Chapter Fourteen - part 2

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William sat in one of the armchairs, about four feet away from the sofa. “Now close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing. Focus on pulling the air deep into your lungs. I want you to relax your body. Let yourself float. Release the tension in every limb. Start with your toes and work upwards, relaxing every single muscle.”

She listened to his soft, slow voice and concentrated on her feet, visualising them floating. Her attention moved to her legs, her arms and her torso, feeling the weight lifting as William continued his soothing litany of words. After a few minutes she’d lost all sense of time, seeming to float in a void of nothingness.

“Now, imagine yourself in a garden. You’re lying on the soft grass and you can hear the birds singing in the trees. Above you, the sky is blue and you are visualising pictures in the fluffy white clouds.”

Although Liz knew she was still lying on the sofa, somehow she could also picture the garden in her mind, only it wasn’t just any garden. She lay on Pemberley’s south side lawn where the grass stretched down to the lake. Wood pigeons and doves cooed from the branches of the Spanish chestnuts. Somewhere a honeybee buzzed lazily around the daisies growing in the grass.

William sounded as though he was calling to her from a distance. “Now, imagine you are flying, hovering suspended in the air. I’m going to count down from ten and as I count you will move backwards in time to the point when you last knew me. In front of you is your past. I want you to move towards it. Ten…nine…eight…”

As William continued to count Liz felt herself moving forward. The cold whistled past her cheeks as the clouds melted. She didn’t look down, just kept her attention on the horizon.

“…three…two…one. You are no longer moving. You’re on solid ground now. What can you see?”

Rough mud walls stood inches from her face. Turning around she found men in uniform on either side of her. They laughed and talked, their mute voices reminding her of a silent movie. At that moment, Liz understood who and what she was, as though someone had slotted the information into her brain, like a video tape. “I’m in the trenches. It’s the Somme,” she whispered.

“What year?”

“Nineteen sixteen. The beginning of July.”

“What’s your name?”

The answer came unbidden to her lips. “Johnny. Johnny Greeves. Private, 359722, Second Lincolnshire regiment. We’re just about to go over the top. I’m scared.” Her reflection in the bayonet caught Liz’s attention. She saw a distorted image of a young man in khaki with short black hair and a thin moustache. Studying her companions in the trench, Liz gasped as she recognised the soldier leaning against the wall next to her. “You! Oh God, you’re there as well.” She watched as William passed Johnny a cigarette before rolling another for himself. “You haven’t changed at all. We’re…we’re friends. You took me under your wing when I first arrived in France, looking after me. You’re talking to me but I can’t hear what you’re saying. I think you’re giving me advice for the upcoming battle, telling me to stay behind you.”

The image in Liz’s head changed. Now they were crossing no man’s land and she could feel the debilitating fear as they ran across the pock-marked sea of mud and grass. William went ahead, his arm held in front of her like a shield. It didn’t work. The bullets from the machine gun emplacements beyond the enemy’s lines ripped across her stomach, leaving a scorching trail of fire behind. She fell to her knees, just one stalk of wheat among many, scythed to the ground, the pain unbearable.

Liz lay in the mud, her eyes unfocussed as her blood soaked into the French soil. The battle continued as her comrades fell around her. They’d all known it for a lost cause.

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