The Rose Chamber: How I found my way into spiritual worlds through meditation

By Caroline M. Brown

The Rose Chamber is the autobiography of a modern-day initiate, an ordinary woman who - after years of hard work in meditative practice - found her way into spiritual dimensions.
As a child in Kenya, Caroline had glimpsed spiritual worlds in a beautiful and spontaneous experience, which convinced her of the existence of 'God'. Much later, she

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inhams Publishing
• Release date: Jan 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781910656020

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Contents

THE ROSE CHAMBER

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Preface

1   The Cave

2   Sarah

3   Shock

4   Leaving my body

5   Struggling to meditate

6   Bridge of Trust

7   Perry

8   Danger averted

9   Fiery Mountain

10   Ma

11   Wind Beings

12   The Rose Chamber

13   Leaving Kenya

14   Halls of the Dead

15   Teenage crisis

16   Core of goodness

17   The Hum

18   Timelessness and memory repair

19   New spiritual name

20   The de Vaux

21   The Blue Gold Being

22   First trial

23   S’Adam

24   A past life revealed

25   Upside down in the Crater of Whispers

26   True forgiveness

27   The Hut of protection

28   Unexpected gift in the Holy Nights

29   Ma’s crisis and the Mountain of Sunlight

30   Strange infestation

31   The Cobweb Bridge

32   More past lives

33   Time streams of colour

34   Confessions

35   The Scary Being

36   The darkest stain

37   Tong Chin

38   Priscilla, Sonia and Gertrude

39   Scary Being transformed

40   Manes

41   Dream with an important message

42   Ma is my mother for a reason

43   Irreversible decision

Afterword

Notes

Teacher/pupil relationship

Communication

Angel

Spirit beings have no gender

The Beasts

Cathars

Manes and Manichaeanism

References

About the Author

Comments on THE ROSE CHAMBER

Back cover text

THE ROSE CHAMBER

How I found my way into spiritual worlds through meditation

Caroline M. Brown

Inhams Publishing

First published in the

UK in January 2015

Published by

Inhams Publishing

UK

www.inhams.com

Copyright © Caroline M. Brown 2015

Caroline M Brown asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher and without a similar condition being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

EPUB Edition:  ISBN 978-1-910656-02-0

Cover design by BespokeBookCovers.com

To Joanna

Acknowledgements

My heartfelt thanks go to Joanna, my extraordinary teacher. Thank you Joanna, for your endless patience as you helped me with my early doubts and anxieties about what I began to experience ‘on the other side’, and for your care of me. I am for ever grateful to you for helping me to change my life.

A huge thankyou to my young friend and creative writing teacher, Nathan Feuerberg, for critiquing my manuscript as it evolved. You taught me how to write.

My warm thanks go to Matthew Barton, my editor, for your sensitive and remarkably insightful editing. I learned so much from your experienced assistance.

My thanks go to my friends, relatives and acquaintances of all ages who were kind enough to read a raw version of The Rose Chamber well before it got into Matthew’s professional hands: Adrian Rance, Kathy Russell, Christy Riordan, Kate Howlett, Mary Harrington Williams, Joan Walling, Philippa Brown, Jean Brown, Michael Harrington, Peter Harrington, Iam Liew, Johan van Wallenberg and Benthe van Wallenberg. Thank you all for your comments, critiques and helpful suggestions which encouraged me to work towards publication.

I want to thank my three grownup children who have trusted me . . . you are all deeply embedded in my heart for ever.

Last, but absolutely not least, a huge ‘thank you’ goes to my husband Stuart. This book would never have happened without your love and unending care for me and interest in my progress in spirit worlds, and without your strong support.

Foreword

In a world fraught with conflict and division, with all kinds of material and psychological struggles and burdened, often, by hopelessness, is there any value in a book that describes one person’s spiritual experiences? If the ‘spiritual world’ were a place quite removed from earthly travails, the answer would probably be ‘no’. But readers of this book will soon see this is not so: that spiritual and physical realities are intimately connected, and that our search for peace on earth must inevitably include a developing awareness of realms of which we mostly have only the most fleeting glimpse.

As this insight evolves, we can come to see that our lives, with their joys and difficulties, truly belong to us and show us our shortcomings at every turn. We can get a sense that we are taught by the very problems in life that often seem so intractable, that keep our nose to the grindstone of what is still lacking in us. All those weaknesses in us we are so familiar with, as well as our buds of potential, offer us meaningful lessons in how we need to grow. And suffering — if we do not simply hide from it, numb it, or blame others for it — is a severe yet true and potent guide to the undreamt wealth of our future possibilities and shared, compassionate humanity.

