Chapter 53 - Memories

Lily turned to the mirror, looked at her bare back and a row of decorative buttons on the hem of the fabric. She put her hand moaning on her forehead and secretly cursed women's fashion.

Frustrated, she searched in the closets for other day dresses that she could try on alone. But every dress had the same problem. Button plackets on the back! With a zipper she might be able to close it somehow. But button plackets?

Heaven, she needed more than just to twist her body, she needed two hands to grow on her back to cope with this. She hated those button plackets. It was too cumbersome. You could not even change clothes yourself.

But women of the upper class frowned upon zippers. Only women of the working class or below took advantage of this dashing invention, because the dressing was accelerated and was no longer so cumbersome.

Since Lily belonged to the upper class again, there was no dress with a zipper in her dressing room, she was sure of that. All the dresses that Lily was allowed to wear were awkward and a little uncomfortable, but very chic. Just as the fashion of the high snobiety pretended.

Lily shook her head and sat down on the floor. Somehow desperately.

It remembered her of the time when two worlds collided in her head. It was in the period when she was only five years old. But it was not like Lily got hit on the head and suddenly remembered her past life. No! She gradually remembered. Bit by bit. Throughout her life she had always the feeling that she was living in a déjà vu.

Things and people have always had this vague taste. Everything became clearer at the moment she first met Pascal. Pascal was visiting her grandparents with his grandfather, and her grandfather introduced Pascal Drouet, who was only eight at the time, as her future fiancée.

Their grandfathers had long wanted a connection between the two families. Both of them were longtime friends, who knew each other from childhood and up to now maintained their friendship and wanted to deepen it with a marriage between the families. At first this wish remained unfulfilled, since in both families only girls were born. But then Pascal and Lily came into the world. For the two men it was as if an intimate wish was finally fulfilled.

It had not bothered Lily at first. She had only that vague feeling near Pascal, but they were no more than two children, two faithful playmates. Because Lily could not solve the mystery behind the déjà vu moment.

The second clue that brought her closer to her memories was her father. It was a few months after Lily met Pascal for the first time. Then her father Raymond Lindet introduced her to his new wife, Ivonne and his two-year-old daughter Nadine. Again, Lily had that feeling. This vagueness of knowing something.

Memories joined these feelings over time, like little pieces of the puzzle that Lily slowly put together into a whole picture.

The memories became clearer and clearer, the more she remembered. Knowledge that she shouldn't have collapsed over her. Knowledge that helped her in school. Made her to one of those prodigy children.

She often dreamed of strange devices and machines that did not exist in this world. As a child, she never dared to speak out of fear of being portrayed as mentally unstable. The other children looked at her that way anyway. She did not know what was wrong with her for a long time.

But then she remembered the crucial pieces of the puzzle. Finally, she got clarity and completely remembered another life. Every detail in someone else's life that was completely foreign to her, but very familiar at the same time. It was almost as if two people in Lily were merging into one. Not only did Lily get her memories, but also her knowledge and skills, as if she had learned all that.

The girl first had this feeling of euphoria finally solved the vague mystery that occupied her for many years.

But this did not last long.