If This Is Paradise, I Want My Money Back (5 page)

They’re all so lovely and they all have such great stories to tell, but it’s just that . . . you see, they’re all so much, well,
older.
Not that I’m complaining, far from it, but . . . they do all spend most of the day watching TV, then later on there’s bingo and sometimes, to add to all the unbearable excitement, bridge. Which is terrific. It’s just that, now that I’ve been here for a while, I’m starting to wonder how well I fit in, that’s all. I’m not exactly sure what I thought the afterlife would be like, but I sure as hell didn’t expect stair lifts, and Thora Hird, and an elderly lady in a Paddington Bear hat wandering around with a corgi trailing after her and a gin and tonic in one hand, who I’d only swear is the Queen Mother.

I suppose I expected death to mean that you might get to hang out with Princess Diana or Elvis. Or Kurt Cobain or even John Lennon, but I guess they must have all passed their assessments years ago and are now partying away in wherever it is that all the cool, hip, young dead people go, while I’m somehow stuck in the Florida of the afterlife.

At this stage, Dad’s getting expert at reading my thoughts.

‘Not really your cup of Bacardi Breezer here, is it, pet? I know it’s hard because you’re so young, but you have to understand that to everyone else here, this is the equivalent of partying like it’s 1899.’

Shit. He’s sussed me out. I’m frantically racking my brains trying to think of a polite way of saying . . . what, exactly? That I made a pig’s ear of my time on earth, and now it turns out that the afterlife isn’t exactly a barrel of laughs, either?

‘There is something else you might consider, you know,’ he goes on, his face giving absolutely nothing away, but then Mum always reckoned there were times when you’d need to be Sigmund Freud to figure him out. ‘Just to pass the time.’

‘Yeah?’ I say, wondering what he means. Give hell a try, maybe?

‘It’s not for everyone now, but there is an opening, and I think I could possibly pull a few strings for you . . .’

He looks at me, and there’s just the tiniest giveaway glint in his eye, like he’s had this up his sleeve for a long time.

‘Charlotte, pet, maybe you’d consider putting in a bit of emmm . . . well, work experience, I suppose you’d call it, really?’

Sounds OK, I think. I mean, no one seems to know how long this assessment lark actually takes. I’ve all this time on my hands, so I might as well do something useful with it. Plus, we used to do this in school as part of detention. Saturday work experience in old folks’ homes, that is. You know, make tea and sandwiches, help people in and out of wheelchairs, make sure everyone got the right medication, referee any rows about what everyone watched on TV, that kind of thing. Never thought I’d end up doing it in the afterlife, but there you go. If you think life’s full of surprises, you should try giving death a whirl.

‘Absolutely,’ I smile up at Dad, delighted that there’s some way to relieve the boring, tedious monotony and make myself useful for a change. Plus, if some higher power is, as we speak, busy evaluating my sad, dismal little life, then, maybe, just maybe, if I show a willingness to muck in here, they might go that bit easier on me. Give me a kind of posthumous effort cup, if you will.

‘I’d love to.’

Chapter Three

Don’t ask me how it happened, but the next thing Dad and I are both sitting in what looks a bit like a bank-manager’s office. Tiny and a bit gloomy, with leather swivel chairs, a load of corporate-looking files lying on the desk opposite, and phones ringing in the background non-stop. I’m not joking, half of me feels like I should start filling out a mortgage application form. Across from us, there’s an older, smiley-faced lady sitting behind a computer who’s having a conversation with . . . well, with no one, actually, at least no one that I can see. She’s bubbly and warm, and would nearly put you in mind of an Aer Lingus hostess that’s about to slip you a little bottle of Chardonnay from off the drinks trolley with a discreet wink and not charge you. She’s also dressed head to toe in pink, with plump pink cheeks; Jaysus, even her glasses have a pinky rim. For a second, it flashes through my poor befuddled brain that she kind of looks a bit like a human marshmallow. Every now and then, she relays the other side of the conversation back to me and Dad, a bit like they do on the
Eurovision Song Contest
, when the Ukrainian vote is coming in.

