I’d been awake all night after something had happened to deeply disturb me, as if an iron fist in a velvet glove had delivered a powerful blow to body, mind and soul. I was not so much in tears as torment until the very early hours, whereupon I exhausted myself and peace set in. I lay in bed staring out of the window at the shadowy treetops against the inky sky.

A split second later my attention snapped to a hallucinatory vision of a small white cat walking with it’s tail in the air, for all the world a strange distraction. In the next split second I was back in my bedroom, still lying in the same position, with my eyes wide open. I could see the wall beneath the window ledge as if it were light.

Before I had chance to look around I felt something brush over my face, as if someone was passing a cloth of light over it, wiping my face clean. It felt almost like fabric and had substance in the sense that I could feel it, but it was lighter than light and softer than petals. It felt as if the hem of an angel’s robe had touched me.

My eyes were closed while that happened and when it passed I opened them again, onto a  sky beyond the window that was dazzling, azure blue, like a Summer’s afternoon. Sitting in the tree directly opposite my room was a huge Sea Eagle.