The Man You Meet in Heaven: An absolutely feel-good romantic comedy

by Debbie Viggiano

  It was a question I’d asked myself many times, and frequently cogitated upon. I’d determined that whilst splitting up meant you kept your own earnings, no longer had to entertain step-kids who detested you, and could have just a sandwich for supper if the mood so took you, there were other things that simply didn’t fit into that category. How do you quantify the reaction when you and your husband see your child take his first step? That is worth something, because only you and he together can truly appreciate how special it is. And there are countless other things like that which are involved when children are in the equation. The first day at school. The first wet painting. The first visit by the tooth fairy. The first football match. That first goal.

  And if you divorce? Instantly there is the loss of so many traditions. What are we supposed to do at Easter? Christmas? Birthdays? Those glorious summer holidays? And I’d decided that those traditions were necessary in my life. I needed for us to be doing them together – starting with marriage itself, which still held those pledges of help and support, if not fidelity. So I listened to Nick’s excuses. Whether it was supposedly crashing out from tiredness at his desk as he adjusted paperwork and contracts to appease a difficult client, or apparently having to go away for the weekend on a corporate event that excluded wives, as the years passed I swallowed the lies down like a bitter pill.

  Ironically, it was Nick’s brother who, over a decade later, looked at me in the same way as he had when visiting the flat on the pretext of seeing baby Fin. This time the scene had changed. We were all at a big family barbecue hosted by Tod and Jackie. Everyone was laughing, nursing their chilled wines and beers. The kids – teenagers now – were hanging out together, nursing filched ciders and well away from the Embarrassing Parent Brigade.

  Sensing that I was being watched, I’d turned to see Tod’s eyes upon me. He was standing by the barbecue, cooking a mountain of fodder. He’d jerked his head imperceptibly indicating I go and talk to him. Excusing myself from one of Jackie’s neighbours who’d come around to complain about the smell of charcoal and promptly inveigled an invitation to stay, I’d taken myself over to Tod.

  ‘How are you, Hattie?’ he’d asked quietly.

  ‘Fine,’ I’d smiled.

  ‘No you’re not. What’s with the weight loss? The strained smile? Those dark circles under the eyes?’

  ‘Ah,’ I’d shrugged, taking a swig of wine so I didn’t have to say anything else.

  ‘Those are telltale signs,’ he’d murmured.

  ‘Yup, I guess so.’

  It hadn’t taken Tod’s prompting for me to admit that something was wrong in my marriage again… that Nick had started something. I just hadn’t yet discovered it was with my good friend Pippa.

  ‘Do you want me to have a word with him?’ Tod had quietly said, flipping blackening beef burgers over the smoking griddle.

  ‘No,’ I’d replied, twisting my wine flute between my fingers. ‘Give it three months and the affair will have burnt itself out.’

  ‘It looks like it’s burning you out,’ Tod had replied. ‘You know what, Hattie?’

  ‘What?’

  Tod had shaken his head slowly. ‘I can’t help thinking that Nick might have forgiven me for kissing you way back when, but I don’t believe he’s ever quite absolved you.’

  ‘I suspect you’re right,’ I’d responded.

  It was true that Nick always dragged the matter up if I dared to make a comment about suspecting him of having an affair.

  ‘Oh, hark at Miss Virtuous,’ Nick would always sneer, when Fin was out of earshot.

  ‘I do sometimes wonder,’ I said to Tod, ‘if Nick has repeatedly wanted to punish me throughout our marriage for that one indiscretion.’

  ‘Can it even be called that, Hattie?’ Tod asked. ‘God, one fleeting brush of the lips. Hardly a snog. It wasn’t even a fumble.’

  I smiled wanly. ‘I guess the trouble is, Tod, I’ve been made to feel so guilty about it, a part of me believes it was something bigger than it actually was. When Nick walked into the flat and saw us in a lip-lock, he later told me we were even. That anything he’d done was cancelled out, because now we were both as bad as each other. Certainly, Nick would like me to believe that. That said, he’ll also have me believe that he is Mr Innocent with a wife who simply has an overactive imagination.’

  ‘That’s poppycock,’ said Tod quietly.

