Heaven Can Wait Read online

  Seconds later the bus ground to a juddering halt and I sprang out of my seat, hot-footed it down the aisle and jumped off the step and onto the street. The sun had slipped over the horizon and a dusky haze had descended, broken only by the street lights that flickered and hummed, brightening patches of pavement with a warm orange glow. And there it was, the white sign with black writing that made my stomach flip over, White Street, NW6. My home.

  I waited until a crowd of people strolled past the bus stop and tagged along behind them until I reached the street light nearest to our house, then stopped and hovered in the shadows.

  The light was on, the curtains were pulled back, and the television was flickering in the corner of the living room. At the back of the room were two bookshelves, one filled with my books, the other filled with Dan’s DVDs and computer games. On top of the bookcases was a carved wooden elephant I’d bartered for during a holiday to Tailand, two church candles on black metal stands, a silver statue Dan’s team had won in the London Advertising Awards and a wilted-looking spider plant. In front of the bookshelves was a sofa. Someone was curled up on one side, hugging a cushion with one arm, his legs curled up underneath him.

  It was Dan.

  On the bus I’d imagined running up to our front door, pressing the bell and launching myself at him. Instead my armpits were damp and my mouth was dry. What would I say? What would Dan say? It’s not every day your girlfriend comes back from the dead and knocks on your door.

  I was still trying to get up the courage to do something when the TV flickered and illuminated Dan’s face. He was looking at what looked like a photo. His shoulders were shaking and tears were pouring down his cheeks. My heart convulsed and I thought I might pass out from the pain. I’d never seen him cry like that. Ever.

  I took a step closer to the window and knocked.

  ‘Dan,’ I mouthed. ‘I’ve come back.’

  He glanced up, a look of astonishment and delight on his swollen, red face.

  ‘It’s me!’ I shouted, jumping up and down and waving frantically. ‘I’m back! I’m so sorry about the argument, Dan. I was just being an idiot. I didn’t mean what I said, honestly.’

  Dan’s expression changed in front of my eyes. Excitement faded to disappointment and he frowned. I froze, my hands still in the air, mid-wave. What had just happened? Why wasn’t he smiling any more? Was he angry with me? I ran down the pathway and pummelled on the door.

  Come on, I thought as the light in the hallway was switched on and the floorboards squeaked with the sound of heavy footsteps. Come on, Dan, just let me in.

  The door opened slowly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, peering through the gap. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Oh very funny,’ I said, feeling as though I was about to explode with happiness. ‘Just let me in and give me a hug.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Dan frowned. ‘I can’t hear you. Could you say that again?’

  ‘I know I died,’ I said, still grinning like a lunatic, ‘and I’m still dead, sort of, but I’ve come back to be with you. I’ve just got to complete a task first. I’ve got to—’

  ‘Who are you,’ he said, looking me up and down, ‘and what do you want?’

  I felt sick. There was something about the expression in Dan’s eyes that wasn’t right. He seemed cold and distant and not the slightest bit excited to see me.

  ‘Dan, it’s me,’ I said, reaching through the gap in the door and stroking his cheek. ‘It’s Lucy. Are you OK? Are you in shock?’

  Dan jumped as though he’d been burned and swatted my hand away. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Let me in,’ I begged as he started to close the door. ‘Stop messing around. You’re scaring me.’

  ‘If you’ve lost your voice,’ Dan said, ‘there’s a chemist down the street.’

  Then he slammed the door in my face.

  ‘Dan,’ I screamed, pummelling the painted wood with both fists. ‘Dan, it’s Lucy. It’s Lucy. Let me in.’

  The door swung open again.

  ‘Look.’ There was a look of disgust on his face. ‘I don’t know who you are or what you want, but I really don’t need this shit. Just go away.’

  He shut the door again and I stared at the glossy blue paint and the shiny, silver thirty-three and swallowed back tears. What had just happened? Why hadn’t he recognised me and let me in?

  I banged forlornly on the door a couple more times, still calling his name, but he ignored me. In desperation I moved to the window and tapped the glass. Dan was sitting on the sofa again, his head in his hands.

  ‘I came back, Dan,’ I sobbed. ‘I came back to be with you.’

