Red Dress

by Bridget Finklaire

  “I think it might set you on the right path, give you direction.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Shanti touched Katy’s arm and held her gaze, “You know I’m psychic? I pick up on things. See things other people don’t notice.”

  “Like what?”

  Shanti smiled and patted Katy’s arm. “It’s okay. I’m not judging – just being a friend! I’m here if you need me.”

  “I appreciate that, Shanti, but I’m not sure what you’re getting at?”

  “We all need friends to tell us what we don’t want to hear! Maybe it’s time to let your hair down a bit? This is my stop. Get the contract done, Katy – here’s her number.”

  Katy stared at the scrap of paper and tucked it into her handbag. It took another 30 minutes before she was home.

  “I’m thinking of getting my soul contract done,” said Katy over supper.

  “Whatever makes you happy, Kittykat.”

  Richard wasn’t interested. He was reading the paper and probably didn’t give a damn about soul contracts. “I’m happy to let you dabble in this world of make-believe,” he said. “As long as you don’t end up driving an orange VW Beetle!” He turned his paper over and chortled. “You’ll be hugging trees next!”

  Tilly rolled her heavily kohl-lined eyes and left, intent on making as much noise as possible by banging down her cup and stomping up the stairs.

  “Do you want yours done too?” asked Katy, studying Richard’s face.

  “What?” He looked up with a frown. “Go and do whatever you want, Kit, if it keeps you out of mischief,” he said, letting out a snort and returning to the sports page. Freddie grimaced and got on diligently with the business of eating the last meatball. Richard’s tone would have upset her before, triggering vague childhood recollections of being teased and humiliated, but she’d grown a thicker skin and was shifting her perspective – rising above. There was a bigger picture, so she let it go, rather than let his little dig get to her. “There’s more to life than our five senses, you know,” she said, pushing her palms against the table and standing up.

  “Yes. There’s logic and critical thinking for a start!” Richard flicked over the page, absorbing himself in an article about the best places to network in the City.

  “And sixth sense, Rich, even you follow your hunches and your gut instinct sometimes!” she said, clearing away the plates.

  “That’s different.”

  “But how?”

  “It just is.”

  “I want to know more, Rich! I want to understand energies, forces, unexplained phenomena—”

  “Yes, dear.”

  She loaded the dishwasher, secretly longing to share her fascination with the metaphysical world, wanting to discuss paraphysics, psychic channeling and miraculous healings. She filled the kettle and thought about crop circles, the Philadelphia Experiment, and the Bermuda Triangle. Nobody would be interested. “I’m going upstairs,” she said, taking a mug of chamomile tea up to the office.

  She was searching for something and the further she explored, the more challenging it became. With every step, her awareness expanded, forcing her to rethink how she saw the world. New levels of understanding were being integrated as she shifted perspective. Accepting what her former self would have condemned as nonsense, she picked up the office phone and dialed.

  “I’d like to book an appointment to have my soul contract read.”

  The lilting voice at the other end of the phone was ethereal and other-worldly.

  “Yes. Three-thirty, ninth of October is fine,” said Katy.

  “Can you email me your date of birth, the full name on your birth certificate and any names you’ve had since then. Could you get those to me this evening?”

  A soul contract, it seemed, was exactly what it said: A contract your soul had entered into before incarnating, detailing what you were here to do and what you had come to learn. It would give you an overview of your soul purpose and the dynamics of any key relationships with significant others. Katy had given Dinah relevant information for Richard, Tilly and Freddie.

