The clock was ticking down. One hour to go before showtime. Hair? Check. Make-up? Check. Everything was in place; now there was just the waiting. It was the calm before the storm and the last, vital bit of peace in which to compose myself before I strode out on to the stage and opened myself up to the afterlife. The buzz of the audience synchronized with the buzz of psychic energy in my head. The dressing room was quiet, but I could sense the expectation building up outside.
I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t get nervous; after all, I take a step into the unknown every night when I walk out on stage. I haven’t a clue what will happen. I don’t get any indication of what I’ll see or hear. There’s no script to learn when you’re talking to the dead. There are no lines, and the only stage direction is ‘enter stage right’. The rest is on a wing and a prayer. You have to have bucketloads of faith when you do what I do. You have to go with the flow and hope everything works out. Every now and then I stop and think to myself: what if it doesn’t happen, what if the ability goes, what if one night I walk on stage and all I hear in my head is silence? After all, I’m not entirely sure why I have it, this ability that many people call a gift. I know it is a very special ability, I know it is precious and I believe it was given to me by someone or something. So if it was given, surely it can be taken away just as easily as it was granted. We joke sometimes, me and the crew: what would happen if, one night, the messages did mysteriously run dry? I tell them I’d finish the show with a sing-a-long, like an old-fashioned music-hall dame.
Thankfully, though, it hasn’t failed me or the audience yet. We have a few hiccups along the way, but spirit wants to help, it’s not there to trip me up, and 90 per cent of the time, what I see on stage ends up making sense to someone in the audience.
So, on this particular night, the venue was Wolverhampton, and I was quietly preparing myself in my dressing room.
It’s a big crowd, Sal, I told myself. It was a sell-out: 1,200 bums on 1,200 seats.
In the hours leading up to the show, everything had been normal – if you can call the life of a medium normal, that is. John and I left the house early to drive from London to Wolverhampton. We assumed we’d miss the traffic but, of course, when we got to the outskirts of Birmingham, we realized that you never really miss the traffic in that part of the country because there is always traffic in Birmingham. John had driven us around the M25, up the M40 on to the M5 then on to the M6, where the traffic was chock-a-block.
Panicking that I’d be late, we had our usual bicker and I blamed John for bringing us on the wrong route. He hadn’t, he’d just followed the sat nav, but you need someone to blame when you’re stressed, and that’s what husbands are for! We still arrived with plenty of time to spare; it’s just that I like everything to run like clockwork. I’d get to the theatres in the morning for the evening shows if I could, but most of them don’t even unlock their doors until mid-afternoon. This show was at the Grand Theatre; and it is. The five imposing arches that stretch across its façade contain a wealth of history. There’s a lot of energy in those bricks and that mortar, which is good for my line of work. That residual force from years and years of use, all those thousands and thousands of people who walked through the doors and laughed and cried together, it all leaves a mark, like a stain on the fabric of the building. Mix that with the energy of the spirits waiting to contact their loved ones and you end up with a potent psychic soup. I reckon the residual energy in historic old buildings works like a lubricant and makes it easier for spirit to come through.
Now that we were here, backstage, I had unloaded my outfits and the bits and bobs I needed, just like I had done a hundred times before. Curlers, hair dryer, make-up, it was all laid out in front of me, and I went through the motions, readying myself for the show.
With the minutes passing, I was sitting peacefully in the dressing room, collecting my thoughts and finishing off a last cup of coffee before the start of the show. The psychic hum was all around me, a low-level electricity that was uniform and comforting, waiting expectantly for me to connect with the audience. No bad behaviour on this occasion. No spirits butting in, trying to make themselves known before it was time.
It was then that I felt it. A ripple. It’s hard to explain in words, but imagine that the energy I was feeling that night was like the dead-calm surface of a pond. It was still and even, almost like a mirror. It’s often like that before a show. Then, as the curtain call draws near, it builds up and the surface starts to develop peaks and troughs. In the middle of really intense shows, those peaks and troughs become waves of energy, crashing around me. But this ripple was almost imperceptible, as if someone had just brushed the surface of the energy pond and created a tiny disturbance.
