Ghost Whisperer

FOUR

By ten o'clock the next morning, Robbie had expected his dream to have faded from his mind. However, if possible, it had done the complete opposite. Since waking up in a pool of cold sweat, fearing what had happened, Robbie couldn't think of anything else and the more he thought about what had happened, the more Mark's words seemed to loop around in his head.

...when you wake up tomorrow, come to my grave at midday...
...I promise you, this is real...
...this is real...this is real... this is real...

Those three words kept on resounding in Robbie's head and, no matter how hard he tried, he just could not get Mark's voice out of his head. For an entire twelve months, Robbie had wanted to hear nothing else than the sound of his best friend talking to him again; but now, he just wished he would leave him along.

When he had turned on the laptop first thing that morning, Robbie found he had three new emails all from the rest of the lads back at the studio. Each of them said almost the same thing: Are you OK? As Robbie looked back now at what had happened at the studio, he could see the scared looks of Gary, Howard and Jason as he shouted at the top of his lungs at something they couldn't see – that he refused to see. He felt bad for scaring them like he had, but he had been terrified himself. Had they been in the position that he had been in back then – and even now – then he was almost certain that they would have acted in a similar way.

After having read the emails the lads had sent him and replied to all of them saying that he was fine, Robbie couldn't help but scroll through his old emails. Most of them were from the record label and a few of his friends outside the band. But as he continued to look through his old emails, there was one that eventually caught his eye. It was the last email Mark had ever sent to him, sent in 2011 just after the tour had finished and Robbie had gone back to LA.

He hovered the mouse over the email and toyed with the idea of reopening it or not. It had been almost three years now since he had opened it. Back then, none of them could have known what would happen in the months ahead. This was at a time when things seemed like they could only get better and Robbie wished, more than anything else, that they had.

A familiar sounding double-click brought him out of his thoughts and Robbie found that he had, subconsciously, opened Mark's email and now sat staring at the last words Mark had typed to him.

Hi Rob!

Just emailing to see if you're all right and I just want to say thanks again for coming back. The tour was amazing and I don't think I've felt this happy in years.

Hope you and Ayda are OK on the other side of the world. Things are constantly on the up for me and Emma and the kids are happy, which is always good.

Anyway, can't wait to see you again, mate. Have fun and good luck with whatever you do next. Not sure what I'm going to do yet, although painting sounds like a good idea to me. Though, I'm not so sure Emma's going to like that much, but we'll have to see what happens. Maybe I could just sit in the studio and make a load of noise.

Right, better go now, Elwood keeps calling me to play football with him.

See you soon, I hope.

Love Mark.

Robbie stared at the email for ages, just rereading it over and over, hearing Mark's voice in his head. He sounded happy, full of life, with no knowledge of what would happen. Back then, they were just enjoying themselves, making the most of their time out of work. It was sad to think that everything had turned upside down so quickly.

As Robbie read, a tear slipped down his face. He hung his head, looking away from the screen in front of him. He was so caught up in his own memories – the memories of the calm before the storm – that he didn't noticed when Ayda walked into the room, looking at her husband with sad eyes.