Love at Second Sight Read Online Free PDF Page A

had a girlie talk about
soulmates or clairvoyants.
    ‘Hey, Owen,’ I said. ‘What you doing back from uni?’
    ‘Quick visit, I only got home last night. Needed my laundry doing. I’ll be going back tomorrow,’ he said, then gave me a suggestive look. ‘So. About what the clairvoyant
said. I might be your Howard.’
    ‘And why’s that?’ I asked.
    ‘I’m in my first year of medicine. Howard was the son of a doctor.’
    He looked miffed when I laughed out loud.
    ‘Seriously though,’ said Mark. ‘I saw a programme about reincarnation on telly once and there were some very convincing cases.’
    ‘On telly, hey?’ I replied. ‘Must be true then.’
    This time it was Mark’s turn to look put out. ‘There was a woman on the programme who’d been doing research into past life phenomena,’ he went on, ‘and she had some
fascinating case histories. Especially kids. Apparently many recall their past lives but the memory fades after the age of five. Some of them remembered places, people and events they
couldn’t possibly have known, and when they checked out the details, it was just as the kids had said.’
    ‘I saw that programme,’ said Effy. ‘There was an Indian boy who insisted that he had a shop and family in a different village to the one where he was born. In the end, his
parents took him to the village and there was the shop and family just as he described and he was able to tell exactly what changes had been made to the shop since he died. He knew all about the
place and the wife who ran the shop came to accept the nine-year-old boy as the incarnation of her departed husband.’
    ‘Amazing,’ said Tash.
    ‘Mad. The boy probably read about it in a newspaper or something,’ I said. And that’s why the facts check out. Kids absorb everything around them.’
    ‘Take no notice of her,’ Effy said to Tash. ‘She’s such a cynic. There were loads of examples on the programme of people remembering things from past lives that they
couldn’t possibly have known. One young girl said that in her previous life she had buried some jewellery, and when she took her new family to find it, it was buried exactly where she had
said.’
    I rolled my eyes. ‘I’m sure that there’s a rational explanation for all the cases you saw but then that doesn’t make good telly, does it?’
    ‘I despair,’ said Effy. ‘But anyway, we’ve come up with the most brilliant idea.’
    ‘Yes. I’ve thought of a great present for my mum and dad,’ said Tash.
    Phew , I thought. Change of subject from past lives, thank God. ‘What’s that?’ I asked.
    Tash gave Dave a coy look. ‘It was Dave’s idea. I’m going to do a family tree for both of them. You know, find their ancestors.’
    ‘That’s a lovely idea, Tash. They’ll love that,’ I said.
    ‘Family tree. Ancestors,’ said Effy; she gave me a meaningful look and added, ‘Census records, Jo. They’re on the Net.
    ‘Yeah. I know. You can get them online now.’
    ‘I don’t know why we didn’t think of it earlier,’ said Tash.
    Effy nodded. ‘Don’t you get it, Jo? Henrietta. We can look her up while we’re researching Tash’s roots.’
    Ah , I thought. So we haven’t changed the subject. No such luck.
    ‘They have records of births, deaths and marriages,’ said Dave. ‘We can find out everything about her and even maybe the doctor she worked for. He would be listed on one of the
census records. They were recorded every ten years from 1841 and you can see all the records up until 1911, so everyone living at a certain address on the night of the census was recorded. If
we’re going to find anything out it’s a great place to start.’
    ‘But it’s this life that matters, surely? Not a past one. Even if I did believe in past lives, it’s gone, over,’ I protested. ‘And anyway, we don’t know where
they lived.’
    ‘London,’ said Effy. ‘You told us Betty said London.’
    ‘Think of it as a project,’ said Owen.