Operation Soulmate Read online

  Geraldine loved her work. It was so obvious to her when other people were about to make the biggest mistakes of their lives, throwing good love after bad, and it was so satisfying to be able to stop them. If only she could see her own life that clearly, maybe even take some of her own advice every now and again, she'd probably spend a lot less time adjusting her face in mirrors.

  Just before she left, Sarah turned to look at her again and said, “You don’t think I’m silly do you?”

  “Absolutely not” she said, with complete honesty. “It’s confusing sometimes, this love thing, don’t you think?”

  She nodded and smiled. “Thank you Geraldine,” She said, as she made her way back to the reception desk, smiling peacefully and glowing with healing energy.

  The rest of the day continued like this, with noticeably similar issues arising throughout. It always amazed Geraldine how the days would sometimes run in themes, with one client after another asking about the same issue. The theme for today’s readings was definitely, “Don’t leave your husband for a younger, spoilt brat; it's going to end in tears.”

  The last woman to leave, at the end of the day had actually said “You probably get loads of people in my situation, though, I bet.”

  “Not really...a few....it happens...” said Geraldine quite honestly, knowing that tomorrow would be a whole other story with a brand new theme and that, relatively speaking, eight wasn’t an awful lot. She never really knew how to answer that question without causing offence. She’d either be saying “Yes, I meet hundreds of people every day with your exact same boring old, common-place problem and they’re alright, so just pull yourself together” or “No, I’ve never, ever, in my entire life, or in all my years of giving psychic readings ever come across anyone with a problem as freakishly peculiar as yours! You are a very strange person who should never darken my doorstep again!”

  She left the shop early feeling slightly more frazzled than usual, but with the trademark Angelic feeling of optimism and all-encompassing love all around her. Leaving early meant, of course, having to face the rush hour for the second time that day, but after such an intense nine hours, she was ready to brave anything to get home as quickly as possible.

  On the tube, people stared at her for no apparent reason, perhaps somehow sensing the strange and endlessly loving vibration of the Angel realm that was now following her around like a soft, pastel-coloured, candy-floss cloud: sweet, forgiving and capable of taking away the woes and worries of the world in seconds. Geraldine squirmed uncomfortably, as far too many people tried to cram themselves into the small space around her when there were plenty of other places to stand. She really was going to have to make more of an effort to close down properly after a day of readings. She closed her eyes and tried to visualise white light all around her, and the decisive, sequential closing of each of her chakras. But she just felt odd, standing with her eyes closed, and eventually just gave up and tried to look deeply engrossed in a copy of The Evening Standard instead. What the heck. In theory, the energy wasn't coming from her, it was coming through her, and anyway, tomorrow, she had the whole day off to recover!

  Chapter 2

  Ben was putting glasses away when she slumped down on a kitchen chair, her big-bag exploding with the usual collection of, mostly unnecessary, items: Her Angel cards, (okay, helpful) a purse that was way too big, a couple of books - one on Edgar Cayce, one on getting and keeping the love you want, a tube of toothpaste (she couldn’t quite remember why) an extra pair of flip-flops (just in case) endless notebooks/pens/highlighters, make-up bag, throat sweets, sunglasses, an egg-timer (!) a collection of crumpled tissues, a couple of furry-looking sweets and a half-eaten piece of carrot cake wrapped half-heartedly in cling-film.

  Ben was so lovely. She was sure they were her dishes from the night before he was washing up. He smiled, as she threw her head back and let out a huge sigh. “Hard day in the third dimension dear?” he said, grinning mischievously. Geraldine shook her head incredulously and sat frozen for a while, trying to delete the more fraught images of the day’s travel, and various other questionable 3d incidents.

  “Honey, you have no idea...” she said, smiling as her unbridled stoicism mingled with her deep appreciation for Ben’s gorgeous empathy.