  He got up and crossed the living room, his eyes on mine. For a heart-stopping moment I thought he’d recognised me again. Then he yanked the curtains closed and disappeared.

  I didn’t immediately go back to the House of Wannabe Ghosts. Instead I walked to Primrose Hill, sat on a bench in the dark and stared at the lights flickering and twinkling over London. They would have looked beautiful if I hadn’t felt so utterly miserable and alone. I couldn’t block the image of Dan’s crying face from my mind. I had never, ever seen him look so utterly bereft. In fact, in seven years I’d only seen him cry four times. They were:

  1) When he came to see me after my parents died.

  2) When his mum told him she had breast cancer. He didn’t cry then, in front of her, but he did bury himself in my arms later, hiding his tears in the crease of my neck.

  3) One year later, when his mum told him she was officially in remission.

  4) When we watched Schindler’s List on DVD. At the end, when Schindler grasps a ring made for him by the Jews and cries, ‘I could have saved more, one more Jew, two more Jews,’ Dan made a loud gulping sound. When I turned the lights back on, his eyes were red raw.

  That’s probably a lot of crying for most blokes, and I’d never seen a man cry before. Watching Dan crumple because I was dead was the most horrible thing I’d ever seen and I knew, in the split-second when he’d looked up at me through the window and almost recognised me, that I’d made the right decision in coming back to earth. Nothing, I realised as the London Eye twinkled on the horizon, was more important than us being together again. He’d been there for me so many times when I was alive and now he needed me. Even if I was only a ghost, at least he’d know I was watching over him.

  I stood up, feeling determined. If I was going to pass my task I had to get back to the House of Wannabe Ghosts and find out why Dan hadn’t recognised me. There was no time to lose.

  Chapter Seven

  All the lights were burning inside the House of Wannabe Ghosts so I turned the handle and pushed. It was locked.

  ‘Brian,’ I screamed through the letterbox, terrified I’d be left standing on another doorstep. ‘It’s Lucy. Could you let me in?’

  There was a loud boom from upstairs, the sound of heavy footsteps along the landing and then the door swung open.

  Brian was dressed head to toe in combat clothes: a khaki shirt, camouflage jacket and trousers, and a pair of army boots slung over his shoulder. Three thick black lines were painted on each of his cheeks.

  ‘Ah, Lucy,’ he said, ‘thank God, you’ve come back.’

  ‘I’m glad you missed me,’ I said, relieved he knew who I was. ‘And I’ve got so much to ask you. First of all I need to know why—’

  ‘We can chat later,’ he said, holding up a hand. ‘First we need to save Claire.’

  ‘What from?’

  ‘Her exact words were,’ he said, wriggling his feet into his heavy black boots, ‘“I’m going to kick the bitch’s head in. Come and help me.”’

  ‘What!’ I said. ‘You’re not going to help her beat someone up, are you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said as he shooed me out of the doorway and slammed the door shut. ‘I’m going to stop her. And you’re going to help me.’

  ‘No I’m not,’ I protested. ‘Claire was a complete bitch to me earlier
and—’ but Brian was already out of the gate and jogging down the street like a demented Action Man.

  I turned back to the front door and gave it a shove, then a harder one, but it didn’t budge. Bugger! I looked from the door to Brian. I’d have to go after him or spend the rest of the night sitting on the step waiting for my housemates to come back.

  I sprinted after Brian, my thighs wobbling as I pounded the pavement and clutched the stitch in my side. Dead and still flabby and unfit. How unfair was that?

  ‘Brian,’ I panted as we approached the bus stop, ‘were you ever in the Territorial Army by any chance?’

  He nodded and passed a hand over his sweat-free forehead. ‘I was, yes. How did you—’ He pointed down the street. ‘Bus!’

  Sure enough, a red double-decker was pulling round the corner. It drew up beside us, Brian paid for our tickets and then charged up to the top deck. I followed behind, grabbing the handrail and dragging myself up the steps. He paused at the top of the stairs and stared around, his eyes darting left and right like a judge at a table tennis competition.

  ‘I’m just looking for a seat where we won’t be overheard,’ he whispered as though we were on some kind of covert military mission.

