Chapter 1

I should have known that I was too old to try to pull that dead stump. I wasn’t the young buck any longer, although it would have been hard to describe me as a buck in my youth. It was about the time of the third pull that I felt something was wrong, with my left arm and chest suddenly painful and my strength going, I fell onto my back and looked at the scudding spring clouds.

I could hear my son calling for me and was suddenly glad that my wife had passed away a year ago, the first time I was actually feeling good about that. At least she wouldn’t have the worry of burying me. I had discussed this very possibility with my two sons a couple of weeks ago.

They say that your life flashes before you as you die. I could tell them that they were wrong. The life that I saw in those last few minutes was the life that I had always hoped could have been mine.

“Michael! Dad! Where are you, there’s a call for you from the lottery office.”

I had to smile. Whatever I had won would now go into my estate for my family. It would be my last gift to them. My thoughts were that the gift that I had craved had never been given. Still, I had lived as well as I could, and had enjoyed a good career and marriage. My parents emigrating to Australia when I was a teenager had allowed me to leave the taunts and spitefulness that I had been subject to in my old school in England. All of a sudden, I had the vision of the hills that I could see from my old bedroom window. It was a sight to die for. That’s when I saw only a golden light.

………………………………………..

Oddly, I opened my eyes again and memories of that other, craved-for, life filled my mind. I was in bed and the sun was shining through the window. I looked around and the room seemed familiar, somehow. I pulled the bedsheet off and stood, suddenly feeling the weight on my chest and the smooth feel of the nightdress against my body. I padded to the window and looked out.

There, in front of my eyes, was the last vision of my dying body. The shape of the hills were exactly as I remembered, although the houses dotting the lower slopes were new, as was the hair that tended to fall across my eyes.

“Mikala, honey. It’s time to get up and face the day.”

That was my father calling. Today was the last Sunday of my youth. Tomorrow, I would be starting my first job, as a tour guide with a travel company.

Today was Sunday, so church. It was my mothers’ church, as my father was not religious. Well, his religion was making money, rather than saving souls. I smiled as I turned from the window to put on a gown to go and get breakfast. I was looking forward to the service today. Or, should I say, what will be happening after the service.

I stood for a moment and looked at the room. It was a girls’ room, and almost everything in it screamed ‘girl!’ The bathroom was not as I remembered, now a bit bigger to accommodate the double shower. I sat to pee, wiped and washed my hands. When I had lived here before, it had been better than most houses in the area, but no mansion. As I walked downstairs, I could see some differences. There were doors in what used to be the outside wall, so there must have been some building work in the intervening years.

In the kitchen, my father was busy at the stove, and I glanced at the calendar. It was the day that I had died on the other side of the world. The old me had been born in the late forties, and I had left this house in the mid-sixties, so I now had a lifetime of experience that Mikala had never known. I wondered if she was still inside me, or had moved out as I moved in. I did have her memories of a loving father and a domineering mother, so she may have been suppressed all her life, waiting for this morning.

“Here’s your breakfast, sweetheart. Eat up, it will give you the strength you need to get you through the day. You really don’t need to go to that church if you don’t want to.”

“I want to go, Daddy, so I can tell him what you’ve found out. The look on his face will be worth a photo.”

I had my breakfast and cleaned up as he was looking intently at his laptop. He worked in stockbroking, or should I say, he lived for stockbroking. The youngest child of Hungarian refugees who had fled to England after the country joined with the Germans in the World War, he was now white-haired and slow, but still a strong man. My mother is his second wife, and a mistake that he now regretted.

I went upstairs and used the big shower, dried and went to dress for church. My mother had always made me wear very childish clothes, with ribbons and bows, with long skirts and looking like someone out of a period novel. Today, though, I dressed according to my age, with a shorter pleated skirt and a silk blouse that my father had bought for me to start work with, among a heap of other things that were in a suitcase waiting to be taken. I had been dressing like this for the last couple of weeks, and the other dresses had been donated to the Amateur Dramatic Group.

