What was it? At first I couldn’t tell. I was listening to the radio on my headphones, and a woman was speaking, in a northern accent, gently, into my right ear, about her mother having died when she was young, and how after that she had wanted her father near her all the time. Suddenly I felt there was someone else nearby, who was not the speaker, so I removed the headphones to say hello. But there wasn’t anyone there. I replaced them again, and listened to Cynthia say she used to write notes for her father to find when he came home from the pit, about how she needed to speak to him, urgently.
Again, that visceral sense of a presence; again, no one there. Headphones back on – of course, there was nothing urgent, “I just wanted to look at him.” “I can remember getting me dad to come and lie next to me on the bed before he went to work,” said a voice full of tears, into my other ear, “I used to think, if I hold his hand really tight, he won’t be able to go to work” – and the mystery was solved. It was her sister’s listening presence I had felt, so strong it was almost in the room with me.
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