Czytaj książkę: «The Second Life of Nathan Jones: A laugh out loud, OMG! romcom that you won’t be able to put down!»
The Second Life of Nathan Jones
DAVID ATKINSON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk
HarperImpulse
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Copyright © David Atkinson 2019
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
David Atkinson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008327880
Ebook Edition © August 2019 ISBN: 9780008327873
Version: 2019-06-27
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About HarperImpulse
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Getting killed hadn’t been part of Nathan Jones’s plans for Saturday afternoon. Instead, he’d mapped out a nice relaxing time for himself on the sofa catching up on The Walking Dead boxset he’d got for his birthday.
His wife Laura and their three children were in the kingdom of Fife, visiting her mother, and weren’t due back until the evening. He pottered from room to room, still in his pyjamas, revelling in the hush that had descended upon his normally noisy life.
Nathan polished off one of his favourite toasted cinnamon bagels, smothered with some of Tesco’s finest jam, whilst flicking from channel to channel making the most of having sole custody of the remote control. Had he known what was in store for him when he left his flat, he would have remained safely seated on the couch and phoned for a takeaway dinner.
Instead, he got dressed, zipped up his coat and headed out into the windy November afternoon munching a bag of pickled-onion-flavoured Monster Munch crisps. His planned destination had been the local Tesco but as he crossed the busy road adjacent to his flat he had an unfortunate run-in with a bus that subsequently changed everything.
When he pieced together the incident later, it appeared he had stepped off the pavement right into the path of the twelve-tonne vehicle. This was obviously a very silly thing to do and so unlike his normally cautious approach to life. He couldn’t remember the number of times he’d drummed into his children’s heads ‘STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN’.
The ambulance arrived in record time, but a paramedic pronounced him dead at the scene and an A & E doctor confirmed the decision a short time later at the local hospital.
He remembered very little about dying. If pushed, he would classify it as a complete non-event. Nothing flashed before his eyes and no dead relatives stood beckoning him into the light. Even if they had, his relationship with his family had been such that the likely outcome would have been him running in the opposite direction.
If Karen Gillan had been tasked with bringing him into the fold he might have considered it, but she hadn’t, probably because
1. She happened to be still very much alive and
2. He didn’t merit a heavenly Hollywood A-list reception committee.
His first impression of death? A vastly overrated experience and he had no idea why everyone made such a fuss over it.
He’d felt that way about several things in recent years: the various royal weddings and births, the Brexit fiasco and the launch of the latest incarnation of the iPhone.
His poor impression of death might be down to the fact that, like many things in life, Nathan didn’t do it very well. He was rubbish at lots of things. He couldn’t ski, skate or work out quadratic equations and had issues with authority figures. He could now add dying to the list.
Thinking back to his childhood, Nathan recalled that his mum’s main concern about death had been underwear.
‘Nathan, you must make sure that every day you leave the house in clean underpants, just in case you’re involved in any kind of accident. I don’t want you showing me up in hospital.’
For that reason, whenever she left the house her underwear would be clean and as new as possible. Even as a relatively young kid, Nathan realised that if she ever got injured so badly in an accident that she needed hospital admission her underwear would more than likely be soiled to the point that it would have to be binned.
He never mentioned this to her, however, and had she still been alive, she would not have been happy that on the day her son’s life ended, he’d been wearing very old and very threadbare boxer shorts.
Nathan first realised everything wasn’t quite right with the whole ‘after-death experience’ when he became aware of a bone-numbing cold and that his arms had been strapped down. His face had also annoyingly been covered with cloth. Overall it felt as if he’d been swaddled in a similar way to that which his wife used with the kids when they were babies.
Initially he thought it might be a straitjacket hugging him tightly. Perhaps the increasingly fractious relationship with his wife had finally reached a stage where his sanity had cracked, leading to an extreme psychosis demanding he be sectioned and confined in a small space?
He could still breathe easily enough, though he learned his breath smelt none too pleasant as he received instant feedback from the fabric pressed against his face. He tried to move his left arm, but this resulted in such searing pain that it made him gasp and brought tears to his eyes. He tentatively moved his right arm. He felt some gentle tingling but no pain. He pulled it free of whatever restricted it, reached up and removed the fabric membrane from his face.
Free of the first prison, he then faced a second containment. He’d been enclosed in something dark, hard and metallic. As far as he knew, even the most dangerous mental patients were not placed in metal boxes. At least, he didn’t think so, though he acknowledged he had limited knowledge of current UK mental health treatments.
Unfortunately, at this point some feeling started to return to the rest of his body and he ached. Not the kind of soul-ache that you got from being desperately in love with someone, which he could still recall (just), but the kind of all-over body ache that occasionally accompanied a bad bout of the flu when it felt as though a little man was running around your body stabbing your extremities with a hot needle. In fact, it felt very much as if he had been hit by a bus. Then he remembered with a start of realisation that that was exactly what had happened.
He started to shout. However, his croaky, weak voice only produced a pathetic whimper. He tried to bang the sides of the metal container with his good arm, but this only made the smallest of sounds given the lack of space at his disposal.
