The Unseen Hand by LA Hackett

He told me that it was as if an unseen hand was guiding them: the outcome unknown; the journey imperative.

When they had set out from New York, his daughter Tri and he, ancient photographs stowed carefully in inside jacket pocket, AK had known he was doing the right thing. He was only now getting used to being alone again and the health scares that had plagued him over the summer were no longer things that scared him, but things he could live with. Setting out for Scotland, he had felt buoyed up with an imperceptible but keenly felt sense of destiny. That guiding hand; perhaps it was hers.

The day that changed all our lives was to open with disappointment. It was his daughter's absolute belief in the need for him to visit his mother's home town in Scotland that had kept them going. Her energy had been undiminished by all the arrangements: she had booked the coach trip that was the notional reason for going to Scotland and which they would pick up once they had completed their mission (this it had become) and, at the Scottish airport, having selected the biggest SUV-like vehicle the hire company had to offer, she had driven this impossibly large car on the wrong side of the road, for an American, on impossibly small roads to a destination neither of them knew.

The mission was simple: find a house and a grave - his mother's house and his grandfather's grave. Both were in this small seaside town. The house was easy to find; his mother's description sound, but disappointment had overwhelmed him as soon as they had driven through the cemetery gates. The town cemetery was huge; not at all as he remembered from his mother's oft-told stories. Where to start? He had no idea. He said to his daughter that it was enough just to have come. "Nonsense, Daddy, we'll find it." She had found a cemetery worker, got the information on who could help and had somehow taken on board complicated instructions on how to find the crematorium on the outskirts of the town, where the cemetery office was located. Somehow, his daughter had found it; he knew not how.

The scene that greeted them at the crematorium was enough to make Tri stay firmly in the car: a large group of men, many in what AK recognised as Orange regalia, seemed intent on assembling a procession in the driveway. Addressing them was a smartly-dressed young woman who, AK could see, was not intimidated by the massed horde. He walked into the calm of the crematorium office and approached the counter with something like hope that he would find what he had set out to find. The hope was short-lived; once more he felt the disappointment that had overwhelmed him in the cemetery as the counter staff member said in answer to his question, "A name is not enough." It seemed he needed the burial year and he knew the date only vaguely. He tried again, asking whether she could search for a JK who had died around 1910. His grandfather had been a monumental sculptor; one of a long line of stonemasons. The reply was once again negative. He ploughed on, hoping that something of his need to find would transfer to the young woman on the opposite side of the counter.

The office door swung open and the smartly-dressed young woman come swiftly into the room; her vivacity in marked contrast to the attitude of the counter staff.  ‘Can I help you?' It was as if a ray of sunlight had flooded the room. She was all warmth and efficiency.  "I am looking for a house and a grave." AK had not known why he gave her both pieces of information, but the words were out. He carefully extracted the photographs and handed them over. The woman looked at them and seemed to catch her breath. "Whose photographs are these?" AK's response seemed only to confuse things yet further. "That's my mother's house and my cousin's wedding photo." "But this is my mother's house, and her wedding photo!" They looked at each other in astonishment and, properly, for the first time. All this in a second before the words tumbled out, more questions were asked and answers given. The first Tri knew of this was her father excitedly opening the car door, saying, "You won't believe this! I've found family; real, live family!" Seconds later, he was introducing us, "This is your cousin, Tri. This is L". L told him that she had heard an American voice and that something had prompted her to offer her help. That unseen hand again, he thought. Thank you.

AK had found not only a house and a grave. L was one of his cousin GC's three daughters. The family had lost touch as families do. The trauma of two World Wars had also made its mark. There was a flurry of phone calls and it was agreed that the family - his family - would meet that night in their hotel overlooking the sea. As his elated daughter drove him back to the hotel, all AK could think was, "It was a dream. They'll not turn up tonight." But turn up they did: L and her husband, his cousin GC and L's sister LA who came hotfoot from Edinburgh, a copy of the family tree in hand.  In the hotel, all was mirth and laughter: lives were changed; the family reunited. He spoke by telephone to his other cousin and to new-found relations in Devon and London. As GC said to her assembled guests, AK at her side, one year on at her birthday party in the hotel overlooking the sea where they had first met, "It was serendipity - a happy chance meeting." Tri knows it as a story of angels:  a dream fulfilled. I know that an unseen hand that day made me stop and help.

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