Easy As Falling Off A Bike pt 2018

The Daily Dormouse.
(aka Bike)
Part 2018
by Angharad

Copyright © 2013 Angharad
All Rights Reserved.
  
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I drove us back from Bristol. Simon seemed to need some time to reflect upon his morning. We’d had a nice lunch in a pub on the outskirts of Bath and seeing him looking pensive, I offered to drive. He passed me the keys and got into the passenger seat.

We were half way home when I observed, “You’re very quiet.”

“Mmm, yeah, just nothing much to say.”

“Did you see the children?”

“No, I think they were at a friend’s.”

“That would explain why I didn’t see them either. Matt didn’t say very much, did Peggy?”

“She talked a lot but said very little of coherence.”

“Different people cope with grief differently.”

“Yeah, I suppose they do. It’s funny but every time I see or hear of something like this, when someone dies prematurely–you know short of their three score and ten or even four score years–it brings home how short life can be for some of us.”

“It’s not something I think about if I can help it. If I do I just think about Billie and it makes me sad or angry.”

“I can see why, but surely that will get easier with time, won’t it?”

“I don’t know, Si–she was there today.”

“Who was?”

“Billie, she showed herself for a split second after I sorted Matthew out.”

“That wasn’t just wishful thinking, you know being in the presence of recently bereaved an’ all that?”

“It could have been, but it didn’t feel that way–she just waved at me as if to say she was alright and that things were progressing as they should–at least that was how I saw it.”

“In which case go with it.”

“Oh I intend to, now what’s eating you?”

“Seeing what happened when someone got involved with thugs, it reminded me that you’d already been stabbed and nearly died...”

“Yeah, but I didn’t, did I?”

“You also nearly died in the car crash.”

“Okay, so that’s two of my lives used up. I’ve still got seven more,” I joked.

“I suspect you’ve used them up as well–Cathy, you’ve done the most outrageous things, dealt with gangsters with guns, with knives and all sorts of things. You’ve been stabbed and run off the road on bikes and cars, they’ve tried bombing you and I don’t know what.”

“So, I’m difficult to kill.”

“Cathy, please–I don’t think I could carry on without you.” I saw a tear drip down his face.

“C’mon, Si, it’s not going to happen, is it? I mean, things have been quiet for some time and I’m a bank director now–I mean, I have to act respectable–you know wear knickers and things.”

“It’s not a joke, Cathy. I love you too much to want to go on living if anything happened to you. I saw how devastated Matt was after Marcia died–I’d be ten times worse than that.”

“Matt had leukaemia.”

“Oh–I didn’t know.”

“He hasn’t now, it’s in full remission.”

“You did that for him?”

“I’m purely the agent, I was sent there to heal him so the children could grow up in their own home.”

“You were sent there? By whom?”

“I don’t know–the goddess–Shekinah–or whatever; I don’t really know. If I understand it one iota, it’s as the universe needs me to do something for it and it gives me the tools to do it. I do what it requires and I see Billie for a few seconds.”

“So that’s the carrot is it, to see Billie?”

“That’s how it seems to happen. I could be misjudging everything, but it seems to happen that way. Today a female voice told me I’d done a good job. then when I looked from where it had come, I saw Billie.”

“Could it be a trick?”

“It could be the first signs of madness for all I know–the voices made me do it, and all that.”

“Why not see Anne Thomas?”

“Because she probably wouldn’t understand.”

“Your priest friend, Marguerite?”

“She might understand, but I don’t find it a problem enough to seek her counsel or opinion.”

“It’s not a problem that you’re driven all over the place performing miracles–what’s it all about, Cathy? Why you–I mean it’s not as if you believe any of it is it?”

“I don’t think it works like that. It doesn’t require me to believe or understand, simply to cooperate and act upon its behest.”

“That’s crazy.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t, but that’s how it is. I know when it wants me to act–it gives me information.”

“Like what?”

“Like I knew Peggy had COPD.”

“What’s that?”

“A lung disease.”

“Oh, so how come she could talk for so long without taking a breath?”

“Very funny, Simon.” My tone showed I didn’t think it was so.

“Maybe you’ve seen it before and diagnosed it from that, rather than some mysterious voice telling you what it was.”

“And Matt’s leukaemia?”

“Heidi could have told you without you registering it.”

“I suppose.”

“Well it makes more sense than mysterious voices.”

“True,” I agreed then a couple of moments later I heard the voice saying, ‘Get off the motorway–now.” Without thinking I turned off at Hungerford and then down towards Salisbury.

“Where are we going?”

“I got fed up with the motorway.”

“But it’s so much quicker.”

“We’ll make up the time after Salisbury.”

“But this is crazy, I knew I should have driven.”

“It’s okay, I know where we’re going.”

“Yeah, so do I, a long way for a short cut.”

“Sorry–next time you can go on your own. then you won’t have to deal with my lateral geography.”

“Lack of direction you mean.”

“So, I know where I’m going.”

He patted his legs in desperation, “I suppose the voices made you do it?”

“Actually, yes they did.”

“Cathy, I think you need to see someone about this.”

“Switch on the radio–local station–press six, I think that tunes us in automatically.” He did as I asked him and we’d not gone more than couple of miles when the radio announced traffic congestion on the M4 near Newbury caused by an accident. Apparently the motorway was closed and tailbacks were approaching two miles.

“Obviously, Heidi must have told me about this,” I said and he blushed.

“Coincidence,” was all he said.

Of course it might have been, but when we saw the pictures on the news that evening I saw a foreign truck which had crashed into a car and the truck, WHICH was just passing us as we turned off–it was huge thing. Even in my Jag we’d have been flattened. I pointed this out to Simon who went white and said very little, he obviously recognised it too.

“D’you always listen to the voices?” he asked at bedtime.

“Not always why?”

“I think I’m rather glad you did today, that truck passed us as we turned off, the car that was hit was just ahead of us.”

“Accidents happen.”

“The driver has been charged with causing death by dangerous driving–they reckon he fell asleep.”

“It happens, Si.”

“Yeah, but we were that close to it happening to us,” he held up his thumb and forefinger about half an inch apart. “That was too bloody close.”

I kissed him and turned over to sleep, I felt very tired as I went to sleep I offered a silent thanks to whatever had made me turn off the motorway. It didn’t matter what it was, only that we were safe and well.

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