The day I met my mother's ghost, I had just flown out to the west coast to start a new life with my soon to be husband. The only thing that could possibly have spoiled my mood at the time would have been if I had known what the next couple of years were going to bring me...
Three years prior I was a student at a prestigious girls' boarding school in England. I had done well on my exams, and was looking forward to enjoying my last year of academic life. However, a month or so into term my mother passed away after a long battle with cancer, and the next thing I knew I was on a plane to attend her funeral. I found out a couple of days later that my father had remarried, and not a day after that that I was virgo intacta, to use that term from the Latin.
I was eighteen at the time, and I accepted the situation. I was under the age of majority, and couldn't decide to live with my father so I had to live with my mother's sister in California. I went cheerfully, and had anticipated some excitement in my new life, as I was a very outdoorsy person and this turned out to be a year of surf-bumming and sun-baking. However, after a couple of months I realized that California wasn't for me either. I sent a couple of postcards to my old Head Girl, my boyfriend, and my best friend (who was doing an internship in America) telling them the ins-and-outs of what life was like across the Atlantic. But then, one Monday at about five o'clock I just had to call someone in England. I rang my best friend.
I had known her since I was eleven. I had always thought of her as an older sister, and we had been close friends since she moved to London the year before. We were inseparable. We would do everything together. However, we had decided right from the day we turned twelve to treat that year as an extended holiday, and have a mini-summer before we went back to school in the autumn. We had wanted to relive all of our earlier childhood fun. In the month since I had moved I had become too busy to really keep in touch with her, but now here she was in my life again.
"Hi Emily," I said.
"Hi Carly. How are things?" she said.
"I'm fine, thanks," I replied. "How's your life in London?"
"Erm...fine?" she said. "Hang on a minute, how's your life?"
"Fine, thanks," I said, and then I burst out laughing. She laughed too. "Seriously, what do you make of it all? Have you met any really interesting people?"
"Yeah. It's a hectic time," she replied. "I've met a lot of interesting people."
"Uh-huh," I said, and then I said, "So how's your life in London going?"
We both howled with laughter.
"That was a good one, Rachel," she said. "Look, it's getting late. I should let you go."
"Yeah, thanks for calling," I said, although that was a horrible thing to have to say now. I didn't want to say goodbye, but I had to. "I'll miss you."
"Oh, so will I," she said. "Bye."
"Bye," I said, and before I hung up I added, "So when are we meeting up again? Soon, huh?"
"I don't know," she said. "It's been weird. How about you?"
"Well, I... I... I guess I also miss you," I said. "In case you didn't tell me, I love you."
"I love you too," she said. "It's been really weird without you here."
"I'll see you soon," I said, and then the line went dead.
Well, that was unexpected, I thought. I must have been away from her longer than I thought if she couldn't keep the conversation going.
That thought was soon banished from my head. I closed my bedside drawer and picked up my book just as my cell phone rang. It was Emily, and she had burst into floods of tears.
"Em, what's wrong?" I said.
"Nothing," she said with a sniff.
"Are you sure?" I said.
"Yeah, I'm sure," she said, and then she said, "I'll see you in a week, okay?"
"Okay," I replied.
"I'll see you in a week," she said.
"See you," I said, and then we hung up. I was starting to feel very confused. Where was this leading?
I decided to get to the bottom of this. I got my phone out, and looked at the screen. A text message from Andy had come in, and I opened it.
It read:
"Hey Rach, I'll come for a week after Christmas."
I read it, and then I do a double take.
"Andy?" I said. "You'll come for a week after Christmas?"
You know how you get these moments where the person you're speaking to becomes so different from when you're dialed up on a conference line? I had never experienced that, but I did now. Andy was changing.