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that of course no one else was there, and my hand reached out and groped for that infernal machine I knew was somewhere on the floor by the bed. Who on earth could be ringing at this time in the morning? I peered at the clock through half-closed eyes and saw that it was nine-thirty A.M. —then suddenly I was wide awake, remembering the events of the night before. The lady in gray!
    I picked up the receiver, and a voice said: “This is Irene Denham here, and I'm phoning to see if it would be possible for my husband, Paul, and me to come and talk to you.”
    Immediately I was on my guard and, very warily, asked: “Why?”
    She explained that she and her husband were very interested in me, and after what had taken place the night before, perhaps they could help me.
    This was beginning to sound more and more spooky, and my answer was guarded.
    “I really don't feel very interested in what has happened,” I said. “As far as I am concerned, spiritualism is something which should be left strictly alone.”
    Now you have to remember that I knew very little about spiritualism. My ideas were primitive, confined to things like people holding hands round a table, dark rooms, and hushed voices whispering, “Is there anybody there?”
    From the age of three I had attended Sunday school, not because my mother believed that religious instruction was important, but because it was a way of getting us out from under her feet for an hour or so. The church I went to was a small building that stood on what seemed (to me as a child) to be a hill at the top of the road where we lived. Saffron Lane was a busy road situated on the outskirts of the city of Leicester, but on Sundays there would be little traffic, and my mother would usher us out the garden gate and see us off up the road. Many was the time in my early childhood that I would go with sore legs or a sore bottom and tears raining down my cheeks because I would kick up about not wanting to go.
    Since I was always “the difficult one,” my mother must have been pleased to “see the back of me,” as she used to put it, on many occasions.
    My church, as I still like to think of it, is called the Church of Christ, and although I rarely visit Leicester these days, when I do and I drive past that small Baptist church and see the wall that I used to sit on with my pals, I feel a pull at my heartstrings. As a teenager, whenever I felt sad or alone, I would sit on that little wall and talk to God.
    The congregation was large, and the people I met at church and grew up with were responsible for my religious upbringing. I had wonderful teachers, and the love and warmth I received from them at a time in my life when I felt none at home, I can still feel today. When I was fifteen years old I committed myself to living my life in the way that I felt Christ had shown through His teachings, so I was baptized. Some of you might think that at fifteen a young girl may not know her own mind, but I knew then, as I know now, that my life belonged to God and that I could trust Him to decide my fate in all things.
    Now here I was, nearly twenty years later, aged thirty-five, listening to a woman I had met only the night before, talking about spirits and mediums. Even though I had said I wasn't interested, she hadn't been put off by my attitude at all. I imagine she had come up against it before.
    Again she pressed home the point that I needed someone to talk to about the strange things that had been happening to me, someone who would understand and be able to help. Eventually, after a lot of persuasion, I was talked into going to her house for tea later that day. But the apprehension stayed with me.
    Driving back to that place took an awful lot of courage for me, as I didn't know what I was letting myself in for, but my instincts told me that once I had entered the Denhams’ house again, my life would change completely. The problem was that I didn't know how, or in what way, or even if I wanted it to.