Storyteller - Colin & Anne Brookfield (ebook and pdf reader .txt) 📗

doctor rang to say that the mother of the blood donor was prepared to meet them, which had now brought them to Scotland and where they were met by prior arrangement by Mrs Langley, at the airport.

Melody allowed her thoughts to return to the present and opened her eyes just as the car turned into Mrs. Langley’s forecourt.

Once they were all comfortably settled in and fortified with tea and cakes, the moment of questions and answers finally arrived.

“Please call me Marjory,” the lady requested and then sat quietly as Sarah unfolded the strange changes to her life, subsequent to receiving her daughter’s blood donation. Melody had noticed the tears welling up in Marjory’s eyes as the events were related, and passed a tissue to her.

As Sarah finished, Marjory left her seat; opened a drawer in a nearby bureau and withdrew several items. One was a picture of her daughter as top chef, taken in the kitchen of one of London’s premier hotels. The other items were her daughter’s certificates of culinary qualifications.

“There is a word that relates to this kind of inter-connective phenomenon,” she continued, “it’s called ‘psychometry’. But now to my side of things. Two years ago Philippa – we call her “Pippa” by the way – Pippa and I were devastated by the loss of my husband. I thought at the time that nothing could ever eclipse that. Then, she went missing and the police have drawn a complete blank over her disappearance. I feel so lost, as though in a dark and stormy sea with no hope of rescue.”

Sarah and her mother were mortified at the unexpected turn of events and said everything they could in ways of commiseration.

The gloom of Marjory’s disclosure still hung over them as their return flight finally touched down at their home airport. They hadn’t expected to be met, but it was a pleasant surprise to be greeted by those who were now important in their lives. It seemed that Tom and Michael had been keeping tabs on their movements.

The men were later brought up-to-date with all that had transpired from their visit to Marjory Langley, and were shown a picture of Pippa standing in her garden, given to Sarah by Pippa’s mother.

That seemed to be an end to it, until Sarah confounded everybody by saying, “I’ve been having dreams for some time.”

“What kind of dreams dear?” her mother enquired.

“I don’t mean ordinary ones; these are directive and I feel I must follow them through. There’s nothing silly about such dreams. Wasn’t it the American Indian Chief Sitting Bull that asked a cavalry officer, ‘Do your people dream?’ and was dismayed when the man replied that they did not? I tell you, we have all lost something important along life’s long journey.”

Placing her hand on Michael’s arm, she then asked that everyone be patient with her. “I’m going to Chichester tomorrow and search for a yacht with the name ‘Berin’. I have seen it as being berthed there. I don’t know where this matter is going to take me but I’m sure I will be shown the way.”

“Shown the way?” interrupted Tom, “who is going to do that and who is going to look after you?” Sarah put her hand up at Tom’s protestations, and Michael’s impending ones.

Melody was up early the following morning and despite serious concerns about her daughter’s strange enterprise, she nevertheless helped Sarah to pack a few things into her car. Then with a few hugs and a goodbye wave, the car drew away towards the beckoning of a dream.

Later that day, Melody tried to get the London police interested in Pippa’s disappearance.

“It’s not on our patch,” she was told.

Chichester Harbour, with its myriad of small and large yachts, would prove a salutary lesson for anyone imagining that the yacht they were seeking was going to leap out of its berth and say, ‘here I am’. After several hours searching and asking dozens of nautical types, it seemed that nobody had ever heard of it. Eventually she was taken under the wing of a young lady who was sitting on the prow of her small motor vessel – appropriately named ‘Robin’ – as it later proved to be the girl’s Christian name. Sarah phoned her mother to say that all was well and would be staying for the moment on a boat of a friendly girl she had just met.

That evening, over a bottle of Chablis, she told Robin her story.

“Wow!” exclaimed Robin. “Tomorrow, I’ll have a word with the Harbour Master. If the Berin is here, he can tell us where it is.”

Robin’s voice awakened her the following day. “Stay in your bunk for a while and have a rest, I’ll make breakfast when I return. I want to catch the Harbour Master before he starts his busy day. He knows me; I can charm his beard off and get a free cup of coffee thrown in – not literally,” she said laughing.

Sarah took Robin’s advice and drifted off again to a deep sleep. She was woken abruptly about an hour later when Robin burst through the cabin door.

“GOT IT! Come on, let’s have breakfast then we’ll visit the Berin.” They found it berthed with larger ocean-going yachts and were pleased to see there were several crew members on its deck.

“Excuse me,” Robin shouted, “my friend is looking for Philippa Langley, could you get her for us please?”

“Never heard of her,” retorted one of the men.

“Oh, but you have,” Robin replied.

“Shove off, or I’ll turn the hose on you,” was all she got in return.

“Well, that ploy didn’t get any results,” said Robin, “it could be that your dream is leading you up the garden path Sarah. But I do have another idea that might flush out the truth one way or the other. Stay there, I’ll be back in a moment.”

