Desperately Seeking Heaven (20 page)

‘Aye, we’ve had a few these last few weeks.’ He stopped, smiling wryly, gently easing himself into an upright position and rested his hands on his haunches. ‘Carry on along this path here, beyond the church and over in the left-hand corner of the church yard, you’ll find him.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, smiling.

It was a beautiful spot. The sound of birdsong rippled through the trees and in the neighbouring field sheep grazed happily, oblivious to the famous celebrity who had recently moved in next door.

I wandered amongst the headstones, stopping to read some of the inscriptions, before reaching the spot where Jimmy was laid to rest. It was too soon for his headstone to be in place, but the profusion of flowers marking his grave was testament to the loss felt by so many people.

I stood there for a few minutes soaking up the atmosphere, at first not realising that tears were running freely down my cheeks as my eyes pored over the messages of condolence. Jimmy was just a memory to these people now and, although he was still very much part of my life, I knew it was only a matter of time before he was consigned to memory for me too.

‘I’ll miss you, Jimmy,’ I said quietly, wiping the tears away with my forearms, as I walked away, retracing my steps back through the graveyard.

‘Cheerio, love,’ called the old man, raising his arm to me.

‘Bye and thanks,’ I managed to say through the tears as I fumbled in my pockets to find a tissue.

Less than ten minutes later I’d made my way to the village centre and was standing outside Honeysuckle Cottage admiring the picture-postcard effect of the scented flowers in their full and glorious bloom framing the doorway. It was prettier than I could ever have imagined. Before I’d had time to consider what I was doing, I rapped on the door knocker three times, half hoping that no one would be in so that I could drift away, as if I’d never been there and climb back in the car and make my way home.

No such luck. The door eased open and Rosemary greeted me, looking tanned and relaxed in a short sleeved checked blouse and cream chinos, her hands covered by floral gardening gloves. She looked as if she didn’t have a care in the world. What was I doing here stirring up who knew what?

‘Hello!’

‘Hello Rosemary, you won’t remember me, but…’

‘Of course I remember you,’ she said, standing back and pulling the door open further, her face lighting up. ‘It’s Alice, isn’t it? How lovely to see you. Do come in. You’ll have to excuse me,’ she added, brushing herself down, ‘I was just in the garden doing some pruning.’

‘Thanks. I hope I’m not intruding though.’ I wandered after Rosemary down the narrow hallway, looking first one way and then the other, my gaze distracted by the photos on the wall as Jimmy’s eyes stared down at me from all angles.

‘No, not at all. I’m grateful for the break. Come on through into the kitchen. I was just thinking how it must be time for a cup of tea.’

The old-fashioned country kitchen was full of French oak cabinets brimming with brightly coloured crockery. A vase of sunflowers sat in the middle of the huge rectory table complementing the deep ochre of the walls. An image of Jimmy pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table, something he must have done a million times before, flashed into my mind.

‘Have a seat,’ Rosemary said, bringing me back to the present. She filled the kettle from the tap, placing it in its holder, before turning to face me. ‘So how are you?’ she asked.

‘I’m very well. I was just passing,’ I fibbed, ‘and it was such a lovely afternoon, I decided to come and visit Jimmy’s grave.’

‘Oh well, I’m very glad you did. It’s such a beautiful spot, isn’t it? I find it a great comfort knowing he’s there, not five minutes around the corner. I often wander down there of an evening and spend some time with him.’

My gaze drifted out of the leaded window and into the garden. Now I was here, sitting in Jimmy’s family home, I wasn’t sure what it was I’d come for. There was so much I wanted to tell Rosemary; that she wasn’t to worry, that Jimmy was happy, that he was doing a good job of making himself very comfortable in my home, that he was eating his way through the contents of my cupboards, but I couldn’t tell her any of that. Instead, I helped myself to a chocolate digestive from the plate Rosemary offered.

‘It is lovely, so peaceful,’ I agreed. ‘And how have you both been keeping?’ I asked, observing her reaction thoughtfully.

She sighed, placing her mug of tea back on the table.

