The Other Us. Fiona Harper
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 the same sort of size as me: slightly overweight, with the usual forty-something bulges and curves, but somehow she wears it better. I bought some long boots like hers in the sales last year, but every time I try them on I just end up peeling them off again. I wanted to see a stylish, mature woman staring back at me in the mirror, but all I could see was pantomime pirate. They’ve sat in their box at the back of my wardrobe since January.
‘You look nice today,’ I tell her once we’ve relocated. I usually greet people with a compliment, but today it isn’t an automatic response pulled from my mental library at random.
Becca grins back at me. ‘Thanks! I’m feeling great, too.’
I can’t help smiling with her. If happiness is a disease, it’s about time Becca caught it. For a long time I thought her lousy ex had inoculated her against it. ‘I take it things are going well with the new man?’
‘Pretty good,’ she says, and orders a coffee from a passing waiter. It’s very odd. Becca used to gush endlessly about her latest squeeze when we were younger, but she’s being a bit cagey about this one. The only thing I can think of is that it’s because this is the first proper romance since her divorce. ‘We might get away for a weekend soon. If he can work out getting time away from … I mean, getting time off.’ She looks down at the table again, but I see her secret smile.
‘It sounds as if it’s getting serious.’
Becca flushes. ‘I know. Ridiculous, really. I mean, it’s early days and we’ve only been seeing each other a couple of months and I really should be dating and having fun, but he’s just so amazing.’
I want to jump in and tell her that, while I understand how wonderful this is for her, how I’m truly pleased she’s happy again, maybe she shouldn’t leap into this relationship quite as hard and quite as fast as she has done all her others – but the words keep tumbling out of her in a breathless stream, as if, instead of filing up neatly behind one another to make sensible sentences, they’re all racing each other to see who can get out first, and I can’t get a word in edgewise.
The gushing carries on as we leave the cafe. She instinctively heads in the direction of her favourite shops and I trail along with her while my shower curtain gets heavier and heavier. I mention this after we’ve dropped off both her returns.
‘Of course,’ she responds, but then, when we’ve turned tail and are heading back towards John Lewis, we pass Hobbs. She gives me a sugary smile. ‘You don’t mind if we pop in here, do you? It’ll only take a minute, and they had this gorgeous blouse that’d be perfect for work now the weather’s finally turned warmer …’
I shake my head, but after Hobbs it’s Laura Ashley and then it’s Massimo Dutti.
I honestly don’t know if she does this on purpose, or