Read Online Ghost by Michael Cameron - Free Book Online

He noticed the red Ford out of the side of his eye in the car park. Despite the car appearing familiar, he thought it nothing more than an unlikely coincidence.
     
    Robert Page pulled his sporty little Fiat 500 into a space, switched the engine off and took a CD from his bag. Carefully he pressed the disc into the player and watched it slide into the console with just the gentlest touch of persuasion. He had about thirty minutes until the kids were dropped off and it was time to meditate. Well, it was time to try and meditate, in as much as you can in a car beside a busy park.
    The therapist had recommended the CD, supposedly it would help him to relax.  “It’s all about thinking of the moment you are in now, not the past or the future but the present and if your mind wanders, don’t beat yourself up, just bring yourself back…”
    In therapy for a few months now, to his surprise, it was working. For as long as Page could remember a voice spoke to him, in his head… not weird shit, but his own voice, talking to him…conversations with himself. At first he thought it was his ‘conscience’, but the voice for the most part was negative. It spoke with such presence that sometimes Page even spoke out loud in response. Since arriving when he was a young adult it stubbornly remained, neither reassuring nor supportive, it was entirely destructive, easily reinforcing negative views of himself and furthermore, supporting these views with a host of evidence. Over the years, the voice had come to haunt him, causing Page to believe that it was in many ways responsible for, or contributed to, the complete fuck ups he experienced in relationships, in work and his family life.
    How the hell can I silence the voice long enough to meditate ? Page didn’t know but was determined to try. A start at least.
    Page moved his seat back, reclined it, closed his eyes and listened intently as the male voice on the CD told him to “ relax, breathe and focus .” There was a hint of a waterfall on the soundtrack to help create a mood but it just made him want to pee. As the track progressed he followed the instructions and tried hard to block out the surrounding noises. The calm and tranquillity of the present was shattered when he briefly blinked and saw her. Thoughts rushed at him so quickly and so intensely that he almost struggled for breath. It was her. The red Ford wasn’t just a coincidence after all, it was hers. After all this time, there she was, Lucinda Harris.
    #
    He dropped his gaze and all thoughts of meditation were gone. Switching the CD off he sat in silence, eyes now closed and heart beating so loudly it pounded inside his ears like a bass drum. Hardly daring to breathe Page slowly opened his eyes and without moving his head looked to the right to where she stood, not ten feet away from where he was.
    In five years her appearance had not changed.  Tall, long reddish blonde hair, dressed immaculately in jacket, jeans and knee length boots, elegant and beautiful. For a moment he thought sweetly of her, about to call out her name he stopped as he noticed the car beside hers pull out. She regarded the driver and smiled before fixing her hair, straightening her clothes and getting into her own car. Page lowered his eyes, a flood of memories threatened to overwhelm him. He sighed, he knew what that look meant.
    Silently, he watched the red Ford and the gleaming silver Jaguar saloon move slowly out of the car park and in a moment or two, they were gone. Well, a Fiat could never compete with a Jag I suppose . He had no idea if she saw him or not, though it was probably irrelevant as she had only reluctantly responded to a miniscule percentage of his drunken texts or emails over the years.
    It was one of those moments where Page was trying to compute what had just happened but he could not quite get the thoughts to join up quickly enough. Eight years earlier, in exactly the same space in that same car park it was his car she had