Apart

Chapter 2

James: Heaven

It’s been ten months now since I checked in here.

It was a real shock at first. So out of the blue – enough to shake you up.

And I’m not easily shaken. Obviously. You can’t be when you’re in the army.

But I’m starting to feel more settled now.

Trying to resign myself to the situation.

In some ways life, well, the afterlife, is not too bad.

For starters, it’s a beautiful place. It’s similar to Earth, but with all the bad bits left out.

If you’re a fan of Stranger Things you might get what I mean when I call it The Upside Upper, as opposed to The Upside Down.

It mirrors the world back home, except it has only good things, none of the crazy evil stuff, or crazy evil people.

And it’s calm, everyone’s laid back up here.

I suppose we don’t have the pressures like you get back on Earth – no bills, no sickness, no enemies.

The problem I’ve got is missing Amy, and knowing how much Amy is suffering.

I can watch her on this phone they gave me when I got here, and I feel so bad for her.

I get it, she must feel completely abandoned.

And my mum doesn’t help. She might have been a bit more sympathetic if we’d even got engaged, but my mum’s behaving towards her as though being a girlfriend wasn’t such a big deal and she should be over me already.

Obviously she’s wrong. I love Amy – completely, as we always used to say.

And I don’t love her any less than I would have if she’d been called my fiancée or my wife.

But that’s just how my mum is. She’s such a stoic, and she expects everyone else to be too.

The fact is, I should really want Amy to move on.

She’s so young. She’s only twenty-six. She has so much to live for.

And there’ll be no shortage of men wanting to be with her.

But right now, she’s fighting the fact that I’ve gone.

I totally get that. I know for sure I’d have been fighting it if it was me, if I was the one left behind and she was up here.

You’re not meant to feel pain the same way up here.

I suppose pain’s not really compatible with paradise, so they have a pain filtration system.

I guess their ratings could take a bit of a nosedive otherwise.

Not that it’s featured on TripAdvisor obviously, but, you know, people talk, and if it was miserable up here and word got out, it wouldn’t look so good for The Boss.

Unfortunately for me, my filter is malfunctioning, so some of the grief still gets through, and at times it really hurts, missing Amy, seeing her suffering.

But in fairness, it’s not all-consuming, not that totally overwhelming sense of loss you feel back on Earth.

And most people I know up here say they don’t really feel grief at all.

Of course, I didn’t expect to be here so soon. Even though I was in the army, I never used to dwell on the idea that I could die young. I always seemed to get lucky in life. And then suddenly one day a lorry veered into me, and bang, that was it. Here I was.

I know there are worse places to be – well, at least one – and there are some positives, after all.

Up here you get to do things you couldn’t do back on Earth.

Like seeing David Bowie play live. Wow! He is such a legend.

He still sounds fantastic. And Amy Winehouse – fabulous.

And she looks so healthy, and her songs are so much happier…

don’t worry, not all Katy Perry or anything, but her music has lost that haunted feel.

She’s off the drugs, of course. None of those up here.

So yeah, sucks to be a Mexican drug cartel owner in this place – actually I haven’t seen any of those either, so maybe they just don’t get in.

Handy tip there, if you are the owner of a drug cartel, and you want to end up here, you might want to think about a career change.

Maybe move into growing avocados instead?

Because I’d say the Hail Marys are just not cutting it.

So although there’s lots to like about this place, the fact remains that I’ve lost so much, and I still do sometimes question why it had to happen so early, while I was so young.

Was it really my time? But it’s completely pointless, because there’s nothing I can do about it.

Instead, I need to focus on working out how to help Amy.

I want to let her know I’m fine. And then maybe she’ll stop worrying about me, get some closure.

There must be something I can do, some way of communicating with her.

I’m just mulling over the problem again when I run into The Boss.

The God Boss, that is, not Bruce Springsteen – he’s very much alive, as far as I know.

He’d better be. The last birthday present I ever bought for Amy was tickets for his upcoming tour.

Although I never got to give them to her in person. Because of the lorry.

The God Boss is definitely not what you’d expect. If I hadn’t already seen pictures of him, I never would have guessed who he was. He doesn’t have the kind of look that springs to mind if someone says the word ‘God’.

So, there I am, out running through my favourite park here and along he comes.

He isn’t running. He’s doing more of a stroll.

Quite honestly, he doesn’t look like he does a lot of running, despite the tracksuit bottoms. Not that he’s obese, but I’m guessing he enjoys his food.

He’s got a really cheeky boyish face, and it turns out he’s very friendly, not all high and mighty like you’d expect.

I slow down to let him pass on the path and he just starts chatting.

‘Morning.’

I look behind me to check he isn’t speaking to someone else. No one there.

‘Morning,’ I reply.

‘Don’t think we’ve met before.’

‘No, sir. We haven’t, sir.’ Sir? Did I just say that? Is that okay? How are you meant to address God? Should it be Lord? Your Holiness?

‘And your name is?’

‘James, James Harrington,’ I reply. Crikey, am I really talking to God?