Nathan then discovered that if he banged his bare heels off the bottom of the metal prison it made much more noise. He did this for a few seconds then gave up, exhausted.
Then he suddenly felt himself moving forwards. It felt like the start of a roller-coaster ride but without any of the delicious anticipation, and suddenly he slid out of the darkness into a harsh white light.
As he squinted into the brightness a face emerged and peered curiously at him. An angel perhaps? If so, she was nothing like those depicted in Hollywood movies. Her hair was black, her eyes were black, her clothes were black, her earrings were black, her piercings were black, even her lips were black – although her teeth were pearly white. She smiled at him and said, ‘Hello there.’
Chapter 2
My full name is Klaudette Ainsworth-Thomas (yeah, I know). I woke up on my tenth birthday, decided enough was enough and made a monumental decision. The first person I had to tell? My mother.
‘Mum?’
Janice, my mum, could usually be found behind an ironing board. She ironed every day. Ironing was one of her many obsessions. If it got to 6 p.m. and there were no clothes left in the ironing basket she got all anxious and cranky and started to press things that had already been done, like my dad’s shirts or something random like the bedroom curtains. She had even been known to remove the cushion covers from the couch and press them on a low heat.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes, Klaudie?’ Now, there was another thing that annoyed me; even though my thoughtless parents had lumbered me with the triple-barrelled name from hell, they couldn’t even be bothered to use it properly and invariably shortened it to Scotland’s prevailing type of weather.
‘I’ve made a decision.’
‘That’s nice, dear.’
‘Mum, I’m serious.’
My mum put the iron down and stared at me. ‘Klaudie, you’re always serious, that’s your problem, you—’
‘No, Mum, that’s not my problem, that’s your problem. I am the way I am. I’ve decided that I’m sick of being called Klaudette, Klaudie and Klaudia, and I’m sick of Ainsworth-Thomas as well. From now on I’m only going to answer to the name Kat, K-A-T.’
‘K-A-T?’
‘Yep, Kat is much cooler and most of my friends call me that anyway.’
Mum returned to ironing her slippers. ‘That’s nice, dear.’
Despite my mum’s apathy I stuck to my guns and from that day on I only answered to the name Kat. Eventually everyone, including my parents and most of the teachers, adopted my new alias, the only exception being the assistant head at my crumbling Glasgow high school, Mrs Brock, who insisted on calling me Klaudette. As a result, I ignored everything she said for the next five years.
The only issue with this impasse happened to be that Mrs Brock also taught me history for two of those five years. History, therefore, didn’t turn out to be one of my strong points, not helped by the number of Harolds/Haralds mooching about in 1066.
The fault all lay with my mum. She’d met and married a John Thomas (yes, really) and they decided to join forces and hyphenate their names after they got married. I’d always thought someone who had grown up being called John Thomas would have had more awareness and sympathy about kids’ names instead of lumbering his only daughter with such a mouthful. He’d even managed to become a professor of social anthropology to avoid using his first name. Even his bank cards only had ‘Professor J Thomas’ printed on them.
As a youngster, before I had the presence of mind to change my name, I had a plump, lumpy body, a squished face and little self-confidence. I used to come home from school, go into my bedroom and slip into a Cinderella or Snow-White costume from my dressing-up box and prance up and down in front of the mirror pretending I lived a different life, using clothes as an emotional crutch, an image to hide behind. I still did.
I’ve always felt that there was a certain cruelty involved, growing up as an only child, especially with parents like mine, who were too wrapped up in their own obsessions to notice my issues. All parents should be obliged to have two or more children or none. In my opinion, having only one kid could lead to them growing up lonely – well, kids like me who had real problems making friends would, anyway. If I’d had a sibling, they would have played with me and banished some of my loneliness.
Yeah, but knowing you they would have hated you so that would’ve made things worse.
‘Things couldn’t have been much worse.’
Wanna bet?
When I get stressed I often argue with my inner self, usually out loud, which can bring me some weird glances from strangers. Well, weirder than normal. Reminiscing about my childhood usually raises my stress levels so I try not to.
Despite the problems in high school I left with some decent grades, much to the surprise of many of my teachers, especially Mrs Brock, and won a place at Napier University in Edinburgh to study nursing.
I couldn’t stand the thought of working in an office. I was a practical sort of person and initially believed that nursing would be a good option. I anticipated that it would provide a stimulating and fast-changing environment that would stop me getting bored. It didn’t.
My first placement in an adult surgical ward saw me dealing with patients who were either waiting for or recovering from an operation. The ward was chronically under-resourced (like so many others), which meant I felt used and abused by everyone, staff and patients alike. On my first eight-hour shift my mentor said, ‘Kat, the patient in room three needs some toast and tea. Can you get that for them?’
I rushed back to the nurses’ station after I’d finished. My mentor said, ‘Quick work, that. Can you change the two beds in room eleven, they’re covered in blood and vomit, and after that could you be a dear and nip down to the shops for some sandwiches for me and Elaine, the staff nurse, as we both forgot to bring anything in for lunch?’
