I stay with Kate the whole time, just watching over her, and when she starts sobbing, I do too.
Chapter Twenty-five
JAMES
Next morning, out of guilt more than anything else, I manage to pull myself away from the slumbering Kate and go to look in on James. I do what I normally would: i.e., focus on him, and then expect to just appear at his side, at his house, more than likely. But no, this time it’s different. Because when I open my eyes, I find myself in hospital. In a public ward, with six beds in it, packed full with visitors, doctors doing their rounds, nurses bustling in and out of the little cubicles. It’s noisy and frenetic, with a TV on in the background, trolleys clattering, phones ringing, and what sounds like about twenty different conversations going on at once.
And then I see James. In a bed right by the door, hooked up to a very frightening-looking monitor. He’s pale, washed-out and weak as a kitten. The only patient in the ward who’s all alone, with no visitors. His is the only quiet, dark corner in the whole busy ward.
‘Hi,’ I say softly, terrified I’ll give him a heart attack to add to his woes. His eyes open. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not here to lecture you,’ I half-smile, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘At least, not this time.’
Now his eyes dart around. The spark, I can’t help noticing, has completely gone out of them. He looks like a shadow of the man I once knew and loved. He looks broken.
‘Drugs,’ he murmurs in a voice so low and faint, I have to sit up just to hear him. ‘They must have me on some serious drugs. Class A. Only explanation for your voice in my head, Charlotte. Can’t be the booze this time, gotta be drugs.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Worried that if the medics see me talking to myself, they’ll put me into a psychiatric unit.’
‘Stop messing.’
‘I’ve just had my stomach pumped. You really want the details? When the doc told me what exactly was involved, my reaction was, “So do I have to be there?”’
‘You went for a gag. A lame one, but still, a good sign. You must be on the mend.’
He slumps back on to the pillow, looking drained and exhausted.
‘When are they letting you go home?’
‘Later today, I hope.’
‘Are you kidding me? You’re far too weak to leave here! Sure, look at the state of you!’
‘It’s OK. Sophie’s coming to pick me up. And stay for a bit, keep an eye on me. Make sure I don’t try anything like that again.’
Guilt washes all over me. Sophie. Who I was so horrible about, so bitchy. I mean, yeah, she did steal my boyfriend, but she also saved his life. She was more of a guardian angel to him than I ever was. Light, guard, rule and guide was my remit, and I completely buggered it up, the way I completely bugger everything up, and if it wasn’t for Sophie . . .
I can’t even bear to finish that sentence.
So I say what I’ve come to say instead.
‘James . . .’ I look around while I’m trying to work out how to phrase this right. No, there’s nothing else but just to come right out with it.
‘I owe you an apology.’
‘The voice in my head is apologizing to me? Please don’t ask me to answer you. They’ll put me in a strait-jacket, then a padded cell, then throw away the key.’
‘Look, just don’t interrupt or I’ll never be able to get this out. When I first realized you could hear me, I went out of my way to make your life hell, and I shouldn’t have. As far as I was concerned, you were responsible for my accident, and I was so . . .’ I break off, and then Regina’s phrase comes back to haunt me ‘. . . so full of blind fury, that I wanted you to suffer too. I felt this was the perfect way to give you your just desserts. To put it mildly, you weren’t exactly boyfriend of the year, and this was my chance to get back at you. To get even. To make you pay.’
‘Charlotte . . .’
‘No, let me finish. Then there was your big meeting with William Eames.’
‘Did you have to remind me about that? I might just need a second stomach pump.’
‘And I ruined it for you. I mean, OK, your idea was brutal . . . sorry, there I go, judging you again. OK, reboot. Here we go. So, I may not have liked your pitch, but I didn’t have to make a holy show of you. I didn’t have to reduce you to a gibbering wreck.’
‘Was I a gibbering wreck?’
‘Worse. Far, far worse. And then, to cap it all, there was the other night. You were at your lowest ebb, and what did I do? I played God. I told you that this was all your own doing, and that you’d brought it on yourself.’