  Ben, Geraldine’s flat-mate of two years standing, was one of those lucky people who worked mainly from home. Being a professional life-and-relationship coach, he had the luxury of mainly having people call him for Skype or phone-coaching from all over the world, while he just sat around in his pyjamas being all upbeat and wise. However, he’d worked long and hard to be at the top of his career and was respected for his coaching and his much-talked-about books, magazine columns and T.V. and radio interviews. He was tall, fit, wildly creative, absurdly insightful, evolved, sophisticated, unreasonably good-looking (although absolutely not her type) funny, playful, stylish, kind, unbelievably generous, and blessed with the kind of deep, wide, bright and sparkly eyes that constantly hinted at a more unfathomable wit, wisdom and intelligence than anyone on planet Earth really had the right to possess.

  Of course, she wasn’t discounting him, romantically, on the basis of his colour at all. Geraldine had what most of her friends would describe as a truly international perspective when it came to men. She just didn’t see Ben in that way. She knew, however, that some day, he was going to make the right woman very, very happy.

  “Hmmm.” She said, slumping over and resting her head on the heavy wooden kitchen table “Going out there in rush hour is a complete work-out.”

  “Did you get zapped again?”

  “Yep.” She laughed quietly to herself. Sometimes she thought Ben was the only person who truly understood her. Even the other girls at work, however sensitive they were, didn’t seem to have the same issues when it came to being prey to the slightly vampiric nature of the city and some of its less contented inhabitants. Perhaps they just had better defences in place; or perhaps they just had generally more energy than her. Or maybe, just maybe, as many people had suspected and hinted at throughout her life, she, herself, was actually from another planet, and just couldn’t quite get the hang of life on Earth when it came to humans and their energies.

  Strangely enough, though, Ben was exactly the same. He could never spend too much time out and about in town without getting blasted, and although, of course, he would never describe it in exactly the same terms, they both understood each other on that point of shared experience. He dealt with it by getting away for regular breaks in the countryside, and often worked for international clients who flew him out to all kinds of exotic, sun-drenched, ocean-coloured scenes. And she handled it with salt baths, energy-clearing meditations, white light visualisations, crystals, prayers to Archangel Michael and semi-reclusiveness. London was no place for a psychic.

  It was so weird how the two of them had come to be living together. Ben had studied at UCL at around the same time as her, only, he’d studied Engineering and she had opted for English Literature, with the intention of becoming a teacher, before they'd both decided they were absolutely on the wrong courses and career paths. Then, without ever having met each other, they had both taken a leap of faith and dropped out at the same point, after their second year. Then, a little later on, despite her reservations about being totally unqualified for a real job in journalism, it had seemed somehow fated that she should take the job on an international, glossy women's magazine, when the opportunity arose through a series of timely feature submissions, chance encounters and co-incidences. It had seemed particularly significant in light of the fact that she had just wasted several years in a soul-destroying relationship with an absurdly controlling narcissist, while leaping through a series of unsatisfying casual jobs.

  She knew she could easily do the job. The pieces she had submitted to the magazine, on the topic of abusive relationships, had been extremely popular. To the point where she had been asked to write a regular column, and, eventually, to join the permanent writing te
am. At the time it had just seemed too good an opportunity to pass up. But it was her chance meeting with the magazine's editor, at a writing convention, which had finally convinced her that not could she do the job, but that she was also, for some reason, absolutely meant to do it! And it was after just one year of working for the magazine that she’d met Ben for the first time, when she was asked to interview him for a feature on ‘modern dating dilemmas.’

  At the time, his career was just beginning to blossom and he’d been lots of fun to interview. They'd hit it off straight away, even though she’d actually thought he was a bit full of himself. Then, A couple of years later, when she had left her job as the result of a chance meeting with Faith, while doing a feature on Fated Love and Mystical, Magical goings on in the heart of town, he came into her life again, quite unexpectedly.

  She had been working with the crew at Magic and Miracles for just a few month, and her own career as an intuitive and a spiritual writer had begun to take off in leaps and bounds, as a result. Everything seemed to be going great, until Kassandra, her previously relatively sane flatmate suddenly left for New Zealand with a boyfriend of just four months, leaving her struggling to cover the entire rent alone.