By the end of the day I felt more like a waitress and a chambermaid than a nurse. I also wondered why patients were called ‘patients’ as they were anything but, constantly pressing buzzers and shouting for anything and everything.
I could have probably put up with all that and carried on but for me the final straw came on the last week of my first placement. Whilst I was escorting an elderly male patient to the toilet, he suddenly turned and grabbed both my breasts in his bony (but surprisingly strong) little hands, thrust his head into my cleavage, sighed and expired on the floor.
Enough was enough, so I dropped out and began a medical internship at the local mortuary. Dead patients didn’t grope me, or demand things, or speak to me, or stare at me, or assault me. In fact, they rarely did anything at all – except lie still. They occasionally stink a little, but you soon get used to that.
I applied myself and with the help of day release and evening courses I qualified as an anatomical pathologist practitioner, better known as a mortuary technician. I suppose given my view of the world and my relatively serious and introverted nature, the work suited me. I’d been working in Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary for nearly six years now and there wasn’t much I hadn’t seen, or, more pertinently perhaps, smelled.
Initially, my mum reacted in horror at my relatively unusual career choice and couldn’t understand my motivation. Over time, however, she came to recognise that I enjoyed my job – as weird as that sounds – and never complained about it, the way many people did.
Monday, 23 November started out like most other early shifts. My alarm woke me at 5.45 a.m., I showered, ate cornflakes whilst drying my hair and staring at BBC News with the subtitles on, so I could understand what the presenters were jabbering about over the noise of the hairdryer. My thick hair always takes ages to dry.
After that I applied my Manic Panic foundation. If I was honest I liked the name more than anything as pretty much any pale slap worked for me. However, for the last ten years I’d only ever worn three shades of Rimmel lipstick: black, purple and, for special occasions, RockChick Scarlet but today being a work day meant boring Black Diva.
I then applied my black liner and smudged some light pink blusher on to contour my cheeks and make me look slightly less like one of my charges. In truth, as I’d got older I’d toned down the Goth persona. I supposed I’d got nobody and nothing to rebel against these days, but still liked the fact it made people wary of me.
I then pulled on my clothes, left my tiny rented flat in the Duddingston area of Edinburgh and drove to work. My workload scheduled for that morning should have been light as we had no post-mortems booked until the afternoon, so my plan had been to sort out a load of paperwork I hadn’t bothered finishing on Friday. Another plus would be that I’d be working with Sid.
Sid’s actual title was Dr David Ingles but his idol growing up had been Sid Vicious, so he’d taken the nickname. My only issue with this was that, in my opinion, Taylor Swift bore more resemblance to Sid Vicious than David did with his soft round face, big lips and gentle grey eyes. There was also the slight problem that as David, being only thirty-six, wouldn’t have been born when the Sex Pistols were at their zenith but then who am I to criticise? Sid was my favourite forensic pathologist, which was a bit like saying he was my favourite teddy bear, given his nature. He started at Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary around the same time as me and although much more senior he didn’t have the ‘lording over’ attitude some of the other doctors have and we got on brilliantly.
He was on my wavelength with so many things, and as we had absolutely no interest in each other physically it was easy to talk to him. I suspect he might be gay – in fact I’d stake money on it – but whenever I broached the subject (usually on a night out after a few drinks) he changed the subject of conversation immediately. He was firmly in the closet as far as I was concerned, so far in that he’d locked the damn thing and thrown away the key.
On this Monday, I managed to arrive before anyone else and opened the door to the large basement room where all the recently deceased were stored. Then, something made me stop in my tracks. I’d heard something. I didn’t move for a moment, hardly breathing, then decided I must have been mistaken. I’d been alone down here hundreds of times before, both during the day and at night, and it didn’t bother me any more. It had been a little creepy at first, but I’d soon come to realise that the dead couldn’t hurt me (barring any kind of zombie uprising, of course), and life had taught me well that it was the living I needed to be wary of.
I quickly scanned the log, noting only one new entry, and as I turned to go and get changed I heard something coming from one of the drawers. How strange.
I cautiously approached the section where the banging emanated from and thought for a second that one of the medical staff might be playing a trick, but that sort of stuff was usually only reserved for ‘newbies’. I slowly pulled out the offending drawer and peered down at the pale and bruised but incredibly cute face staring up at me. It blinked its bright blue eyes and I was immediately smitten. It had finally happened – I’d fallen for a corpse.
Chapter 3
Once I’d made sure my rather attractive ‘corpse’ was alive and not a figment of my too often fertile imagination, I called upstairs and got them to send down some of the intensive care staff. My ‘patient’ (I thought that sounded better than ‘corpse’ on the phone) hadn’t been dead for long, if indeed he’d been dead at all. The doctors were understandably confused and fired loads of questions at me, most of which I couldn’t answer.
