“Tell me your idea.”
“Ah yes, my idea. It sounds nuts but…I think, Delphie, that Jonah might have been your soulmate.” She grabs my hands in hers. “I mean, technically humans have five soulmates wandering the earth at any one time, but I think Jonah might be one of yours…The way you were looking at each other.” She sighs dreamily. “Like Laurie and Jack in Josie Silver’sOne Day in December.Like all you wanted to do was touch each other. I mean, what are the chances that this guy accidentally turns up here at the same time as you? Inmylobby, no less.” She gasps, jumping up from the chair and pacing around the room. “What if it was fate, and I just have to, you know, give it a little nudge?”
I blink. A soulmate. Soulmates are real? I get a sudden vision of walking hand in hand with Jonah down a snowy Oxford Street. Which is mad because I despise the busyness of Oxford Street and I usually avoid the snow whenever possible. In the fantasy Jonah and I are wearing matching mittens and giggling. And I don’t feel irritated or scared or sad. I don’t feel like me at all. It’s funny, I’ve never even pondered the possibility of a soulmate before…But what if this is real and Merritt is right and Jonah wasit? What if I actually have a way to feel something better than everything I’ve been feeling up until now?
“I’ll give you ten days,” Merritt says decisively.
“Ten days?”
“Ten days back on Earth to find Jonah. If he kisses you, then you can stay.”
“I can stay alive? Like this never even happened? Like I’d never choked at all?”
“Yeah. Buthehas to kissyou. Of his own free will.”
I narrow my eyes. “Why only ten days?”
Merritt folds her arms. “Those therapists I told you about? The ones who keep stealing new Deads away from me, who don’t think I’ve got what it takes to make a difference round here? Those two rodent droppings are on holiday for the next ten days. So we could get this all done and dusted before they return…and no-one would ever have to know!”
“Wait…you’re not actually allowed to do this?”
Merritt shakes her head quickly. “Of course I am! I wouldneverbreak the rules of Evermore.” She tuts. “It would just be better to, you know, keep this between us. Jeez. Anyone would think you haven’t just been offered the chance of a lifetime.”
I screw up my face. “How would this be a ‘favour’ to you?”
Merritt laughs and wiggles her eyebrows slightly. “Well, I would get to watch it all play out.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Look, you don’t even know this man’s full name. You don’t know where the hell in London he is. You have a ticking time clock provided bymoi,and god knows how many obstacles keeping you apart. It’s like a real-life romance novel! That I get to watch unfold in real time! Thedream.” She claps her hands together, bouncing on her heels.
“You won’t even tell me his full name?” I goggle.
“Where’s the fun in that? Ooh, and his memory will have been wiped too so he won’t remember your little dalliance here today.” Merritt wanders over to the framed picture of herself and straightens it tenderly. “I want to see fate in action. See if you can pull it off. Like I said, Deads are being stolen away from me left, right, and centre. A girl needs to get her kicks somewhere.”
I stand up and start to pace the room. “What if I can’t findhim? What if he doesn’t kiss me? Do I have to come back here? ’Cos I really, really don’t want to.”
Merritt rubs her hands together and stares into the distance for a moment. Then a huge smile spreads across her face.
“Yes. You have to come back hereandwork with me on the dating service I’m setting up. Eternity 4U. We need guinea pigs. Volunteers to go on test dates and give feedback about how they can be improved. You would have to agree to be a guinea pig for as long as I need you…Also you have to sign this contract agreeing to my terms.” Seemingly from nowhere she whips out a piece of paper and places it on my lap. Then she reaches into her dungaree pocket and takes out a gold pen topped with a burgundy feather.
Being a date tester for a load of people I’ve never met before sounds like my actual nightmare. I’ve never even talked to the shopkeeper of the corner shop even though I see her almost every day. I don’tdopeople. But…then I think of how Jonah just looked at me. Like he would definitely kiss me of his own free will. In a heartbeat, in fact. All I’d have to do is find him. I already know he lives in London. And that his first name is Jonah, second name something beginning with the letter T. How many Jonah Ts can there be in one city?
I picture my cosy flat with my new stripy rug. All the TV series I’ve yet to finish. Old Mr. Yoon, who has been getting more forgetful of late and has no-one else but me to check in on him. This would be a chance to make sure he’s okay, to make sure he has everything he needs in case I do end up snuffing it for good. My heart starts to beat desperately with the innate human instinct to save one’s own life. To keep breathing and living and being, no matter what it takes.
Before I can second-guess myself, I grab the pen fromMerritt and scribble my signature across the bottom of the paper. The wet ink is purple, shimmering like oil in a puddle.
“Ten days,” Merritt repeats. “Andhehas to kissyou.”
“But what about if—“
I don’t get to finish my question, because Merritt snatches the paper out of my hand and then, with a manic laugh, reaches out her thumb, pressing it resolutely onto my forehead.
I gasp and look down at my arms as they turn iridescent and then into a silver sort of liquid and then…
5
“Delphie? For fuck’s sake. Delphie? Wake up.”