‘Well, of course, it’s been hard. The mornings are the worst. Waking up and thinking for a moment that things are just the same as they ever were. Then comes the awful realisation,’ she slapped her hands together hard, her eyes, the same greyish hue as Jimmy’s, brimming with emotion, ‘and it’s like reliving that awful moment over again, when we were first told the news, knowing that life will never be the same again.’ Her shoulders sagged as she locked her fingers together and rested her chin on her hands. ‘Michael copes by keeping busy. He barely sits still. He’s out now,’ she explained. ‘He drives the local community bus taking the old folk into town.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Me, I’m happy pottering at home. It gives me a sense of comfort being in the place where we spent so many happy times together.’

‘I can understand that.’

‘Of course, it helps knowing that he was loved by so many people. You wouldn’t believe the numbers of letters and cards we’ve received through the post. Here, let me show you.’ She pulled out a wicker basket that had been sitting on one of the kitchen chairs tucked beneath the table, picked up a pile of letters and allowed them to drop back into the basket. ‘It’s been very humbling. I’m slowing working my way through the heap, but I’m determined to reply to them all.’

I ran my hands through the stack of letters and cards, shaking my head in disbelief. ‘Jimmy would be overwhelmed by the reaction, don’t you think?’

Her laughter tinkled around the room, a room I was certain had heard a great deal of laughter over the years.

‘Oh yes, he would have loved all the fuss and adulation. He was just like that as a little boy, you know. Attention seeking! Playing up to the crowd. Acting the joker. Charming his audience. To think he’s still doing it after his death, well, it makes me smile.’

If only you knew, I thought, smiling at her fondly.

‘Ryan was absolutely right. James was a golden boy. Everything he tried his hand at he turned into a success. He expected it as his given really, I suppose we all did. We all thought he was at the beginning of what would have been a long and fruitful phase at the top of his game, career-wise. The happy personal life, a wife, children, a beautiful home, were surely just around the corner for him.’

She shrugged wistfully.

‘The strange thing is,’ she went on, ‘although it’s been hard, very hard, since we lost Jimmy, I’ve been strangely comforted by his presence in these difficult weeks.’ She shrugged her shoulders, laying her hands open on the table, as if she didn’t quite believe it herself. ‘I’d heard people say before that they’d felt the presence of their loved ones around them when they’d passed and I’d never really believed it, but now, well, I’ve experienced it for myself.’

‘Really?’ was all I could manage to say.

‘Oh yes. Sometimes I feel as if he’s here, looking over us, making sure we’re okay. You probably think me mad, but Michael says he feels it too and he’s a proper sceptic.’

I’d been a sceptic too until I’d had my very own first-hand experience of living alongside a ghost.

‘I don’t think you’re mad at all.’ I ran my finger along a groove in the table top. ‘I think there’s so much we don’t know about the whole dying process and what happens on the other side. It’s reassuring to think that there might be something else out there after all.’

Rosemary nodded and we sat in companionable silence for a few moments until she looked across at me, her eyes smiling mischievously.

‘Now tell me to mind my own business, but what I’d like to know is what sort of relationship you had with Jimmy? I suspect it was something more than just a friendship. Am I wrong? ‘ She raised her eyebrows, tilting her head to one side, a smile resting on her lips.

Anything I told her would be an untruth so all I could do was tell her my own version of the truth that existed in my own skew-whiff world.

‘We are…’I stopped myself. ‘We were very close. I hadn’t known Jimmy long but we became good friends in a short space of time and I suppose I feel cheated that we weren’t able to get to know each other better. Who knows, we might have quickly grown to hate each other, but I don’t think so. We seemed to click instantly, like you do with some people. I’d like to think we would have played a constant role, one way or the other, in each other’s lives.’ With her friendly face cupped in her hands observing me thoughtfully, opening up to Rosemary felt easy and entirely natural. To talk to someone who knew Jimmy even more intimately than I did was poignant and therapeutic at the same time and I could tell from her warm expression that she felt exactly the same way. ‘One thing I do know,’ I continued, ‘is that he was the loveliest, most decent man I’d met in a very long while.’

‘I knew it,’ Rosemary said with a touch of triumph. ‘I said to Michael when we met you at the funeral that I thought you were someone special in Jimmy’s life. It was just a feeling I had. Jimmy had reached that stage in his life where he was ready to meet someone special, to settle down and start a family.’ Her eyes took on a misty faraway look. ‘He would have made a lovely father.’ She paused, took a deep breath and looked me directly in the eye. ‘I suppose you’re as distraught as we are about the stories in the press?’

My stomach tensed.

‘You mean Donna Diamond, I suppose?’

