Chapter Six
Jake
I know where we are before I even open my eyes.
Lavender. Fucking lavender. Not the old-lady soap kind or the stuff you’d find in the moth section at the back of a garden centre, but the real stuff – wild.
Growing in the fields outside our town. The kind that used to stain my white shirts purple and that I’d pick out of my hair for days after. The kind that reminds me of her.
I can still feel the heat on the back of my neck, still sense the sun going down around us.
I’m reminded of the feel of her bare skin under my fingers, how soft she was, how I kept finding excuses to touch her arm, her shoulder, the back of her hand.
I wasn’t subtle about it, but I was certain my hands hadn’t truly felt before that evening.
Obviously, I’d had a lot of sex before Belle. Loads of it. I never kept count, exactly, but it was … loads. I had a lot of fun, but when I met Belle, I realised what I’d been missing with all those bodies in the dark, and the awkward hellos come morning.
This felt different. This was the kind of sex where you’re driven by pleasing the other person, needing to satisfy her more than you need the pleasure yourself.
The kind where you’d want to stay the whole night, make sure she fell asleep okay, and be there when she woke up.
I’d turned into the kind of guy who wanted to know what she was thinking; I’d walked home that particular evening, convinced I’d never need to sleep with anyone else ever again, ever. Embarrassing, really.
The lads took the piss out of me for weeks, but I didn’t even care because …
Well, I didn’t care. That’s how far gone I was.
I even googled ‘men’s aftershave with lavender in it’ – which I’m still embarrassed to admit – purely because I didn’t want to forget that evening, the feel of her, the taste of her … I wanted to be reminded of her, always.
I squint my eyes open. Belle and I are back in the same field, with the same fading light, watching two kids entwined in front of us on a bed made of lavender. And now I’m dead, and she’s about to get hitched to another guy. This could not be more fucked up.
This flashback feels different to when we went back in time to Aunt Susan’s, though.
I scan the sky, the rolling hills of purple and …
Wait, purple? It’s still tinged grey but …
it’s there. Like someone’s put the saturation up from zero to six.
I should feel great, I should fist-pump the air, but I’m furious.
Of course, my first hint of colour in ten years has to be right here, in this field, watching a younger and considerably more alive version of myself having the best sex of my life, like some sort of voyeur, which is not how I imagined getting my feelings back would go, if I’m honest.
This doesn’t feel helpful; it feels like torture.
I rub the back of my neck, trying to work out what I’m supposed to be taking from this.
Some profound life lesson about love or loss or whatever Gabe’s on about, but if anything, the only thing I’ve learned for certain is that Gabe is a dick.
Because what is he actually doing? Giving me brief access to my senses from back then, so I fall back in love with a woman who is about to marry another guy?
I can almost hear him enjoying this, from whatever smug corner of the in-between he’s currently occupying, watching me stand in a purple field having feelings I haven’t had in ten years about a woman I can’t have. Really helpful, mate. Truly.
Belle takes a step away from me and, in doing so, slides on some gravel. I reach out to catch her elbow. She steadies herself, shakes off my pre-emptive grip and says nothing. Neither do I. In front of us, past me is oblivious to anything but her.
‘I’m struggling to see why this is so important,’ she says unmoved. There’s no love in her voice, no wistfulness or longing. In fact, she says it as though in a meeting she feels could have been an email. Like she’s politely questioning the agenda.
I’ve been dead for ten years. I haven’t tasted food or felt sunlight for a decade, nor felt anything except greyness and the occasional spike of anger when Gabe infuriates me. But here I am, finally starting to feel something and she’s … bored. Fucking hell, Belle.
I look at her, really stare at the woman next to me, and it doesn’t seem like she’s putting on an act – she’s her usual, bright self.
But something in her eyes portrays a blankness.
There’s no softness in her face, no recognition of what we’re watching.
