They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

37 26 July 2007

There’s a stranger looking at me, giving me a curious, almost mocking eye. She’s saying, Ha, imposter! She looks like something out of a fashion magazine from the 1920s, with her bright lipstick and the way those long red curls slant down her face. You could picture her dancing the Charleston in one of those slinky outfits.

I can’t believe I’m looking in a mirror.

It’s me.

Was me.

Hello, Sandra Jones!

Gratitude is a strange thing.

I was so grateful to Nicos but I was also now feeling angry with him. Angry, I guess, because he’d been so persuasive, so confident. He’s convinced me to believe in him. Now, thanks to that, I’m totally out of my comfort zone. At least, in my addled mind, ‘comfort zone’ had been my life this morning, before I left — before everything changed, while I was still old me. Now I was new me and not yet liking it much. In truth, I was not liking it at all.

I’d go so far as to say that I was actually hating it, and wondering if I’d made a very big mistake. Wondering if it was too late to do anything about it.

New Me was sat in a small, pleasant, but sparsely furnished bedroom on the first floor of Saint Hill Manor, the British HQ of the Scientologists. It was kind of like how I imagine it might feel to be on your first night in boarding school. Different sounds, different smells, different terrain, different vibes, unfamiliar voices. Very strange and disorienting.

There was a tall bookshelf, stacked mostly with hardbacks and paperbacks by L. Ron Hubbard, and a modern television screen. A table with a bottle of mineral water and a glass. I had a view out over several modern extensions and what looked like a mock Norman castle, surrounded by almost fanatically well-tended lawns, and a lake.

But despite feeling lonely, nervous and lost, I did at least have one positive. Roel Albazi sure wasn’t going to find me here too easily.

So far, on this first crazy day of my new life, Nicos had delivered everything he’d said he would. My passports, my Gatwick flight reservations, and his friend, Hans-Jürgen Waldinger, here at the HQ of Scientology. Hans-Jürgen had made me feel welcome, showed me my room and given me the timetable for meals. Not that I had any appetite for food, I felt on the verge of throwing up, from nerves, at any moment.

Hans-Jürgen, a good decade older than me, was from Munich, and spoke cultured English with the hint of a German accent that I found very charming and quite flirtatious, and he seemed to belong here, as if he was part of the management. He was tall and good-looking in a kind of arty-academic way — long centre-parted hair and retro spectacles, and dressed fresh and cool for the summer heat in trainers, thin chinos and a short-sleeved white shirt. He was confident and quite tactile with me and, when he looked at me, it was with an intense, penetrating gaze as if he was reading something deep inside me that made him smile, that I didn’t even know was printed there.

Whether Nicos had briefed him or it was just his natural way, to my surprise, Hans-Jürgen made no attempt to start introducing me to Scientology — in fact, it was almost the reverse. I told him I had relatives near Munich and he said how much he missed the city and was planning to move back soon. I asked him if he was going to remain involved with Scientology there and he said he was not, very pointedly. He then whispered a strange thing to me, which perhaps I should have taken more seriously. ‘Be careful of Nicos, he’s a dangerous man. Any time you are in trouble you can come to me.’