  I pushed past him, desperate to sit down, and slumped into a seat at the front.

  ‘If we sit here,’ I said, tugging at his wrist, ‘we can look out of the window and check there aren’t any submissives following us.’

  ‘I think you mean subversives, Lucy,’ Brian said, carefully positioning himself on the edge of the seat so our bodies didn’t touch.

  I felt myself blush. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘We’re not looking for subversives,’ he said, frowning at me. ‘We’re looking for Claire. She told me she was in the Dublin Castle pub in Camden.’

  I stared at him in astonishment, temporarily stunned by what he’d just implied. It didn’t matter that Claire was a bitch or Brian was smelly because we could communicate with each other via ESP. How cool was that?

  ‘Can you read my mind too, Brian?’ I asked hopefully. ‘Can you tell what I’m thinking now?’

  ‘Of course not.’ He shifted away from me, looking at me like I was mad. ‘I spoke to Claire on the telephone, Lucy. There’s one in the hall cupboard, next to the kitchen.’

  ‘Oh.’

  There was a pause and I stared out of the window, clicking my purse open and closed. On the streets below us north London was still bustling with life; angry drivers honked their horns, young men leaned up against kebab shops smoking cigarettes as they eyed up the girls that walked past. Men in suits, desperate to get home, negotiated their way through crowds of laughing teenagers, and couples, arm in arm, paused outside restaurants and peered at the menus.

  ‘Brian,’ I said finally, ‘how come I’ve got two hundred pounds in my purse but all my cards and stuff have gone?’

  He tutted. ‘You haven’t read your manual yet, have you?’

  ‘I haven’t had time,’ I said, staring back out the window at a couple snogging passionately against a pub window. ‘I went to look for my fiancé instead.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was really horrible.’ My bottom lip wobbled dangerously and I willed myself not to cry again. ‘He didn’t recognise me, Brian.’

  ‘Oh, Lucy,’ he sighed. ‘If you’d just read your manual you’d have realised that would happen.’

  ‘But I still look like me,’ I said, turning to look at him. ‘I checked in the mirror.’

  ‘I know you do,’ Brian said, his eyes soft with sympathy, ‘and I can see the same person you see. So can Claire. But other people, living people, they view us slightly differently, Lucy. It’s what’s called a temporal twist in perception.’

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked. It sounded scary.

  ‘Imagine I was a holding a clay model of a human being.’ Brian held his hands in front of him. ‘And then I squashed it slightly.’ He pressed his hands together. ‘It’s still a clay model of a human being but it just looks slightly different. That’s what happens with us.’

  ‘But Dan recognised me,’ I said. ‘For a split second when he first saw me.’

  Brian nodded. ‘The temporal twist doesn’t happen instantaneously. There’s always a slight delay.’

  ‘Does that affect our voices?’ I asked. ‘Is that why Dan couldn’t hear me either?’

  ‘No. It’s familiar mutism,’ Brian said. ‘Rule 512.6: if you try to communicate with anyone who knew you before you died, your attempts will be thwarted. Speaking renders you mute and writing turns into gobblede gook. You might have discovered that, Lucy, if you’d bothered to read the—’

  ‘Manual. Yes, Brian, you said.’

  I was still trying to figure out the temporal twist thing when the bus swung round the corner of Camden High Street and turned onto Parkway. Friday-night revellers crowded outside Camden tube. Music poured out of clubs, pubs and restaurants and goths, emos, punks, metallers, hip-hop kids and homeless people spilled onto the pavement and into the night. We were surrounded by life and energy. No wonder Claire couldn’t keep away.

  ‘I saw my mum in Covent Garden once,’ I said, swallowing hard, ‘or I thought I did. It was about a month after she’d died.’ I turned to look at Brian. ‘Do you think that means she came back to earth to do a task?’

  ‘Quite possible,’ he said sagely.

  ‘But she never showed herself to me as a ghost. Do you think she failed?’

  He shook his head. ‘Sometimes people pass their tasks and choose not to become ghosts.’

  ‘But why, it doesn’t make sense? Why go through all that trouble and then not show yourself to the person you lov—’

  Brian held up a hand and stood up. ‘This is our stop.’

