Afterwife (35 page)

No, the shadow has stopped. It is turning. It is walking back up the path, faster this time. One more a quick, sharp ring. Ollie opens a bloodshot eye. He scratches his balls. His brain catches up with his ears and he staggers down the hall toward the door, shedding cashew crumbs. He opens the front door. His face lights up, like all his Christmases have come at once.

“Hi,” Jenny says. There is snow on the tips of her dark lashes, like tiny white pom-poms.

He just stares at her in silence, grinning like a loon.

She smiles shyly. “Er, can I come in?”

They are in the hallway now and the air between them is sparking, ticking, as if we’re in a forest of electricity pylons. She flicks snow off her hair. A flake lands on his neck, melting instantly.

“You look different.”

He rubs his hand over his jaw. “I shaved the biblical beard.”

“Ah,” she laughs, blushes.

They are in the middle of the sitting room now, lit by the firefly
glow of the fairy lights. Jenny doesn’t realize that she has a long tail of green tinsel stuck to the bottom of her snowy boot.

“You disappeared,” said Ollie, still staring at her weirdly. He is pulsing with a strange, pent-up energy that is familiar to me yet hard to identify.

She looks down at the floor. “Sorry.”

His eyes don’t leave her face. Like he’s scared it might go somewhere if he looks away for even a second. “I missed you, Jen.”

A bittersweet possibility begins to dawn. Could they?
Would
they? Have I been…Oh, my God, have I ignored what was under my nose all this time? I consider the match for all of two milliseconds and I’m flooded, for the first time since I died, with a delirious cascading rush of hope.

Jenny smiles twitchily, like she could just as easily cry. “I’m sorry for being such a crap friend.” I can see her backing away. “I really am, Ol.”

I want to fill her heart and tell her it’s okay. There is no other woman on planet earth I’d rather replaced me at number thirty-three. You even helped me choose the living room wallpaper! You have legacy here. Oh, Jenny. Look after my boys. Take them, hold them close; and make them eat some broccoli.

“I’m going to New York in the New Year,” she says, unable to meet his eye. “I didn’t want to go and leave without saying good-bye properly.”

Ollie looks stricken. “New York?”

“I need to start again.”

Oh, Jenny, darling Jenny. Please don’t screw up, not this time. Everything is at stake.
Everything.

“New York is so far away.”

“That’s kind of the point.”

“You can start anywhere, Jen.” He takes her hands in his. “Stay with me.”

She stares at their entwined hands. “I can’t,” she says in a whisper. She’s beginning to shake like a leaf. “You are…you are Sophie’s husband.”

Jenny, Jenny, I am dead as a dead parrot! Ceased to be! I must do something. I must. Using all my last reserves of flagging energy I whirl dementedly round and round her head like a dancer in a Gaga video, trying to make her see me or sense me or whatever it takes to make her realize that here is her chance. This is it.

In my usual grand paranormal style, nothing happens.

“Please listen to me.” I see it in his eyes then, his love for her. He is no longer mine. Our love has been recycled.

She pulls away from him. “Don’t, Ol.”

I whirl again, frenzied now, desperate. The future is slipping away, the last grain of sand through my clay-cold fingers.

Jenny steps backward, touches her forehead. “Oh.”

“You alright?”

Jenny looks puzzled. “Yes…yes, I think so.”

Freaky. Did I just do that? I do it again, harder this time. Her eyes squeeze shut tighter. “Oh,” she says, touching her forehead again.

I did it! I only bloody well did it! I can commune with more than hamsters and smoke alarms.

“Here, sit down.” Concerned, he reaches for her, steadies her with his hands. She perches on the sofa arm.

“Give me one minute, then you can go again, okay? You can go to New York. Go where you damn well want. Just hear me out, please?”

Jenny nods. There’s still a chance. Relief tunnels out of me, long and light, like a last breath.

Ollie’s brows knit together and he speaks slowly and carefully like a man desperate not to screw up. “I love Sophie from the bottom of my heart, Jenny. I miss her every day.”

“Me too,” croaks Jenny. She puts her hand down on the sofa to steady herself and accidentally presses the remote control lying on a cushion. Music starts to pour out of the speakers, filling the room with something twangy, bluegrass.

“But she has gone, Jen. And losing you for all these months felt like another huge loss and I’ve missed you, missed you so much.” His eyes darken. “Freddie keeps asking after you.”

She gulps. “I’m sorry.”

The music rises and falls around them. Harmonica. Guitar.

“I know that I’m a fucking car crash.” He smiles at her so tenderly then, it makes me want to weep. “And I know that any sane woman would run for the hills, but I
love
you, Jenny. I love you not only because Sophie loved you and she would want me to love you too but because when you are with me it feels like the world is not so crap and you take me to a different place from the one I am in. Does that make sense?”

She bites her lip, shakes her head. “You fucked Tash.”

“I wished it was you.”

Jenny drops her head into her hands.

“Sophie would want us to be together, I know she would. Of all her friends, she adored you, Jenny. She completely adored you. You were like a sister to her.”

“Even weirder.”

“Sophie liked weird. When did she ever play by the rules?”

Jenny smiles and swallows hard. She is trying not to cry.

He is solemn now. “We loved each other totally but it wasn’t perfect, Jenny. And it did not need to be perfect, nothing needs to be perfect…just enough.”

She looks at him with such longing then, I wonder if she’s about to lurch forward and take a bite out of his arm.

“You must not see us, me and Sophie, as something that is, was, unattainable, unrepeatable. God, it’s so hard to explain.” He shuts
his wonderful gypsy eyes, presses his fingers against them. “It’s just that…I think you’re totally wonderful. That’s all. Please say something, Jenny.”

Jenny doesn’t say anything. Instead she looks up and she starts to smile, a big wide sunshine smile.

“Come here, you.” He stands up, pulling her with him, slides his arms around her waist and rests his chin on her shoulder and slowly, falteringly, like teenagers at their first school disco, they start to sway to the music. Jenny is stiff and shy at first but as the song progresses she relaxes, lets her body be led by his. And there they are, dancing in the living room lit by fairy lights, stepping on each other’s toes, the green string of tinsel still stuck to the sole of her shoe.

The track finishes.

Snow is swirling in thick whirlpool flurries outside the window now. It’s a strange backdrop, like it’s just the two of them in one of those toy snow-shaker domes. They are looking at each other in astonishment, as if they can’t quite believe the feelings whooshing up inside them.

Then it happens.

The power of the kiss flings me hard against the ceiling. My husband’s sad blue body turns pink as she breathes life into his lungs, softly sucking the last bit of it out of me, like a sweet passed between the mouths of lovers. They are kissing and kissing. The music starts up again. He laughs, and a new song begins.