‘In a way, I suppose I did, really.’
‘But it wasn’t my place to hound you into the ground about it. To drive you almost to . . . suici . . .’ I can’t even bring myself to say the word. So I change tack. ‘The thing is, James, I’ve realized so much recently. OK, so you didn’t exactly treat me very well, but I’ve learned that the only person who can take the rap for staying in a such a bad relationship is me. I was a woman who loved too much, and I just couldn’t see what everyone around me could. All the time . . . I . . . I thought you were like a couture fit for me, and the whole time, you thought I was . . . Topshop. I loved you warts and all, but to you, I was only ever . . . like a Lidl version of your ideal woman.’
‘Tortured metaphors, love it.’
‘Anyway, I suppose in a roundabout way, what I’m trying to say is that, for my part in reducing you to this . . .’ I look around the tiny cubicle, at all the machines that he’s wired up to, at the general, miserable, rock-bottom state of him. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Doctor Walsh says you can have tea now and a piece of dry toast,’ says a nurse, crisply whipping back the curtains around the bed and letting in a shaft of light. ‘Did I hear you talking to yourself just now?’
‘First sign of madness.’ James half-grins at her. For the first time I notice that his flirt gene is still working. Which is a sign that he’s on the mend. And what’s even better, it doesn’t bother me the way it used to. A sign that I’m finally over him. OK, so it took a lot to get here, but better late than never.
The nurse disappears off, and James flops back on to the pillow, still ghostly white.
‘The single greatest eye-opener in the world,’ he whispers, ‘is to find yourself at your lowest ebb and realize that you have no one to help you back up. No one. It’s the loneliest place to find yourself in, and then lying here . . .’ He breaks off, indicating the general horribleness of the cubicle we’re in. ‘. . . Really hammers it home. I know an awful lot of people, and not a single one would lift a finger to help me. Not a pleasant thing to have to face up to at my age. In fact, I’ve been lying here wondering which lever to pull to get crushed by a safe.’
‘Well, you don’t get wake-up calls any louder or clearer than this. Maybe it’s time for you to start building bridges with people. You know what? You should do out a karma list.’
‘A what?’
‘You know, a karma list. You write down the name of anyone you may have wronged, or in your case, shafted, then you figure out how you can make it up to them. Think of all those people you called looking for money that turned their backs on you. Then figure out how you can make amends to them.’
‘Are you kidding me? That shower of bastards?’
‘No. Wrong attitude. For instance, you called your brother, Matthew, and he wouldn’t help you. So you need to ask yourself why, then pay your karma forward. Make it up to him. He’s the only brother you have, after all. No row is worth falling out with family over. Why did you argue with him, anyway?’
‘Over you, as it happens.’
For a split second, my heart stops.
‘One Christmas. He had a go at me for the way I was treating you. We’d just had a row at my parents’ house about . . .’
‘Don’t.’ I stop him, shuddering at the memory of what I used to put up with. I remember that particular row too: it was Christmas Eve, and he never came home, even though
I’d a dinner all prepared for him, me, Mum, Kate and Paul. The plan was, we were all to eat, and then go to midnight Mass together. Not only did James stand us all up, but then he added insult to injury by spinning me a yarn about how he’d crashed out on some pal’s sofa, had no batteries on his phone to call, etc., etc., etc. The row continued right up till New Year’s Eve, if I remember, and it was horrible, ugly and awful. But bless Matthew for sticking up for me.
It’s just a shame I didn’t have the guts to do it myself when I was alive, that’s all.
‘No, I guess I wasn’t exactly boyfriend of the year, was I?’ he says, accurately reading my thoughts.
‘It’s not too late. You can pay all this forward. Be good to Matthew, and remember blood is thicker than water. And then there’s Declan. Kind-hearted, hardworking Declan who did nothing only slave away for Meridius Movies, and got rewarded with a kick in the teeth. And all for what? For telling the truth about the book option to that ex-priest guy? Can you blame the poor guy for quitting?’