  Her life had become so hectic during that phase that there’d hardly been time for placing ads in papers and interviewing prospective candidates. So when she’d met Ben again, while giving love-readings at a celebrity, speed-dating, fund-raiser, during which, he’d confessed to being in the process of splitting up with his wife and needing to quickly find a place of his own, she’d somehow found herself interviewing him again...only this time, as a potential flat-mate! And although she’d never shared with a guy before, they’d become firm friends, and she’d quickly grown to love having him around. She often thought the two of them would have had the perfect marriage, if they'd fancied each other. Unfortunately, though, the absence of any chemistry whatsoever made it patently clear that there was to be nothing more than friendship on the cards.

  “I was going to order a take-away; what do you fancy?” he asked, kind and thoughtful as ever. Ben was always thinking of others. It was, obviously, yet another of the many reasons he was so good at his job: He really, genuinely wanted to see everyone happy. Geraldine often thought what a shame it was that there was just no spark between them when they were both so similar. Why was it that two nice people never ended up fancying each other? There always seemed to be one really kind person and one really needy, horrid person in relationships or, at least, one person who did all the giving and another who did all the taking. It was a kind of weird, co-dependent yin/yang thing. Another useless, unwritten natural law from an omnipotent universe that had not one clue about human relationships and feelings. She and Ben were too similar and too nice to ever be attracted to each other. The universe had spoken. They were both givers, and that was obviously why - in the romance stakes at least - they completely repelled each other like the positive poles of a magnet. But at least they had a friendship that seemed destined to last forever, and, for that, they were both extremely grateful.

  “Oh, you choose, hon,” She shouted back to him, on her way to indulge in a nice, hot foamy, jasmine-scented bath and some fluffy, clean pyjamas. When she eventually returned, thirty minutes later, there was an interesting-looking bottle of red wine breathing nicely on the table, two wine glasses, and a range of take-away menus. She threw her head back and laughed. For someone who made a living out of encouraging other people to be decisive, Ben Wright just had to be the most indecisive person she knew.

  “You couldn’t decide, could you?” She said, shaking her head.

  “It’s not that,” he said, “I just didn’t know what you wanted.”

  “Oh Ben, you know me, I’ll eat almost anything, I’m not even all that hungry to be honest.” Ben stared blankly at her for a few seconds, as this response failed to register as any kind of suggestion, and then shuffled through the pile of menus again.

  “Okay, we’ve got, Pizza, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Nepalese,” he shook his head and did a quick double take on this last one. The menus that came through the door were getting to be more surprising every day. Geraldine sighed. This could go on all night.

  “Okay, go on then, Indian; we haven’t had a curry for ages.”

  “Knew it!” He said, striding over to the phone and lifting it triumphantly, to reveal the menu from their favourite Indian restaurant, already pre-selected and sitting poised under it.

  “How do you do that!”

  “Ah ha! You’re not the only psychic one!”

  “Oh, really.... I thought you didn’t believe in all that.”

  “That’s when it’s you who’s psychic. When it’s me who’s being psychic, I’m a bit more open-minded.” She rolled her eyes and snorted derisively.

  “Typical man,” she said, playfully, "You have to be in charge of everything don’t you?! Have to prove yourself to be the dominant of the species in every arena.”

  Ben laughed. “Only because we are babe’,” he replied, good-naturedly.

  “Oooh, and are you willing to sign a statement to that effect? Perhaps a little something I could mail out to some of your doting, female clients.” Ben widened his eyes and shuddered slightly at the thought. Empowering women with business skills was another of his specialities. He visualised some of their happily empowered faces becoming enraged and indignant, then quickly recanted his assertion with a winning smile.

  “You know I’m only playing, Hon.” He said, grinning mischievously. “I think women outstrip us in most of the areas that really matter anyway!”

  Geraldine threw her head back and laughed. “It's okay, relax ...and ...breathe. There’s no hidden cameras here, okay? Seriously! Stop it!” they both laughed until the stressful day began to truly unravel and detach itself from Geraldine’s consciousness...