When I was dressed and made-up, I picked up my bag and went back downstairs.

“See you after church, Daddy.”

“Do you have your new door key?”

“Right here, Daddy, on my keyring.”

“Sing well and have fun.”

“You can be certain of the second, Daddy.”

I walked outside and looked around, noting the new wing that took up the space where a kitchen garden used to be. My Honda sat next to my fathers’ Range Rover, and its lights flashed as I pressed the button on the key. It had been my mothers’ up to a week before but was now mine. I drove to the church, along familiar roads with some unfamiliar shops and houses. It wasn’t as I remembered it, but sixty years can do that for any place.

I parked at the church and went in, sitting in a pew near the back without kneeling or crossing myself. I stayed silent during the hymns and had to smile at the sermon. It was loosely based around the Italian phrase of Que Sera, Sera -- What will be, will be. The preacher made it out to all be Gods’ Will, with us all following his instructions. It was aimed at the congregation following the decrees of the church without question. It’s no wonder they’re called flocks.

The preacher looked at me as he went to leave, and I smiled brightly at him. I waited as the smallish congregation left, looking at the sumptuous interior of the supposedly humble house of God as I waited. When I walked outside, he was waiting for me.

“Mikala. Are you looking forward to your time at Saint Ignatius? Your mother told me that you would make an excellent nun. I must say that you don’t appear to look like a Bride of Christ, dressed like that.”

“That’s because my father and I tore up the application papers that you and my mother prepared. Tomorrow, instead of learning History and Theology, I’m off to be taught how to herd cats with a tour company.”

“Your mother will not be happy with that, child.”

“Two things for you to know. One is that I’m not a child any longer, and the second is that I don’t give a flying fuck what my mother thinks. I don’t know what bullshit she’s been telling you in confession, but we have changed the locks at home, and my father has removed her name from the family bank accounts. She went on a six-week cruise this summer, a habit of hers, and this time she was followed by a private investigator. My father received a number of photos a couple of weeks ago, showing her breaking that commandment about adultery several times with different men. It seems that she’s been taking these trips and picking up handsome, well-endowed studs for a few years. When she disembarks, on Wednesday, she will be welcomed by a lawyer with the divorce papers, and my father has two large cases with her property that we cleared from the house over the last week. You would be surprised at the little toys we found hidden away.”

“That’s no way to speak of your mother! You should revere and respect her.”

“Like you and your church respect women! Where are all the women bishops, the women cardinals. There’s one reason that I’m happy that my mother made me wear those childish dresses, and that’s because you and the perverts that work with you weren’t able to leer at my tits. This is my last goodbye, and I doubt that you’ll see my gold-digging bitch of a mother again, she’ll be having a hard time keeping housed and fed, so won’t be putting big notes in the collection any longer. Goodbye.”

I turned on my heel and walked away from him as his mouth was opening and closing like a goldfish. I felt suddenly cleansed. If my rebirth was brought about by a higher being, it wasn’t one that would look kindly on the church that professed to follow his word.

“I’ve always wanted to do that!”

I didn’t break my stride as those words seemed to be spoken in my brain. Perhaps the original Mikala hadn’t moved out.

“I’m here, with you, Michael. We will merge, as time goes on, but I’m happy that you have joined me to face life. I could never have spoken to that old hypocrite like that. Mother had almost beaten my freewill from me with her ways. I was looking forward to travelling, before you arrived, but was scared of it at the same time. On my own, I doubt that I would have lasted, but, with the two of us, we will get on well. I’ve looked at your memories and I’ve always wondered what the house used to look like. Now I know.”

I sat in the car and started the engine. I pulled the shade down and looked in the mirror to check my lipstick. I laughed.

“Hello, Mikala, thank you for not hating me.”