The poet William Blake once wrote:

Joy and woe are woven fine

A clothing for the soul divine

Under every grief and pine

Runs a joy with silken twine.

It is right it should be so,

We were made for joy and woe

And when this we rightly know

Through the world we safely go.

In this remarkable volume, Caroline Brown describes a very moving life journey through pain and struggle to a perception of spiritual realities. She does not simply take flight into ecstatic experiences but grounds her experience on the ‘other’ side in the actual events and difficulties of her life, in real circumstances and self-perceptions, healthily sceptical about her experiences. It soon becomes apparent that this ‘side’ and the other are simply two sides of one coin and she continually checks how these two realms relate and belong to each other.As readers we soon see that this is all extremely hard work. Unlike mere flights of fancy, becoming spiritually airborne needs the continuous heavy lifting of inner work, grappling with negative emotions, perseverance and discipline. It also requires healthy, grounded common sense, respect for the physical body as a strong, safe vehicle for spiritual insights, and a deep reverence for realities much vaster than one’s own.

Here then, is a human story in the fullest sense; and one that can encourage us in two ways simultaneously: firstly, to make space for a patient meditative practice which, however humble it may seem, and without immediately dramatic results, can eventually lead us slowly and surely to a fuller, deeper embrace of our lives and those around us, and to vision of the luminous worlds in which physical reality originates; and secondly, to see those lives, with all their struggles, as a meaningful learning process that can teach us where the real work needs to be done.

It is heartening in a further sense too, for it shows that we are not, after all alone, but that spiritual beings, more advanced but no less real than we are, are deeply, lovingly concerned with our development, and continually at pains to nurture it; and that they can do so all the more as we open ourselves to the reality in which they dwell.

Matthew Barton,  January 2014

Preface

This is my true story that is being made public in full for the first time.

In 1982 I was advised to do daily meditation to help me cope with the difficulties I faced in my family situation. The calming and expanding effects of meditation helped me to centre myself and I continued to meditate, for five minutes or more, every day for the next twenty-three years. Following early retirement in 2005, my meditations changed. I discovered, with the help of a ‘teacher’ that, with my new enhanced consciousness, I was able to ‘cross’ into spiritual dimensions and interact with spirit and human beings in those realms. I was constantly guided by my Angel.

From the beginning of this journey, I made detailed notes of my experiences as they happened on a daily basis. I also made exact notes — often in shorthand — of what my ‘teacher’ said to me when she phoned to talk for an hour every week in 2005 and 2006. These are contained in seventeen large notebooks, with far too much detail to include in this book.  Conversations and events have therefore been condensed, but all are true to what actually happened. Much detail has had to be left out, but the main events and milestones of my journey have been included.

In order to describe my experiences, I have used the analogy of physical objects from our familiar material world to try and create a picture for readers to visualise conditions I met in spiritual realms which are, of course, very different from our earthly world. Words such as 'ladder', 'lift', 'pond', 'cliff' and 'butterfly' help to convey - as best I can - my experiences of the extraordinary and unfamiliar environment of spiritual dimensions. Colours are easier because the same names can be used, though the various colours have a meaning in the spiritual world that we are generally not aware of in our material environment.

My aim in writing this book is to give heart to those who are working on their inner life. Whilst true self-development is not easy, I hope that the descriptions of my own pathway will encourage others to be confident that the spirit world is right here all the time, and that we humans are given an extraordinary amount of help. We are always among spirit beings, but we are usually not able see them without a significant change in one’s consciousness.

I have changed some names and descriptions so as to protect identities.

1   The Cave

‘Shut your eyes,’ Joanna instructs.

My mind drifts back to those dreadful weeks two years earlier when I was a teacher in a small primary school. The children seemed settled in my class. I thought I had a good relationship with their parents, then realized how wrong I was when I became the focus of a hostile whispering campaign by a group of them. I struggled to work through the situation and the crisis passed, but the experience left me drained and disillusioned.

In the depths of my exhaustion, I sought counselling to help me come to terms with what had happened. Following my husband’s recommendation, I began regular telephone counselling sessions with a friend of his. My new counsellor, Joanna, helped me to see which aspects of the crisis were due to my own mistakes, and which may have resulted from others’ projections. I learned how my need for approval and poor self-image had contributed to the situation. It didn’t come easily to me, telling someone I hardly knew all these private details about my inner life and struggle.

