First-time novelist and Huffington Post blogger, Hattie Holden Edmonds tells us about an experience that made her question whether those uncanny coincidences in life might just be little miracles. A topic which she was inspired to explore further in her first novel, Cinema Lumiere.
"That first fizz of inspiration can come from anywhere, but for me there are several technicolour moments, that seem to be spotlighted in the run up to writing Cinema Lumière. One of the most extraordinary incidents took place over ten years ago, but even now, whenever I think about it, I feel a skitter of goosebumps across my skin...
‘Did that really just happen?’ I asked my friend Angelika as we sat on the bus, heading towards Kings Cross. We were both staring at each other, trying to find a rational explanation for something utterly irrational that had just happened.
Earlier that afternoon, Angelika and I, had been to the Tate Modern, to help take my mind, if only for an afternoon, off the recent death of my father from a stroke. Angelika had also lost a family member that year so perhaps naturally, our conversation as we’d stepped on the bus, turned to the possibility of life after death. Neither of us had very strong opinions on the subject and neither of us are religious.
We were the last passengers to board the bus and were sitting at the front on the ground floor, just by the luggage racks. As we rumbled off, we continued the conversation, but seconds later, without the bus having had a chance to stop again and let any other passengers on, we noticed an old man standing to our left, by the driver’s booth. He was dressed in an oddly old-fashioned three-piece suit made from Harris tweed. I knew this because my Dad had a thing about Harris tweed suits and as a child I loved going with him to his tailors.
"There's a part of me that believes that it was nothing less than a little miracle."
So it was the suit that I clocked first. Then I noticed that there was something sticking out of the man’s top jacket pocket, which I can only describe as an out-sized calling card. Short-sighted as I am, I could still make out what it said because the writing was in such bold print.
“Death is not the end, it is just the beginning.”
‘That is so bizarre,’ said Angelika, in answer to my initial question. But she wasn’t looking at me anymore.
I followed her gaze to where the man had been standing – but now there was only an empty space next to the driver’s booth. We scanned the rest of the ground floor but he wasn’t there either. The bus hadn’t stopped in the short distance since we first noticed him, so presumably he’d gone up to the top deck, although he must have been pretty nifty on his feet. I scooted upstairs to check, but he wasn’t there either.
Even though it took place over seven years ago, that afternoon has stuck in my mind with technicolour clarity. I’m still undecided about what exactly happened. Part of me wants to dismiss the encounter as simply a coincidence. And yet there’s another part of me, a part which lies a little deeper, that believes that the man who got on the bus with precisely the answer to mine and Angelika’s question poking out of his top pocket, was nothing less than a little miracle.
Have you ever experienced something similarly inexplicable? If so, I’d love to hear about it and how you chose to see it.
Hattie can be found spending most of her time writing, while running a ramshackle cinema in a fisherman's hut in Whitstable, and teaching meditation at a palliative care unit in Ladbroke Grove.
Her first novel, Cinema Lumiere, the story of a mysterious picture-house with only one seat, is out now. You can purchase a copy on Amazon.