“Welcome to my brain, Mikala. I could never hate someone so knowledgeable and wise. How long have you played guitar?”

“About fifty years, are you any good?”

“Not as good as I will be the next time that we pick it up. It’s the one thing that’s given me a problem. My fingers didn’t want to play what my brain was asking. My piano is better than my guitar, but not that hot.”

“That’s good. I tried piano in later life and enjoyed it, as far as I got. We’ll be able to be good with both now.”

“There was a big block of your memories that were hard to look at.”

“That would have been my time in Vietnam. I arrived in Australia at exactly the right time to be called up. They took me from a puny lad to a fit man. I was trained at Puckapunyal, spent three months in the rain forest of northern Queensland and was sent to the war in the Special Forces. I saw things and did things that no young lady should know about. I wonder if what I learned has stuck. I do revel in this young body. Do you run?”

“I do. I can already tap into your abilities in breathing and stuff. What do you say about having a run, this afternoon?”

“Sounds good to me. I doubt that the tracks I used to use are still around.”

“Not a lot has changed. It will be good to get outside after lunch.”

I arrived back at the house and went in, my smile telling my father that I had delivered the message with both barrels. We had a light lunch, and I went upstairs to change into running gear. With my phone in a waist pack, I set out on a track that seemed unchanged. As I warmed up, we mentally conversed about breathing and proper use of the muscles to give extra stamina.

“By the way. There’s a rapist that’s been reported in the last few months. He attacks women alone. He hasn’t been close to us, but I looked at the locations and he may be near us next time.”

“That’s all right. These nails are well looked after. They’re long enough to cut his throat or take an eye out. If we meet him, we can look after ourselves. Did you learn to knee a guy in the nuts?”

“Yes, I’ve been doing some self-defence lessons.”

“If we do meet him, the first lesson in combat is to be the one who walks away.”

We took some tracks that I hadn’t known about, and were out into the country, into our second five miles, and I could feel the exhilaration that came from my mental companion. We were passing a copse when I felt a movement behind me. An arm came into my view, and I smelled chloroform. I immediately stopped breathing and reached up for the arm, stopping suddenly and bending forward, pulling the man over my body.

He was a well-built guy, but I could only see his eyes as he hit the ground, because of his balaclava. I didn’t ask his permission, I just kicked him hard in the nuts, and, as he curled up, I gave him another kick in the head.

I pulled the phone out and speed-dialled the police, giving them the location and the situation. I sat beside the track until I heard the sirens.

“That was amazing. We took him down like he was a rubber dummy.”

“He was a coward, using chloroform. With his build, he should have been able to subdue a girl without it.”

“But he didn’t meet a girl this time, did he? He met a hardened, combat experienced, Special Forces fighter.”

“We don’t tell them that. We stopped suddenly and bent over, and he went over the top. Anything else was what you were taught in the classes. We did well, though, didn’t we?”

I sat there, producing enough tears to be believable, as the police forced his hands away from his balls so that they could handcuff him with his hands behind him. When the balaclava was pulled off, I laughed. The Inspector looked at me.

“What’s funny, miss?”

“That’s the priests’ assistant at the church in the village. He always leered at girls boobs on Sunday. That’s really going to make the preachers’ day.”

“Do you feel up to making a statement. We can leave it a couple of days.”

“I’m heading for London in the morning, to begin a job, so I’d like to get it over with. I’m sure that you would have enough DNA collected to link him to the other cases, so I doubt that you would need me to put him behind bars. I would prefer it if my name was kept out of this, if you just tell the press that he attacked a transvestite and found someone who knew how to fight. I’m sure that no transvestite would want his name bandied about as a rapists’ target, however successful that would make him feel.”

I was given a ride to the police station, calling my father on the way. He met me there and hugged me so hard I thought I would snap. He sat with me, holding my hand, as I gave my statement, pushing the notion that he had gone over the top without my help, and only the classes kicking in enabled me to subdue him.