That’s odd, I thought to myself. But it was such a fleeting feeling – a split second and it was gone – that I carried on preparing myself and didn’t pay very much attention to it. Half an hour later, when my phone rang, I jumped.
You know the feeling you get late at night when the telephone rings and you’re in bed – that feeling when you automatically know there is something wrong because people only call after bedtime in an emergency? It was like that. I knew there was a problem. And it wasn’t just a question of me using my intuition. On a practical level, not many people know my personal telephone number. I can’t give it out willy-nilly, not in my line of work. Heaven knows what kind of people I’d have calling me up. So only very close friends and family have my number. And most of them know when I’m working. So I knew that night that whoever was calling just a few minutes before I was due to go on stage must have something urgent to tell me.
Standing up to reach across for my phone, I saw the caller ID. It was my daughter Fern.
My heart began to beat fast in my chest. I picked up the trilling handset.
‘Hello, love, what’s wrong?’ I could feel myself frowning.
Fern was crying on the other end of the line, her voice punctuated with sobs.
‘It’s Auntie Jean, Mum,’ she said. ‘She passed away this afternoon. You’ll have to tell Dad.’
I stood open-mouthed. I felt like someone had hit me in the chest, taking all the air from my lungs. I didn’t breathe. I grabbed the edge of the counter to steady myself and felt my legs buckle. My brain couldn’t compute the information it had just been given.
Then the world and the implications of Fern’s words came into sharp focus and I sucked in a lungful of air.
The tears came quickly. ‘Not lovely Jean,’ I cried. I was shaking now, and the tears were streaming down my face. My wonderful, kind sister-in-law Jean was dead. She and John were so close. He would be devastated. Then I thought of my husband. He was at the front of the theatre, at the merchandising stall, laughing and joking with the crew and customers, unaware that his life was about to crumple, unaware that grief was lurking just around the corner.
I deal with death every day but, when it affects me personally, my years of experience never make loss any easier. Ultimately, death can be cruel; it can snatch away those nearest and dearest to us in an instant. It doesn’t matter that I knew Jean would be in a beautiful, peaceful place, that she would have finally been released from her years of suffering. That doesn’t make loss any easier to bear because, suddenly, you realize that you won’t see that person again for a long time. I knew there would be no more friendly phone calls and no more get-togethers where we’d be able to catch up with the gossip about each other’s lives, because Jean’s life was now over.
Colin, my production manager, walked into the dressing room.
I was standing, still with the phone in my hand, sobbing. My mascara was running down my cheeks like a dark slick.
‘Sally! What’s wrong, what’s happened?’ he gasped, walking over and hugging me.
I told him the tragic news, and he was adamant. ‘Right, we’ll have to cancel the show,’ he said. ‘There’s no way you can go on stage after news like that.’
‘There’s no question,’ I told him resolutely. ‘There’s an auditorium full of people out there who have all paid money to come here and see the show. I’m not going to let them down. The most important thing now is that John needs to know.’
‘I’ll tell him,’ Colin offered.
‘No, it has to come from me,’ I insisted.
It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. John and Jean had always been close. He was very protective of her, not that she needed protecting. She was the life and soul. But, twenty years ago, she had been afflicted with a degenerative nerve disease. Slowly she’d been robbed of the use of her arms and legs and she’d ended up in a wheelchair, paralysed from the neck down. You’d understand anyone being bitter in that situation, but bitterness just wasn’t in Jean. She wasn’t one to feel sorry for herself and, despite her illness, she was always upbeat. She’d be on the phone for ages, laughing and joking. Her mind was as sharp as a knife. She followed my career and was always fascinated to know what I was up to. She read my books and watched the television shows. She especially enjoyed watching her brother and always chuckled at our onscreen tiffs and banter. She was a fan as well as family and a dear, dear friend. And now I had to tell John that she was gone.