‘Sorry about this.’ She smiles at us apologetically. ‘Bit of an urgent situation I just need to troubleshoot, then I’ll be right with you!’ And back she goes, talking to thin air again. ‘Gabriel, before this escalates, I think you may need to step in. Number 742 is at his wits’ end here, this really is a code red . . .’

I throw a ‘huh?’ glance at Dad, who just looks ahead, as impassive and expressionless as ever.

‘Did she just say Gabriel?’ I whisper at him, unable to shut myself up. ‘Like, as in THE Gabriel?’

No response.

‘Dad! Is she talking to the Archangel Gabriel?’ I hiss at him. ‘I mean, I doubt very much if she’s having a chat with Gabriel Byrne . . .’

He makes a tiny, ‘shhhh’ frowny gesture, but otherwise just stays focused straight ahead. Bloody hell, he’d have cleaned up as a poker player.

‘. . . no, no, his charge is now sitting in his car at the end of a pier contemplating, well, let’s just say, he’s at his lowest ebb and I think we may need urgent backup . . .’ Then smiley lady flashes a big ‘don’t worry, all under control’ professional smile at me and Dad.

‘Oh yes, I have all the files here in front of me, his charge is going through a very acrimonious divorce at the moment, in fact that’s exactly what started all this . . . no, go ahead. I’ll hold,’ she says, top of her voice, before whispering back to us, ‘So, so sad. Lovely man. His wife went to work part-time in a garden centre and ran off with someone else she met there. The fella in charge of the water features. She worked in aquariums, and one fine day their eyes met across the faux rocks and the lily pads. Like something you’d see in one of those Sunday evening sitcoms with Robert Lindsay, isn’t it? Tragic. But sure, what can you do? That’s what comes of giving mortals free will. Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for it. Anyway, what the poor deserted husband doesn’t know is that his whole life is about to take a turn for the better in ways he can’t even begin to imagine . . . hello? Yes, Gabriel, I’m still here . . . yes, that’s lovely. Fine, well, let’s hope that does the trick, and I’ll call you again shortly with an update. Copy that. Over and out.’

Copy that, over and out? I think. I’m half-wondering if I’ve wandered on to the set of a cop show when smiley lady stretches out her hand to introduce herself.

‘Regina Angelorum is my full title, but everyone around here just calls me Regina,’ she says warmly, whipping off the pink glasses, which manages to make her look slightly less marshmallow-like.

‘Lovely to meet you, I’m Charlotte Grey . . .’

‘Oh, yes, we know all about you, love. In fact I’ve a full dossier here somewhere on you,’ she says, waving vaguely at the big mound of files on the desk in front of her. ‘Now, wait till I see, where did I put it? Oh yes, here we go. Be a good girl and fill in that for me, will you?’ she says, passing me over a biro and a very official-looking form.

‘Car crash, wasn’t it, love?’ she asks sympathetically, and I nod. ‘Don’t bother with page one, we have all that information already. Just fill out page three and that’ll be grand. Oh, if you only knew the amount of road fatalities I’ve seen in my time, and do you know it’s getting worse every single year? I’m hoarse saying it . . .’

Regina chatters on to Dad about speed-limits and the general uselessness of penalty points and drink-driving laws while I wade my way through the paperwork trying to find page three. God Almighty, it’s like applying for a passport. The form is headed AWE and it’s only when I look closely that I see what that stands for.

Angelic Work Experience.

OK, now I’m starting to feel like I’m stuck in a Harry Potter movie, and am almost half-expecting to see flying owls and kids playing Quidditch fluttering past the window any minute.

‘Excuse me, emmmm . . . Regina?’ I interrupt her in full flow about road-death statistics. ‘Am I seeing things? Or does this really, honestly say angelic work experience? Like . . . for real?’

‘Ye-eeeeessssss, dear.’ She smiles, looking at me as much as to say, ‘What the hell else did you expect?’

‘So, I’m going to be . . . like . . . an angel?’

