Heaven Can Wait Read online

  ‘I’ve seen worse,’ I lied, and sat down.

  ‘This,’ Brian said, pointing at the only clean work surface in the kitchen, ‘is mine and so is this cupboard. I’ll ask Claire to clear out one of her cupboards for you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, though I secretly suspected the chances of her doing that were even smaller than me borrowing a pair of Brian’s sandals for a girls’ night out.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ I asked him as he retrieved two clean-looking mugs from the cupboard and filled the kettle.

  ‘Five days.’

  ‘And how are you getting on with your task?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t really want to talk about it.’

  He was obviously going to be a fat lot of good when it came to doing my own task, which reminded me – I still hadn’t opened my envelope.

  ‘Is it OK to open this now?’ I asked, waving it at Brian.

  ‘You haven’t opened it yet? Other wannabe ghosts tend to open theirs on the escalator.’

  I didn’t feel like a wannabe ghost. In fact, I didn’t even feel like I was properly dead. I felt like I was at university and I’d just moved into the worst houseshare in the world. I slipped my hand into the envelope and slowly pulled out the contents, careful not to let anything drop onto the filthy floor.

  On the top of the pile of papers was a sheet headed ‘Details of Task: Lucy Brown’. I skimmed the details:

  Name of wannabe ghost: Lucy Brown

  Age: 28

  Cause of death: broken neck (that made me wince)

  Reason for seeking ghost status: to haunt fiancé Dan (it sounded a bit creepy, written like that)

  Task: to find a total stranger the love of their life

  Name of stranger: Archibald Humphreys-Smythe

  Age: 30

  Occupation: Computer Programmer

  Place of work: Computer Bitz Ltd, 113, Tottenham Court Road, London

  ‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘He’s a geek and he sounds posh.’

  Brian placed a cup of tea on an empty cereal box. ‘Who’s a geek?’

  ‘My task. He’s called Archibald, for God’s sake. What kind of family calls a little kid Archibald?’

  ‘My dad was called Archibald,’ Brian said.

  I cringed. ‘Shit, sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ He shrugged. ‘He’s dead too.’

  I felt my cheeks grow hot and quickly looked at the next sheet of paper. It was a bound document, about three inches thick, and was titled ‘Rules and Regulations for Wannabe Ghosts’.

  ‘You might want to read that,’ Brian commented. ‘There are lots of things you can’t do.’

  ‘Like what?’ I asked.

  Brian looked strange when he smiled. His eyes disappeared behind his crinkled lids and his lips disappeared beneath his moustache. You could see his nose hair more clearly too and … ewwww … everything attached to it. How strange that someone so uptight about kitchen cleanliness could totally ignore his own personal hygiene.

  ‘I’ll let you discover that for yourself,’ he said.

  I reached for my cup of tea and peered into it. ‘Can I drink this or is it going to go straight through me?’

  Brian reached for his own cup of tea and took a sip. ‘You’re not a ghost yet, Lucy. You’re temporarily human, sort of. You can eat, drink, sleep and defecate.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘You did ask.’

  ‘Not about pooing, I didn’t.’

  ‘What did you ask about?’ Claire was lounging in the doorway, observing us with a bored expression.

  ‘None of your business,’ I said.

  ‘Is that so?’

  Before I knew what was happening she’d leaped forward and grabbed the first sheet of my instructions. When I tried to grab it back she skipped to the doorway and peered at it from her safe distance.

  ‘Reason for seeking ghost status,’ she read, ‘to haunt fiancé Dan. Fiancé? Someone actually wanted to marry you?’

  I glanced at the butter dish nestled next to the cereal box. Could Claire die twice if I stabbed her with the butter knife?

  ‘Yes, as it happens,’ I said.

  ‘And you want to haunt him?’

  ‘Not haunt, no. I just need to be with him. There are things I need to say.’

  She laughed. It was a surprisingly high-pitched titter for such a generously proportioned girl. ‘Liar! You want to check he hasn’t moved on yet.’

  ‘No I don’t,’ I said, jumping out of my seat and snatching the piece of paper out of her hand. ‘I’ve been dead for less than twenty-four hours, for God’s sake.’

