Looking back, I can see that I was happy enough. I had reached the age of 30, I had enjoyed a career which had allowed me to make a good living, cash in on the eighties property boom and go on to have four wonderful children.

But then I started to feel drawn to a deeper meaning. I joined a local church and, one Sunday in early De cember, as I listened to a reading about Gabriel's visit to Mary, I found myself overwhelmed with tears. I was hearing the same words I had heard, in some form, for years yet now, I was touched by them very deeply.
At the same time, I was drawing pictures of Angels, writing poems about Angels, even making little patchwork Angels that I sold in a local craft shop. The church hosted a reular soup-kitchen for the town's homeless, and I told my husband that I wanted to volunteer for one evening each week. He was, however, very much against the idea, telling me that if I put my name down he would make sure he was home late so that I was unable to go. We had no extra money for baby-sitters and, for the sake of harmony, I agreed to give up the idea.

I was able to join a local meditation group which took place once a month. I was starting to have psychic experiences, I was teaching myself Astrology, and found myself reading what were then described as "New Age" books. It felt that I was changing inside myself in a way I could not explain. My husband, however, was also changing. We were growing apart; he was becoming depressed and ill, with one chest infection after another. He did not enjoy his work, which bound him to a desk, though his true desire was to be a musician.

"Go to college," I told him. "I'll go out to work." I wasn't sure what I would do, but I had been successful before, and there was no reason not to do it again.
Around that time he was invited to form a band and so, for a while, his black moods lifted. They were all talented musicians and, whatever our marital difficulties were, when I watched them play I felt a tingling in my whole body. They were born to play, their music lifted their own spirits as well as those of the audience.

As part of the normal band-forming process, one Sunday morning we found ourselves out in the Kent countryside, taking "Band photos." I had my SLR, the guitarist's girl-friend had hers, and we snapped away, trying to catch the essence of the group. It was that day that I met, for the first time, David, who sang with them. We walked together, chatting easily as if we had known each other for many years. He came back to eat with us in the evening, but I suddenly felt uncomfortable. He seemed to have noticed, or maybe he had heard, that things were not quite as they should be in my home, and some of his comments made me realise how vulnerable my marriage was. I had dreamed of growing old in that marriage, and wanted to do what I could to save it. I asked Rob to go to the doctor, imagining that he would be referred for counselling, and stunned to see him come home with a bottle of anti-depressants. With them, life became bearable, however, so that when he announced his intention to stop taking them, I was filled with dread. Rows resumed. Realising that I needed to work on myself, I resolved to meditate every day, feeling that deepening my inner sense of peace would somehow transform life for the better.

With a houseful of children, one of whom still slept in a cot in our bedroom, my meditation needed to be done in the dining room of our little terraced house. One evening, I sat in the corner, trying to begin my meditation ritual, when Rob opened the living room door and walked through to the kitchen, doors creaking, TV blaring in the front room where he was watching a football match, and back, across the floorboards, leaving the door open and shattering my peace completely. I opened my eyes and walked through to the front room.

"I was trying to meditate!"
"And I am trying to watch the football." He didn't move his eyes from the screen.

Sighing, I returned to my seat. In the next ad' break he came through again. There was a row brewing. At the end of it I plonked myself on the sofa, giving up on all thoughts of meditation for the day, when Rob came charging through, shouting very loud and, to my profound shock, he kicked me. I had never experienced violence before, but this heralded the beginning of a phase, often accompanied by drinking. One night, under the influence of alcohol, every time I fell asleep, he hit me in the back to wake me. Looking on the bright side, I lay in bed and giggled when he kept going to the bathroom to vomit; his shouting had woken our youngest daughter who, bizarrely, upon hearing him being sick, copied the sound in the darkness. Maybe I was in shock.

The next day I went to town and bumped into David. We chatted for a few moments and I felt intense relief. There was something about him that made me feel very safe.

From there. I went window shopping,anything to take my mind off the situation at home, and bumped into the woman who ran the meditation group.
"You look terrible; what's happened?" I quickly explained that Rob and I had been rowing. "Your aura is in tatters," she told me. "Don't worry, Angels are with you." In that moment, I knew that they were. The moment I acknowledged them I felt protected, similar to the sense of protection I felt with David, but deeper and more profound.