  “Anyway, I know that psychic thing is your gig. I think what you do is amazing, you know I do.” Geraldine raised her eyebrows and smiled without saying a word, refusing to let him off the hook so easily. She knew he didn’t believe in mediumship or life after death or any of the things she felt so passionately about. He probably just didn’t want to be insulting any more women at that precise moment. “...Honestly!!! Don't look at me like that! I don't think I've ever said I absolutely don't believe in it! I'd love to get some concrete proof some day, before I make my mind up... Which is in no way the same thing. And I remain hopeful that someone, somewhere is actually going to give me that proof some day, so whatever you might think of me, I’m probably the least sceptical person you know actually... Because I absolutely think it just might be possible to get that proof. I’m just waiting for it, that’s all.”

  Geraldine huffed. It was all so frustrating!! Why was it so hard to do readings for friends?! She blocked herself every time. The best people to do readings for were the ones who just turned up in the shop, fresh from the streets, the ones she didn’t know from a bar of soap. With friends she’d always be thinking, ‘Now do I know that about you because you already told me’ or ‘Is this going to seem too obvious a thing for me to say seeing as I already know x, y and z about you?’ Then, when it came to predicting stuff, it was just hopeless. Of course, she’d always want the best possible outcome for her friends so when they said ‘Is he/she the one?’ How on earth could she answer a question like that without letting her feelings get horribly involved or, worse still, being vilified in some way, either in the heat of the moment, for not telling them what they really wanted to hear, or after the event - when it all fell apart - for not telling them the truth earlier! There was just no way she could win.

  She decided to let it go. She wasn’t out to prove anything. What she did was, after all, pretty unbelievable, even to her sometimes. So she knew it was a stretch for most regular people. There were days in fact when even she had her doubts. Usually during a long break away from work when too much reality would start to creep in, or when things didn’t go particularly well in her own life and pe
ople would ask, “Well, didn’t you see it coming?” Talk about adding insult to injury. It was like saying to a doctor “Well didn’t you know you were going to die one day? How can you just let this happen?” Shit happens to everyone at some point. We all make mistakes; free will says so, and the best we can do is learn from those mistakes whatever we needed to learn about how to do it all [life] a bit better in the future. Being psychic didn’t let you off the hook from learning stuff. Some people seemed to think that mediums just landed on Earth one day, in a hermetically sealed bubble, with a magic wand and a manual comprising in-depth cataloguing of all (theirs and everyone else’s) future events, specific instructions on how to navigate them clearly and concisely, and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the whereabouts of all straying puppies, lost children and eccentric millionaires! Sometimes life was just messy.. if you did it right. It only got better when you figured that out and learned how to clean up the messes and move on quickly. All a psychic could really do was maybe help you to see the big ones coming, and show you how to clean smarter.

  Geraldine sighed as she watched Ben browsing through the menu. Lovely, lovely Ben. He was probably the only one she truly wanted to prove anything to. Deep down, she knew it would really mean something to him. She would secretly make it a personal mission to, one day, give him the proof he was waiting for.

  “So what sort of day did you have?” She asked, as he poured the first glass of wine.

  “Okay,” he said, “Wow, amazing day! Remember I told you about the woman who was waiting for a guy at work to ask her out on a date, and I told her the goal for this week was to make eye-contact with him, just that, nothing else?”

  “Oh yes, Miss Y!! Oh my God, what happened!?”

  Ben never mentioned his clients by name. It was a part of his professional code. Geraldine was just the same. People opened up to them both a lot in their sessions and, in their capacities as advisors, it was important to them that everyone who saw them should feel safe that their confidentiality was automatic and secure. And with the volume of people in the public eye who came seeking out their services, it was probably just as well. But they extended the same courtesy to all of their clients, regardless of their position in society. In their eyes, a client was a client, and as far as they both were concerned, it didn’t matter who a person was perceived to be, in the outside world, a heart was a heart, and everyone was seen through the yearnings of their heart, and not for the quality of their wardrobe. So over the years, they had built up a secret code. All men were either Mr or Master X and all women were Mrs or Miss Y. This uncomplicated system usually told them everything they needed to know, for the purpose of the conversation.