  And indeed there had been nothing imaginary about spotting Nick’s car outside my bestie’s house and seeing, with my own eyes, their frantic coupling. In that moment, something in me had finally died. All the glue that I’d so carefully placed in the fragile bricks of our marriage had cracked like crazy paving, allowing those blocks to tumble down and batter me under the rubble. In that moment I’d metaphorically stuck two fingers up to tradition, marriage, and men. I was tired of it all.

  Fifty-Eight

  You are indeed tired of it all, said a dear and familiar voice directly into my head. Fin is no longer a baby, so I’m bringing you back. No protests or resistance this time.

  Like a tablecloth trick, the scenery was snatched away leaving me blinking owlishly in the Halfway Lounge. I was sitting on the squashy sofa, Josh seated opposite in the easy chair, exactly as we’d been sitting before I began such a lengthy piece of life reviewing.

  ‘Welcome back,’ he said, giving me that wonderful blowtorch smile that had the ability to melt every part of my being. ‘I had to intervene, Hattie, because your aura’s colour indicated you were wilting fast.’

  ‘I was,’ I nodded.

  ‘That was the longest period of reflecting on your part since you came to the Halfway Lounge.’

  I put out a hand on the edge of the sofa to steady myself. I felt disorientated and befuddled. For a while there, I’d almost believed I was reliving the past all over again in Earth time. It was good to be back to reality – ha! – whatever that was.

  ‘I feel like I’ve been away for years,’ I said.

  Josh looked at me kindly. ‘In some respects, you have. You have an iron will, Hattie. When you put your mind to something, there’s no budging you, is there! Your resistance to my summons to return earlier, when Fin was a baby, was quite something.’

  ‘Sorry, Josh, but I just couldn’t bear to be parted from him. He was so tiny, so defenceless, and even though there was the drama with Nick in the delivery room, it was indescribably blissful to hold him once again as a babe in arms.’

  ‘I understand. You have worked through some tough stuff, and cast off a whole lot of emotional chains, almost making peace with yourself and your past.’

  ‘Almost?’ I said, shivering slightly. I still felt weird. Definitely out of sorts.

  ‘One thing remains, but we’ll talk about that in a moment. First of all, you need a strong pick-me-up.’

  A tall glass appeared out of nowhere, suspended in the air between us. It appeared to be full of white swirling mist, some of which was spilling over the rim, the white vapour curling like a witch’s potion before evaporating into nothingness.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked, taking hold of the glass.

  ‘An energy drink in the true sense of the word. You won’t sprout wings, because you’ll possibly fly without them,’ he chuckled. ‘Its content is harnessed from the mountain range beyond the veranda.’ Josh nodded at the snow-capped peaks in the distance. ‘The ingredients are excellent for eliminating any traces of leftover residual emotional toxicity, and holistically stabilising the body after trauma.’

  ‘I see.’ I didn’t. Was he still talking English?

  I sniffed the substance cautiously before putting it to my lips. My senses were instantly tickled with indefinable aromas, one moment cherry and vanilla, the next strawberry and mint, then pineapple and mango. It was a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of smells. The texture of the drink was bizarre, and almost impossible to describe. The nearest comparison would be like swallowing warm deliciously flavoured clouds. But instead of feeling better with every sip, I
began to feel more and more upset. By the time I’d downed the last of the glass’s contents, I felt like my lungs had taken on a life of their own, inhaling and exhaling air in great chuggy breaths. My expression must have alarmed Josh, because he leapt to his feet in concern.

  ‘Hey, are you all right?’

  ‘Ooooooh, n-n-n-noooooo,’ I gasped. I was reminded of Fin, as a two-year-old, wanting his own way about something and, if he failed to get it, taking a huge breath which he’d hold until he turned purple, before releasing it as the mother of all tantrums. What was my body doing? Was it about to have a hissy fit?

  Josh folded my hands into his. ‘Breathe out,’ he ordered.

  ‘I’m tr-tr-trying,’ I stuttered, wondering if I might be on the verge of fainting, especially as Josh’s hand-holding was started some sort of internal nuclear meltdown. Suddenly he released one of his hands from mine and began to gently stroke my throat. I thought I might pass out from desire.