  October 9th, 2008

  Dinah’s North London flat was furnished with artefacts and wooden carvings from Asia and India, offset by stark, white walls and floorboards. A joss stick sent a wisp of sweet-smelling smoke into the center of the room. Dinah’s caramel skin shone with health, her dark hair swept back into a perfect, thick, coiled plait, accentuating a classic oval face and almond-shaped, brown eyes. Her fine ankles tinkled with the sound of tiny bells on a silver chain. Deep red nail polish, perfect in its execution, adorned the toes of her dainty feet which danced lightly across the floor, the blood-like pools of crimson caught between the white of the floor and the brown of her feet. Katy had an urge to cry and stifled it. The scene reminded her of her past – pre-Richard, when she was single and living near Archway in a Bohemian flat. She missed it. It seemed so far away and out of reach, so at odds with her sleek new existence. She’d adopted the role of WASP wife and lost who she was. Out of place and out of time, she’d mislaid herself. Creativity, individualism, and playfulness were missing. She’d been swallowed up by faded-grey, classic lines and metropolitan suburbia.

  “Take a seat,” said Dinah, bringing a jug of water and two glasses from the small kitchen. Katy took a notebook and pen from her bag. From a carved Moroccan cabinet, Dinah pulled an old tape recorder and a blank cassette. Katy stared in disbelief at the antiquated machine. Slipping the cassette into the player, Dinah pressed two of the chunky buttons and it began to hum. “Soul Contract Reading. Katy Stone. Ninth of October two thousand and eight.” The session was recorded but the cassette was never to be heard. There was nothing Katy owned on which to play it.

  “These are the Moses Codes,” said Dinah, showing Katy a sheet of paper with strange symbols. “They’re derived from your date of birth and your birth name. You also have what we call an ‘overlay’ name. When you married Richard, you changed your name to Katherine Alison Stone and that brought in a whole new vibration and path.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Katy.

  “That’s what I’ll be explaining over the next couple of hours. See this diagram? It’s like a Star of David, or two intersecting triangles. The upward pointing triangle is your physical life, the downward is your spiritual life. The center point is your ultimate soul-purpose. Think of it as a destination. You’ve got to work through the other six points first.”

  “Oh,” said Katy, scribbling furiously in the notepad.

  “I’ll show you the karmic debts, the obstacles, the challenges, the opportunities, and we’ll also talk about the implications of your name change to Stone, as well as the relationship dynamics with Richard, Matilda and Frederick.”

  Katy became engrossed in the symbols, signs and meanings which were based on numerology – the numbers in her date of birth and the numerical value of the letters in her name, with A being one, B two and so on up to I which was nine, then J which started back at one.

  “Nine is a very special number. There are only two letters of the alphabet which represent nine: I and R. Everyone wants nines! That’s why Danii Minogue added that extra I to her name! I don’t think you realize the importance of it! You’ve got six nines in total in your name and your birth date adds up to nine. Nine is unique, mathematically speaking – multiples of it, added together, always come to nine.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well. Two nines are eighteen. Add the one and eight of eighteen together and you get nine. But it carries on like that. Let’s take a random number.”

  “Thirty-six,” said Katy.

  Dinah scribbled down some calculations. “Thirty-six times nine is three hundred and twenty-four. Add together three, two and four and you get?”

  “Nine!”

  “It’s the last of the single digit figures. Ten has two digits, so nine is the completion of things. It’s a highly spiritual number and happens to be your life path. You’re here for hi
gh level spiritual work and it’s probably your last incarnation. By the way, your chart shows you’re very psychic.”

  Katy was reeling with disbelief. Could this be true, or did she say this sort of thing to everyone? She couldn’t take it in, wasn’t it just pie in the sky? Put it down to experience, she told herself, we live and learn.

  “You okay? Do you need a break?” Dinah halted recording with a clunk, resuming after a short while and taking a fresh sheet of symbols from her folder.

  “When you married Richard,” she said, “you changed your surname, and that brought in a whole new vibrational overlay. I can see how it must have catapulted you into motherhood and domesticity at such a rate that you barely had time to consider.” Katy stopped writing and stared at Dinah. “It would have forced you to become family-oriented and shift your values,” she continued. Katy opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated, letting Dinah carry on. “It also doubled your workload and stress! See?” she said, pointing to a pair of squiggles. “It’s a karmic knot.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There must have been karma from a past life for you to work through, a life-lesson if you like?”