‘Don’t remind me,’ he groans. ‘I was a complete shit to him, wasn’t I?’
I nod, then remember that he can’t see me.
‘You can apologize, James. Remember, it’s never too late to start over. It’s too late for me, but not for you.’
‘What did you just say?’
‘I don’t know what you’ll go on to do with your life, but I do know this much. You will never again be at rock bottom if you just treat people a little better. Trust me on the karma list.’
‘No, I mean what did you mean by saying it was too late for you?’
‘. . . Which brings me to Sophie,’ I barrel over him. ‘Now she may not be my favourite person, but she did save your life. Treat her well, James. Better than you did me. You can do it, I know you can.’
Then I glow a bit here, reflecting on just how far I’ve come. When I first heard about him and Sophie, I wanted to machine-gun the pair of them down in a hail of bullets, but now . . . now I’m cool with it. Better than cool.
I’m OK.
I’ve healed.
‘You can be such a charmer when you choose to be,’ I go on pontificating. ‘When you turn on the full megawatt force of that natural magnetism you have, you’re incredible. You’ve been so gifted in life, and you’ve everything going for you. Just stop using all that charisma to further your career, or else trying to cajole some girl to go to bed with you . . .’
Funny, I could even say that, and it didn’t hurt a bit. Amazing.
‘. . . be kind for no reason. Be kind even when there’s nothing in it for you. And you’ll never hit that rock bottom again.’
‘I . . . I will try.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
‘Worth dying just to hear you say that. And, from my point of view, if you can start treating the people around you a bit better, then maybe I won’t be such a useless failure of an angel, after all.’
He sits propped up on both elbows, and the weird thing is, even though he can’t see me, he’s looking right at me.
‘Charlotte?’
‘Yes?’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘Well, it’s a long story, but we angels aren’t entirely unsupervised, you know. There’s, like this boss who we all have to report to, and I’m telling you, you SO don’t want to get on her wrong side . . .’
‘Did you just use the word angel? Did you say it was worth dying to hear me promise to try and be a bit nicer to people for a change?’
‘What’s wrong with me saying that?’
‘Well, nothing, apart from the fact that you’re not dead.’
I look at him in shock.
‘WHAT did you just say?’
‘Charlotte, you’re still in the coma. You never came out of it. At this moment, you’re lying in an intensive-care unit. In this very hospital, if I’m not mistaken.’
Chapter Twenty-six
It’s total crap. James is wrong and that’s all there is to it. He has to be. I can’t even answer him. I’m reeling with shock. Stunned and numb, I leave him and desperately try to focus on someone else. Mum or Fiona or Kate, anyone. But it doesn’t work. The old charm of thinking about someone one minute, then magically being beside them the next, is gone. No matter how hard I try. So I run from James and walk, sorry, make that stagger down the hospital corridor. No one looks twice at me, even though I can see all of them clear as day. An angel’s passing by, and no one knows. I somehow make it to the reception desk and ask if there’s a Charlotte Grey registered, but of course, the receptionist can’t hear me, and just keeps on typing. Then I see the hospital layout written out behind her, with signs and arrows pointing in about a dozen different directions.
There it is, intensive-care unit. Level three, ward two. So I somehow stumble to the lifts, which have reflective doors, but I can’t see myself in them, even though I’m standing right in front of them.
You see? James got it arseways, that’s all. He’d just had his stomach pumped, and he wasn’t thinking straight. Out of his head on sedatives, more than likely. Of course I’m dead. Of course I am. I’m an angel, for Jaysus’ sake, aren’t I? The lift doors trundle open and in I go. It’s packed, but no one makes eye contact with me.
‘Excuse me, but can anyone here see me?’ I shout at decibel level, to total silence. The only time they all react is when an elderly lady’s mobile goes off, and she starts having a full-blown conversation right into the phone, at the top of her voice, causing everyone around her to wince. Even a guy with an iPod on, at its highest volume.