‘Just fill out question three, paragraph two, dear and we’ll see how you get on.’

I flick ahead to the right page, my hands trembling, half with excitement and half with total disbelief. No, I definitely am not seeing things. There it is in bold type.

Oh my God, this is unreal. If I wasn’t actually sitting here, I’d never believe it in a sugar rush. Here I am, about to become a bona fide actual angel. Me, that made such an almighty mess of my time on earth, and now look at me! Suddenly, I think about Mum, Kate and Fiona. What they must be going through. But then I think of how much more I can do for them from where I am now. I mean, I’m sure I’ll get to look in on them and work all sorts of miracles for them all. ’Cos everyone knows angels have, like . . . powers, don’t they?

Ooh, I just thought of something. Bet I could help Kate to get pregnant. And Fiona to get her face out of that computer, start spending time among the three-dimensional people and then maybe find a gorgeous man who’ll treat her like a queen. I’ll help her to make her life
work.
The way that mine didn’t. And I could get Mum through that list of hers, although how I’ll arrange for her to meet George Clooney is another thing. Then there’s all the actors at the agency. Bet I could make all kinds of fabulous things happen for them, too. Apart from Miss Helium Voice, that is. But otherwise I’ll be a perfect model of angelic behaviour.

I will completely reinvent myself, just like Madonna. Or Carla Bruni.

For the first time in ages, I’ve got the biggest beam spread across my face. I grab the biro and, honest to God, once I start writing, there’s no stopping me. Under ‘reasons for wishing to partake in the AWE programme’ I write two full pages about how, although my own life didn’t exactly work out the way I’d imagined, now I want to devote myself entirely to helping others. I must sound gushier than a contestant on
Miss Universe
, and am only short of writing ‘have deep, burning desire to promote world peace’.

Anyway, I must have done something right, because after Regina reads over my answer she smiles, winks at Dad, and tells me I’m clear to go.

To a classroom, to be exact. As if things couldn’t get any more bizarre. The old-fashioned type, with wooden floors, and an actual blackboard, and an overwhelming smell of chalk dust. Kind of reminds me of the time myself and Fiona signed up for a night class called ‘Screenwriting for Beginners’ in the local adult education centre. I was all up for it because I thought it would help me in work; Fiona thought it would be a good way to meet fellas. Anyway, we were both disappointed: the course was total rubbish, and the one and only guy in the class happened to be gay. But I digress.

There’s two other people here: an elderly man with a goatee beard wearing what looks like an ancient Victorian frock coat, and a middle-aged woman, very attractive in a pale, hollow-eyed, Mary Pickford way, with shingled hair and bright red nail-varnish.

‘You’re Miss Charlotte, aren’t you?’ says goatee man politely, not even a raised eyebrow about how I just managed to . . . I dunno, beam into, or somehow get landed wherever it is that I am now. Just like in a dream; I haven’t a clue how I physically got from A to B, all I’m sure of is that I’m here now.

‘Emm . . . yes, but the thing is . . . emm . . . I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but emm . . . I don’t suppose you know exactly what’s going on here, by any chance?’

‘Motoring accident, wasn’t it?’ says shingle-haired woman, mildly curious.

‘Emm . . . yeah . . . but . . .’

‘Yeah,’ goatee man repeats after me, pondering. Honestly, the more I look at him, the more he’d put you in mind of Gladstone or Disraeli or some other Victorian frock-coated, elder statesman type.

‘I could never get used to that abbreviation. A little like “OK”. One hears it so often nowadays, and it never fails to amuse me. Well, I do hope your accident wasn’t too painful, my dear?’

‘Ehh . . . no, actually, never even felt a thing, really, it was all over so fast. I think the shock must have numbed me. There was a storm and I was, well, I was . . . I was . . . emm . . . really upset about . . . something. One minute I was trying to overtake a car in front of me, but I didn’t see that there was a truck coming towards me on the opposite side of the road, till it was way too late, then, next thing I was in hospital . . .’

