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in the kitchen. She had to clean that up first. She went into the kitchen and got out the dustpan and brush and started cleaning up the glass splinters. She carefully wrapped them up in newspaper and put them in the bin. Job done she put away the dustpan and brush.

    This is the answer she though. Action. Work. No time for thinking.

    And with that firmly in mind she went up the stairs to get changed for work. Whatever was happening would be sorted out. In the meantime she just had to get on with things.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

    But of course focusing on work was easier said than done. The images of everything she had seen, not just today but everything over the past week kept flooding back to her. And even more distant memories than that - the voices she had heard as a child. What did it all mean?

    At one o'clock she found herself looking up Matt’s extension number in the phone directory. What had he said to her last week? Are you seeing her too? And in that dream, that vision - whatever it was - he had mentioned a Dr Priestley.   She had looked him up on the internet this morning. He was indeed a physicist in the university. And dream Matt, vision Matt, had been right - he was delivering a series of lectures in St Mary’s church. The first was tonight. If it was all her imagination how could she have known that?   What if this wasn’t an illness? What if it was something else?

    What are you saying, she asked herself. She brushed the question away. All she knew was she needed to speak to Matt. She should have spoken to him before anyway. She should have sorted things out after the first conversation. But now this had happened as well. She thought again of the image of the wedding. It had seemed so real. And so very different from her wedding to Damien. They had married in a registry office, a low key affair. There had been twenty guests and it had rained so the photos were taken indoors. Then they had all adjourned to the local restaurant where most of the family had spent the afternoon getting drunk and bickering. Chris had not enjoyed the day. She’d had a blinding headache by the time it was over. Then there’d been a mix up with the bill - the restaurant manager had no record of the deposit they had already paid for the food and there had been a dispute. She remembered Damien coming out to see what was going on and helping her sort everything out while the rest of the family continued to get more and more drunk. Finally it was over and wearily they had climbed into the taxi to go home. All she had wanted to do was sleep.  

    “My wife,” Damien had murmured in her ear as the taxi drove through the rain soaked streets. And it was at that moment only, at that moment finally, that she had felt happy. Thinking back to the day itself still made her feel sad.

    The image – or was it a memory? - of the other wedding felt very different. As she thought about it more details seemed to come back to her. There had been many more guests at that wedding, over a hundred. There had been a wonderful atmosphere – everyone had been looking forward to this day for so long. The sun had been shining. People had told her she looked beautiful in her dress and Matt's face when he had first turned to look at her confirmed it. And she had felt happy, happy from the moment her father let go of her hand and placed it in Matt’s.  

    Stop it. Stop it. She halted her reverie. Was she making this up? Was she indulging in a fantasy? She looked around her. Everyone was busy working, typing emails, arranging meetings, making telephone calls. What was she doing sitting here fantasising about a wedding that never happened to a man she hardly knew.

    She looked down at her desk. Matt’s extension was scrawled on her notepad. Should she ring him? Should she talk to him? In answer to her own question she picked up the phone and started to dial.

    He answered on the second ring. The phones they had in work displayed the name of the person ringing