Fifteen minutes after I’d discovered the patient – Mr Jones, according to his label – had been moved to an intensive care bed, wired up to the moon and subjected to all manner of poking and prodding. After they finished their tests, they loaded him up with painkillers and left him to sleep. The IT consultant told me that, ‘Nathan Jones is a medical curiosity, a walking miracle – well, he will be. Currently, he’s a lying-down moaning miracle.’
At the end of my shift I pottered upstairs to see how my first ‘living corpse’ had fared. He intrigued me but, more than that, he’d unsettled me. I’d never developed feelings instantly for anyone before, alive or dead or maybe somewhere in between, as Mr Jones appeared to be.
I knew I’d stepped onto dodgy ground but couldn’t help the way I felt.
I stopped by the nurses’ station on the way and got an update from Jan, the staff nurse on duty. We’d known each other for years. She’d ‘taken me under her wing’ (her description not mine) when I’d first started in the hospital, and even confessed to me one night when we were both a bit drunk that she suspected she had bisexual tendencies but didn’t want her husband or teenage son to find out. Given that new information, I hadn’t been sure at the time whether her ‘taking me under her wing’ might be a sign that she liked me or a sign that she liked me, but – to my relief – nothing more than her drunken confession had happened.
She filled me in on what she knew and that he remained asleep. I slipped into his room and sat staring at him for a while, wondering how on earth he’d managed to get pronounced dead and yet still be alive.
I’d just decided to get up and head for home when his eyes flickered open. ‘Hello there,’ I said brightly.
‘Can you say anything else?’ he mumbled with an English accent, running his tongue around dry lips. I poured him some water and handed it to him. His left arm had been encased in plaster but his right one seemed fine and he took the beaker from me.
‘Are you right-handed? That’s lucky.’
He nodded. ‘Yeah, I don’t feel that lucky just now. I think I need to thank you … you know, for finding me.’
‘You were being very noisy. The morgue is usually quiet, like, well … a morgue, I suppose.’
‘Not too noisy, I hope – not enough to wake the dead.’
‘I didn’t check but I think you were the only live one there.’
‘Has that ever happened to you before?’
I shook my head. ‘Nope, you’re my first zombie. You were definitely dead when they shut you in the drawer again yesterday.’
‘Again?’
‘Yeah, I wasn’t in over the weekend, but it seems after your wife identified you on Saturday night, they moved you around a fair bit because they were servicing the fridge mechanisms, so you haven’t been in the drawers much. Thing is, you’d think all that moving about would have woken you up.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Neither do I, nor the doctors. You’ve got a lot of people confused and all worked up. They don’t know why you’re alive and that bothers them.’
‘They’d rather I’d stayed dead?’
‘Probably; and if you’d stayed in there much longer you’d likely have frozen to death anyway. They’re saying you’ve been subject to the Lazarus Syndrome.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Well, it’s also known as autoresuscitation after failed cardiopulmonary resuscitation, which is the spontaneous return of circulation after failed attempts at revival.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You’re very lucky.’
‘You said that already. What’s your name?’
‘Kat.’
‘What, as in pussy? Sorry, that sounds rude.’
‘It’s fine. No, K-A-T.’
‘Oh, okay. As in short for Katie or something.’
‘Yeah, something like that. Look, I really came to see if there’s anything you need?’
‘A new body, maybe.’
I laughed. ‘I can’t help you there. I think your wife stopped by earlier.’
‘Did you speak to her?’
‘No, I was downstairs at that point helping saw the top off someone’s skull.’
‘I probably didn’t need to know that.’
‘Sorry, the staff nurse said she couldn’t hang around because of your kids but they’ve called to let her know that you’re awake. She said she’ll come tomorrow.’ I scratched my nose where a black piercing emerged from my left nostril. I noticed Nathan watching me intently. I must admit being overcome with a feeling of disappointment when I’d discovered he had a wife. My taste in men wasn’t getting any better the older I got. ‘It must have been a shock for her.’
‘What? That I’d died?’
‘Well, yes, that you’d died. And then that you were suddenly alive again.’ I noticed his face darken and a frown appeared, making him look older. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Apart from being broken?’
I smiled. ‘Yeah, you look upset about something.’
‘No, just in a bit of pain, I think.’
I didn’t believe him but whatever was bothering him wasn’t really any of my business.
‘Well, as your wife isn’t able to come and see you, who else can I call?’
‘Ghostbusters,’ he said, smiling.
‘Seriously – there’s no one? Your mother?’
‘She’s been dead for seventeen years.’
‘Father?’
‘Dead for twenty.’
‘Brothers, sisters?’
‘I’m an only child.’
‘Lonely child, more like. What about friends?’
Nathan sighed. ‘You could have called my mate Graham, I suppose, but he’s on holiday in Thailand.’
‘Have you told your work you’re likely to be off for a while?’
‘I mainly work for myself, freelance, so no need.’
‘Freelance what?’
‘Just freelance. You’re very nosy.’
‘Are you lonely?’
‘With a wife and three kids? You must be joking.’
‘Outside your family circle there doesn’t seem to be very much for you though.’
‘I’m a very busy person.’
‘That’s what lonely people say.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes.’
