(aka Bike) Part 1718 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad
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I managed to get Trish on her own for a moment, “Have you seen Billie in the house recently?”
“She’s dead, Mummy,” she shrugged.
“You know what I mean.”
“Okay,” she sighed, “She does come sometimes.”
“Have you seen her since Sammi arrived?”
“Don’t think so, can’t remember–she really likes to come to hear you reading the Gaby stories.”
“You’re winding me up, aren’t you?”
“No, Mummy, she does come sometimes–you sure you can’t see her?”
“If I could, I wouldn’t need to ask you would I?”
“Oh no, silly me.”
“Sammi thought she saw her today.” I was still suspicious though I didn’t know why–being taken advantage of once too often, perhaps?
“She coulda done, it’s you she comes to see, or so she says.”
“Why?”
“Because she says she feels sad when she sees you being sad because she died.”
“So why doesn’t she let me know she’s there?”
“She says she tried but you were so closed down she couldn’t get through to you.”
“What d’you mean, closed down?”
“Like a radio or telly, closed down or switched off so you can’t receive the signal.”
“But I try to keep an open mind,” I protested.
“To some things.”
“What?” I snapped.
“It’s only what Billie said.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t seem interested.”
“Of course I’m interested–it concerns one of my children.”
“She likes the new car, always did like Jaguars, apparently.”
“You sound as if she’s here?”
“She was, well a few moments ago.”
I felt hurt. If she was worried about me, how come I didn’t get to see her? I can’t believe my defences are so strong that she couldn’t get through to me. Trish went off to find where Mima was because Livvie was supposed to be there too. I glanced at the trees in the grounds they were absolutely beautiful, then for an instant I thought I saw the outline of a child in some dust floating in the sunlight through the trees. A cold shiver ran down my spine–then it was gone.
I was dealing with this, rationalising away whatever I saw as pure wishful thinking when the three mouseketeers arrived. “Did you see her?” asked Trish quietly.
“When?”
“Just now, by the trees.”
“If I had I wouldn’t need to ask would I?”
She just shook her head, “If Jesus turned up you’d want to see the marks in his hands and side, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course, wouldn’t you want to see the stigmata?”
“Nah, I’d rather he turned water into lemonade.”
“Lemonade?” called Livvie, “Have you got some?”
“At home.”
“Well let’s go and get some–please,” the last word sounded like an afterthought.
I pondered what was happening to me–was I so closed down that my filters wouldn’t allow me to see my own daughter? Were the others deluding themselves, like me seeing the dust by the trees and wanting it to be Billie, at the same time happy that it was just wishful thinking–to be anything other would upset my little map of the universe.
We all know when you’re dead, you’re dead, and it’s for keeps–there is no afterlife, nor paradise or heaven–like there is no god, except for what we’ve created in our own likenesses. The major religions have got it all arse backwards–man created god, not the other way round.
I’d been driving on autopilot and suddenly realised we were practically home. I pulled into the drive oblivious to anything around me until that moment–that was frightening.
Once indoors, I sent the girls off to change and do their homework while I got them a drink of lemonade and a biscuit. Stella and Jacquie were back and talking with Sammi. The mound of ironing had gone down very little.
“When did you get back?” I asked Stella.
“Just after you left, we passed you coming the other way.”
“I didn’t see you,” I confessed, I often don’t see people even if they beep or wave or fire missiles at me.
“Who was the girl sat in the front of the car?”
“What girl?” I felt totally at sea now.
“When we passed you, there was a girl sat alongside you in the front passenger seat.”
“No there wasn’t.”
“I could have sworn there was, oh well, some sort of mirage then.”
I started making the dinner, chicken portions in an onion sauce with sage leaves added. I popped it in the oven in two large meat trays covered with foil. I’d give them about an hour or so, by which time Si should be well on his way home. I dearly wanted to talk with him about all this and to ask if there was a job for Sammi.
“Did you phone your doctor?” I asked Sammi when she brought me a cup of tea.
“Um–not yet.”
“Do it now,” I exhorted with sufficient menace that she sat down and dialled on her mobile.
“You’re a big bully,” she said then started talking with the doctor’s receptionist, “Tomorrow at nine twenty–okay, thank you.”
An almost perfect time, I could drop the girls off at school and take her straight to the doctors and wait with her in the waiting room. Must remember to take my Guardian with me tomorrow.