  “What sort of lesson?”

  “I can’t tell, but it has a ‘doubling’ effect. You’ll have ended up doing twice as much as you did before.”

  “And getting horribly busy?” asked Katy, watching carefully for a reaction.

  “Yes. You probably feel overstretched.”

  “That’s exactly how I feel! Overwhelmed!” she said, focusing fully on Dinah now and wondering how she could possibly have known any of this. “I look after everyone – Richard, the kids, the house – not to mention my clients. I do my best, but the responsibility weighs me down. I can’t break free of the mounting workload!”

  “You feel trapped? Suffocated?”

  She’d nailed it precisely. “It feels like it’s all caving in!”

  “Yes. I see that in the charts. You’re so busy, you don’t know who you are anymore.”

  Katy edged forward, leaning in towards Dinah. “Carry on!”

  “Let’s get to the point of it all, your soul purpose, which is at the center. I think you’ll like it! See this?” She was pointing at a symbol. “It means you were born to talk!”

  Katy tipped back her head, laughing. “Everyone’s been telling me that for years! Even on my old school reports it used to say, ‘Katherine talks too much’. I was always getting into trouble!”

  A hundred and fifty pounds and a whole afternoon for something she already knew! Suddenly, she became aware of a life-long struggle between the desire to talk and the need to keep herself in check and be quiet. A counsellor needed good listening skills, but she’d opted for approaches that involved speaking to her clients: Hypnotherapy, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, NLP.

  “It’s not just about talking, Katy, it’s about speaking!”

  Katy came from a boisterous family, most of them older than her, and all very chatty. They would talk in unison, each hoping to be heard above the din of the others. Her mother spoke the loudest, slicing through them all like a Spanish Galleon in full sail. Only her father was able to usurp her position. Katy’s tactic was to gabble quickly, in the hope of fitting in what she wanted to say between everyone else’s chirping. She’d always felt that nobody was listening anyway. They were thinking about themselves and the importance of their own contribution. Speaking? Who was going to listen to her?

  “Public speaking,” said Dinah, leaning forward and raising her voice slightly to get Katy’s attention. “You’re going to be talking to big audiences. Teaching them.”

  Katy stared at Dinah, her mouth slightly open, her eyebrows raised. What on earth would she be telling them?

  “It’s your soul’s purpose! Speaking from a stage, leading by example, pioneering a new evolution in consciousness!” said Dinah, her voice rising with excitement, her words tumbling out.

  “What? Me?” Katy became animated, warming to the idea yet at the same time overwhelmed by it, a thrill running down her spine. The stressed mother, wife and therapist was happy to exchange roles and bask in the limelight for once, but the thought of standing on a stage in front of all those people petrified her!

  “You’ll be sharing your wisdom publicly. Remember, it’s the potential we’re looking at. You’ll have to want it, claim it, and work for it. It’s a life-time goal, but what a goal!”

  Katy suddenly felt small. There must be some mistake. The vision both thrilled and terrified her at the same time.

  “But I’m not sure – I mean – are you certain you’ve got it right?”

  Dinah laughed. “Yes! I’m sure! You’re likely to face a few challenges along the way, but that’s what the symbols are telling me loud and clear, and they don’t lie!” Her face grew more serious. “The only thing is, you’re going to have to change your name.”

  “What?”

  “You definitely can’t do it with your present name.”

  Katy’s bubble burst, her shoulders visibly slumping. “But I can’t do that!”

  “I used to be Diane but I tweaked my name to shift the vibration. It was a game-changer. It’s all been unfolding beautifully since then.”

  “I’d feel like a fraud.”

  “Have a think about it. Tree used to be called Simon. He’s my mentor and heads up the UK. Went out to California to study, changed his name and his whole life turned around! I promise you! It’s magic!”

  Katy suppressed the urge to laugh and blurt out something sarcastic. She could hear her cynical self, mocking in Richard’s tone. What sort of person calls themselves Tree? It’s not even a proper name. She can’t be serious.