  ‘So when did you die, Little Miss Never Gonna Be a Bride?’

  ‘Yesterday. Friday 23rd March at about 7.30 p.m.’

  ‘What would you say,’ Claire said, raising her pencil-thin eyebrows, ‘if I told you today was Saturday 27th April?’

  ‘I’d say you were a liar.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  I moved out of the way as she bent down and rummaged through the pile of newspapers and magazines Brian had swept onto the floor.

  ‘Aha!’ she said, waving a copy of the Daily Herald in front of me. ‘Proof.’

  I grabbed at it. ‘Let me see that.’

  And there it was, in the top right-hand corner of the newspaper – Saturday 27th April. I swallowed hard and sat down. She was right.

  ‘Brian,’ I whispered, ‘how can that happen? How can a month just disappear?’

  ‘It’s eternity up there,’ he said, placing his mug back on the table and gesturing upwards with his thumb. ‘There’s no such thing as time.’

  ‘So I really have been dead for a month?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Poor little Lucy,’ said Claire from the doorway. ‘Worried Dan’s moved on, are you?’

  ‘Brian,’ I said, ignoring her. ‘I’d like to see my room now, please.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I thought Claire was going to swipe at me with her black talons as I swerved round her and followed Brian out of the kitchen. She didn’t, but she did mumble ‘Never the bride’ as I approached the stairs.

  I turned back. ‘Rearrange these words, Claire: don’t fuck why off.’

  She raised an eyebrow and stared at me. I stared back, determined not to look away first. I was good at the no-blink game. I always beat our cat.

  ‘You missed out the word you, Lucy.’

  Oh.

  Crap.

  ‘Your room,’ Brian announced, after I’d sprinted up the stairs at lightning speed, ‘is next to mine.’

  ‘Excellent,’ I panted. ‘I’m glad.’

  And I was, even if there was a strange smell like an eggy mist creeping out from under his door. The further I was from Claire, the better. I wasn’t about to admit it to Brian, but her comment about me wanting to check if Dan had moved on had really hurt. She was talking total bullshit, of course. Dan loved me, he wanted to marry me, and I’d only been dead for a month. Of course he wouldn’t have moved on.

  ‘Wow,’ Brian said as he strolled across my room and sat down on my bed, ‘you certainly like to be surrounded by stuff, don’t you?’

  What stuff? What was he on about? Oh my God. Were those Dan’s shoes strewn around the base of the laundry basket? And was that the enormous pink elephant he’d won for me at Brighton Pier on the bed? There was more. Dan’s contact lens solution, a pile of CDs and his PSP cluttered his bedside table, and the book I’d been reading, a box of tissues and half a glass of water were neatly arranged on mine. I clutched at the doorframe, suddenly feeling faint.

  ‘It’s my room,’ I said. ‘It’s my room, mine and Dan’s.’

  Brian shot me a look. ‘Well, yes. I told you it was.’

  ‘But it’s exactly like the room I had when I was alive.’

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’ said Brian, bouncing so hard on the bed the springs creaked. ‘I don’t know how they do it, but everyone who comes here gets a complete replica of the room they lived in before t
hey died.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve got no idea. Maybe they think it’ll help us settle in.’

  I thought it was horrible; like taking part in a twisted episode of Big Brother where, instead of making you do stupid tasks and then evicting you, they kill you off and then torture you by making you live a replica of your old life.

  ‘I think it’s sick,’ I said.

  Brian moved from the bed and walked towards me. For a horrible second I thought he was going to hug me. Instead he sidled past and opened the door to his room.

  ‘I thought it was a nice touch, actually,’ he said as he disappeared. ‘I missed my train posters.’

  I was just about to go after him when a creak on the stairs startled me and I jumped, hitting my hip on the dressing table. I gasped in pain and grabbed hold of it, nearly sending my jewellery box flying as I stumbled about. The box was exactly where I’d left it, the lid permanently open because I’d once dropped it on the floor and broken the hinge. It was piled high with tangled necklaces, clusters of single earrings (their pairs permanently lost) and the silver and jade bracelet Dan had bought me for my birthday balancing precariously on the top. I looked down at the third finger of my left hand. Oh no! My engagement ring had disappeared.