Simon arrived just before Tom, and Jacqui greeted him as ‘Gramps’ which took his breath away for a moment before he smiled at her. Julie was last home, she was doing some perm which went wrong and she had to do it all again, so she wasn’t in the best of tempers.
I did manage to soothe her ruffled feathers by offering her some vouchers I had for Marks and Spencer–can’t remember where I got them–but she didn’t care, it was fifty pounds worth so she snatched them and smiled at me.
“I’ve had a chat with Sammi.” I explained and she nodded her understanding of what the topic would be.
Over dinner, Sammi announced, “I was doing some surfing on the web earlier and found a clip of you on Youtube.”
The dormouse one, no doubt.
“Did you have a good laugh?” I asked, everyone else had.
“Laugh, no–I wanted to see the rest of the play.”
“Play? I thought you meant the dormouse clip?”
“Is there one of those too? I meant the Macbeth play.”
I sat and blushed as they all tucked into their chicken.
“Mummy did that at our school, someone made a film of it, we’ve got one here somewhere, I copied it off someone who bought it.” Trish seemed to be unaware of the idea of fundraising–whether it was deliberate or unintentional would be too much information.
Comments
Crickey I'm first tonight.
Nice chapter Angie. Not sure if Cathy will benefit a lot if her filters open and she gets to 'meet' billy again.
Still lovin' it though.
Thanks for all the hard work, (and it is hard work churninmg out good stuff every night.)
Thanks once again,
Bev
OXOXOX
Thinks!
A lot to think about tonight!
Spooky...
...since it appears as though Billie's even managed to be glimpsed by Stella... but unlike Shekinah, who being a deity can force her way through Cathy's defences (although even then only usually when she's asleep), Billie can't. Given Cathy's meetings with Shekinah and her mother, I think at some deep unconscious level, Cathy recognises the existance of supernatural, but on the more predominant conscious level, it's instinctive for her to attempt to find a non-supernatural explanation to rationalise away everything she can't understand.
However, it's so deeply ingrained that it's anyone's guess what (if anything) can persuade Cathy once and for all that there are some things that cannot (or should not) be explained by science.
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Cathy........and Billie
Cathy seems to giving this matter of the supernatural a little more thought. With so many others being able to see Billie when she is around, and Cathy can't, I think Sammi especially will have a positive effect on Cathy's ideas about the supernatural.
Don't let someone else talk you out of your dreams. How can we have dreams come true, if we have no dreams?
Katrina Gayle "Stormy" Storm
From Akeelah and the Bee
" Our deepest fear is not we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is we are powerful beyond measure."
Catherin has been taught not to be noticed by both her parents and normal TS safety concerns.
I am also under the consideration that there is a lot of religious BS running around in her mind. So to escape that she refuses to see the difference between religion which is rigid BS, and spiritual knowledge, which although is out side of the science she trusts but is still real just the same.
She needs to learn to trust herself and the observations of trusted people around her. This may help disperse the monsters that hide under her mental bed allowing her to have her a Spock moment when she realizes that faith in logic needs to be tempered by knowledge of that which can not be measured. Like the love of her child who has passed, and the existence of beings farther up the food chain than us.
With those with open eyes the world reads like a book
Cathy can be pretty
difficult (mild way of saying it) sometimes. As a scientist, she evaluates data. Sure, there is no "hard" data proving the existance of gods, goddesses, spirits, etc. However in this case there seems to be a lot of data turning up in the form of "sightings". Especially when it's people with no previous interest seeing the same thing. Cathy's scientific curiosity should be about ready to open up a bit. Remember when she investigated the "blue light"? Proved there was actually something there. Maybe it's time to do the same with Billie.
To bad for her
I have given up on being sympathetic to her. It is just her loss. If she does not love her children enough to open her heart to their presence and swallow one's pride and be Willing.
Tough.
Kim
Easy As Falling Off A Bike pt 1718
Maybe now Cathy will start believing that Billie is there.
May Your Light Forever Shine
Cathy is such a contradiction
here we have a woman who is able to use a blue energy light to help people recover from what could otherwise be fatal conditions , This same woman can also talk to a godesss of whom's power she is only too well aware, Contrast that then with her failure to be able to see her late beloved daughter Billie in the same way that her children seem to be doing..... Time i think for her to shed the focused mind of a biologist and to open up her mind and try and see that not everything has a scientific explanation, Not that it will be easy, no one would ever suggest it was, But unless she tries she will continue to suffer the frustration of being so close to Billie and yet so far....
Kirri