After the system had done its thing, he took me home and I went for a long shower. He called through the door, as I was drying, that we were going somewhere nice for our evening meal. I dressed well, in an outfit that I had thought was too good to take with me. We went to a good restaurant in the nearest town and ate well. I had a couple of glasses of wine and was feeling mellow. He put his hand on mine.

“I’m so proud of you today, Mikkie. Not only did you tell the preacher off but ended up putting one of his assistants in jail. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have other samples of DNA that they’re not talking about. The other girls were found a long way from where they were taken, and the newspaper has suggested that they were unconscious for all the time. Here we are, with you seemingly unaffected by this, I would have thought that you would have been a bowl of quivering jelly.”

“The old me would have, Daddy. Since you’ve rid me of my mothers’ influence, I’ve gained a lot of confidence in the last couple of weeks. It only took something like today to bring it to the front. I was afraid of failing in the future, but I think that now I’ll make you proud of me.”

“I’ll always be proud of you, my daughter.”

When I woke up on Monday morning, I finished packing after breakfast and my father put the cases and my guitar in the Honda. I had breakfast, showered and dressed. I stripped the bed and put the sheets in the washing machine. They then went into the drier, and we had an early lunch. The bed was remade, and I was ready to go. I hugged my father and shed some tears. He wished me a good trip and good luck.

“The best of luck with Mum, when you see her. I can’t send her my love, as she destroyed it with her domination. Give me an email when things have sorted themselves out. I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too, Mikala. You’ve always been the best thing that came out of my marriage to your mother, ever better now. Work hard and come back to me a world-wise woman.”

I drove into London and parked at the head office of the tour company. I went in and presented myself at reception, being sent along a corridor to an office. There, I met the lady who had interviewed me, a couple of months before, when my father had brought me on a manufactured trip ‘to meet up with his relatives’.

“Welcome to Topper Travel Company, Mikala. I’ll show you around our training section. It isn’t big but will give you the basic training in being a Topper Guide.”

She showed me the classroom, the mock-up of a tourist coach, and a dining room. Then, we went to the clothing store, where I was issued with red skirts, slacks, shorts, tops in hi-vis yellow with the company logo, a couple of red dresses with wide yellow hems, and a red jacket and a red ski jacket.

“We’ll need you to be dressed in the company outfit tomorrow morning, for training, and only wear your own clothes on days off. All the hotels we use have a quick laundry service for our staff, so you should be able to keep smart on duty.”

I was then issued with a name badge with Mikala Halmi on it and she took me, now laden with garment bags, to my room.

“This is your room for a week, and then you join your first tour with an experienced guide. Normally, you would have to share, but there’s only two of you this week.”

She left me to hang the bags on a rail, and then I went down to bring my own bag up. It was one with mainly underwear and toiletries in it, as well as shoes. I had been advised of the type of shoes I would need for the job and had got my own so that they would fit properly. I had two pairs of low-heeled black ones, a pair of moderate heels in red, and a pair of winter boots. I left my case with my other clothes, and the guitar case, in the car.

I was sitting in my room, reading the paperwork I’d been given, when I heard voices in the corridor. When it went quiet, I opened the door and looked out. The next door to mine was open, so I went and peeked in. A girl, about my age, was sitting on the bed with a worried expression.

“Hello. I’m Mikala, and the two of us are the only trainees this week.”

Her face brightened.

“Hello, Mikala. I’m Belinda and I was thinking that I may have made the wrong decision, now that I’m here and committed to being a guide.”

“Don’t worry, Belinda. Between us we can get through the training and be on our way to strange places with a coach load of strangers and whip them into compliance.”

She smiled, which made her face light up.

“Keep that smile, Belinda. Whatever you’re worried about, that smile will be your shield.”