  I rummaged through the box, spilling earrings and necklaces onto the floor. Where was my ring? Where was it? I threw open the drawers and tipped them onto the floor too. I’d definitely been wearing my ring when I said goodbye to Dan at the front door and then … then … I’d taken off my clothes in the bedroom and wandered into the bathroom. Please, I thought as I flew across the room towards my bedside table, please let it be here.

  And there it was; a small platinum band with a single princess-cut diamond solitaire. Dan had chosen it himself from a shop in Bond Street and hidden it in his pocket when we went camping in the New Forest last year.

  I’d been tired after the journey and just wanted to crawl into the tent and go to sleep, but Dan had insisted we build a fire first.

  ‘It’ll be fun,’ he’d said, reaching into his rucksack and pulling out a firelighter, a small bundle of kindling, two metal skewers and a packet of marshmallows. ‘ Look, the stars have come out too. It’s a perfect night for marshmallows.’

  His smile was so wide and his eyes were so excited, I couldn’t say no, and I soon set to work lighting the world’s smallest bonfire as Dan threaded marshmallows onto the skewer.

  ‘Lucy,’ he’d said from behind me as I prodded the fire.

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘Lucy, do you want a marshmallow?’

  ‘In a minute. I’m just trying to—’

  ‘Lucy Brown … ’

  There was something in the tender way he said my name that made my heart flip. When I turned around he was on one knee, a diamond ring balanced on the top of a fat, pink marshmallow.

  ‘Lucy Brown, will you marry me?’

  I can’t remember what happened then – it’s all a blur of tears and kisses and yes, yes, yes, and more tears and more kisses – until Dan slowly slid the ring onto the third finger of my left hand.

  ‘If that’s a yes,’ he’d grinned, ‘you’ve just made me the happiest man alive.’

  I slid the ring off the bedside table and pressed it against my lips as tears filled my eyes and dribbled down my cheeks. If I had any chance of surviving the House of Wannabe Ghosts and completing my task, there was one thing I had to do first. I had to see Dan.

  Chapter Six

  I thundered down the stairs, wrenched open the front door and peered down the street. The sky was streaked orange, red and gold, and all around me street lamps were buzzing as they flickered to life. Plan. I needed a plan. How about … hang on … why were my teeth chattering? And why was an old man across the street gawping at me as though all his Christmases had come at once?

  Dammit! I was still wearing the bloody toga.

  I hitched it up, slammed the door, and ran back to my bedroom. Clothes, I needed nice clothes, suitable clothes. But what kind of clothes did you wear when you were planning on visiting your grieving boyfriend to say, ‘Hiya, bet you thought you’d never see me again?’

  I wrenched open a drawer and pulled out a pair of black knickers, a matching bra, my Gap jeans, some stripy socks and a soft, grey jumper. I dressed quickly, wriggling into my jeans and sucking in my stomach like it was a perfectly normal evening. When I caught sight of my reflection in the full-length mirror by the door I smiled. I looked like me again. Me – Lucy Brown, five foot seven and a bit, size twelve (nudging fourteen if I had PMT), with green eyes and shoulder-length brown hair. I looked just as Dan would remember me.

  It was only when the front door banged behind me that I realised I had no idea where I was. The street looked and sounded like a normal London street – terraced houses, small front gardens (some littered with rubbish, others gravel-covered and neat), pigeons pecking at splodges of chewing gum ground into the pavement and the wail of police cars and fire engines in the distance – but where exactly? Across the road a man was striding down the street, his expression steely. A woman tottered behind him on high heels, shouting, ‘Mike! Wait for me!’ whenever he got too far ahead. I thought about chasing after them, but they disappeared into one of the houses before I could get up the nerve.

  Clues, I needed clues, or someone who had one. There were three teenagers further down the road. They were sitting on a low brick wall in front of a house, chatting and flicking their fingers in the air, laughing hysterically. I wandered towards them and tried not to feel nervous. Look street, I told myself. Think rap, think bling, think swagger. I glanced at my reflection in a car window. I looked like Eminem after a stroke.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said as I drew closer to the teenagers, ‘ whereabouts in London am I?’

