‘Of course,’ Saskia says, matter-of-fact. ‘Most people do. I, for one, feel confident that I have lived a life in Egypt, though I’m sincerely hoping I wasn’t mummified, and I’m sure that at one point I knew how to start a fire with nothing more than wood and stone – something my partner is adamant can’t be true, based on my barbecuing skills.’
This gets a surprised snort of laughter from Lissa, and Saskia smiles in response. She seemsnice.So maybe, if she’s a con artist, she doesn’t know she is.
Lissa leans forward, placing her hands on her thighs. ‘The thing is, I’ve been having these flashbacks. That’s what they are, I’m sure of it – like memories. From another lifetime. Three lifetimes, to be exact.’
‘Three,’ Saskia repeats. Is it just Lissa, or does she sound a little careful? Despite what she said, maybe she thinks Lissa’s mad. To be fair, maybe she is.
‘You said most people have multiple past lives?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Well I have three.’ Possibly more, but her current working theory is that Scotland in the 1800s is the first one, based on the fact that she’s only had one memory of that, and it was blurred.
‘Okay …’ Saskia’s gaze is very direct on Lissa’s. ‘Well if you’re sure about that, what do you need help with?’
Lissa feels a spike of something – excitement maybe, at finally getting to the point, at being able to talk it through with someone. ‘I want to knowwhy.’
‘Why? You mean why souls are reincarnated?’ Saskia purses her lips, painted a pale pink. ‘I’m not sure I can answer that for you – there are plenty of different theories, many centred on the fact that energy doesn’t just disappear when someone dies, but—’
‘No,’ Lissa interrupts. ‘Not why they are reincarnated, whyIam.’
She gets another raised-eyebrow look at that – because she’s being egotistical?
‘Or,’ she continues, trying to make up for it, ‘not, like, why I’m reincarnated in the grand scheme of things, but more why I’m having these … visions.’
Saskia cocks her head. Her diamond stud earrings glint in the sliver of sunlight through the window at her back. ‘Well, maybe you’re a little clairvoyant yourself?’
Lissa frowns. ‘But I’ve never experienced anything like this before. So why now all of a sudden?’
Saskia hesitates for a beat, uncrossing and recrossing her ankles. Lissa wonders if she doesn’t believe her. Then she wonders if it matters all that much if she believes her if she can still give her some answers. After all, she’s paying for the whole session, isn’t she?
‘How long have you been experiencing the memories?’ Saskia asks, apparently coming to some internal decision.
‘I don’t know. A few months, maybe?’
‘Can you think of when they started, specifically? Did something happen, perhaps, to trigger the first one?’
Lissa leans back in the armchair, tapping her fingers against her thigh. She remembers waking up disoriented after the first one. Waking up in a bed that wasn’t her own. And if she was in Mark’s bed, that means it was the day after the anniversary of Chloe’s death – the day after her reckless, stupid decision. So does that mean it reallyisall about her sister?
Saskia smiles, the skin around her eyes creasing. ‘You’re figuring something out, I can see.’
Lissa shakes her head. ‘I’m not so sure about that.’ Because why would it happennow, twenty years after the fact? Is she trying too hard to understand something that arguably doesn’t make sense at all?
‘In each of them, I lose a sister,’ she says slowly, thinking as she speaks. She’s not totally sure of that statement – she knows it happened in the 1940s, but she had a hint of it in the 1920s, too, walking along the corridor of her house, trailing her fingers over the brass doorknob, behind which lay an untouched room – her sister’s bedroom. So it would follow, wouldn’t it, given when the flashbacks started, that that’s what connects them all?
She blinks over at Saskia, who is watching her, waiting. ‘Why would that happen again and again?’
‘Well,’ Saskia begins, her tone even, ‘there are some theories that people create similar responses in others whenever they meet over the course of a lifetime. That because we react to our parents, our friends, love interests in similar ways, we make a sort of pattern. Until our souls are able to learn and grow, that is.’
Lissa’s heart rate spikes uncomfortably. ‘So you’re saying it’s my fault – in every life?’
‘No,’ Saskia says quickly, ‘no, that’s not what I mean at all. I just mean that often there are similarities between lifetimes, not in what we might have been doing or where we were living or even the gender we were, but on some basic core level.’ She takes a breath, her chest rising and falling with the motion. ‘But the other thing that could be happening, Lissa, is that your sister’s death in the past lives that you think you’re seeing could be a metaphor for something else entirely – or it could be you simply processing the trauma of her death inthislifetime.’
Lissa doesn’t think she’s told Saskia about Chloe – but then it’s not exactly a leap, is it? ‘Yeah,’ she mumbles, ‘I did wonder that.’ But she keeps coming back to the fact that if that’s what it is, why wouldn’t sheonlysee her sister’s death – why would she be experiencing glamorous parties, for instance?
‘Is it …’ She hesitates, knowing how this will sound. ‘Could it be punishment?’
‘Punishment?’ Right, yes, she sounds insane, based on Saskia’s reaction.
