‘When she told me I had to let go, I felt like I’d been dumped from the afterlife’

On a family trip to Blackpool, Charlotte Cripps consults a clairvoyant, hoping to reconnect with her dead partner Alex

(Illustration by Amara May)

As I drive up Blackpool promenade with its bright lights and colourful shops, one with a sign saying “we sell fags and poppers”, I’m reassuringly reminded of what the real world looks like. Cocooned in my Notting Hill bubble, I’ve actually contemplated the need for a Range Rover (locally known as the Chelsea tractor). I shudder at the thought. What was I thinking?

Blackpool jolts me back to reality. Visiting Alex’s family in the North is going to be the break I need. It might help me tune back into my true self. As we drive past a Cinderella horse and carriage and a water slide on our right, Lola screams with joy: “Look at the water party!” I see the Pepsi Max Big One roller coaster in the near distance, and I know we are nearly at our hotel.

A wave of sadness rushes over me: Alex isn’t with us. I last visited Blackpool with him, long before I had his two children after his death, via IVF, from a batch of frozen sperm. Alex had wanted to show me his hometown, a place he proudly referred to as “shithole Britain”. Alex left Blackpool aged 16 but we often returned to see his family. And now, even without him, it’s a wonderful place – especially with the kids.

Our room overlooks Blackpool Pleasure Beach, with its high roller-coaster tracks and metal horses that whizz past. The sound of screams melts into the air as we text Alex’s mum to say we have arrived. The chilly North is made considerably warmer with the huge welcome we get from Alex’s family. In no time, his mum, sisters, cousin and uncle have all congregated for a meal, where they throw their arms around my two daughters, which is hugely emotional especially as my kids have never met their dad.

Bright and early the next day I am down at the Pleasure Beach – a sprawling fairground – with the kids. There are no yummy mummies here: it is more rain sodden mums like me, wearing plastic ponchos to stay dry. I have never played with the children so much: we got a full day pass at 10am and we are still riding the rides at 4pm.

But it is later on the pier that I notice a clairvoyant. She must be good as there are loads of photos of her with Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Michael Parkinson; unless they been cleverly photoshopped. She has been working on the North pier for more than 30 years – a Romany gypsy, whose family have been reading the futures of holidaymakers for years.

Having your fortune told is all part of the fun of Blackpool, along with sticks of rock and donkeys. But who knows, perhaps I could get in touch with Alex? I’m open to these things, I suppose, and why not? Being a clairvoyant she really should have known I was banging on the door to see her – but she isn’t there – and when I ask somebody when she will be back – they tell me she follows her own schedule.

I’m not having much luck communicating with Alex. Oh well. He was hard to get hold of alive, let alone dead. However, we did appear to get in touch with Alex a few years ago, when Alex’s sisters took me to a spiritualist church in Torquay, where one of his sister’s lives. We had to stand up and sing Abba’s “I Believe in Angels” as part of the order of service, but at least the medium was accurate.

When she told me that he said I needed to let go of him, I felt like I had been dumped from the afterlife

When she told me that he said I needed to let go of him – which would also help him to move on – I felt like I had been dumped from the afterlife.

She went on to reveal that it would be Lola’s birthday at the end month (February). Then she reported from Alex that he felt like “he had passed his sell by date” when he took his own life; and was sorry for “going over the top sometimes”. He wanted me to be happy – “you don’t know what is around the corner”. Then he told the medium, apparently, that we had two children together. I said: “No only the one! He has another child with his ex.”

The medium said: “No he’s quite adamant you have two children together.”

It got me thinking later that night – indeed I did have an embryo on ice in Russia – maybe it was a sign! So that is when I decided to go for it with baby number two – who became Liberty, now 12 months old.

I really hope the Blackpool clairvoyant is going to be as good as the one from Torquay. Alex’s sister tells me she went to her school, which demystifies her somewhat, but I don’t let it put me off. I hand over the cash, which I put under her crystal ball. I’m told that I have a musical daughter and will get married to somebody I know – but there is a barrier that I can get over with the right approach.

“But you are born to be a widow,” she says. I wonder if she knows? But no, she is not picking up on Alex at all. She means that my future husband will die before me – “but even by a day only” she adds. Oh god, not again, I think. I can’t go through another death of a partner. Anyway the clairvoyant tells me that I will be more financially stable by this time next year and have a second home abroad. Lottery?

She covers illness, marriage, old age, love and health, in 10 minutes – it’s all a bit dubious. But there is no mention of Alex’s death, no message from the afterlife, so I leave disappointed.

I walk back down the promenade to meet the girls who are with Alex’s cousin. The clairvoyant wouldn’t let them in in case there were “energies” around. I see a hen party with the bride dressed as Elvis Presley and her entourage in 1950s dresses. By dark the place will be teaming with people getting legless. But I will be asleep with the girls in our super king-sized bed at the hotel. As I look at the empty chair next to me, I remember Alex sitting there with his feet up on the open window – smoking a fag – watching me zoom past on a roller coaster. Who would have thought I would be back with his two children and he would be dead. I pinch myself – I couldn’t make this up.