We were both silent for a moment and I noticed his eyes closing.
‘I should go. You’re obviously very tired and you need to sleep.’
He nodded. ‘You’ve got to get back to work, I expect?’
I shook my head. ‘No, I’ve just finished my shift so I’m heading home now.’
‘Is your boyfriend waiting?’
I wondered why he’d asked that and it slightly annoyed me. Maybe he’d been a serial cheater, and, if so, no wonder his wife hadn’t rushed back to the hospital.
I said rather sharply, ‘I don’t have a boyfriend. Do you think I’d be sitting here if I had anywhere better to be?’ I could tell my question and tone of voice had taken him aback.
‘Probably not,’ he said, chastened.
Perhaps that had been a bit harsh. ‘Sorry, that didn’t come out as I meant it to.’
‘No, it’s fine, I appreciate it. I wouldn’t have had any visitors at all today if you weren’t here.’
‘I probably won’t come to see you again. I really only popped by to see if you needed to contact anyone else – now that you’ve told me you don’t … well, that’s fine.’
‘Thank you for bringing me back to life.’
I smiled and shook my head. ‘I don’t think I did but it’s a nice idea. Goodbye, Mr Jones.’
‘Nathan.’
‘Goodbye, Nathan.’
*
The next morning Nathan awoke early. Mainly due to the clatter and clashing that went on in hospital wards at that time of day. He’d had a troubled sleep and his dreams had been haunted by the mortuary girl, and then pain when his medication had worn off. A nurse had stopped by to take his blood pressure at some ungodly hour, though, and thankfully administered more pain relief.
During the morning his wife appeared with their youngest daughter, four-year-old Daisy. Daisy jumped onto the bed and gave him a hug, which felt lovely. They also had Millie, ten going on thirty-five and Chloe, six.
‘Where’s the other two?’
Laura smiled. ‘At school, of course – it’s Tuesday.’
‘They could have missed a morning to come and see their dad.’
‘They’re confused enough. I spent the last two days trying to stop them crying about you being dead. Now they think I’ve been lying to them about it and Millie especially is hardly speaking to me.’
‘Sorry for upsetting your life.’
Laura’s phoney smile vanished. ‘Don’t start, Nathan. I’ve had a traumatic few days. You’ve no idea how hard it’s been coping with everything. We all thought you were dead.’
He nodded. ‘I’m not going to apologise for still being alive, Laura. It was the Lazarus Syndrome.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Something to do with pulman circumnavigation or … anyway, I didn’t do it on purpose to complicate things.’
Laura blinked and looked away. ‘Yeah, I know. Sorry. How are you feeling?’
He sighed. ‘Sore. I’ve got a lot of broken things.’
‘Yes, I know, they told me.’
‘You could have come yesterday.’
‘I did but the girls were playing up and I … might have been in shock. When they told us we had to go it seemed easier to just agree.’
‘Shock?’
‘That you were still alive; as I said I’d spent two days …’
‘Yeah, telling the girls I’d died, you just said.’
The next few minutes passed in silence until Daisy announced, ‘I need pee pees.’
Laura went with her to the toilet on the other side of the room and Nathan took a moment to try and see things from his wife’s point of view. He accepted that she’d been shocked by his death, and their three daughters could be a handful, but if the situation were reversed would he have waited patiently to see his wife? No, he would have demanded the hospital staff let them in rather than giving up, for the girls’ sake if nothing else.
He sighed and tried to remember the love he’d once felt for Laura but found it difficult; they hadn’t been close for so long. Occasionally they had a good day or more likely a good night when she was horny, and their love-making brought them together physically and mentally, but those episodes had become less frequent.
Laura came back and sat with Daisy on her knee. His wife had jet-black hair, her natural colour. In all the years he’d known her she’d never changed it. Even now with many grey hairs appearing she still resisted colouring it. Her small nose sat like a cute little button on her pale and lovely face. Dark emerald eyes that once captivated him and gazed upon him with love and devotion nowadays more often expressed impatience and scorn.
‘Well, I suppose I’d better get home. Daisy needs her lunch and I’ve got to pick the girls up from school at three.’
Nathan didn’t argue; the silence wasn’t comfortable, and he needed to sleep. The painkillers made him drowsy and irritable. Minutes after she left he slipped into a fitful slumber. His dreams were rarely pleasant any more.
Chapter 4
Laura brought the girls to see him every evening whilst he remained in hospital and although seeing his daughters acted like a tonic, staring at his wife’s stressed and unhappy face had the opposite effect. He was glad when, after four days, they let him go home.
The consultant appeared on the Friday afternoon with a clipboard and a printed list of things he wasn’t allowed to do once they handed over the strong painkillers and released him from their care.
Motocross
Hang gliding
Parachuting
Rally driving
Water-skiing
Boxing
Bull riding
Nathan had never attempted any of those things and it left him wondering if he’d been missing out on life somehow. He signed the bottom of the form, promising not to do anything dangerous, though he had to remember he’d ended up in the morgue by simply trying to cross the road.