  One of the boys, the one in the Burberry baseball cap, winked at me. ‘Get lucky last night, did you?’

  ‘No, I …’

  ‘Bit of a slapper, are you?’ said the girl, hooking her thumbs into her low-rise jeans and exposing a permatan midriff, complete with belly ring.

  ‘You can talk,’ piped up one of the boys.

  ‘Fuck off, Jase,’ she said, turning to glare at him. ‘You’re the slapper.’

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Could you just tell me where I am? I need to get home.’

  ‘Give me a tenner and I’ll tell you,’ said the girl, holding out her manicured hand.

  ‘Forget it,’ I sighed. ‘I’ll work it out for myself.’

  They laughed as I walked away. I could still hear them cat-calling and screeching as I reached the end of street, turned the corner and almost walked headlong into a bus stop. I stared up at the numbers on the sign. Oh my God, we were in Kilburn. I was only about ten minutes from West Hampstead, where Dan and I lived.

  I rummaged in my bag for some money as a bus pulled round the corner and peered into the notes section. There was two hundred quid in my purse! Where had that come from? And where were my bank and credit cards, my driving licence and my library card? Everything that had my name on it had gone.

  Arse, I thought, as I paid for a ticket and stepped onto the bus, I should have read the bloody manual. I stared out of the window as the bus carried me closer to Dan. Everywhere I looked people were walking, talking, arguing and laughing; they gathered in small groups outside betting shops, queued for computers in Internet cafés and shuffled in and out of mini-supermarkets, plastic bags containing milk, bread and beer swinging from their wrists. I watched as the lights went on in the flats above the shops as people returned home from work and settled in front of the TV, carried plates of food into their living rooms or closed the curtains, shutting me out. They were all going about their normal lives as though nothing had happened. And nothing had happened really. It wasn’t as though I was Princess Diana, Anna Nicole Smith or Heath Ledger. I wasn’t famous or important and the public weren’t in love with me. I was just Lucy Brown, aged twenty-eight, from London. Only a handful of people in the wo
rld knew I’d died and no one, apart from my new housemates, was aware I was back.

  The elderly woman in the seat next to me started rummaging around in her bag and I turned to look at her. She was small and bony with a clear rain hat jammed over her blue-rinsed curls and pulled low over her deeply lined forehead. Poor woman, I thought, as she retrieved a mangled toffee from the bottom of her bag and popped it in her mouth, she’s probably terrified of dying. Lonely, too. The least I could do was talk to her and help ease her fears. I was somewhat of an expert on death after all.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Excuse me.’

  She glanced up at me and smiled. ‘Are you after a toffee?’ she asked, dipping back into her bag. ‘I’ve probably got another one in here.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘Lonely, are you?’ she asked, tapping the back of my hand with her spindly fingers. ‘That’s OK, love, we all get lonely at times.’

  ‘No, no,’ I said, ‘I just wanted to talk to you about death.’

  ‘Death?’ she repeated, frowning up at me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, my eyes filling with sympathetic tears as I gently squeezed her delicate hand. ‘I just wanted you to know that you have no reason to fear death. Everyone you have ever loved and lost is waiting for you in heaven. All you have to do is—’

  ‘Help!’ the old woman shouted, inching away from me and staring madly round the bus. ‘Somebody help me. I’m being recruited for a cult. Help! Help!’

  ‘No,’ I said, my heart thumping wildly as everyone turned to stare at me, ‘you’ve got me all wrong. I just wanted to—’

  Before I knew what was happening, a middle-aged man had swaggered down the aisle and was pointing an accusatory finger in my face.

  ‘You people!’ he bellowed, his face puce. ‘If you’re not knocking on our doors at all times of the day and night, you’re pestering pensioners on the bus. You should be ashamed of yourself.’

  ‘I … I …’ I stuttered, staring out of the window as I frantically searched for an explanation that wouldn’t make me sound like a complete nutter. ‘I … oh, this is my stop!’