‘Yes… we… I mean…’ She faltered, her voice tight with emotion.

‘That was something I wanted to talk to you about,’ I said, suddenly feeling uncertain. I took hold of her hand across the table, wondering how she might react to the next bombshell I was about to drop. ‘This is very difficult,’ I started.

‘Go on,’ she said. She smiled wryly. ‘Whatever it is can be no worse than what we’ve already had to endure.’

‘There’s no easy way to say this, but what you’ve read in the papers, about the baby. I’m afraid it simply isn’t true. It isn’t Jimmy’s baby, Rosemary.’

‘I knew it!’ She banged her hand down on the table. ‘I just knew it.’ She sat back in her chair, the pain evident in the soft lines of her face. ‘But how can you possibly know this?’ she added, quietly.

‘I know Donna. I’ve spoken to her and she’s admitted the baby isn’t Jimmy’s. She never even had any kind of relationship with him. It was just a lie, I’m afraid. Something she made up on the spur of the moment, a chance to cash in on Jimmy’s name, I suppose, not realising that it would escalate into such a big deal.’

Rosemary shook her head, all her energy seeming to drain from her body.

‘But why would she do that? It’s an awful thing to do. Really awful. It was so out of character for Jimmy though, so far away from the person that he was, that we knew it couldn’t possibly be true.’ She pulled out a tissue from the box on the other end of the table and dabbed at her eyes. ‘But to think that there would be a part of Jimmy, his baby, growing up in the world, we couldn’t help imagining what that might be like.’

‘I know, I know,’ I said, feeling desperately sad for her. To lose at first her son and then the possibility of a future grandchild, it was almost too much to bear. I stood up and walked around to her side, wrapping my arms around her. ‘I’m so sorry, Rosemary. Really I am.’

‘It’s for the best,’ she said, through her tears, as she collapsed into my arms, her shoulders juddering. My tears came then too and as we held each other, taking comfort from one another, I knew then, despite my reservations, it had been exactly the right thing to do coming here today.

‘Everything OK?’

We pulled away from each other and turned to see Michael standing in the doorway, a bemused expression on his face. I gasped. It could have been Jimmy standing there, the likeness was so pronounced; the same laughing deep-set eyes, the same jawline, but it was the rich warm tone to the voice that sent shivers running down my spine.

‘Darling! You remember Alice, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do,’ said Michael, his face lighting up, as welcoming and friendly as his wife. ‘How lovely to see you, Alice.’

‘You’re just in time. We were just about to have a glass of wine, weren’t we, Alice?’ She patted me on the hand and I knew I’d found myself a friend for life. ‘Would you do the honours, dear?’ she said to Michael fondly. ‘I’ll go and fetch the albums and show Alice some pictures of Jimmy when he was a boy.’

Chapter Twenty-Two

By the time I got back to the flat it was after ten and I wasn’t expecting Jimmy to be home as he’d gone off on a little jaunt over to France to catch up with someone he’d been at school with. So I was a little bit surprised to find the front door to my flat wide open.

‘Jimmy?’ I called as I wandered in.

I heard furtive movements from the kitchen and my heart lifted at the thought of Jimmy being home early, preparing my dinner. I had so much to tell him.

‘Hi, I didn’t expect to find…’ I stopped mid-sentence in the doorway to the kitchen as a young man dressed in jeans and a grey hoodie delved into my coffee jar. He turned and looked at me darkly.

‘Shit!’ he said, dropping the top to the coffee jar on the floor and dashing past me, almost pushing me out of the way.

‘Hey,’ I said, ‘don’t rush off. You’re a friend of Jimmy’s aren’t you?’ With his pasty complexion and deep black circles beneath his eyes, he was clearly not of this world.

‘Eh?’ he said, turning to look at me.

A frisson of fear shivered down my body. Oh please Lord, not another one! What if I was expected to look after this motley-looking ghoul as well as Jimmy? Or perhaps this new creature was a replacement for Jimmy and this was now my designated role in life; looking after one wayward spirit after another.

At least Jimmy had the benefit of being easy on the eye, was delightfully charming with his outrageous yet entertaining stories and could rustle up a mean cheese omelette at the drop of a hat. The guy in front of me couldn’t even look me in the eye, had seemingly lost the capacity for coherent speech and what, exactly, was that awful smell? My nostrils twitched at the scent of something really nasty.