Blast from the Past. Cathy Hopkins

probably her mother,’ said Pete. ‘You’re always bossing her around.’

      ‘Yes, that’s a very likely possibility,’ said Marcia.

      I put my fingers in my ears. ‘Not listening. You really are bonkers sometimes, away with the fairies.’

      Marcia laughed. ‘That’s no way to talk to your mother.’

      I sighed. ‘Honestly, I’ve never heard such nonsense.’

      ‘I’d take on board what she told you if I were you.’

      ‘Marcia, you know I love you dearly, and I am quite prepared to believe that Saranya Ji passed on a message from your father, but what she told me, I think not. I bet she gives loads of people the same spiel. I reckon she clocked that I was single because I don’t wear a wedding ring then she made it all up from there. I can’t be the only woman of my age who hasn’t known lasting joy, as she put it, in my relationships.’

      ‘But what if she didn’t make it up? She said nothing to either of us about past lives,’ said Pete. ‘What she told me was very much about the present and about life’s purpose and lessons to be learnt.’

      ‘For me too,’ said Marcia. ‘But more importantly, what are you going to do about it?’

      ‘Do?’

      ‘About Billy and whoever he is this time round. What are you going to do to find him.’

      ‘Find him? Nothing. Oh come on, I appreciate the gift, I really do, it’s been a great experience,’ I indicated the hotel. ‘Coming here has been fabulous – the boat ride and the car, I loved it, and meeting Saranya Ji, it’s been … er, different, if a little weird. But past lives? People called Grace and Billy. I’m sorry but I don’t believe a word she said, not for a minute. She guessed I’d known some sadness. Who hasn’t? Then she made the rest up and that’s her gift – tuning into people then spinning a yarn. Obvious really.’

      ‘Not necessarily,’ said Marcia. ‘You have to give it a chance and try and find him. She talked to me about destiny, it being what is fated to happen, and that free will determines how you react to that fate.’

      ‘She also talked about the importance of keeping an open mind,’ said Pete.

      ‘She said that to me too,’ I said. ‘So OK, a soulmate? In what country? In what period of my life? She said I may have already met him. We could have passed each other on the street and—’

      ‘You were probably looking at emails on your iPhone,’ said Pete.

      ‘Exactly. Missed him, darn it.’

      ‘It’s never too late,’ said Marcia. ‘If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.’ She glanced at Pete for support but he just shrugged. He wouldn’t take sides. He never did.

      Adita appeared by our sides. ‘Your boat is ready to take you back,’ she told us.

      I stood up. ‘Great,’ I said, and prayed that Marcia would drop all talk of past lives and spirits, ‘now let’s go and enjoy our last evening.’

       5

      The following day was an early start. A short flight to Mumbai then a two-hour delay before our flight back to London. When we’d found seats in a row in the airport lounge, I got out my laptop with a mind to google Saranya Ji and see if there was a reviews page. Although the rational part of me had intended to put the whole session to one side, another part of me kept going back to what she’d said, not just about the past lives but about my life and experience of love being painful. I couldn’t deny that had resonated. I put in the name Saranya Ji only to find there were hundreds of them on the Net. Clearly it was a popular name. I scrolled down. There were pages and pages of women with that name.

      ‘Anyone got any paper?’ Marcia asked.

      ‘Sure. What for?’ I asked.

      ‘I need to make a list.’

      I always travelled with a notepad, so found it in my bag and tore out a sheet for her. ‘A list of what?’

      ‘Past lovers.’

      ‘Oh no, Marcia. I know exactly what you’re thinking.’

      ‘I couldn’t get what Saranya Ji told you out of my mind and, as I was going to sleep last night, I thought that first we should look for someone named Billy Jackson. We could check records, you know, births, deaths, marriages, see where and when anyone of his name lived. It might give us some clues. We could look for Grace too. You never know what we might find and where it might lead us.’

      ‘Good idea Marcia,’ said Pete. ‘So much history is on the Internet now, census records and so on. It shouldn’t be too difficult.’

      I groaned. ‘Please, don’t encourage her.’

      ‘I’d like to do it,’ said Pete. ‘You know I love stuff like that. A challenge.’ It was true: he was a closet computer geek and was never happier than when researching history or suchlike on the web. ‘I traced my father’s family back to the seventeen hundreds on one of the ancestry sites.’ He got out his laptop. ‘In fact, I could start looking now while we’re waiting.’

      ‘Oh please don’t. When you were looking you were tracing back a family tree, your family tree, not tracking down someone that a clairvoyant told you that you might have been in a past life.’

      ‘What have we to lose by looking up the names that Saranya Ji gave you? It will be so easy to do. I have subscriptions to all the main sites and know my way around. I could put in the names and see what comes up.’

      ‘Please, please don’t do it on my behalf. Don’t waste your time.’

      ‘Someone has to do it and we know you won’t. Pete is a whiz at it all now,’ said Marcia. ‘The woman, what was her name? The surname?’

      ‘Harris. Grace Harris. A name Saranya Ji made up. I was thinking about it as I fell asleep too. She could have plucked any names out of the air. You probably will find them if you look on your ancestry sites; there will be loads of people who lived with those names, just like there are hundreds of Saranya Jis on the Net.’

      ‘Ah,’ said Marcia, ‘so you are interested. You looked her up.’

      ‘Only to see if there were any reviews saying she was a charlatan. You will find a Grace Harris and a Billy Jackson, thousands of them probably, and not only in the UK but all over the place – Australia, America. It won’t mean anything.’

      ‘Didn’t she say where they lived?’ asked Marcia.

      ‘She said London and that it was in the Second World War.’

      ‘See, that narrows it down already.’

      ‘Seriously? What’s the point? So you find two people who had those names, they could be the names of people she met the day before she saw us, and now today she’s telling some other sucker that they were Bea Brooks or Marcia and Peter Rodgers in a previous life. Grace and Billy could be the names of people she met anywhere on her tour. And if, by some miracle, you find that they did exist in the past, in London, there would be nothing to prove I was a Grace Harris in a previous existence.’

      ‘We’re going to look into it,’ said Marcia. ‘Let’s see what we can find.’

      I looked over at Pete who was still looking at his laptop. ‘Can’t you stop her?’ I asked.

      ‘I think you already know the answer to that … And what harm will it do?’

      ‘Exactly,’ said Marcia. ‘Keep an open mind, Bea. So, second part of the plan, we look at your past lovers, where they are now and if, by any chance, there’s someone you overlooked. It can happen.