Gradually, through our sessions over several months, we explored more of my history. I had left a long, unhappy first marriage to an alcoholic, to begin again with a new partner. I had left behind a house, job, family — essentially my whole life. We discussed how these experiences had coloured my approach to my new job at the school. Beyond that, I had brought many years of unresolved baggage with me from painful situations in childhood.

After the campaign died down, I continued teaching at the same school for another two years to follow through my commitment to the children. Two weeks ago I left teaching. I feel exhausted now and want to have time for myself, see more of my family.

Joanna’s voice in my ear cuts through my thoughts, ‘What can you see?’

With an effort, I pull myself back to the present. ‘Yellow. Soft, yellow light.’ I sit back in my chair and reach for my mug of tea. I notice my hand trembles slightly.

The line crackles as Joanna says, ‘Now that you don’t have to concentrate on preparing lessons for school, I can help you move on with your inner work.’

Most of my phone sessions with Joanna over the last few months focused on incidents from my childhood, my reactions to them, my fears and changing moods. We explored how some of my unconscious negativity towards myself may have caused problems both for me and other people. Our conversation today seems different.

‘Allow yourself to soften into the light,’ Joanna says. ‘Can you see anything else?’

‘No, not really.’ My voice sounds thin, suspicious. ‘Are you sure this light isn’t caused by the bright sunshine outside?’

With my eyes still shut, I look at the soft brightness shining in my head, and become aware of a new spaciousness, beautiful feelings of love in my heart area.

I open my eyes again and look around. The usual mess on my desk. The untidy pile of papers on the floor.

A jet whines low over the house, lining up for the approach to Heathrow. ‘I wonder what’s going on today. That campaign against me at school two years ago shattered my world. But sometimes I’ve wondered if it also cracked something open in me, like a nut’.

‘Don’t be afraid. Try this again in your meditation sessions every day.’ Joanna’s voice is reassuring, but she doesn’t answer my question. ‘It’s because of all the work you’ve done in different meditative exercises over many years that you’re capable of doing this now.’

A little bewildered by this new stage in my counselling, I lean back in my chair. ‘So . . . you think this is spiritual light?’

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Joanna repeats. ‘Take a step forward slowly, and see what happens.’

I shut my eyes again and concentrate on this inner brightness. The phone is squashed hard against my head. I loosen my grip and rub my ear.

Joanna sounds firm: ‘Everyone has a hidden door of their own into spiritual worlds which they can open if they wish to. Usually this happens over several lives but everyone has the latent forces to work on themselves, and begin to see.’

I hesitate for a moment. ‘So, you’re talking about some kind of . . . clairvoyance?’

‘Let’s talk in a couple of days,’ Joanna says briskly, evading my question, ‘and just go on like this.’

During the next few days I overcome my doubts and follow Joanna’s instructions when I meditate. Each time a purposeful surge of energy filled with love expands from my heart and fills my throat, like an umbrella unfurling. This powerful love rays out through the roof of my mouth, as if into a cave encrusted with jewels of all colours. Gradually I become aware of a sandy path leading out of this cave. I know intuitively that all the grains of sand in the path must be polished with truth and integrity. Each one must be pristine. All this happens quite fast, over several days’ intensely concentrated sessions of meditation. These unexpected developments alarm and excite me at the same time.

Joanna phones again. ‘Just take it all step-by-step. Try it a little bit every day, but not for too long. Don’t hesitate to call me if anything happens to worry or frighten you. But I think you’ll be fine.’

As I continue to work with her in our regular phone sessions, recalling events and circumstances in my life, I understand more and more how vital it is to be truthful with myself, and to see myself as I really am. I have to face previously hidden traits in myself that I don’t like, and feel ashamed of. There is no room for self-deception. Joanna helps me to recognise deeper, so far unnoticed hindrances to spiritual progress in my soul life. It is a painful process.

‘The spiritual world is there all the time, you understand that don’t you?’ Joanna says. ‘It’s just that most people don’t realise it. It’s possible to learn to cross into a state of heightened awakeness, and to become aware of spiritual beings in the realm of truth. But you must confront your own shortcomings at the same time.’

I digest this for a moment. ‘You mean I should be grateful to the aggressive parents at school who shocked me into a deeper acceptance of my issues.’

‘Exactly,’ she agrees. ‘We all need to see our own untruth.’

