so.”

“Look, I don’t know anything about what happens after death except to your body, but people over the years have said all sorts of things. One of the things I’ve heard is if you write a letter to the person you want to contact, and then burn it, the smoke carries it into the other world. I don’t know if it works, but we can do it if you want.”

“I dunno–I’ll feel silly.”

“No one but you would know what was in it. I’ll get you a sheet of paper and an envelope and you can go and write what you like. When you’re happy with what you’ve written, seal it in the envelope and we’ll go up the garden and burn it.”

“I still think it sounds silly.”

“It’s not compulsory, but what it does is to make manifest your thoughts and it also helps you to order your feelings, because we tend to be more orderly when we write something down–it’s more formal.” I rose and left her to get a pad of Basildon Bond paper and an envelope.

She spent most of the morning in the lounge doing her letter and I was in the dining room on my computer doing more survey stuff after I replied to emails from the girls and a text from Danny.

Finally, about half past eleven, she’d finished and wiped her eyes. I’m sure that psychologists use it as a way of dealing with emotions in a private way, because apparently those who do it usually feel better for doing so.

I grabbed a cheap plastic lighter I had in a drawer in the kitchen, and we went up the garden and I asked her if she wanted me to stay. She shrugged, so I walked away a little to give her space. It took her ten minutes to burn the several pages of her letter and when she finished, she wiped her eyes again and we went into the house.

“Okay?”

“Yes, thank you. I imagined all the smoke going to wherever my mum is.”

“Good idea.”

She gave me a huge hug and said, “Thank you, Mummy.”