Colin went to find him and brought him to the dressing room.
He knew as soon as he saw my tear-streaked face that something terrible had happened.
‘What is it, love?’ he asked, holding my arm.
‘Oh, John, I’m so sorry. It’s Jean …’ My voice trailed off. I didn’t have to say anything else.
‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ he said, his eyes brimming with tears. We hugged, holding each other silently. When you’ve been married as long as John and I have, you don’t always need words. We natter on and on about the little things in our lives but, when it comes to the big things, we can say more to each other with a hug than words can ever express. So we stood there for what seemed like hours, quietly comforting each other, sharing our energy.
‘You know she would have wanted you to do the show,’ John said quietly. I nodded.
‘I know she’s listening, John.’ I addressed the air around us. ‘Jean, darling, you are in a good place now, you are at peace, and I am so sorry but I have to go on and do this show.’
We both took deep breaths to steady ourselves. People were in their seats waiting. I’ll cry after, I told myself. We hugged again and looked at each other, steeling ourselves to get through the following hours.
I know Jean would have been the first to say, ‘Get out there, Sally, the show must go on.’ There wasn’t a selfish bone in that woman’s body.
While I was on stage, John would have time to make the necessary phone calls. He told me afterwards that he was on autopilot for an hour, until the break, and it was only days later that he was able to think about how difficult it must have been for me to go out on stage. I was numb, but I had to compose myself. I had to get myself in the right frame of mind for the show. There was a theatreful of people looking forward to the psychic connection I was about to make. Then it struck me. What if Jean comes through? But she would never do something like that; she wouldn’t interrupt the evening. She was too considerate to sabotage anything in that or any other way, and I couldn’t let myself contact her either because I’d be in pieces; it would be too much for me.
That is one of my golden rules: I never turn my ability in on myself or towards family. I have to keep a divide between work and personal life. It’s tough sometimes and often people fail to understand why I refuse to use my gift on a personal level, but if I started to look into my future and my family’s future it would be like opening Pandora’s box. It would lead to a whole heap of trouble.
‘But surely you can see when bad things are going to happen and prevent them?’ people say. But I don’t believe in dabbling with my ability on that level. I think it would be dangerously irresponsible.
I believe that we all die when we are supposed to die, that the date is set and immovable. From the moment we take our first breath we are given a journey. We can deviate in certain areas but if we go off track too far we are always bought back to that pre-set route. Think of the people who survive accidents, seemingly by a miracle – people who go skydiving and their parachutes fail to open but they somehow survive the impact when they hit the ground, or the sole survivor in an airplane crash – they’re not lucky; it just wasn’t their day to die. It was not their time. Life is like a journey guided by sat nav. You have a start point and an end point and a route you are given. You have the freedom to deviate from that route if you want. You can turn when you are not advised to and the route will be recalculated for you and you will be given other options, but the end point is always the same.
And because I believe this is the way our destiny is shaped, I really do not want to know what will happen to me or the ones I love in the future. I don’t want to know when any of us will die, because I know I cannot do a thing to change it and that knowledge will ruin the time I have left. You can’t live if you have one eye on death. I have never even tried to see into my future. I doubt I would be able to anyway. I think this ability I have comes with a set of restrictions, and even thinking about turning it in on myself makes me feel very uneasy. I just push thoughts and feelings like that away. I don’t get involved, and my family understands why.
I suppose when death impacts on my life on a personal level, it also has the possibility of impacting on my work. I don’t get relatives trying to get through to me on stage and, if they did, I would have to put up the barrier. The show is not about me. And, ultimately, spirit is good and generous and pure. I feel they respect the boundaries I have had to draw. I look at my personal detachment as being similar to that of medical professionals who don’t wish to treat their own families. I have to keep a professional distance, which seems weird when you are talking about death, but think of surgeons: many wouldn’t want to operate on their own loved ones, would they?
