I was, and still am, inclined to believe her because Melissa is almost always right.
I pull myself together – for now, at least – paint on a smile, and return to the others inside the pub.
‘Drink up boys and girls,’ says Tommy, and cups his hand around his ear. ‘Time for the next pub. The Old House at Home is a-calling.’
As the others lead, Melissa hangs back to wait for me and we exit together, arm in arm. Only two people on earth make me feel safe, and she is one of them.
‘You okay?’ she asks.
‘Once this ear infection goes, I’ll start feeling more like myself.’
‘And aside from the infection?’
‘Getting there,’ I lie.
‘Good,’ she replies, seemingly placated.
A young woman in a thick, stained coat sits on top of a sleeping bag with an unlit cigarette butt balanced between her fingers. Inside my wallet I find a ten-pound note and give it to her.
‘Have you ever walked past a homeless person and not given them money?’ asks Melissa.
‘I could have so easily been like her.’
I know how quickly I could’ve slipped between the cracks. Half of children who end up in care have criminal convictions by early adulthood. A further ten per cent become homeless. If it weren’t for Helena ... my thoughts tail off when a figure suddenly catches my attention across the road. He’s sitting midway inside a single-decker bus. A young lad with red hair, his head turned towards me, his face expressionless. Slowly he raises his hand and points a finger at me. For a split second, my breath leaves my body, as he looks so much like the boy I saw when I died. Then a van overtakes the bus and obscures my view, and like in a movie, he vanishes.
‘Damon!’ Melissa yells and yanks me sharply towards her. A car horn blares and I realise I’ve stepped on to the road. ‘Are you trying to get yourself killed again?’ she says with a gravity behind her smile.
‘Sorry,’ I reply, trying to mask the unease in my tone. I don’t want her to pick up on how rattled I am and add to her worries about me. ‘You know how much I enjoy a sequel.’
Chapter 7
Damon
I snap awake at the sound of a heavy door slamming, followed by a deep, angry voice echoing along the corridor outside the flat. I’m fully clothed, lying atop the duvet. Light creeps through each side of the blind so it must still be daytime. I raise my head, and wince when I feel someone racing Formula 1 cars around inside it, so allow it to sink back into the pillow.
I recognise who’s talking outside. It’s the young man who lives in the apartment opposite yelling at his girlfriend again. He’s calling her a ‘miserable bitch’ and she’s telling him she is sorry. Now, they’re stomping down the metal staircase together, him still showering abuse upon her. This isn’t a one-off. I don’t really get angry, so much so that Melissa once nicknamed me Lake Placid during a one-sided row about whose turn it was to fill the car up with diesel. And I don’t understand why people can’t talk it out instead of yelling. I’ve yet to meet my neighbours in person, but based on past experience, I know that tonight they’ll be making up with sex so noisy it would make porn actors blush.
I do a double take when I check the time on my phone.What the hell?What started as a Sunday afternoon nap has become an epictwenty-hour sleep coma and it’s now mid-morning on Monday. The sharp movement makes me aware I’m about to piss myself so I tiptoe to the bathroom like a ninja in stealth mode, fearing I might accidentally dribble down the front of my Calvins. Then, after swallowing three codeine tablets, I return to bed. God knows why, but I’m still exhausted. My eyes glaze over as I stare at the ceiling. And soon enough, I’m losing myself in the sea, returning to the moment the largest of the waves caught me off guard, jamming my mouth and throat full of freezing water. I didn’t have time to brace myself for the next wave, which triggered a coughing fit, and before I knew it I was below the water’s surface, dragged by a terrifically potent, invisible force. A rip current, Melissa told me later. Now I understand that by panicking and fighting against it, I did the worst thing possible. Soon after, I lost consciousness.
When I think back to it, I’m certain my brain was preparing me for the inevitable, protecting me, wanting me to exit this life experiencing something aside from terror. Hence, as my body began shutting down, the gush of my life’s significant moments flooding over me – the instantaneous, somehow simultaneous manifestation of my entire existence.
There was no chronological order to it; it wasn’t like starting a book at the first chapter. One moment I was a teenager; the next, I’d reverted to a child and then an adult. Static images and mini-movies all played together, each with vivid clarity. A black-and-red balance bike I’d loved as a toddler; a football tournament I’d competed in as a teen; towering skyscrapers I’d made out of Lego; a poster of my first crush Margot, from the pop bandParty Hard Posse, that hung on my bedroom wall; a marble run game I was obsessed with building; being hit in the neck by AJ’s rogue blue paintball; and being mugged for my mobile phone by a hooded hyena on a BMX. A party I organised when Tommy returned from travelling around America; a Taylor Swift concert Melissa draggedme to; opening my terrible A-level exam results; and the whitey I pulled that was so intense, I never smoked a joint again.
I suddenly realise the only person conspicuously absent from those life events was my mum. There wasn’t even a glimpse of her, the person I miss the most.
The good and the bad, I was able to not only recall butunderstandevery one of these people and events.
Well, all but one: the dead red-haired boy.
I’ve replayed his death hundreds of times since then, searching for clues to his identity and whether what I saw was real – or, as Melissa suggested, whether he was a figment of my imagination. Try as I might, I’ve yet to recall anything else about him – his name, where we were, why I was there, who hurt him or what happened next.
But if everything else I remembered that day is true, why would my brain fabricate him?
My phone buzzes. A text message from Jason, one of my colleagues, asking for a lift to work. We both have shifts that start this afternoon. He only lives a couple of streets from me so I won’t need to go out of my way. Yes, I reply, I’ll pick him up in an hour.
I climb out of bed, my head still banging, make my way into the bathroom and turn on the shower. I freeze in place well shy of the spray, my body rigid, a Pavlovian response to running water. I’m back under the waves, clawing to reach the surface, failing every time. I should be grateful to still be here and I really am, thanks to Melissa. But I keep dwelling on the fact that I drowned. That for a time, I wasdead. And I’m struggling to find a way to deal with the enormity of it. Half the time I’m thanking God for allowing me to live, and for the rest, I’m crying for what might have been.
Come on,Damon, I tell myself,pull yourself together. I reach my hand out to feel the water’s temperature. Ever since I drowned, I can’t seem to find warmth. I’ve taken to wearing a long-sleevedT-shirt under my work shirt and two pairs of socks in my boots. Sometimes I wonder if I’m actually still dead and floating under the surface of the sea, and this is all a dream.