  ‘Try exhaling again,’ he urged, fingers still caressing my neck. It was the most erotic thing any man had ever done to me. Embarrassingly, my body was starting to judder. After two years without sex, I wondered if I might just judder right off this sofa. Instead my lips parted, and I let forth an involuntary bellow before promptly bursting into tears.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Josh, his voice matter-of-fact. ‘You had some trapped emotion in your oesophagus, but it’s gone now.’ He produced a tissue out of nowhere and gently dabbed my eyes.

  I let out an involuntary whimper as I stared at him, dazed.

  ‘How do you feel now?’ he asked.

  Like I want to be kissed, I silently replied, knowing he wouldn’t be able to read that, but a bit of me wishing he could and, if so, what his reaction might be. Would he join in, reciprocating enthusiastically, his fingers caressing not just my throat, but two very erogenous zones that, even now, felt like they were straining at the straps of my balcony bra, bursting forward like roses unfurling on a camera’s fast-frame, begging to be touched, demanding to be—

  ‘There’s just one very tiny bit to verbally review, Hattie,’ said Josh, cutting across my thoughts, which had taken an indecently erotic turn.

  ‘Yes?’ I whispered. I’d verbally do anything with this man, especially if it meant using tongues.

  ‘When you were talking to Tod at the family barbecue —’

  ‘Yes,’ I said cautiously, not sure where this line of conversation was going.

  ‘You were both discussing how Nick so easily forgave Tod for kissing you.’

  I flushed pink with the embarrassment. Even though Josh had assured me previously that he never judged – that it wasn’t his role to do that, nor did he have any opinions about it anyway – it was nonetheless pretty monumental having a complete stranger put so many years of your life under some sort of giant microscope and endlessly mop your tears throughout.

  ‘And you were also talking,’ he continued, ‘about the fact that Nick never completely forgave you for something which – as Tod so succinctly put it – wasn’t even a snog.’

  I went from pink to puce as I also recalled Tod adding on a few more words… that it hadn’t even been a fumble. Thankfully Josh was alive to my discomfiture and didn’t vocalise the rest of Tod’s sentence.

  ‘Also,’ he added, ‘you told Tod how Nick considered both you and he being as bad as each other. Indeed, how you let him talk you into believing that.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I nodded, as my mind went back to the scenario in my best friend’s bedroom, when I’d discovered her entwined with my husband.

  You know why I do this, don’t you, Hattie? Nick had mocked.

  Because you’re a tart? I’d answered back.

  Nick had been livid at my response.

  Don’t you talk to me about being a tart, he’d hissed. Try taking the plank out of your own eye before you start complaining about the splinters in other people’s.

  ‘Nick was manipulating you, Hattie. Do you see that?’

  ‘I do now.’

  ‘You need to understand that this was Nick’s escape clause to justify his extra-marital affairs. And that’s his business. Something he will one day have to review himself. But for you, Hattie, in your review, it’s time to grant yourself the ultimate kindness and forgive yourself for thinking that you drove him to behave the way he did. That was never so. A cheater is a cheater. No excuses.’

  ‘Should I not have married Nick?’ I frowned.

  ‘You made that decision in the best interests of your son. There is no right or wrong about that particular path. You have reviewed and subsequently understood why you took that path, but you never quite binned blaming yourself for Nick’s behaviour. Exonerate yourself, Hattie. There was no excuse for his conduct. Ultimately, and equally important, be at peace with your decision to finally walk away from the marriage. You have carried misplaced guilt about putting yourself first in this instance, after years of thinking about everyone else. You forgot that you are important too. You retired to your dear little cottage with your charming beagle and teenage son, pulling the whole thing around you like a giant duvet which, although comforting, has stopped you moving on with the next phase of your life.’

  ‘Which is?’ I asked, mesmerised by his fabulous blue eyes which hadn’t left my face while he’d been talking.

  ‘It’s time for you to fall in love,’ said Josh softly.

  ‘I don’t know how to,’ I whispered, electrified by the moment, and far too shy to reveal to Josh my true feelings for him.

