Page 61 of The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
OM:How did you get his number? [You must shake your head to this, EC] Why not?
AB:Someone risked something to give it to me.
OM:Why did they giveyouhis number? Sensitive info that couldbackfire on them. No one ever gives me leads like that. People suck.
AB:Different reasons. Some believe things need to be exposed. In this case, someone I spoke to trusted me and wanted to help. It’s not a perfect science. I’ve been desperately trying to get information out of someone else for this project. They just aren’t playing ball.
OM:Welcome to my world.
AB:It can be luck too. There’s a connection with some people. You must find that. We all do.
OM:Never happens to me.
AB:Maybe there’s something fundamentally untrustworthy about you.
OM:I don’t think so. Anyway, how can someone who barely knows you – or me – make a judgement either way?
AB:The invisible connections between us.
OM:Thewhat?
AB:You know, people who study psychology, or who train to be counsellors, that kind of thing. At their first class, the tutor says: ‘Everyone walk around the room and find someone else to pair up with.’ They do, and the tutor asks them to sit down with that person and each talk about their family life and upbringing. The students find they’ve – apparently randomly – picked someone whose parents divorced, just like theirs did, whose father died when they were young, whose family life was disrupted by constant moving. Or something as simple as two people who were born in the same place in the order of siblings, or are both only children.
OM:In other words, normal coincidences that mean nothing.
AB:We’re drawn to people with similar life experiences. There’s an unseen level of communication that draws us to those whose emotional development is similar, or complementary, to our own. [I’ve done this and remember telling you about it! EC]
OM:Can’t see it myself …
AB:We can’t see or hear it, much less control it, but it’s there and it governs who we are drawn to or repulsed by. Cult leaders– influential, charismatic people – have an aura that attracts those who are insecure and vulnerable. A perfect psychological storm. [That’s fascinating. EC]
OM:People join cults because they’re weak and stupid. What does that have to do with bods giving you information and not me?
AB:I have more life experience than you, and it means Iconnectwith more people than you do.
OM:Doesn’t explain why anyone gave you Jonah’s number.
AB:They gave meanumber. I don’t know whether you give up your mobile phone when you go into a monastery, but the number Jonah had in 2011 is now with someone else who, when I called it, told me where its original owner is living now. And it’s right over there.
OM:Where?
AB:That stone building beyond the trees.
OM:Hey, you can see it from the water?
AB:We’re the only passengers still here. Better get back to the car – I’ll drive.
OM:I want my hundred and fifty quid’s worth of delight out of this plastic chair and sticky carpet.
[You stop the recording here. Why are you recording all this? EC]
File 2
[Crunch, crunch, crunch. Walking on gravel? EC]
AB:All we know for sure is that he was in foster care. At some point in his mid-teens he joined the Alperton Angels. He was rescued from The Assembly, then disappeared back into the care system.
OM:Not for long, presumably. Being seventeen when it happened.
