An Angel By My Side: Amazing True Stories of the Afterlife. Jacky Newcomb
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was the reading room.
She looked so normal. I guess I didn’t know what to expect but if I’m honest I suppose I was a little surprised she wasn’t wearing a purple cloak with stars on it and a pointy hat. Sandra started her reading.
‘I have a woman here. She’s quite snooty, stuck up. No, that sounds rude and I feel embarrassed now that I know she can hear me say that. Sorry, love. I don’t mean stuck up, I mean posh. Oh dear … well, you know what I mean.’
We laughed and she continued.
‘She’s very well dressed and she’s showing me that she liked nice things and expensive holidays.’
We both leaned forward on the tiny sofa. This was good stuff and we looked at each other before nodding in agreement. This person sounded familiar.
‘She’s showing me a ring.’
‘Um, maybe,’ Debbie added.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I think I understand.’
Mum’s friend Pat had given my mother a brooch and a gold ring set with a large crystal stone about two years before she died. It seemed a strange thing to do because Pat was several years younger than my mother and I remember thinking at the time that it was more usual to hand down jewellery rather than hand it up. But Pat had sons rather than daughters of her own. Maybe she thought that the pieces might go to her friend’s daughters after she passed? I’d hoped so, as she was like an aunt to us, and it would be natural for Mum to pass us the jewellery at some future date.
The stone in the ring looked like a large solitaire diamond and we jokingly called it the ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ ring. It was a ring I had coveted a lot and I occasionally borrowed it. I secretly wondered if this was the ring she meant, but I was wary of giving anything away so said nothing. My Mum promised to leave it to me in her will, but I teased her that I would get a real diamond instead.
‘Hang on, I’m getting a name now. Pat?’
Debbie and I both slumped back on the sofa in relief. It was Pat! How exciting that she’d given us a great description but then the name too. I was impressed, it wasn’t as if she’d given us a whole list of names … just the one. The medium smiled and we stopped and had a mouthful of tea before she carried on.
I looked around the room. It was fairly dark and dusty in Sandra’s spare room. I knew the medium had been unwell for a long time and when I looked at her now she looked frail. A twinge of guilt hit me in the stomach. Sandra had put off our appointment twice due to ill health and I remembered how anxious I’d felt for our visit, feeling a little cross inside about the inconvenience of the delay. She had a long waiting list and each cancellation meant another wait of several months.
Now as I looked around the room I wanted to search out a duster and rush around the room with it, to help her in some way. But I knew if I’d have even mentioned such a thing I would have totally offended her. The poor woman. Of course she would be offended. What did the dust matter anyway, she wasn’t bothered by it so why should I be? Random thoughts flickered through my mind as I heard gentle chatter in the background. For a moment I just totally zoned out. She was talking to my sister Debbie.
Unusual objects seemed to have been left in the room. A sweater was folded over the back of a chair and a strange newspaper cutting was propped up on the mantelpiece of what would have once been a fireplace. Also on the mantelpiece was a pair of mismatched glasses: one was a wine glass and the other a short tumbler. They seemed out of place. Had someone had a drink and left the glasses in the room? Both had been decorated with glass paints in bright reds and orange. The room was a little untidy and I guess I had wanted mystical chic.
You don’t comment on other people’s things unless you are going to say something nice and I couldn’t think of anything to say which would have made any sense. I realized I had been staring and someone was talking to me. I turned back to face the medium and I smiled as she handed me a pack of tarot cards.
‘Shuffle the cards, dear, and place eight of them on the table. No make it ten, no fifteen.’
Debbie and I looked at each other. We were excited and bemused.
‘Yes that’s it, place them face down on the table. Ok now turn up the first two or three.’
She began talking again and I blurred in and out. Debbie was furiously scribbling notes for me whilst the medium gave me a reading from the tarot cards. I felt that the reader was using the cards more for my benefit than her own. As I turned over each card at her request I noticed she didn’t even look at them.
‘I see you writing,’ she said. I nodded. ‘Writing a book. In fact, although it’s going to be slow at first, eventually you’re going to have more work than you can handle. You’re going to write a lot.’
I grinned and looked at Debbie who was trying to note it all down as fast as she could. Sandra asked me to place another ten cards face down on the table and turn over half of them. Again she didn’t look at the cards.
‘I do write, actually. I’ve just started.’ I muttered.
‘Good, good. Yes I can see you on TV.’
‘TV? Really? Not radio?’
In my mind I’d thought that one day I’d like to go on radio and chat about my new research into angels and the afterlife, but I’d never thought I would go on television.
‘Yes, radio too but TV, lots of TV. You’re going to be well known.’
‘I am? Cool!’
I was thrilled. Was I giving something away in my body language? But why was I pleased about going on television. Am I shallow? Did it matter?
‘You’ll have published your first book within eighteen months, they’re telling me. Then there’ll be others … lots more.’
As it happened, that book took a little longer, about two years actually, before it finally hit the shops, but whether the event was pre-ordained or I’d been encouraged to succeed by the message I’ll never know.
I was desperate to know more but she asked me to pick up the cards and pass them to my sister. It was her turn now and I scribbled furiously until her turn ended, way too soon. I could see how people became addicted to this stuff! Perhaps it’s the ego hearing what it wants, taking what it wants from the message. But she’d already started talking again.
‘I have another lady here, on your mother’s side,’ she began. ‘She’s with someone, her husband I think, and they are showing me a horse and cart. He’s making deliveries door to door.’
We both nodded again. Could this be granddad? He used to be a milkman.
‘Now I’m seeing a bakery. It’s connected to the lady. She’s making cakes and things.’
We weren’t sure but later Mum reminded us that our Nan worked for years in a bakery called ‘The Home Made’. How could we have forgotten this piece of family history?
‘You don’t know? That’s okay. Write it down, she says, and ask your Mum later. She’ll tell you. The lady is showing herself surrounded by children, loads of them, and she’s wearing a uniform.’ She continued.
This was brilliant stuff. How could she have known? Our nan had worked in an orphanage for years and years. There were pictures at our parents’ house of Nan in her uniform with her starched white apron, surrounded by forty or fifty children!
There were other relatives who came with messages that night. Brief appearances were made by friends and relatives from both sides of the family. I remember looking at my watch again. We had already been at her home for two hours and I wondered if it was time to go. Was she going to ask us to leave now?
‘Do you want to have a go on the table?’ she asked.
Debbie shrugged and smiled.
She beckoned us to stand