The Second Life of Nathan Jones: A laugh out loud, OMG! romcom that you won’t be able to put down!

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About HarperImpulse (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 1 (#ulink_f3b8b1a1-4a65-5cf7-8b86-5cd997718480)

Getting killed hadn’t been part of Nathan Jones’s plans for Saturday afternoon. Instead, he’d mapped out a nice relaxing time for himself on the sofa catching up on TheWalking Dead boxset he’d got for his birthday.

His wife Laura and their three children were in the kingdom of Fife, visiting her mother, and weren’t due back until the evening. He pottered from room to room, still in his pyjamas, revelling in the hush that had descended upon his normally noisy life.

Nathan polished off one of his favourite toasted cinnamon bagels, smothered with some of Tesco’s finest jam, whilst flicking from channel to channel making the most of having sole custody of the remote control. Had he known what was in store for him when he left his flat, he would have remained safely seated on the couch and phoned for a takeaway dinner.

Instead, he got dressed, zipped up his coat and headed out into the windy November afternoon munching a bag of pickled-onion-flavoured Monster Munch crisps. His planned destination had been the local Tesco but as he crossed the busy road adjacent to his flat he had an unfortunate run-in with a bus that subsequently changed everything.

When he pieced together the incident later, it appeared he had stepped off the pavement right into the path of the twelve-tonne vehicle. This was obviously a very silly thing to do and so unlike his normally cautious approach to life. He couldn’t remember the number of times he’d drummed into his children’s heads ‘STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN’.

The ambulance arrived in record time, but a paramedic pronounced him dead at the scene and an A & E doctor confirmed the decision a short time later at the local hospital.

He remembered very little about dying. If pushed, he would classify it as a complete non-event. Nothing flashed before his eyes and no dead relatives stood beckoning him into the light. Even if they had, his relationship with his family had been such that the likely outcome would have been him running in the opposite direction.

If Karen Gillan had been tasked with bringing him into the fold he might have considered it, but she hadn’t, probably because

1. She happened to be still very much alive and

2. He didn’t merit a heavenly Hollywood A-list reception committee.

His first impression of death? A vastly overrated experience and he had no idea why everyone made such a fuss over it.

He’d felt that way about several things in recent years: the various royal weddings and births, the Brexit fiasco and the launch of the latest incarnation of the iPhone.

His poor impression of death might be down to the fact that, like many things in life, Nathan didn’t do it very well. He was rubbish at lots of things. He couldn’t ski, skate or work out quadratic equations and had issues with authority figures. He could now add dying to the list.

Thinking back to his childhood, Nathan recalled that his mum’s main concern about death had been underwear.

‘Nathan, you must make sure that every day you leave the house in clean underpants, just in case you’re involved in any kind of accident. I don’t want you showing me up in hospital.’

For that reason, whenever she left the house her underwear would be clean and as new as possible. Even as a relatively young kid, Nathan realised that if she ever got injured so badly in an accident that she needed hospital admission her underwear would more than likely be soiled to the point that it would have to be binned.

He never mentioned this to her, however, and had she still been alive, she would not have been happy that on the day her son’s life ended, he’d been wearing very old and very threadbare boxer shorts.

Nathan first realised everything wasn’t quite right with the whole ‘after-death experience’ when he became aware of a bone-numbing cold and that his arms had been strapped down. His face had also annoyingly been covered with cloth. Overall it felt as if he’d been swaddled in a similar way to that which his wife used with the kids when they were babies.

Initially he thought it might be a straitjacket hugging him tightly. Perhaps the increasingly fractious relationship with his wife had finally reached a stage where his sanity had cracked, leading to an extreme psychosis demanding he be sectioned and confined in a small space?

He could still breathe easily enough, though he learned his breath smelt none too pleasant as he received instant feedback from the fabric pressed against his face. He tried to move his left arm, but this resulted in such searing pain that it made him gasp and brought tears to his eyes. He tentatively moved his right arm. He felt some gentle tingling but no pain. He pulled it free of whatever restricted it, reached up and removed the fabric membrane from his face.

Free of the first prison, he then faced a second containment. He’d been enclosed in something dark, hard and metallic. As far as he knew, even the most dangerous mental patients were not placed in metal boxes. At least, he didn’t think so, though he acknowledged he had limited knowledge of current UK mental health treatments.

Unfortunately, at this point some feeling started to return to the rest of his body and he ached. Not the kind of soul-ache that you got from being desperately in love with someone, which he could still recall (just), but the kind of all-over body ache that occasionally accompanied a bad bout of the flu when it felt as though a little man was running around your body stabbing your extremities with a hot needle. In fact, it felt very much as if he had been hit by a bus. Then he remembered with a start of realisation that that was exactly what had happened.

He started to shout. However, his croaky, weak voice only produced a pathetic whimper. He tried to bang the sides of the metal container with his good arm, but this only made the smallest of sounds given the lack of space at his disposal.

Nathan then discovered that if he banged his bare heels off the bottom of the metal prison it made much more noise. He did this for a few seconds then gave up, exhausted.

Then he suddenly felt himself moving forwards. It felt like the start of a roller-coaster ride but without any of the delicious anticipation, and suddenly he slid out of the darkness into a harsh white light.

As he squinted into the brightness a face emerged and peered curiously at him. An angel perhaps? If so, she was nothing like those depicted in Hollywood movies. Her hair was black, her eyes were black, her clothes were black, her earrings were black, her piercings were black, even her lips were black – although her teeth were pearly white. She smiled at him and said, ‘Hello there.’

Chapter 2 (#ulink_4091097b-9330-5ae7-952f-5aa416b710a9)

My full name is Klaudette Ainsworth-Thomas (yeah, I know). I woke up on my tenth birthday, decided enough was enough and made a monumental decision. The first person I had to tell? My mother.

‘Mum?’

Janice, my mum, could usually be found behind an ironing board. She ironed every day. Ironing was one of her many obsessions. If it got to 6 p.m. and there were no clothes left in the ironing basket she got all anxious and cranky and started to press things that had already been done, like my dad’s shirts or something random like the bedroom curtains. She had even been known to remove the cushion covers from the couch and press them on a low heat.

‘Mum?’

‘Yes, Klaudie?’ Now, there was another thing that annoyed me; even though my thoughtless parents had lumbered me with the triple-barrelled name from hell, they couldn’t even be bothered to use it properly and invariably shortened it to Scotland’s prevailing type of weather.

‘I’ve made a decision.’