Funny, though, the little things that, bizarrely, do stick in my mind about the accident. Watching the bonnet of my little car crumple like an accordian in slow motion as the truck struck it full-on. Remembering too late that I forgot to put my seat belt on. Feeling my head crash forward through the windscreen at full force, shattering it as easily as if it were made of icing sugar. Then opening my eyes and seeing the panicked truck driver, standing on the road beside me in the pelting rain, screaming hysterically down his mobile phone for the ambulance to hurry the f*ck up, that this could be a fatality.

But I’m grand, I thought looking over at him. Just can’t move, that’s all. Then I remember feeling a hot, oozy slime dripping down my face and into my open mouth. It was only when a bit of it dropped on to my tongue that I realized it was blood.

Then nothing. Blackness. Peace. ‘What was it that happened to you, Charles?’ asks shingle-haired woman in an English accent so cut-glass you’d swear she just stepped out of an Agatha Christie whodunnit.

‘Typhoid.’

‘Typhoid?’ I can’t help repeating after him, stunned. In fact, I couldn’t be more stunned if he’d just said ‘the Black Death’.

‘Yes, dear. Perfectly common in 1849. How about you?’ he asks shingle-head.

‘Influenza.’

‘Flu?’ I blurt out. Sorry, couldn’t help that, either, I’m too busy thinking, do people really
die
of flu?

‘They certainly did in 1919,’ she replies curtly, reading my thoughts. ‘More people died of influenza than did in the whole of the Great War, you know . . . ah, here’s Minnie now.’ She breaks off as a little girl of about ten or eleven comes in, with long brown hair tied in a ribbon, wearing hobnail boots and a kind of smock dress. She’s adorable and looks a bit like one of the Railway Children, and I’m just about to ask her to come and sit beside me when she strides up to the top of the class and, in her sweet little-girl voice, tells us that today we’re going to be learning about giving signs, communication through dreams, and guiding without interfering with free will.

‘But she’s only a kid!’ I whisper to shingle-head on my left.

‘Oh, don’t make that mistake, dear. Minnie’s an older soul than any of us. She’s had over two hundred earthly charges to date you know.’

Bloody hell.

We learn so much I can barely take it all in. And let’s remember that up till this intensive crash course, my knowledge of the spirit world was pretty much derived from movies like
The Sixth Sense
and
Ghost
. Then something that Dad said comes back to me, about how he sends little signs to Mum all the time. And now I’ve learned how to do exactly that. At least, I think I have.

My head is swimming, and all I really want to do is rush back to Dad and fill him in on everything. But things don’t seem to happen like that here. No sooner has Minnie wrapped up, than I’m whooshed back to Regina in her bank-manager’s office, where she looks like she’s been sitting alone, just waiting for me.

‘All right then, love? Minnie is really something, isn’t she? I remember when she first came here, oh, must have been in Queen Victoria’s day, but she really is a wonderful spirit, and a very gifted teacher . . . now, my dear, I’ve got quite a challenging assignment for you. I haven’t just been pulling strings for you, I’ve been pulling
ropes
. Wait till I see, where on earth did I put that file? One of these days I am determined to clear this desk, once and for all . . .’

I’m on the edge of my seat, all excited now. This is just like in a Bond movie, when Judi Dench tells 007 what his mission will be. Minus the gadgets of course, but . . . hmmm . . . wonder if I get issued with a set of wings?

‘Oh yes, here we are,’ she goes on. ‘Hmmm. Interesting. This charge’s last angel only left a few days ago. Wrote it off as a hopeless case. So why don’t we see if you can do any better, dear?’

‘Bring it on,’ I beam brightly, half-wondering if there’s any more training to come before I’m dispatched. Maybe some kind of angelic boot camp. Where they give lessons in, I dunno, flying and general miracle-working techniques.

‘Now, you do know that if the going gets too rough, you can come back here at any time?’ Regina asks, peering at me over the pink glasses, the big marshmallow face looking a bit worried. ‘No one would blame you a bit. It’s not everyone who’s cut out for angelic work experience.’