‘I still need to sort out what I am responsible for, and what belongs to other people involved in that situation, including my colleagues.’

‘Yes, this may take some time,’ Joanna says. ‘Of course it’s important to see your own mistakes clearly, but you should understand that what happened at the school was not just about you. I’ve already explained to you how people unconsciously project their own problems on others, blaming them. It happens all the time.’

‘It makes me weepy thinking about it. I feel miserable.’ My voice comes out like a whine as unwanted tears prick my eyes. I brush them away with the back of my hand.

‘Learn to accept yourself exactly as you are.’

‘I still feel like a failure: I failed the school, my colleagues, the children, the parents and myself.’

‘It’s precisely that horrible experience that led you to this increasingly profound and clear understanding of yourself. Can you see that?’

I shift my chair to gaze out of the window. The sky looks a leaden grey as if it will rain soon. ‘Yes, I suppose I can.’

Joanna phones every two or three days now to reassure me, but doubt eats away at me.

What if all this is a weird illusion? What if she’s leading me astray?

A few days later, I sit in my office gazing out of the window at the nearby canal. A narrow boat is motoring smoothly past, its roof piled high with stacks of neatly cut firewood and pots of bright geraniums. Suddenly everything looks fractured into myriad pieces. I rub my eyes. It stops. I look around the room. Things look normal again.

I run into my husband Cameron’s office to tell him about it. ‘Something strange has just happened. I hope there’s nothing wrong with me. Do you think I’m cracking up?’

‘I know you’re not going mad. I’ll be the first to tell you if you are!’ Cameron snorts.

I laugh with him. ‘Stop teasing me. Everything in my office was suddenly chopped up into bits. It was really odd. I don’t know what to make of it.’

Cameron glances up from his computer, unfazed. He has studied books about spirituality for many years and supports my inner work. ‘Why don’t you phone your counsellor and ask what this means?’

I describe it to Joanna in a phone call.

Joanna sounds reassuring. ‘This impression of everything in pieces is a precursor to actually seeing more of the pieces and knowing what they are. It’s easy to have the impression of everything going wonky. Actually, it’s the opposite, so don’t worry. Just keep going.’

‘Okay, that’s a comfort.’

I light a candle, sit in my favourite armchair and quieten myself before doing my meditation work. I try to block out the clatter of hammering and drilling in the boatyard next door, and the sound of the neighbour’s vacuum cleaner which hums through the party wall. When I am focused enough, I rise out of myself in the now familiar feeling of expanded love raying up from my throat, behind my nose right into my forehead. I see clear colours, and know that I am exploring something new. With an effort of will I calm my apprehension and hold myself together. When I sense that I am in a clear and truthful enough space to proceed, I go on.

In front of me I see two paths: one is the path I have travelled from the past, while the other approaches me, as if from the future. They join at the expanded feeling in my throat, heart and solar plexus, integrating in a sensitive centre, like a calm flame.

When I next speak to Joanna I ask, ‘Do you think I’m hallucinating in these meditation sessions?’

‘You’re doing fine.’

‘I’m full of doubts. I don’t trust what’s happening. It’s beautiful and scary at the same time. I can’t quite believe it.’

‘Just keep going.’

I wish Joanna would explain more what is going on. I never get more than a few words of encouragement and I am not told what to expect. This makes me worry that I imagine it all.

‘It often takes me ages to settle down to real concentration,’ I say, ‘each session takes about an hour.’

‘The length of time you meditate isn’t important,’ Joanna says firmly, ‘and don’t forget to write down what you experience after you’ve finished. You’re good at taking notes and it could be useful later. Then you have to get back to normal consciousness properly. Don’t rush anything. Remember, you should always be in control of yourself.’

‘Right.’

‘Don’t worry. You’re fine. Just work like this in your meditation sessions for a few days. I’ll phone you again in a couple of days, okay?’

My teacher hangs up.

I stare at the phone. These developments in my life still feel new and bewildering. And yet . . . I also have a sense that they have been brewing a long time below my conscious awareness.

2   Sarah

When Joanna and I first started working together a few months earlier, she wanted to know about my relationship with my older sister Sarah. I had often wept in those first few sessions.

‘Talk to me about Sarah in more detail. Do you feel ready?’ she asked.

The candle flame flickered in the draught as I hesitated for a moment. ‘She was like a princess with long, fair hair and blue-grey eyes. I don’t remember anyone ever telling her off. She never lost her temper — as I often did. She seemed calm, contained, sort of remote. I adored her.’ I felt the tears coming.

