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‘It is God – it is!’

And so it went on. I wouldn’t back down, so I kept being smacked by the nuns.

One day, God said to me: ‘Don’t worry. It only hurts for a little while. One day, you’ll be able to teach them.’ At this time I only understood this as the possibility of happy vengeance: I would be the nuns’ teacher so I could smack them back, just like a child. Yet God was teaching me already, in his own subtle way. Every Sunday in church I remember him whispering in my ear, translating the Latin sermon and explaining its meaning in a language that a five-year-old could understand.

Just as God was my spiritual mentor, he was also my superhero. He held my hand as we crossed the road, and once he jerked me back to the safety of the pavement when I ran ahead towards oncoming traffic. There were so many little instances when I physically felt his hands around me, stopping me hurting myself. I can’t remember them all, just as I cannot remember everything my mother did, day in and day out, to protect me as a child. But what I will always remember – and still feel to this day – is having my hand held throughout every step of my life.

When I communicated with my spirit friends as a child, I had no real understanding of death. I didn’t really think about the previous lives that my spirit friends had lived. And I didn’t think that they had experienced physical death. I simply accepted them as they were. I do remember asking some of them where they were from, and sometimes I would be shown a picture. In one instance I was shown the image of an old house. I didn’t understand that this particular spirit had physically lived there – instead I assumed that as I didn’t recognise it, it meant that they didn’t come from Birmingham, or at least our street in Birmingham.

After my mother asked me not to talk to others about my friends, I rationalised to myself my contact with them by saying, ‘Well, you’re not really dead, are you?’ I simply accepted my friends as they were. The idea of death didn’t fascinate me, or worry me – until my uncle died.

Uncle Charlie wasn’t a blood relative, but a family friend. I remember my spirit friends telling me after his wedding that he wasn’t going to have any children. I tried to tell people this, but they took no notice of me. Sadly, he committed suicide. Afterwards, I remember going to his house, where he took his life, to see if he was still there. Somehow I wanted to be sure that he was comfortable. But I didn’t see him, hear him or feel him. That was a strange, empty feeling. It was at this point that I realised that adults were upset by death, so I started to think that I should be worried about it, too.

Shortly after the funeral, I met Uncle Charlie again. There was a blanket of sadness in the house. I remember that it was around Christmas time, because the fire was lit, and we were all assembled around it. All my family were there, and Uncle Charlie’s mother and other members of his family too. I looked over to a chair in the living room and saw him sitting there, just as he’d done when he was physically alive.

‘Can I sit on your lap? I asked, and he replied that this was fine. So I went over to the chair. But I couldn’t feel him at all, as if there was no lap to sit on.

‘I can’t feel you,’ I said.

‘Yes, but you can see me. You just tell them I’m all right.’