  It was absolutely heaving inside the Dublin Castle. I followed Brian’s dark, fuzzy head as he squeezed between the crowds of drinkers and made his way towards the door at the back of the venue where a black and red sign said LU$T BOYS in the ugliest font I’d ever seen. As we got closer a skinny bloke in a tight black T-shirt and even skinnier jeans, held up a hand.

  ‘How many?’ he asked, peering out from beneath the lank fringe that curved over the end of his nose.

  Brian dug around in his wallet and pulled out a twenty-pound note. ‘Two.’

  Skinny Boy grabbed Brian’s note and stamped both our hands with a dark squiggle.

  ‘You’re in,’ he said.

  The door slammed shut behind us and a thumping, screeching, drum-battering wall of noise bombarded my ears. It was dark, stank of beer and sweat and there wasn’t space to breathe, never mind move (it was even worse than limbo). Brian raised himself onto his tiptoes and peered through the gloom.

  ‘Lucy,’ he bellowed in my ear. ‘I’ve spotted Claire and I can see blood.’

  ‘Blood,’ I repeated. ‘Shit.’

  I followed the line of Brian’s finger and squeezed my way through the crowd, ignoring the elbows and boots that jabbed me as I pushed through. At one point something hit my back and warm liquid seeped through my jumper, dripped down my spine, and curled towards my bum crack.

  Please let that be lager, I prayed, pushing on towards the stage.

  It wasn’t hard to spot the band. A short, peroxide-haired singer was screaming into his mike while the rotund drummer thrashed about with his sticks like he was having some kind of psychotic fit. Only the bassist stood completely still, his eyes closed, the plucking movement of his fingers the only sign he wasn’t fast asleep on his feet.

  ‘Look,’ Brian said, grabbing my shoulder. ‘There she is.’

  Claire was flat on her back on the floor, her black boots cycling the air, her skirt up round her waist, exposing her fishnet-covered bum. One of her nostrils was smeared with blood and several of her dreads had come loose. A blonde woman in a red bra was sitting astride her, smacking Claire’s head against the floor as Claire pulled at her clothes and threw badly aimed punches. They were both red in the face and breathless.

  I
t was like watching two gothic beetroots take part in WWF.

  Brian was rooted to the spot, his mouth wide open. ‘Hey,’ I said, thumping him on the arm. ‘Do something! Stop them.’

  He took a step forward, paused, and then stepped back again. ‘I’m not sure basic military training has equipped me for this, Lucy.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Oh for God’s sake. Just pull them apart. I’ll help you.’

  Adrenaline and stupidity propelled me out of the crowd and towards the scrap.

  ‘Grab her,’ I said, pointing Brian in the direction of the scrawny blonde. ‘I’ll get Claire.’

  Brian pounced and wrapped his arms around Claire’s attacker, lifting her clean into the air while I grabbed one of Claire’s hands and attempted to pull her up. Before I had time to react, her free hand curved through the air and hit me square on the chin. I stumbled backwards, slightly dazed and then reached for her again.

  ‘Piss off,’ she screamed, her dreads flying round her head like a Gorgon’s snakes. ‘I can look after myself.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Claire,’ I shouted, rubbing my jaw, ‘I was trying to stop you being killed.’

  ‘I can’t die,’ she hissed. ‘Remember?’

  ‘Yeah,’ shouted some random bloke in the crowd. ‘We’re all gonna live for ever. Rock and roll!’

  Across the dance floor the skinny blonde was wriggling in Brian’s arms and thumping him in the side of the head with both fists. His jaw was gritted but I could tell he was in pain.

  ‘Claire,’ I shouted. ‘Do you want Brian to get hurt too?’

  She looked across at Brian and her expression softened a little.

  ‘Fine,’ she said, levering herself up off the ground. ‘I’ll deal with her tomorrow.’

  The crowd were still booing our retreat as we stumbled through the pub and out the front door, Claire laughing hysterically the whole way.

  ‘Look,’ I said as we stepped onto the street. ‘There’s our bus.’

  ‘Fuck that,’ Claire said. ‘I’m too pumped. I’m gonna run all the way home.’