‘Go on,’ Joanna said.

I cleared my throat. Tears would interfere with the flow of conversation with Joanna and I did not want to waste any of the precious hour we had together on the phone.

‘I always wished I was calm and quiet, like her. She was a real bookworm. We lived in Kenya. When we went on camping holidays to the coast, Sarah used to tell me and my younger sister Frankie stories about Ancient Greece or Norse mythology as we lay in our camp beds under the stars.’

‘What was your relationship with Sarah like?’ Joanna asked.

‘Very close,’ I said. ‘We were hardly ever apart. I depended on her in the huge boarding school we went to in Nairobi. When I was twelve and she was thirteen, she began to look white and tired. I begged her to go to see the school nurse. She was taken into hospital immediately and given injections in her stomach.’

I paused, seeing it all again in my mind’s eye. The big boarding school, with the lines of silent girls walking from twelve identical accommodation houses arranged in a semi-circle, to the dining-room for breakfast in the chilly, early mornings. Sarah pale and fragile-looking, somewhere ahead. She was only a year above me.

‘What happened next?’

I listened to a robin outside my window singing its bittersweet late summer song before replying.

‘We went home to our farm a hundred and fifty miles away for the Christmas holidays.’

‘I suppose Sarah had to stay in bed?’

‘Yes. The dining room which led on to the verandah became her bedroom so she could look out on the garden.’

It was still vivid in my mind: our German shepherd dog Roma lay near Sarah on the verandah, panting quietly.

‘Were you able to spend time with her?’ Joanna asked.

‘Yes. I sat next to her as much as I was allowed.’

Sarah lying still, white as the sheets of her bed. ‘Do you want me to read to you, Sarah?’ Her colourless lips hardly moved. ‘I won’t talk if you don’t want me to.’ Sarah saying nothing, just opening her waxy eyelids and closing them again as if any effort was too much. My mother ushering me away. ‘Come away now, Caroline. It’s lunchtime. Sarah needs to rest.’

Our normal family bustle became muted and sad, with an atmosphere of unexplained anxiety. My younger sister Frankie and I tiptoed around, behaving with the forced cheerfulness we sensed my mother and my stepfather John expected of us. I kept telling myself she would get better soon. No one mentioned serious illness. I was more concerned that I would have to go back to the big school without the protection of my adored older sister. I hated boarding school and it helped to be able to pick out her pale face and long, blond plaits in the crowds of girls, especially in assembly.

A day or so after Christmas my mother asked, ‘Would you and Frankie like to go on a camping trip to the Masai Mara with John and some friends?’

‘I’d love to see a leopard,’ I said. It would be a wrench to leave Sarah, but it was only for a few days. There was plenty of school holiday left.

We spent a few days in the Masai Mara. I lay awake listening to the grunts of lions hunting, the howls of hyenas and crashing noises in the bush. I was too frightened by all the strange sounds before I went to sleep to worry much about Sarah. We had a campfire burning all night to keep wild animals away.

‘Once,’ John told us, ‘people woke up to find the paw prints of a lion in the sand between their camp beds. It had walked right through their tent.’

When we got back, my mother sent us away to stay with Mr and Mrs Pelham. ‘We hardly know them,’ I grumbled. ‘I want to stay with Sarah.’

The Pelhams treated us like young children who had to live separately in the nursery. Their house was grand, not like ours.

‘Oh, isn’t John funny,’ Mrs Pelham exclaimed to us at breakfast after a few days, ‘he has suddenly phoned to say he is coming to take you home.’ She flashed a false smile, which filled me with dread. She was old with misty eyes behind her thick spectacles, and her back was hunched, like a marabou stork, the big scavengers that gathered to eat the offal thrown out by the slaughterhouse we had passed on the way here.

The lead butterflies in my stomach got worse.

John arrived. Frankie and I chorused polite, insincere thankyous to the Pelhams as we got into the car. At last we were going home but something felt strange. A cloud of red dust followed us down the rough road. John pulled the car over to the side and asked us to get out in an uncharacteristically quiet voice.

My limbs felt stiff, as if I were a doll. Or someone else. The sharp, yellow grass stalks pricked my bare legs. Somewhere above in the blue sky a buzzard mewed, circling high.

What’s going on?

John crouched his six-foot frame down and put an arm around each of us. He never usually did that. I liked my stepfather but didn’t always appreciate his brisk, bullying ways with me. ‘You’ll never see Sarah again,’ he said in a sad voice.