She’s standing beside me, one hand on her hip, the other holding up her white dress so it doesn’t touch the gravel on the ground, and something in me cracks.
We could never be together now. Even if I were alive.
Even if I hadn’t died. We’d be strangers.
I know nothing of this Belle. She’s entirely unlike the one who’d ugly cry at Disney films with me, who’d laugh so hard she’d snort, and who’d make love in a lavender field – this Belle would be too worried about getting caught or messy.
Too much has changed, or rather, she has changed too much.
But I haven’t changed at all. I’m still twenty-five.
My hair hasn’t grown since the day I died – zero greys, same dark mess; my fingernails stopped growing when I did – still bitten down to nothing; and I haven’t developed a single new smile line.
The pecs remain, I can confirm, clenching them under my shirt now just to be sure.
In fact, I’ve hardly done anything except watch a million films. But Belle – she’s a champagne lady now, not the cider girl she once was.
She’s found her true love, her soulmate, and has planned a wedding with press photographers in attendance.
What happened over these years to harden this woman, with whom I had the most important, passionate relationship of my life?
Belle shifts her weight to the other hip and looks off, bored, into the distance. ‘Is this really necessary?’ she drawls.
I get it, she wants to get back.
‘I don’t really want to be here either … but apparently you needed to see this.’
‘Who even sent you?’ Belle asks, still staring into the distance.
‘The psychopomp.’
She looks at me now, frowning. ‘What is that?’ I can tell she doesn’t believe me, thinks I’m making it up to annoy her.
‘He’s like a spirit guide. His name is Gabriel.
’ I sigh, rubbing the back of my neck again, because hearing myself say it aloud doesn’t make it sound any less like something from a bad documentary.
‘He delivers people between this world and the next via what he calls the “in-between”.’ I make air quotes with my hands and watch as her mouth twists up.
‘I know. Trust me, I know. But here we both are.’
‘So, does this mean that I’m going to die? Or am I going to be trapped in the in-between with you for eternity?’
One thing I’m learning about this new Belle is that she worries about logistics way too much. Only she would hear ‘spirit guide’ and immediately want the terms and conditions.
‘No, it’s just for when you die – I’m the one on my way to the afterlife.
But honestly, I don’t know why it has to happen now either.
’ I watch her processing it, working through the logic.
I need to move this on before she clocks it doesn’t add up.
‘Look, I’m just doing what I’ve been told to do and letting you know what will happen to you … if you don’t go through with it.’
‘Okay,’ she says, nodding.
Phew.
‘I just wish the timing wasn’t so shit, you know?’
I turn away. ‘Yep.’
A laugh draws us back to the field and we watch our younger selves emerge from the crops. Belle pulls her knickers up as I – I mean, younger me – throws her strappy little top back at her.
‘Stop,’ Belle says besides me.
‘I’m not doing anything.’
‘You’re watching.’
‘So are you.’
‘Yeah, but you’re watching her.’
‘Okay, I’ll just watch myself, then.’ I roll my eyes and redirect my gaze, very pointedly, to young Jake as he does up his belt buckle.
The buckle catches the light as he threads it through the loops with ease.
Tanned hands. A move done a thousand times before.
I’m watching this younger version of me take for granted his body, his hands.
That stupid grin, like he’s got all the time in the world.
Four years left. This idiot doesn’t have a clue.
Young Belle stops and stares at him, unable to keep her eyes off his bare chest. He catches her looking and pretends to cover himself, telling her to stop perving.
Belle giggles and stumbles forward as he joins her, smoothing her short floral skirt down around her thighs.
I look away, focus on the nearby bees buzzing, and swallow.
Belle, next to me, sighs. ‘God, I was skinny.’ She says it like a complaint, her eyes fixed on her younger self. But she’s not really seeing. She hasn’t clocked the way he’s looking at her. Nor the way I’m looking at her beside me, now.
‘Awful hair, though, I never suited blonde. Those eyebrows were way too dark too.’ She looks on disapprovingly.
