Island-in-Waiting by Anthea Fraser Read Free Book Online Page A

ungainly run down the verge.
    â€œYou realize you warned me before that sheep had even appeared?”
    â€œI know.” With an effort I unclenched my hands. “Martha, this has all happened before. Don’t ask me when. I recognized the lay-out of the country, even that broken plough over there, and I remembered you having to brake suddenly. I even knew the sheep was black.”
    â€œ Déjà vu ?” she queried after a moment.
    â€œI suppose it must have been.” I shivered suddenly. “How horrible!”
    â€œOr,” she went on deliberately, “could you have dreamed it? One of your extra-sensory specials? You say you keep dreaming of the sea, though till now you’ve never been near it.” She broke off, leaving the implication of her words to sink in.
    â€˜Till now’. There was an insistent drumming of blood in my ears. “You’re surely not suggesting some of the dreams could have been of the future?”
    She was watching me intently. “Couldn’t they?”
    Neil! The word exploded in my brain, and as I fumbled after its relevance it blindingly clarified itself. That was why I had ‘recognized’ him at the airport; I knew him from previous dreams, dreams which perhaps were now actually going to come true. It was a possibility I had never even remotely contemplated and I recoiled from it with superstitious horror.
    Martha said gently, “It fits, you know. Precognitive dreams are known to be exceptionally vivid, and you said they seem more like personal memories.”
    â€œBut how could they be memories of the future? It just isn’t possible!”
    â€œSome people think it is. John Dunne, for example, tied it in with his idea of serial time. Apparently your astral consciousness or other self or whatever it is, is released in sleep and can slip either backwards or forwards in time. So you really would have experienced those things, which is why they seemed familiar.”
    My frightened eyes went over the sweep of fields and woodlands lit by dramatic stormy sunshine. It was this identical scene striking a mental replica that had ‘broken the dream’. At the airport the sight of Neil had had the same effect. And what of my nebulous connection with Ray? Was that too attributable to my wandering psyche?
    Martha laid a hand on my arm. “Don’t look so frightened, love. I believe it’s quite a common experience.”
    â€œSo you think I actually slipped forward into today, to this particular spot on the Sulby road?”
    â€œPerhaps that’s what precognition is, not only knowing in advance but experiencing too. You remember you said the dreams all seemed to be set in the same place? It looks as though it’s here, doesn’t it? They haven’t come true before, because in this dimension of time you’ve only just arrived.”
    The thought had already occurred to me. ‘ Why did you take so long to come? ’
    â€œBut why? Why here, of all the places on earth?” At the back of my mind a possible answer, unwanted and unacknowledged, began to form and I clamped down on it at once. Quite suddenly I didn’t want any more revelations, and before Martha could reply I said jerkily, “Still, we can’t sit here all day discussing metaphysics! If we don’t hurry the shops will have shut for lunch.”
    Accepting my abrupt dismissal of the matter, Martha didn’t refer to it again. Nor, though I was sure she mentioned it to Hugo when he came home, did he make any comment. In all probability he was waiting for me to raise the subject but I was still playing ostrich, superstitiously afraid that talking about it would somehow solidify a mere conjecture into fact. I was thankful that the dinner party that evening would provide a distraction for all of us.
    The Quayles lived in one of the staff flats in Mona Lodge, a large house in its own grounds just outside Ballacarrick. As we