Roger J Tayler

A Singular Third Person Roger J Tayler

"Death is not final; you survive in the minds and memories of those who loved you best." In 1973, the actor, David Forster committed suicide. He'd first found fame on stage, playing Romeo in Shakespeare's tragedy. Later, in the USA, he achieved international stardom in the classic anti-Vietnam War film, "Saigon, Hanoi". When he died he was only twenty-five years old. Some forty years later, Anna Lyne received a strange message on Facebook: apparently she was now friends with "David Forster". Of course, she knew Forster, they'd been intimate friends in the 60's, but he'd been dead for years, so who was sending her these messages? The next post she received from "Forster" was even more disturbing. It was a photograph of five young people in her mother's garden in Windsor. The caption read: "Summer of Love, 1967 - who are they now?" She recognised the group at once it was Forster' four closest friends - the inner circle. Anna tried to contact the others to find out whether they had received similar posts. As a result of Forster's prompting on Facebook, the people who knew him best began to revisit the past and tell their own - often very different - stories of growing up in Windsor in the late 60's and early 70's. As they recalled the loves, laughter and triumphs of the good times; and the longing, pain and failures of the bad, Forster seemed to grow ever closer until he became their constant companion. For each of them he was a different character - after all, he was an actor - until, at last, he played his final role - a part only dead men can play.