I frowned at him, incredulous. ‘What?’

‘She’s dead. Now, you must look after your mother. She’s very upset. Try not to make her feel worse by crying too much.’

Dead? I stared unseeingly around. The hot sun burned. The gum trees looked dusty. The grass was brown. Time stood still. My mouth felt dry.

‘What do you mean, Sarah’s dead?’

John hugged us tighter. ‘She had leukaemia. I’m afraid you die from it.’

Frankie burst out crying. I couldn’t take it in.

‘We had the funeral yesterday. Mr and Mrs Pelham were there.’

A funeral? Without telling us.

A passionate hatred for Mrs Pelham powered up and consumed me. Frankie’s sobs were the only sound breaking the silence. Time hung as if suspended.

‘Mrs Pelham sat with us in front of the fire last night, then said goodnight to us as if everything was normal,’ I stammered.

And she’d already been to Sarah’s funeral . . .

‘She didn’t want to upset you,’ John said. ‘She knew I would come to fetch you home today.’

We got back into the car in stunned silence and drove home. I struggled to grasp the enormity of this disaster. It couldn’t be true. It must be happening to someone else. It was worse than a nightmare.

Sarah. Sara-a-h . . .

I was shocked to have been left out of Sarah’s death. I instinctively knew my mother did it to protect us from distress, but we had been treated as if we didn’t exist. Why wasn’t I allowed to say goodbye to her? I was nearly thirteen. A storm of emotions swirled around in me as I sat silently in the back of the car, watching the red dust, dirty clouds billowing around the car. I felt powerless, hopeless.

Afternoon tea was ready on the trolley in front of the fire in the sitting room when we got home. My mother didn’t cry. She sat stiff and silent on the chintz sofa, pulled tight like an overstretched rubber band. No one seemed to know what to do or say. All of us tried to behave normally, but couldn’t. I couldn’t eat. It would have choked me. I hugged her.

‘It’s alright Mummy, you’ve still got us,’ I blurted out.

I tried to hold back my tears as John said we had to. Frankie and I could never make up for the loss of Sarah, our gifted oldest sister. I had to try to fill Sarah’s place. But I knew it would never work. I couldn’t play Chopin’s ‘Raindrop Prelude’ exquisitely on the piano like Sarah. I never wanted to hear that again. Ever.

My beautiful sister, mentor and heroine. I worshipped her and loved her so much. This was a bad dream I was never going to wake from.

The sitting room looked gloomy, although the sun shone brightly outside. The remains of my family sat like dark shadows, hovering around the tea tray.

I broke the silence. ‘One of us can sleep in Sarah’s bedroom now, so Frankie and I don’t have to share any more.’

It was a clumsy attempt to swallow my feelings of grief and shock, to be normal for Mummy’s sake.

My mother turned and looked at me accusingly, visibly startled by my inappropriate projection into a future she couldn’t yet contemplate. Did she understand I was only trying to put on a brave face in her presence, as John said? I didn’t want to make things worse for her.

I seemed to be doing a good job of that already.

I couldn’t bear it any more. Sobs erupted out of me like a volcano. I rushed out of the sitting room upstairs to the bedroom I shared with Frankie. Flinging myself on my bed, I wept uncontrollably for hours. I heard the whistles of the dairyman bringing the Ayrshire cows up the steep hill to the wooden sheds for milking. Everything was normal out there on the farm. I lifted my head from the pillow and gazed out of the window. The future seemed a dark chasm of hurt. I buried my wet face in the pillow again.

Who would sleep in Sarah’s room now?

I knew I never could. Even though I wanted a room of my own really badly. Once, in the old days, I dreamed that I killed Sarah. It was frightening, and I woke up sweating. Now the nightmare had come true. I felt wracked with guilt.

Perhaps I’ve killed her for real.

I hated myself.

The thrum, thrum of drums floated across the steep valley from a village near the forest. People would be sitting around bright fires near their thatched huts, roasting maize cobs.

I dared not contemplate my future without Sarah. How could she leave me? How could my mother not include me and Frankie in her death?

Feeling guilty and ashamed of my furious anger, I got up and washed my face.

I am nearly thirteen. John said I must not upset my mother.

‘Are you there . . .?’

I glanced down at the phone squawking in my lap, then snatched it up and put it to my ear.

‘Are you still there?’ Joanna’s voice came