A weird dream

Last night I had the most vivid dream about Louise, my friend who died six weeks ago. I was walking down a road and suddenly there she was, coming towards me. "Yes, it is me," she said. The only difference was that her hair, instead of being long with grey streaks, had a reddish tinge. I asked if she were a ghost and she took hold of my hand. She felt warm, solid and real. She told me she had to come back to finish all the books she had started. She said she couldn't go back to her house in Cornwall as it would upset her husband too much, so I said she could stay with me.

She told me she didn't need to eat or drink, but she had the ability to make herself invisible at will. We embraced, but I didn't feel the emotional warmth that usually came from her. Her voice was the same, her looks, her witty remarks, but it wasn't quite her. I asked what sort of form she was in and she explained that she was a 'simulacrum'.

The next step was to arrange a meeting with her literary agent, who, having told all her publishers that she was dead, would have a difficult job persuading them that she was still writing books! We met near his office at Tower Bridge and he tried hard to hide his amazement. In the end, we decided to say she was a close relative, a first cousin, who had inherited the story-writing gene, and was going to take up where Louise left off.

I asked her if she could still sing and asked her to sing one of her favourite songs. I was testing her, to see if she still retained the living Louise's memories, and she did indeed sing one of her favourites, a sea song called The Last Leviathan, a tragic tale of the very last whale. She said we could still make that CD together and I awoke feeling very happy.

Wonder if I'll meet her today???