The young-looking consultant – too young to be a senior doctor in Nathan’s mind – took the signed disclaimer from him and ticked another box on her clipboard and said without looking up, ‘Now, you shouldn’t drive or operate machinery whilst taking these pills either.’
He waited for her to look up and wafted his sling and plastered arm at her.
‘Oh, yeah, sorry, I’m on automatic, but you’d be surprised at what some people try and do.’
‘Like bull riding.’
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s on your list of prohibited activities.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yeah, right at the bottom.’
She peered at the form then looked up and smiled. ‘Yeah maybe give that a miss for a few weeks at least.’
‘I’ll try, but there are so many opportunities to bull ride in Edinburgh that it might be unavoidable,’ Nathan informed her.
She ignored his sarcasm and left his discharge forms on the bottom of the bed.
Apart from the obvious sling and a few cuts on his forehead, Nathan looked none the worse for his experience. Underneath his shirt, his broken ribs were bound tightly, and his damaged skull bore no marks, but he’d been told to be careful because, although the linear fractures required no treatment as such, he had to return immediately if he experienced any unexpected or severe headaches. Heading home to a grumpy wife and three young kids meant the chances of developing a severe headache were somewhere near one hundred per cent.
Despite this, mentally, he felt elated. It might be down to some sort of post-death high, but he reckoned that, as there wouldn’t be many discussion groups available who’d shared his experience, he’d probably never know.
Laura arrived to take him home in an unusually animated and chatty mood and did most of the talking. As his head hurt and he felt drowsy this suited him fine. He spent most of the weekend watching TV and falling asleep unexpectedly. One minute he would be watching a re-run of an episode of the Antiques Roadshow, the next he’d be snoring, although he suspected this might be more to do with the programme than the pills. Chloe woke him up. ‘Dad, how can you sleep when you’re snoring so loudly?’
‘I don’t know, Chloe.’ He yawned, and Laura came over and made a fuss of him, which he really enjoyed.
Then Daisy jumped onto the couch and gave him a huge cuddle. Dying had certainly made his two youngest daughters very appreciative of him. It probably wouldn’t last so he needed to make the most of it – once they sensed he’d recovered fully they’d be back to normal. Daisy jumped down and tripped over his foot.
‘Shit.’
‘Daisy, don’t say that; it’s not a nice word,’ scolded Laura.
‘Daddy said it.’
‘He shouldn’t have. Nathan, don’t say shit.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Shit,’ squealed Daisy with delight.
‘Daisy, stop it.’
‘You said shit again, Laura, that’s why she’s doing it.’
‘Shit!’ yelled Daisy again, gleefully.
‘I didn’t, did I? Shit, I didn’t mean to.’
‘Shit,’ said Daisy, bouncing up and down on the rug.
Laura put her head in her hands. ‘We need to stop saying shit. I hardly ever say it – it’s you she’s learned it from.’
‘Why’s everything my fault?’
‘Because it usually is.’
‘Shit,’ cried Daisy as she walked over and picked up her doll. She took the doll into her bedroom whispering, ‘Shit,’ into its ear.
On Monday, Laura dropped Daisy at her day nursery and went to work, leaving him alone at home for the first time since he’d come back from hospital. His wife had been making an effort to be civil to him and he felt guilty about the recent disingenuous thoughts and feelings he’d had when she’d so easily given up on coming to see him in hospital that first day. He hoped it might be a sign that they could begin to patch things up.
Their marriage had started off amazingly well considering the circumstances under which they’d got together. After Millie had been born they’d remained close; people even referred to them as ‘devoted’ when they saw them together.
He couldn’t put his finger on when exactly things had begun to turn sour. He supposed it had been a gradual process. Somewhere between falling pregnant with Chloe and the birth of Daisy everything had changed. They’d not had a lot of time together as a couple before Laura fell pregnant with Millie. Perhaps if they’d been given that time socialising, holidaying and doing the normal stuff that young couples did then the relationship might have run its course and ended. Kids complicated everything. They naturally became a priority and somewhere in the mix Nathan and Laura had got lost. Money had only started to become an issue after Chloe came along. At that point Nathan’s work had dried up – companies took more decisions and jobs in-house meaning contractors were used less. The practice had begun to reverse in recent times, but good contracts remained elusive.
Going back further, Nathan suspected that part of Laura’s initial attraction to him could be put down to the fact she’d thought him posh. True, he’d gone to boarding school, but his private education had come about more from the fact he’d been an inconvenience to his parents rather than any aspirational hopes they’d had for their son. He’d interfered with their lifestyle, so he’d spent most of his pre-school years in assorted day nurseries and most weekends with babysitters or childminders. (He still didn’t understand the distinction between the two.)
Shortly after Nathan’s birth, an elderly aunt had died, leaving her entire and considerable estate to his mother. He learned later that she had been waiting years for this happy event, and his parents had spent many hours planning exactly what they were going to do with the money – which included a lot of travel, some nice cars and a holiday home in France. The inconvenience of having a brat would be something they’d deal with as long as it didn’t cramp their style.