So Jean didn’t communicate with me that night, and I don’t know how, but I got through it. I remember Julie coming into the dressing room during the interval to see how I was, and I couldn’t speak to her. I knew if I started to think about the situation, the floodgates would open. Strangely, as far as the show was concerned, it was an amazing night. Every message came through accurately and with clarity. The harmony between spirit and the audience seemed effortless. I like to think this was because spirit knew there was a new member of the Morgan clan in paradise that night and they knew how sensitive I was feeling so they put on an extra burst of energy and helped me.
I haven’t tried to contact Jean in spirit for the reasons I’ve just mentioned, but I have once felt her watchful, guiding presence.
It was a year after her death, and John and I were taking a well-deserved holiday in the south of France. It was summer and the Côte d’Azur was glorious. We were staying in a friend’s villa in the hills just outside Nice. At the beginning of the year I had undergone my gastric-bypass surgery and it had been an exhausting and gruelling six months. Unless you have had that type of procedure, it’s hard to fathom just how life-changing it is. In essence, my surgeon gave me a whole new digestive system. But it was like the digestive system of a baby and, whereas before the op my stomach was used to consuming thousands of calories a day in breads and cakes and biscuits and snacks, this new pint-sized stomach could just about cope with soup in the early weeks. It took a long time and there were many unpleasant episodes before I was eating normal food again. I’ll let you use your imagination to work out what those unpleasant episodes were – suffice to say, most of them involved me leaning over a toilet bowl!
The holiday was the first break I’d had since the operation. I’d shed almost 11 stone by that point, and had to keep pinching myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming and that I actually was wearing a swimming costume by the pool. John was by now thoroughly fed up with my squeals of delight every time I slipped on a pair of heels (remember: I hadn’t worn them for thirty years) or slipped into a dress (ditto) or a strappy top (ditto). But you can’t blame me. I was amazed by my new body. In short, life was good and I felt I had nothing at all to worry about.
It was a Wednesday, about halfway through the holiday, and John and I were relaxing in the sun. Fern, her husband Darren and their children, George and Max, were coming out to join us for the last few weeks of the break, so we were making the most of the peace and quiet. And as I sat there, not really thinking about anything, I felt her. I felt Jean, standing in the shade a little to my left under a palm tree that was softly swaying in the cooling breeze. I looked over, and there was no one there. It wasn’t one of my seeing ‘knowings’. She wasn’t showing herself to me, but she was making sure I knew she was there.
It always surprises me when spirit is there and I’m not expecting it. Normally, I don’t open myself up to it. I have learned to control that element of my ability over the years. In the early days, when I was a girl, spirit would just hijack my mind willy-nilly. Now I am much more in control. But maybe that day I was more relaxed than usual. I’d switched off. And there she was, in my mind, gently reminding me of her presence, looking after us. It wasn’t a frightening feeling, not in the least. It was comforting and reassuring. And after a few seconds, she went, carried away on the warm Mediterranean breeze like an exotic butterfly.
I didn’t tell John immediately, but later that evening over dinner I explained that I had felt his sister earlier in the day and wondered why she had chosen to let me know she was there at that particular time, so many months after her death.
The following day I got the answer. I received a call to do with an aspect of my business that needed urgent attention and was, at the time, very serious. There were a few problems that needed ironing out, and if they were not sorted there and then, they could have become much bigger. My peaceful holiday suddenly became very stressful. But we got through it and everything turned out well.
I realized that Jean had shown herself because she knew we were about to hit some of that turbulence life often has a habit of putting in the way of an otherwise smooth journey. Jean wanted to show herself just to say, ‘Hey, things will get a bit rocky over the next few days, but everything will turn out fine. Don’t worry.’ She was there to offer her support. That is what spirits do. They might not always be apparent, they might just be a whisper on the wind or an unexpected thought at the back of your mind, but they are there watching over us, guiding us, protecting us. They are family, and family never dies.