Chapter 15.
But I don’t stay. As soon as the kiss becomes so good that I don’t want it to stop, I make an effort to peel away from him, and whisper, ‘I should go.’
I’ve never been one to rush in. And even though every last atom of me wants to take things further, I imagine waking up tomorrow and worrying that it had just been a little too much, too soon.
Plus, the thought of Jamie is still nagging at me. It’s an uncertainty I can’t quite place or discern, like the sense of being followed in the dark. My brain keeps about-turning, trying to alight on what it is that’s disturbing me, but much like peripheral vision, it remains frustratingly foggy.
I decide to walk – despite Ash’s pleas for me to take a cab – as the night seems warm and still, and I fancy the fresh air. Halfway home, however, the skies deliver a sluice of early summer rain and I get back to the house soaked through.
I strip off and rub my hair with a towel, then find a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, pulling on an old hoodie and socks in an effort to warm up. I scrape my hair into a topknot, then sit on the sofa without even turning on the light, or drawing the curtains.
Reflexively, I check my phone for work emails, missed calls, but there is nothing. Just a message from Ash.
Thanks for an amazing evening Let me know you got home safe I think you’re great, Neve x
I smile, then sit very still for a moment, my mind whirling, my insides still rocking from the pleasure of kissing him.
I think about what I would do at work, in this situation.
Start at the beginning, then break it down .
So I open the notes app on my phone, then start to make a list of all the ways in which Ash reminds me of Jamie.
Architect
Lives in the Old Yarn Mill – in ‘our’ apartment
Same books
Same handwriting
Same likes and dislikes
Tom Ford Noir
Nighthawks
Window fetish
London Grammar
Norman Foster + Gherkin
Had an accident on the SAME NIGHT as J. Less than 100 yds away.
I pause to review the list. It’s already so long. How can this many similarities possibly be coincidence?
My mind pumps. What next?
A little desk research, Neve.
I tap into my browser, then enter the most ridiculous search term I think I’ve ever typed.
When a person dies . . .
. . . can someone else take over their body?
The results load. I start tapping in and out of entries, one after the other. I search again. I read whole pages. News article after news article. I make leap after leap, searching and searching until my eyes start to burn, with exhaustion or tears or both.
Do YOU believe in walk-ins?
Wandering spirit ‘walked in’ to my husband’s body
My best friend never truly died
DEAD woman’s soul is INSIDE my niece!
Reams of articles – some of them obviously clickbait – describing a phenomenon I’d never heard of until now. The idea that a soul can ‘walk in’ to another body during a moment of trauma – or death. Could it be possible that when Ash’s heart stopped beating that night – at the moment he ‘died’ – Jamie’s soul moved in and somehow... took over?
Might Jamie not have been quite ready to leave this world – or me?
Ash checks off most of the supposed symptoms of being a walk-in. Major accident or life event. Disconnect from family and friends. Patchy memories of life before. Total personality change.
By now my mind is a blizzard. But not the type that looks pretty at Christmas – more like the kind of hazardous mess that causes pile-ups on the motorway.
I dive deeper, reading articles and blogs, watching videos and clips from podcasts.
Am I going crazy? Is this what madness feels like?
Outside, the rain is making steel drums of the window panes. To anyone else, the sound might sound meditative – beautiful, even. But to me, its relentless clatter only precipitates a rising panic inside me. It just reminds me of that night. Of the shining wet horror of the accident.
For the first time in a long while, I have the strangest urge to call Lara. She would know what to say, what I should do. She always did. Having Lara in my life was like being insured against adversity. Whatever happened, she would help me get through it – and vice versa.
I hover over Parveen’s number for a few moments. But I can’t do it. She’s at home with Maz and the kids, and – much as I usually feel I can confide in her – this isn’t the sort of thing I can offload to a work colleague. She can’t do her job if she no longer respects me.
I turn back to the last web page.
Could Jamie have come back? Could his soul have walked into Ash’s body? Might Ash actually be Jamie?
Perhaps this explains Ash’s personality change. Maybe he was not taken over by aliens, in fact – but by Jamie himself, when he died.
No , my rational mind says. The idea is completely preposterous .
My thoughts are actually starting to scare me now. Maybe I need some time off. I haven’t had any for months. The last time I had a holiday was that ill-fated trip to Greece with Leo, well over a year ago. I’ve sold back annual leave to Kelley on more occasions than I can count.
Or maybe all this is simply confirmation that I’m just not ready to start seeing someone new. My mind clearly isn’t in the right place.
I tap out of Safari and into my photo roll, seeking comfort, the balm of distraction.
Jamie and me at the beach, my bronzed face tipped up to his. Jamie amusingly off his tits at some gig or other. Him walking in front of me, along a tree-lined footpath. Smoking a bong. Scrawling his signature on my school shirt, the last day of exams. Dancing to ABBA on New Year’s Eve. Sprawled out by the river on A-level results day.
Uncertainty resurfaces. Maybe he’s returned to continue the love story we never got to finish. To become who he was always meant to be.
But... what the hell would that mean for me? I never thought I’d have the chance to finish what Jamie and I started, yet now...
I can’t cope with this. I’m used to being in control of my emotions, my relationships, the world around me.
I stand up. I need to do something. Something that keeps me busy and unthinking, that occupies my hands. I head into the kitchen, grab a bottle and a cloth, then start to wipe down all my inside window frames with a spray that smells of clementines.
It’s hard to know when the stress-cleaning kicked in. I definitely wasn’t this way before Jamie’s accident. But in the aftermath, I think I used it as a way to distract myself from the pain of losing him.
After a couple of hours, I crawl back onto the sofa, exhausted. Just as I used to do round Mum’s, when Jamie first died. Even though they’d never really bonded, she was there for me then. For once, she was quiet and calm, her presence placid as snowfall.
I suffered with insomnia, right after it happened. It was vigilance, I see that now, stemming from the idea that Jamie’s dying was a mistake. That his vanishing was only temporary. That he would come back to get me somehow.
And now – impossibly – maybe he has.
The next thing I know, the room is billowing with morning light. I start my Saturday with a shiver, incredulous and unnerved.