‘Mum, why did you have me?’ he’d asked her once.
‘I don’t know, Nathan.’
‘What do you mean you don’t know?’
‘Well, you weren’t exactly planned, let me put it like that.’
‘So, I’m an accident?’
‘Kind of. Once I found out, though, I decided to keep you. Auntie Caroline had hung on longer than anyone expected so I thought you might be a welcome diversion, something to help pass the time.’
The only family trips they ever made were to the house in France. Even then, he only got to go during the summer holidays, which he suspected had more to do with the fact it was cheaper to hire a childminder in Brittany, where they had their cottage, than to pay for one in London. His babysitters in France were more colourful than the middle-class young girls they employed in London.
One evening, just after his ninth birthday, his parents engaged Monsieur Masson to look after him while they went to a party. As soon as they were gone Monsieur Masson’s mistress arrived and they left Nathan to his own devices while they made full use of his parents’ huge four-poster.
By the time his parents returned home Nathan had managed to shave his eyebrows off, using his dad’s razor and shaving foam. During the process, he’d nicked the skin above his eyes in numerous places, leaving his face a mask of blood. It made him resemble some demonic child from a cheap horror flick. He then attempted to make a meal by smashing eggs into a large stainless-steel bowl, adding a liberal portion of tomato sauce and grated cheese before putting the whole lot uncovered into the microwave. The resulting multicoloured explosion took weeks to scrub clean. Monsieur Masson didn’t get asked back.
A few days after his fifteenth birthday his father, aged only fifty-six, died of a heart attack. Perhaps the hedonistic lifestyle he and his mother had undertaken could be blamed, or perhaps it could be put down to faulty genes. In any event, the loss of his father curtailed his mother’s excesses for a while and Nathan started attending the local comprehensive in south London as there was no sense in needlessly wasting money on private education any longer than necessary, according to his mother.
Despite the disruption he found that he enjoyed the local school much more and, although his mum could never be described as ‘doting’, at least she took an interest in him for a while.
Laura’s upbringing was in stark contrast to his. She came from a poor background in Fife, growing up in a cramped flat. The glamour of being associated with someone from his background, despite it being completely dysfunctional, might have been intoxicating for her. Nathan admitted it was possible he played the ‘posh’ card a little too much with Laura in the beginning, but as she had been so exceptionally gorgeous he’d felt he needed every advantage he could get.
His wife now worked for a venture capital firm. She’d started as an administrative assistant but, after taking dozens of exams to ‘better herself and her chances’ (her description), she’d progressed to operations manager – a remarkable achievement given she’d had three children along the way. She still wasn’t satisfied with that, though, and continually moaned about how much more she could earn if she moved back to London. Nathan had grown up in the capital and had no wish to return, yet another thorn in their relationship.
The postman noisily shoving something through the letterbox pulled him from his thoughts, and he padded down the hall to retrieve the mail.
There were four items; the first two were a bank statement, which wouldn’t make good reading – he left that to one side – and a small catalogue for children’s books, which had Laura’s name on it. He placed that on top of the bank statement. The last two envelopes intrigued him. They were of the white windowed variety and, although both were addressed to Laura, he could see underneath the window on one of them and noticed his name and a policy number. On the back, the name and address of the sender: The Corporate Mutual Insurance Company.
Nathan opened it and read the script:
Dear Mrs Jones
Mr Nathan Jones – Policy Number CM2345GY98
We were sorry to hear about the recent death of your husband. As discussed with you in our telephone conversation on 23 November please find enclosed the requested information. We apologise for the delay in forwarding this to you but due to an issue with our systems we had not realised this request had not yet been actioned. We apologise for any distress or inconvenience this may have caused you.
Enclosed is the relevant claim form for completion to enable us to consider the claim under this policy.
Please note, in order to be able to pay the proceeds, under policy number CM2345GY98 we will need sight of the original death certificate and for this reason we recommend you return the completed form together with the death certificate by recorded delivery to ensure no delay is caused by lost documentation.
Our thoughts are with you at this difficult time, and if you need to speak to us directly, please call our confidential customer helpline on 0804 345 6788. The phone line is staffed between the hours of 8.30 a.m. until 5.30 p.m., Monday to Friday.
We trust that you will find this to be in order.
Yours sincerely
Mr K Stanton
Senior Claims Executive
Encs.
Relevant Claim Form
Nathan sat down on the couch, stunned. The morning he had been found alive by the mortuary girl his wife had been on the phone to the insurance company chasing money. No wonder she’d been so ‘shocked’ to find him still living. He knew his wife could occasionally be, well, if he was honest always, ‘money orientated’, but his body had hardly been cold and the first thing she’d decided to do was cash in on his death. Nathan had two life insurance policies, the one referred to in the letter and another joint one with Laura that covered the mortgage. He’d no doubt that she’d been on the phone chasing that one as well. What a cold-hearted bitch.
He decided to open the other envelope, fully expecting it to be from the other insurance company, but this one turned out to be even more bizarre as it contained his death certificate. As he sat staring at it he suddenly shuddered, as if someone had just walked across his grave. He then comforted himself with the thought that not many people got to read their own death certificate.
