Back on my own again, I boarded the train to London. I thought about what lay ahead of me: reuniting with my husband, Paul; catching a glimpse of my two adult stepsons, Jesse and Scott, who had just done Wimbledon with their father; visiting Grandmother and Anna Freud’s house in Hampstead–The Freud Museum; visiting my father’s ashes at Golders Green Crematorium; seeing my old grammar school–Camden School for Girls; seeing my old house at 35 Queens Grove, St. Johns Wood. What else? I wasn’t sure.
The closer the train got to London, the colder I began to feel. I wished I could just wrap the warmth from Ann’s home around me and take it with me. Instead, I opened up a little old English biscuit left over from somewhere and gnawed away at that.
It didn’t help. I was REALLY hungry. I could just feel the old undertow reeling me back towards GHOSTS…
***
I heard my husband’s card fiddling with the hotel room door. I smiled inside.
Thank God!
I jumped up and hugged my husband hard, but not amorously for his boys, Jesse and Scott, were right behind him.
The four of us were scheduled for a private visit at The Freud Museum the next morning. I had very mixed feelings about this private visit, but I had set the whole thing up. I had lots of questions. Would it still look the same? Would I feel the presence of Grandmother? Of Anna Freud? Would Sigmund Freud’s presence still be in a shrine as it was when I returned in 1971 for my father’s funeral–the memorial for him in Sigmund Freud’s study? Would I feel the ghost of my father somewhere in that house?
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