The Other Us: the RONA winning perfect second chance romance to curl up with

I don’t know how I know I’m dead. It’s just that I had a sense as my conscious brain swam up from the murky depths of sleep of being somewhere entirely ‘other’.

I heave in some much-needed oxygen, pulling it in through my nostrils. Odd. I’ve always thought heaven would smell nicer than this. You know, of beautiful flowers and pure, clean air, like you get on the top of a mountain.

Without meaning to, I move. There is a rustle and I freeze. Not because someone else is here and I’m suddenly aware of their presence, malevolent or otherwise, but because it sounded – and felt – suspiciously like bed sheets. For some reason this throws me.

As I remain still, listening to my pulse thudding in my ears, I start to contemplate the idea that maybe this place isn’t as ‘other’ as I thought.

There’s the sheets for one thing. And the fact that I seem to be lying on something that feels suspiciously like a mattress. As much as I get the sense that I’m not where I should be, not in my usual spot in the universe – lying next to Dan and pretending I can’t hear his soft snores – there’s also something familiar about this place. The smell of the air teases me, rich with memories that are just out of reach.

I really don’t want to open my eyes, because that will make this real. I want this to be a dream, one of those really lucid ones. I’ll tell Dan about it over breakfast and we’ll laugh, last night’s spat forgotten. But there’s a part of me that knows this is different, that it’s too real. More real than my normal life, even. I’m scared of that feeling.

It doesn’t take long before I cave, though. It’s just all too still, all too quiet.

I blink and try to focus on my surroundings. The first thing I experience is a wave of shock as I realise I’m right: I’m not at home in my own bed, Dan snuffling beside me. Then the second wave hits, and it’s something much more scary – recognition.

I know this place!

I push the covers back and stand up, forgetting I don’t really want to interact with this new reality, to give it any more credence than necessary.

The memories that were fuzzy and out of reach now become razor-sharp, rushing towards me, stabbing at me like a thousand tiny needles. I want to sit down, but there’s nothing to catch me but a thinning and rather grubby carpet.

This is the flat I shared with Becca during my last year at university.

I stumble through the bedroom door and into the lounge. Yes. There’s the faded green velour sofa and the seventies oval coffee table, which we’d thought was disgusting at the time but nowadays would fetch a pretty price at a vintage market.

Why am I here?

How am I here?

I turn into the little galley kitchen and spot the furred-up plastic kettle that produced the caffeine that fuelled Becca and me through our late-night essay-writing sessions, a kettle I had completely forgotten about but now seems as comforting and familiar as my childhood teddy bear. It’s something to hang on to while I feel the rest of myself slipping away.

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.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_b3d1a4db-f40e-564a-849f-bde04989e43b)

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.’