‘Ah yes. And what are you in here for?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘Blimey, do you know how many people there are up here? You don’t expect me to keep tabs on all of them, do you?’ He looks at me as if I’m completely mad.

‘I just thought you knew everything. You’re omniscient, aren’t you?’

‘Well, of course, pretty much. On most things.’

Ah, I think I may have hit a nerve. There’s a hint of defensiveness in his voice now.

‘So, anyway, what happened to you? No don’t tell me. Give me a moment. Well, you look young and active, so I’m thinking not a heart attack. I know, was it cancer?’

Well, I wasn’t expecting this. ‘No.’

‘Ah. You sure? Definitely not the Big C?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. I think I’d know if I’d had cancer.’

‘Fair enough. Right, let me think. Got it. You got stabbed trying to stop some yobbos mugging an old lady.’

‘What?! No!’

‘Not a hero’s death then?’

I stare at him in disbelief. This is turning into the most surreal experience.

‘Okay, I give up. I’m all out of ideas. You’d better tell me.’

‘It was a road accident.’

‘Oh. Nasty.’

‘Yeah, it was. But quick.’

‘Not texting at the steering wheel, I hope.’ He pretends to text on an imaginary phone and gives a cheeky smile as though he’s caught me out.

‘No, I was cycling. An HGV—’

‘You were what?’ He stops the air-texting.

‘Cycling. And this huge lorry—’

‘Oh what the—’

‘I know. Some drivers.’

‘No. I mean cycling. Why?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, what the heck were you cycling for?’ He shakes his head.

I’m a bit taken aback. I wait for him to elaborate.

‘It’s yesterday’s technology isn’t it? No, scrub that. Yesteryear’s technology.’ He’s looking at me like I’m a total idiot. An exasperated sigh. ‘So, tell me, how do you listen to music these days?’

‘Apple Music mainly. Why?’

‘Exactly. You’re not still using a Sony Walkman are you?’

‘A what?’

‘You know, the thing with the cassette tapes and the dinky little headphones.’ He pretends to put some headphones on.

‘See, when I gave you that, that was the best you could get. Music on the move, it was revolutionary. Although, I must admit the take up wasn’t quite what I’d expected among some of those youngsters.

Insisting on lugging those bloomin’ great ghetto blasters around on their shoulders.

What on earth was that about? Went on for quite a few years too.

You’d be too young to remember that. That was back in in the eighties.

Then came the CD, and you all upgraded. And now I give you this streaming stuff, well, you people can’t get enough of it, can you. ’

‘And your point is?’

He sighs, like someone who’s having to explain something complicated to a young child. He eyes a bench right next to us, sits down, and pats the bench next to him. I take it that means he wants me to sit down too. And I’m guessing he thinks this is going to take a while. I dutifully sit down.

‘So, my point is, with music, things evolved and you moved on. You’re not still using the old tech.

So why didn’t you people do the same with vehicles?

I’m fully aware I didn’t get off to a great start.

I know now I didn’t give you enough wheels.

I mean, it’s easy to see with the benefit of hindsight that the unicycle was never going to be ideal.

The bicycle was just another experiment along the way.

And as for the Reliant Robin, well, the less said about that the better.

But look, when I gave you the four-wheeled car I’d pretty much cracked it.

It’s a fantastic vehicle. You don’t have to pedal, you have a roof, and you even get a stereo so you can play your tunes.

And frankly, some of them look pretty damned amazing.

So, bicycles, well they should have been consigned to the annals of history.

I mean, look at them. They’re lethal. Well, you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you? ’

‘You can’t avoid everything just because it might be lethal. You’d never leave the house. I used to be in the army, but I made it home from Afghanistan.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding! So all those Taliban people trying to blow you up, you manage to dodge all that, and then you come home and get yourself killed just because you won’t drive a car?’

‘I do.’

‘You do what?’

‘Drive a car.’

‘So you own a car?’

‘Yeah, obviously.’

He’s waving slightly awkwardly to two people who have stopped close by and seem to be trying to work out whether it really is God who’s sitting on a bench in the park. He turns back to me.

‘So you own a car, and still you insist on getting on that little two-wheeled thing, and in a load of traffic, not just on a nice quiet cycle path in the woods?’

‘Loads of people cycle on the roads.’

‘Loads of people do line dancing. Doesn’t make it right, does it? Well, what can I say? I don’t like to be harsh, but you had it coming to you really, didn’t you?’

I’m stunned. That was not what I was expecting.

‘Have you quite finished?’

‘Yep. Feel better for getting that off my chest.’

‘Great.’ I can’t help a hint of sarcasm.

‘Right, good. Well, I’d best be off.’ He gets up from the bench. ‘I’ll see you around. And stay off the bikes.’

‘I haven’t seen any up here.’

‘Well, I try to make sure they don’t get past security, but you never know. Cheers then.’

‘Right, yeah.’

And that was it. Off he went, whistling away to himself.

Well, I wasn’t expecting to meet the main man himself. Amy is not going to believe this… And then it hits me again, just like the Aldi lorry. I can’t tell Amy. Because I’m stuck up here, and she’s back there, and the days when I could share everything with her are long gone.