She returned, only this time with a camera and took several pictures of the Berin from different angles, which took a while as she did it covertly each time the crew were out of sight.

“Next stop – my work place; there’s always one of our team working there. My job is graphics design, so let’s go and do some designing from the picture of your friend and that of the yacht.”

Within an hour, Sarah and Robin were back alongside the Berin. Robin put two fingers to her mouth and shattered the peaceful day with a sound like the shriek of a steam locomotive whistle. The results were amazing. People came scrambling on deck from most of the nearby yachts in response to Robin’s wake-up call. The Berin crew were furious.

“YOU AGAIN!” shouted one of them. “I’m calling Security.”

“I don’t think so,” Robin replied, “I have a picture here of our friend Pippa Langley standing right where you are on the Berin. I want to see her RIGHT NOW.”

People on the surrounding vessels were starting to take an interest in the noisy proceedings as Robin passed the photo to the Berin crew. “I’ve got a copy,” she told them and the mood changed immediately.

“Come below out of the limelight and we’ll talk about it.”

Sarah was starting to wonder what sort of a mess she would have been in without the fortuitous interventions of her new friend. Power had now shifted to Sarah and Robin, and the men were looking very sheepish and conciliatory.

“My name is Alan Roberts,” said their spokesman. “It’s my yacht, and yes, we did have Pippa aboard some months ago. She had been a friend of ours for several weeks, but when we were about to put to sea, she implored us to include her. Well, you know how difficult it is for us men to say ‘No’ to a pretty face. As it happened, it was a good decision all round. She took over the cooking and kept us laughing at her mannerisms.”

“So, what happened to Pippa?” interjected Sarah.

“That’s where the mystery begins,” replied Alan. “We had decided to provision at Cooktown in Queensland Australia, before rounding Cape York peninsular and on to Darwin. We had to lay off at anchor just beyond the harbour and then take the dinghy in, as we did not have a chart of the local waters. Pippa was left aboard, so you can imagine our horror when we returned and she was missing. We explored every possibility, but there were no rational answers beyond her having fallen overboard.” He paused before saying, “There was another anomaly. Four thousand U.S. dollars were missing from the unlocked safe, which led us nowhere; there were no means by which anyone could leave the yacht. We had the only dingy. Notwithstanding that, there wasn’t a dishonest bone in Pippa’s body.”

“Please don’t use that expression,” pleaded Sarah.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to put it that way, but had we declared the missing girl to the local police, the yacht would be considered a crime scene, and detained along with us, for goodness knows how long during the investigation. To complicate matters further, there was no evidence from the UK end that we had taken a girl with us, and scant evidence at this end that a girl had ever been on board. With the greatest sadness and humility it was how we had to leave matters, as indeed any police investigation would eventually have had to do.”

The raised palm of Sarah’s hand brought further explanation to a stop, and her next comment brought a gasp of surprise from the men.

“Pippa did not fall overboard; she is still alive.”

In the following silence, the girls looked around at the astonished faces. “I must tell you my story,” she began, “and how I have come to know seemingly impossible things.”

Almost an hour passed by before Sarah’s experiences were fully explained and she ended by saying she was going to Australia and pick up the Pippa trail from where it had been left.

The cabin was still for a few minutes, whilst they all tried to absorb what Sarah had said, until Alan intervened.

“I know I’m grasping at straws in a swamp of incredulity, but none of us will have inner peace until every avenue is explored. I also feel the possibility of danger in this, so I can’t let you go alone. My offer is this: I accompany both of you and pay for the flights and all other expenses, and then hopefully we will get to the bottom of this matter. It has haunted my crew and me for too long.”

Although Robin was a free spirit and living away from her parents, she nevertheless phoned them about her plans and promised to keep in touch. Sarah did the same to her mother and Michael.

Their Qantas flight out from Heathrow Airport proved to be more comfortable than they had hoped. They were seated together in Business Class (and not the tourist end, which some airline staff refer to in the pejorative). The duration of the flight seemed interminable, despite the short walks and chatters to all and sundry around the cabin.

After Customs & Immigration at Sydney Airport, they made their way to the hotel for an overnight rest before taking their next flights in the morning that would take them northwards.

New South Wales gradually gave way to the Queensland coastline, touching down at Brisbane, where they would have to change planes for the final leg of their journey. From this flight, they saw Rockhampton and Townsville disappear one after another beneath them, until at last their aircraft began its descent into Cooktown.

By this time, Sarah had kept Alan and Robin updated on her strange intermittent clairvoyant imagery that always seemed to be leading her towards a destination. Firstly, it had been the ‘Berin’; now she had drawn a sketch of a new impression and shown it to Alan and Robin. It showed a harbour plan and the word ‘Tipan’.

“I think we should have a day of rest,” was Alan’s first comment as their airport taxi pulled into a hotel forecourt, “that way, we can