I press down the button at the base of the handle and when it actually clicks on I start to hiccup bursts of hysterical laughter. I have no idea why this is funny. To be honest, I’m starting to scare myself.
Breathe, Maggie, breathe.
I close my eyes and it helps. For a moment the room stops spinning. I try to pretend I’m not here, that I’m back at home. For a second I ache for my dull little life, then I force myself to think this through.
This can’t be heaven, can it? My student digs? I flick that idea away and replace it with another one. My eyes open again. Maybe this isn’t heaven. Maybe that’s too much for a tiny human brain to handle right off the bat.
So maybe this is something else? A waiting room of sorts. Something familiar. Something pulled from my memory banks to help me feel at home.
I frown as I look at the broken chipboard cabinets. Fabulous work, Maggie. Great choice. Of all the places you’ve been in your life, this was the one that rose to the surface? I haven’t travelled much, but what about Paris or that lovely beach in Minorca where we spent our tenth anniversary? Those had been pretty nice places. It must say something about me that I’ve subconsciously plumped for the grottiest place I’d ever lived. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I didn’t choose it. Maybe the place you go to reflects what your life was like before you came here.
I can’t decide which option is more depressing.
However, the decor might be dated, the windows so rotten they rattle in the slightest breeze, but, as I wander round, other memories start crowding in, stragglers that lope in late behind the initial onslaught.
It’s weird experiencing a memory not only in the place it occurred but at the same time it occurred. The sensation takes my breath for a second, the recollection sharper and more colourful than it would be back in my little suburban semi with more than two decades insulating me from the moment.
I don’t know how I can pinpoint it so precisely, but I know exactly where I am. When I am. It’s the morning after the May Ball. Becca is out, having finally caught the eye of the one guy she’s swooned over all through her drama course, and I’m in the flat all on my own. I remember waking up and just knowing that the world was full of possibilities and I was waiting at its threshold, one foot poised in the air, about to step into my future.
That’s when I realise I know why I’m here, in this place, in this time.
Instead of freaking out about my surroundings, I start walking around again, looking at things, greeting them like old friends. Hello, drooping yucca that looks as if someone thought of the ugliest shape they could train you into and did just that. There is no beauty in your asymmetry, but I smile at you all the same. Hello, chunky VCR and impossibly cuboid television set that we watch Dallas and Neighbours on. Hello, mirrored Indian cushion cover that I bought from Kensington Market, which got ruined during a party when someone was sick on you. I’ve kind of missed you all these years, but now I realise you are really rather hideous.
I finish taking the tour and sit down on the sofa and start to wait. This is a waiting room, after all. That’s when I notice what I’m wearing. A large, faded ‘Choose Life’ T-shirt, left over from my teenage years, which I’d kept as a nightshirt. I also notice my legs.
I start to laugh. No wonder I’ve come back here! Everything is tight and toned and less veiny than normal. I twist my legs this way and that to get a better look. I’d heard somewhere that people aren’t old in heaven, that everyone’s about thirty, but taking a good look at the bits I can see, I’d put myself closer to twenty.
I smile as I sit on the sofa, tapping my feet on the floor. But eventually the smile fades and the feet stop tapping.
OK, I think. I’m acclimatised now. Come and get me.
I wait for someone to appear, maybe my grandad or my cousin, who got taken out by breast cancer ten years ago. That’s how this works, isn’t it? But nobody comes, no one knocks on the door or floats through a wall.
I get fed up sitting on the sofa and head for the bathroom. That’s the weirdest thing about being dead. I need to wee. Didn’t think they’d bother with that in heaven. It’s a bit of a disappointment to discover otherwise.
Anyway, I go into the bathroom and do what needs to be done, and it’s only when I’m washing my hands that it occurs to me I could look in the mirror. So I do. Even though I’m half expecting to see my twenty-one-year-old self stare back at me, it’s a shock when it happens.
God, that awful full fringe. I thought it made me look like Shannon what’s-her-face from Beverly Hills 90210, but, in reality, I look more like Joan Crawford from Mommie Dearest.
I’m just drying my hands and wondering if I can find some celestial hair grips in this strange place, when I hear the front door bang.
‘Heya!’ a voice yells out. ‘Only me!’
I try to answer but discover my throat has closed up.
Becca?
Oh, no. Oh, God. Becca! She’s not dead too, is she? What a horrible, horrible coincidence! Both of us on the same day? We must have been in a car crash together. And both of us chose this as our waiting room?
That’s when everything starts to slip and slide again. I hear her moving around in the lounge, dumping her stuff down, just as she’d done that morning after the ball.
‘Mags? You there?’ she shouts, and I know she’s pulling her hair out of its usual ponytail and flopping down on the sofa. I nod, still unable to speak – still unable to move, actually – and stare back at myself in the mirror. I’m as white as a ghost, which would be funny under other circumstances.
Reality dashes over me like a bucket of ice water, and I know the next thought that enters my head to be the absolute and inalterable truth: I’m not dead at all. And this definitely isn’t heaven.
One week earlier
I arrive at Bluewater, the huge triangular shopping centre sitting in the middle of a disused quarry just near the Dartford crossing. Becca and I have been meeting for a monthly shopping trip here for a couple of years now. We could take it in turns to go to each other’s houses, I suppose, but she says, as much as she loves me, the coffee here is way better. And then there’s the shopping. Becca loves shopping.
I head for our usual cafe and order a coffee. I could wait for Becca before I order, but I don’t. Ever since I’ve known her, if we’ve arranged to get together, I’m always ten minutes early and she’s always twenty minutes late. I know I should just adjust my arrival time and turn up late as well, but somehow I can’t make myself do it.
I’ve just reached the silky froth at the bottom of my cup when Becca arrives – an uncharacteristic ten minutes before her usual time – and collapses into the chair opposite me. She has a collection of shopping bags with her: things she needs to return to Coast and Karen Millen that she picked up on our last shopping outing and has decided don’t suit her. I also have something to return, but it’s a shower curtain that needs to go back to John Lewis.
‘Shall we get a table outside?’ she asks, after scanning the restaurant. ‘The weather’s glorious.’
I sigh inwardly, reach for my bags and stand up. Becca always does this. It doesn’t matter where I choose to sit, she always wants to move to a better spot. I wouldn’t mind so much but I specifically chose this table because it’s the one she wanted to move to last time.
Becca is practically glowing. I haven’t been able to take my eyes off her since she walked through the door, and since a few male heads turn as we move tables, I guess I’m not the only one.
She’s