  “But I don’t want to change my name. There’s no way I could be called Cloud or Kali or whatever, it would be ridiculous! I’m Katy or Katherine. Even Kittykat drives me nuts!”

  “You could change your surname? Think about it. I’m sure you’ll find a way,” said Dinah, sipping at her water. “And it would be a pity not to fulfil your role ... otherwise you’ll have to come back again.”

  “For another reading?”

  “No. For another incarnation.”

  Sitting on the train home, Katy kept going over the session in her mind. She looked at her notes and the charts that Dinah had given her and wondered how she was going to listen to that cassette! It was easier to think about something small and technical than to contemplate the bigger picture. She reflected on how marrying Richard and taking his name had thrown her into domestic chaos and overwhelm. She pondered the significance of the number nine. Her lucky number was three, she remembered, and three threes were nine! The train lurched into Turnham Green. The sun emerged from a tiny hole in the dense, drizzling cloud and cast a brief rainbow over the grey. What was she going to give them for supper? They’d be hungry.

  Katy’s evening meditation extended to almost two hours. It was the thoughts – they wouldn’t stop: the unwelcome suggestion of changing her name, and the concern that she’d wasted her money on an elaborate ruse. Behind that was the worry that the reading might be true, and that she might not be able to fulfil her soul purpose. What if she wasn’t up to it? Then there were the doubts about the purpose itself. What if Dinah was mistaken? Toying with the idea of linking her name with Richard’s, she muttered them aloud, as if trying them on for size. “Katherine Fralinski-Stone,” then “Stone-Fralinski.” No, it sounded like a firm of accountants. She sheepishly whispered out into the night. “God? Are you there? Can you hear me? Do you exist?”

  What the hell would people think? What would Richard say? It had gotten out of hand and gone too far now! The therapist within pronounced it a fantasy, an escape from the stresses of reality.

  Breath. Hara. Focus, for fudge sake!

  The thoughts cranked up again. It had been fun, this spiritual odyssey. It had injected some excitement into her life, and for a while she’d thought she knew who she was, thought she belonged. Well it was time to stop! It had run i
ts course.

  Breath. Watch the breath and focus on the Hara.

  A minute or two of silence, then a distant, gentle Voice. Was it inside her head, or just above and behind?

  “This Stone isn’t rolling, it’s gathering moss.”

  If she remained a Stone, she’d be anchored where she was. To continue along the course she’d set, she’d have to change her name. Straining towards the soft Voice, she breathed, “Give me a name I can live with that fits the bill. I don’t want to sound phony or be humiliated.” Sitting motionless, hardly daring to breathe, she waited. Nothing came. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be, she thought, with a sigh of relief.

  An uneventful weekend passed and still there was no inspiration. By Monday morning, she’d given up. On Monday evening, as she flicked through her emails, she noticed a message from Dinah:

  I’ve got good news! Called Tree on Friday after our session. Knew you wouldn’t mind! Sent him the charts and he says your maiden name is perfect! Go with that. At least it won’t be too much of a change for you! Om Shanti, Dinah x

  Katy’s heart was racing. Her answer had come, and it was real! A name that she could live with that fulfilled the criteria. Should she call a halt now or plunge headlong into it? Do or die? Fralinski was reminiscent of the care-free boho girl she desperately wanted to revive. It could work, but she’d have to float it past Richard first. Her insides knotted and her mouth went dry. It would be okay, she told herself, he loved her, didn’t he? She’d been Fralinski when they met and at least it wasn’t a total name change! She sighed with relief, then froze at the next thought: Telling him wasn’t going to be easy. She’d have to choose her moment, and she’d better get her argument straight.

  Freddie and Tilly were out the following Friday, and Katy seized her opportunity. “Fancy a glass of decent red?” she asked. A bottle of Brunello and two expensive glasses sat on the granite counter.

  “What are you up to? Not another one of your expensive courses?”

  She poured the dark liquid, her hand steady so as not to disturb the sediment.