I remember Gill. She was a schoolgirl at the time, recently moved to Ellwood and introduced to me by Paul, her brother. I was ten years older than she was, yet we became close friends. My place became a second home for her. We played card-games until midnight, discussed literature, made cakes, went blackberry-picking and quite often she accompanied me and the children on walks through the Forest. And once, when she finished her A-levels, she baby-sat them for me through the long summer holiday after I returned to work. She was a tender-hearted girl, warm and full of humour, but she did not find growing up easy. I think she needed me as someone to confide in outside of her immediate family. I remember her grief and hurt, her tears and anger when her dog, Sheba, had to be re-homed. I remember how she raged against the unfairness and injustices of life ... and not just her own. When she left school and took a job as a veterinary nurse in Maidenhead, she rescued a small tabby cat that was due to be put down. She brought it to me with tears in her eyes, asked if I’d look after it until she found it a home. I lost touch with Gill after that, but for sixteen years I had that cat as a memento of her. And the cat was not the only gift Gill gave me. During her school years she told me a tale of an upturned glass encircled by letters of the alphabet that spelled out messages from the dead. She and her friends had been banned from using it but it really worked, she said. I did not believe her ... until she and I tried it for ourselves. Then the room filled with a sense of presence, of someone being there apart from the two of us, an invisible spirit who was as alive as we were. It was my first ‘intimation of immortality’... an introduction to the reality of the eternal soul. I don’t know what the experience did for Gill, but for me it was the beginning of a spiritual journey that is still continuing and has changed my whole perception of life. We never talked of it, she and I, on those few rare occasions when we met again in later years. Nor did I ever thank her. But I will, when we meet again. Though Gill may be gone from this material world, I know through my long-ago friendship with her, that somewhere her soul survives and her death is not the end. Elizabeth Mace