I turn towards young Belle and stare at her fondly. She looks shiny. Her skin glistens under the setting sun. She picks up a stem of lavender and tucks it behind her ear.
I really wouldn’t have changed a thing.
‘Everyone was rocking the blonde hair and dark eyebrows back then. It was a great look at the time.’ I kick the dirt around my feet.
‘Well, I know you loved it. You had such a type,’ she says. ‘All the girls you ever went for looked exactly the same.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘Why do you think I dyed my hair?’ She catches herself, mouth snapping shut, like she’s annoyed she let that slip.
‘You’re kidding,’ I say, confused.
‘Jake, look at it – fresh! No roots in sight.’
I’m not sure why I’m so surprised, given that I was doing exactly the same thing from the other direction without telling her – not the hair, obviously, but changing myself to impress her in small ways I thought she wouldn’t notice.
I look at her blonde hair and think about the bracelet I started wearing at the same time, only because I knew she thought men wearing jewellery looked hot.
I also wanted to text her every day; I would have, happily, all day without stopping, but I knew how that would look, so in the early days I’d force myself to wait at least twenty hours before replying, so as not to appear so eager.
‘As Oscar Wilde said, youth is wasted on the young.’ Belle sighs next to me, watching her younger self tie her hair into the kind of topknot that resembles a bird’s nest.
Younger me doesn’t care. He reaches down, holds her face in his palms and kisses her gently.
‘Shaw,’ I say.
‘What?’
‘It was Shaw. George Bernard Shaw.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m dead, Belle, not stupid.’
She pulls a face and turns back to watch them.
I watch too, for a moment. She’s changed – visibly, completely, in ways I’m still working out – and I look exactly the same.
But I don’t feel the same – not really. Ten years of films will do something to a person …
even a dead one. I’d clean up in the movie round of a pub quiz now, for a start.
Whether that counts as growth is another matter.
‘Hey, if I’ve been a dead twenty-five-year-old for ten years, am I emotionally twenty-five or am I now thirty-five?’
Belle rolls her eyes. ‘Without a doubt, you are still emotionally twenty-five. Probs always will be,’ she adds, not missing a beat.
‘I don’t feel it, but sure. Anyway, you’re the one who threw a vase at me earlier, like a stroppy teenager.’
Belle cringes. ‘Because you bring that out in me.’
Our younger selves are wrestling now. What started as Jake untucking Belle’s skirt from her underwear ended up with Belle thinking he was winding her up, the pair of them throwing handfuls of lavender at each other, until she launches herself onto his back.
He catches her legs without missing a step, her arms wrapping around his neck, kissing the back of his head as he walks, completely unbothered.
A smile is plastered on his face, like this is just how they get around.
They set off back towards the car – my car, I should say – laughing, his shoulders shaking underneath her.
‘Do you think we’ve got the picture now? Can we get back already?’ she says.
‘Sure, okay. Where to next?’
‘You’re the one with the guardian angel. You tell me.’
‘He wasn’t very clear … He just said to go down the journey of your love life.’
‘Right.’ Belle twizzles the engagement ring on her finger, lips pursed. It’s very big and very shiny and silver. I always thought she was more of a gold girl.
‘Journey implies two different points. A to B. The start and end. So to tick the right boxes, maybe it’s safest we do the start and end of each relationship?’ She shrugs.
Thank fuck this was a tour of her relationships and not mine. They’d almost all start with, ‘Hello, you’re sexy, wanna fuck?’ and end with, ‘Have a great life.’ She was truly the exception that proves the rule. Christ, I was such a twat.
‘God, this is gonna be torture,’ Belle cringes.
‘Not as torturous as eternal soul destruction!’
‘I know, I know. This feels very particularly unfair, the timing of it all.’
‘Let’s get it over with, then … To the end?’
‘To the end.’
We reach out and hold hands, her palms warming mine.