‘HELLO? YES, LOVE, I GOT PARKING, OK. WHAT? CAN YOU SPEAK UP? I’M IN THE LIFT. I’M ON THE WAY. I SAID I’M OOOOOON MY WAAAAAAY.’
The doors open and we’re on the third floor. And there it is, a sign directly above me.
INTENSIVE-CARE UNIT.
Except there’s a door, which, of course, I can’t open. So I wait for an orderly wheeling an empty trolley to come out, and slip in. Down the long corridor I go, racing into any ward with an open door, looking for . . .
Oh, this is ridiculous. Looking for what, myself? If I wasn’t so traumatized, I’d laugh. I know that James is drugged out of his head and got everything wrong, and I just want confirmation, that’s all.
I pause for a minute at the nurse’s station, and that’s when I see them coming towards me.
Mum and Kate.
Kate’s carrying a pile of CDs and Mum’s balancing two take-out cups of tea, one in each hand.
OK, I think I’m going to faint.
I stand right in front of them, and call out to them, but they stride right past me, not even interrupting their chat, not for a second.
‘You look very tired this morning, love,’ Mum is saying. ‘You should have had a lie-in. Sure, I could have come here myself. I’m well used to it by now.’
‘No, you’re fine,’ Kate sighs, exhaustedly. ‘I don’t like you visiting her on your own. You should have someone with you.’
‘So how did you get on with Paul’s family last night? Did you tell them about the Mass for Charlotte?’
‘Em . . . no, I didn’t get around to it. They all went off to a concert, and I ended up babysitting.’
‘Are you all right, love?’
‘Fine,’ Kate says crisply, in that slightly narky tone she gets when she doesn’t want to be drawn into talking about something. ‘Last night was . . . oh look, it doesn’t matter. Come on, let’s go in.’
Numbly, I follow them.
They open the door of room 201 and go inside. And there I am. For real. Lying on the bed with a ventilator covering my face, my leg in plaster and my head completely covered in bandages. I’m cut and bruised all over, with stitches on every visible piece of skin. There’s even a bolt on the side of my head.
I look like Frankenstein’s monster.
Mum and Kate don’t bat an eyelid, though, like they’re just used to me, from God knows how many visits. Instead Kate puts on a CD, t
he soundtrack to the Sex and the City movie. And Mum starts talking to me and massaging my hands, quite normally. And I just stand at the foot of my own bed, flabbergasted. Knocked for six.
All this time, when I’d overhear people talking about me in the present tense . . . I put it down to them not being able to accept that I was dead and gone. While I was here the whole time. And when they’d all say how upset they were, I assumed it was because they were grieving . . . whereas it was because I was still in a coma.
I am such a moron.
‘So, love, how are you today?’ Mum asks cheerily. ‘Fiona rang, by the way, to say that she’ll be in after school this afternoon. Says she’s loads of boy news for you. And that she’s been having the oddest dreams about you all week.’
‘That’s funny,’ Kate says, clicking on the CD player. ‘So have I.’
Then, just as ‘How Can You Mend a Broken Heart’ by Al Green and Joss Stone comes on, I pass out.
Chapter Twenty-seven
‘Charlotte? Charlotte, can you hear me? It’s OK, pet, you’re safe.’
It’s the word pet that brings me round. Because there’s only one person in the world who ever calls me that.
And when I open my eyes, it turns out I’m right.
Dad is right beside me, holding my hand tight and looking at me, the picture of concern.
‘I don’t get it, I just don’t get it,’ I keep saying over and over. ‘I’m alive? All this time, I never actually died?’
‘Shhhh, shhhh, pet. Everything’s fine. You’ve had a bit of a shock, that’s all.’
‘No offence, but I’d have had less of a shock if I’d just gone and stuck two fingers into a plug socket. What’s going on, Dad? I don’t mean to be over-inquisitive or anything, but would you please mind telling me whether I’m dead or alive? If it’s not too much bother, that is.’
If This is Paradise, I Want My Money Back Page 32