  ‘Yes you do. It’s as natural as breathing.’ He was still holding one of my hands, the other hand now tenderly touching my cheek.

  ‘How?’ I whispered. There was now nothing natural about my breathing. I was struggling not to hyperventilate.

  ‘You just let it happen.’

  I gulped. Was it happening now? Certainly, something was. I felt woozy, but pleasantly so. Josh pulled me to my feet and it seemed as though I floated into his arms, which, gloriously, were wrapping around me.

  ‘You’ve already fallen in love,’ he murmured. ‘I might not be able to read your private thoughts, Hattie, but I can read your aura. And your aura is the colour of love.’

  ‘Is it?’ I mumbled, my heart crashing around under my ribs like a trapped bird.

  ‘And I want you to know that I love you, too.’

  My legs nearly gave way upon hearing those words.

  ‘You love me?’ I gasped.

  ‘Yes. I love you for the woman you are, the life you’ve lived, and the way it has shaped and defined you. I’ve waited such a long time to be with you, Hattie.’

  ‘But… but… how can you be with me, Josh? You’re here, and I’m… I’m… God I’m all over the place, one moment shopping in Tesco, then in this halfway place, then catapulting back to the past, pinging back to here again. How mad is that? God, I’ve even ridden a unicorn… on Margate beach,’ I cried.

  ‘And now you’re going back to Earth,’ he said, his eyes full of tenderness, his mouth inches from mine.

  ‘No,’ I protested, ‘I don’t want to leave you.’ But as soon as I said those words, I knew that I couldn’t stay here. This wasn’t my home.

  I was feeling a gentle tugging sensation, like when Josh had previously tried to pull me back to the Halfway Lounge and I’d resisted.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I asked, clinging on to him tightly.

  ‘Your time here is done, and my job as co-ordinator is now over.’

  My hands curled around his neck, hanging on grimly as the pulling sensation increased.

  ‘I can’t leave you like this!’ I cried.

  ‘I’ll see you again.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When the time is right.’

  ‘What? Are you talking about when I die? And then we’ll be reunited? I don’t want that, Josh! I want it now. I want—’

  But before I could say anything further, the moment I’d been craving for so long finally happened. Josh looked deep
into my eyes and lowered his mouth to mine. I surrendered to the moment, greeting his lips joyfully, allowing the tip of his tongue to meet mine, feeling the passion scorch between us and, as my body responded, it seemed as if the entire universe was shifting beneath the floor of the Halfway Lounge. The kiss went on and on, unfolding moment after perfect moment as I closed my eyes, melting against his body, my fingers touching his silky hair, feeling the warmth from his skin under that glowing white shirt, and my whole being sang with happiness. This was love. True love. I’d found it. And I never wanted to let it go—

  ‘Yer all right, love,’ said a loud voice in my ear. ‘Just breathe deeply. Everything is going to be fine.’

  What? Who was so rudely interrupting my long-awaited kiss? I wanted more. I puckered my lips up, touched something and stuck my tongue out.

  ‘Stop licking the oxygen mask, love,’ said a voice laced with amusement, ‘and just concentrate on taking those nice big breaths for me.’

  I flung my arms out to reach for Josh, but encountered a pair of rough uniformed shoulders. My eyes pinged open in shock.

  ‘Welcome back,’ said the voice. It belonged to a paramedic, who was bent over me. I was lying on the floor of Tesco, surrounded by tins of baked beans, feeling sick to my stomach that my dream man had been exactly that. A dream.

  Fifty-Nine

  I must have drifted off again, because a moment later I was coming to inside an ambulance. Nor was I alone. On the stretcher next to me was a body. Oh my God. A body!

  ‘ARGH!’ I screamed, attempting to push the mask from my face.

  ‘It’s all right, love,’ said the same paramedic, ‘yer knocked yerself out. If yer don’t need that no more, I’ll take it off. Yer off to ’ospital to get thoroughly checked out. Yer can’t be too careful with ’ead injuries.’

  A second later the mask was removed. I regarded the paramedic with huge eyes.

  ‘Is that person dead?’ I asked hoarsely, jabbing a finger at the inert mound next to me.