She put her things on the rail and we both went down to the dining room to meet the cook. It was simple fare, seeing that there was only the two of us. She told us that we would be joined by other guides for breakfast, who arrived early to join the coach to go and pick up travellers, and that they also served lunch for the office staff, but tonight she was on overtime to help us settle in. Other days, we would have to go and get our own meals. We were given a list with a nearby café, a couple of fast-food places, and a cheaper restaurant.

We had the meal, enough to last us until morning, and helped the cook tidy up. Afterwards we sat in the dining room to get to know each other. She, like me, had good passes in French and Italian, with conversational German. I had the first two, a smattering in the third, as well as being taught to speak Hungarian by my father, the Uralic version that was the widest spread. He had also taught me a few words in his local version, should I want to vent.

She also played guitar, but hadn’t brought one with her, as well as piano. It was a feature of Topper Tours that the guides were able to entertain the guests if the need arose, like around campfires in a snowdrift or an isolated hotel without TV. I guess that it was really considered to be a way that they could grade applicants for their personality as a campfire would never be on the itinerary.

In the morning, we dressed in the uniform and went down to breakfast, joining a couple of guides who were leaving on a ten-day tour of the French vineyards. They indicated that we should join them, and they made us laugh with stories about various tours they had been on.

After breakfast, we were in the classroom all day, being drilled in what we should do, what we could do, and what was forbidden. Later, that afternoon, we were introduced to the mock coach, and shown all the features that we should know about, like where the sick bags were and where the cleaning kit was in case the first item was late or missed.

The second day was much the same, with emphasis on the coach. We got used to speaking on the microphone, checking in all the places where a guest could leave something, taken through a mock evacuation of an overturned coach. I had to smile, as about the only thing we didn’t have to do was a pre-flight lecture on oxygen masks and wearing a lifejacket.

That evening, I rang my father.

“Hi, Daddy. How did you get on with Mum?”

“It worked as expected honey. She came off the boat with her travelling companion, the woman from the town chemist shop. They were giggling, which stopped when Henry presented her with the divorce papers and a couple of the photos. She blustered and screamed blue murder, but it finally sunk in that she had been kicked out. She started blubbering and trying to make it up, but I held firm and left her with her suitcases. It all made me wonder if we may have missed something when we cleaned her things out.”

“The old false floor in the wardrobe trick?”

“Actually, it was the false base in the vanity drawer trick. I found a lot of photos of rampant young men, as well as about ten thousand pounds worth of euros. The photos will be given to Henry, and I’ll add the money to your card. You may need extra to live on. How are you getting on?”

“Really well. There are just two of us in this induction and we get along well. We have been given an address where we can share a flat nearby for when we’re off, and we’ll go there Friday afternoon to get settled in. Belinda doesn’t have a car, so I’ll bring us back on Monday morning for our first tours. Any news on the rapist?”

“The village is buzzing with the news. I’ve had several call me to make sure that you’re all right. It will be interesting to see what tomorrows paper makes of it. I’ll email you a scan if it’s juicy.”

Daddy did send me the clippings. The first one was simple and to the point with a headline of ‘Rapist Caught!’ and a rough overview taken from the police press conference. They went down the track of the victim being a transvestite with combat training. I had to laugh as they hinted that it may have been an undercover officer.

The following day’s clipping was more interesting, with a picture of the preacher being put into the back seat of a police car, along with his other assistant. The papers’ cartoonist had drawn a cartoon of the church, with a big sign saying – ‘This House of God is Out of Service’.

My mother called me on my mobile on Thursday evening, pleading with me to follow my holy calling and also to help her recover some things for her. I told her where to put her holy calling and that the things were in the hands of her husbands’ lawyer. The conversation was cathartic to the inner Mikala, freeing us both of the maternal grasp.

On the Friday afternoon, Belinda and I put our bags in the Honda and went to our flat, with us sharing the bond deposit. It had been previously used by another couple of guides who had both got themselves married to rich Americans, who they had met on a twenty-one-day tour of Italy.

Marianne Gregory © 2026