*
He decided to wait until all the girls were asleep that evening before confronting his wife. She’d poured herself a large glass of Shiraz and slumped down onto the couch to watch TV. Nathan sat opposite in an armchair and watched her, wondering if she really could be as hard-hearted as her actions appeared to suggest.
It was clear Laura could feel his eyes on her. ‘What is it, Nathan? Why are you staring at me?’
‘I opened some letters today.’
Laura sipped her wine and smiled. ‘That’s nice; highlight of your day, was it?’
He nodded. ‘In a way, yeah. The first letter came from The Corporate Mutual Insurance Company.’
He watched the colour drain from her face. ‘Nathan, I can explain.’
‘Go on, then.’
‘Err, well, I had concerns that they’d cancel the policies before I could register a claim – you know what these insurance companies are like, they’ll try and weasel out of paying any way they can.’ Laura smiled, obviously happy with her quick thinking.
‘Why would they cancel the policies, Laura? They were up to date and as far as they were concerned I’d been killed legitimately, so why would there be any issues?’
‘Well …’ Laura paused and chewed on her bottom lip. ‘Yeah, but the premiums came out of your bank account and with you dead all your accounts would have been frozen. The bank wouldn’t have paid so I wanted to make sure I got the claim in before they could cancel due to non-payment of premiums.’
‘Is that why you were so fast to get my death certificate as well?’
Laura nodded. ‘Yeah, they said they needed that to process the claim.’
Nathan thought that over for a moment. He really wanted to believe her, but the problem was, he knew his wife inside out. ‘Doesn’t exactly tally up with your earlier claim to be really upset and grieving, though, does it?’
Laura sighed and put her glass down on the floor. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Nathan.’
Neither did he. Did he want his wife to beg for forgiveness, admit she was cold and unfeeling towards him and tell him that everything would change? If she did he wouldn’t believe her anyway; they were too far gone for that and he knew it. ‘We could go to counselling.’
Laura stared at him for a moment, blinked several times and dismissed the suggestion. ‘I don’t believe in that sort of thing.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t believe in it? You can maybe get away with not believing in fairies, UFOs and leprechauns, but marriage counselling is real, proven and helps loads of couples.’
‘I think our marriage is beyond fixing, Nathan, and has been for a long time.’
‘What you mean is, you don’t want to fix it.’
Laura picked up her glass, took a gulp of wine and shook her head. ‘I can’t be bothered, Nathan, and I think that’s worse. It just seems like too much effort. I wasn’t glad when you died but, I should tell you, I was relieved. I know that sounds cold-hearted and unfeeling but it’s the truth. It meant I wouldn’t have to deal with this, deal with you, deal with us. I wanted to wait a little longer until you were completely healed but … well, there you are … you forced it out of me.’
‘It didn’t take much.’
‘No, it didn’t and there’s the problem, isn’t it? I need to leave and move on. I need more from my life than you.’
‘What about the girls?’
‘It’ll be hard at first, but they’ll adapt. In the long run it’ll be better for them not to have to live with our arguing and … what would I call it … apathy?’
‘Indifference.’
‘Yeah, see, you get it, don’t you? Deep down you know I’m right. It’ll let you move on too, maybe find someone new.’
‘I don’t want anyone new. I want the Laura I married.’
Laura smiled sadly at her husband. ‘That Laura died a long time ago. You killed her slowly over time, strangled the life out of her.’
‘That’s horrible.’
Laura shrugged. ‘It’s the truth.’
‘It’s your truth.’
*
Laura looked at her husband for a moment, trying to remember what it had been like to love him. She’d changed over the years while he’d remained pretty much the same, stuck in a rut. Maybe it had been unfair of her to expect more given his family and background, the very family background that had made him so attractive in the first place. Laura knew she had an ambitious social-climbing streak in her at a time when it had become increasingly unfashionable to admit to such a thing. In her mind, quality mattered and whatever else she thought about her husband he had quality – if such a thing existed. It helped he was good-looking, but he never seemed to realise that, which over the years had been at times a comfort and at others a curse. He attracted people to him with his easy manner and chilled-out personality. That personality trait annoyed her the most, though – he didn’t worry about things. Appointments to Nathan were vague arrangements, deadlines something to work towards, the future … what future?
She could have had anyone; at the time she probably hadn’t realised that, but it had been true. She’d been intelligent, beautiful and outgoing. Nathan was so loyal, so devoted like a little puppy, and almost as cute.
Over time, though, loyalty and devotion became wearing and irritating. With Nathan dead her plan had been to sell up and relocate to London. The life insurance money would have come in handy, especially given the costs of living down there, but, in any event, she’d get by.
She sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter whose truth it is, Nathan. I’m going to make it easier on everybody and move out. I’ve applied for a transfer to London and as soon as that’s approved I’ll leave. You can live here with the girls and that way they don’t miss out on their schooling and stuff. I’ll see them at weekends and holidays.’
Darmowy fragment się skończył.
