two girls—I had caught a glimpse of their faces just before they walked straight through me—and it was the attractive one who was burdened with the envy.)
I stepped into the gutter and continued my journey, sweeping along the streets, making better progress when all I had to avoid was jaywalkers and cyclists. Once, at a road junction, I came down in the path of a single- decker bus and I couldn’t help but scream as I cowered and covered my head with my arms. It was bad, but not as bad as I expected it to be.
For a start, there was no impact (obviously, not in my state) and the sense of metal, engine parts, oil, and people’s lower bodies washing through me like fluid through a sieve (well, something like that) was no big deal. It happened so fast and there were so many passengers on board that their every perception dimmed the next, or mixed with it so none was clear. As a round colour chart filled with different colour samples will become completely white when spun, so the individual concerns and considerations melded into one, and were reduced to a senseless but subdued intrusion. It could be handled and that new lesson came as a relief: a mass assault would have quickly sent me crazy.
It became impossible to take any more pleasure in my flight, because primary concerns soon overwhelmed anything else. Anxiety became my driving force. I had to get to Andrea and Primrose, I wanted to be with them when they heard the news of my demise. Somehow—God only knew how—I had to offer them some comfort. If there was a way of letting them know I wasn’t gone, that I was still around…
Minor incidents along the route are not worth mentioning here; suffice to say, that by the time I reached journey’s end I’d learned more rules of my condition and was beginning to adapt. People passing through me, something that couldn’t always be evaded every time, was something akin to a cold shiver, or sometimes, when it happened very swiftly, like a cerebral sneeze, a mild shock that shook me for only an instant.
Even so, by the time I reached home I was an emotional wreck, because pernicious travelling companions— fear, doubt, curiosity, bewilderment, apprehension—had accompanied me all the way. But finally I was there and I paused—hesitated?—at the entrance to the short drive as I had last time I’d journeyed home, but now for a different reason.
I suddenly felt completely inadequate.
As previously noted, time appeared to have little relevance in the new dimension I occupied, but the autumn sun was sinking behind buildings on the false horizon, leaving night and lengthening shadows to settle in. I was dimly aware that the trip from the heart of London into the near-suburbs shouldn’t have taken that long, but at the moment other concerns took precedence.
My home stood in a broad, tree-lined avenue and was one of the rewards of my success, although I wasn’t wealthy by any means, just comfortably off. Detached from its neighbours, with two cars inside the double garage —my BMW and Andrea’s small new runaround, a green VW—the house comprised four bedrooms (one of them converted into a study/studio for me, another used as an exercise room for Andrea, and the other two as normal bedrooms), two bathrooms, downstairs cloakroom, a well-spaced hall, long lounge area with patio doors to the rear garden at the far end, dining room and fair-sized kitchen. At the front was the short drive I now lingered in, a small, neat lawn with a couple of flower-beds to one side, and at the rear of the house another, larger garden.
I noticed there was no police car, liveried or unmarked, parked at the kerbside.
I stood watching my home, emotionally but obviously not physically weary, until the sun was just an orange glow behind the distant buildings. I don’t know why I stayed there—I think I was just afraid. Something within nagged at me, told me that when I confronted my wife and daughter and they neither heard nor saw me, then it would be final confirmation of my death. And that really scared me.
I’m not sure how long it was before I stirred myself—as I said, time had little meaning to me now and could be judged only by the actions of mortals—but eventually I resolved to face the truth.
I approached the heavy front door to my home.
18
A second’s obliteration of sight, the briefest sense of being inside, even being part of the wood grain itself, that’s what I experienced when I passed through the front door. I became kin to its texture, its essence, and somehow I understood its growth as well as its roots (yes, literally; I had knowledge of the tree itself, when the oak was planted in the ground and drawing life from the earth and sky). But it was only an instant (by now you’ll have caught the drift that time isn’t quite what it seems to be).
Even as I emerged from the door into the hallway, stairs dead ahead leading to the bedrooms, a feeling of dread pushed oaks and grainy textures from my mind.
The place seemed empty. Certainly there was a coldness of atmosphere to it that I’d never experienced here before. One of my greatest pleasures in life had been stepping over the threshold of my own home after a good and fruitful day’s work at the office and knowing someone was waiting for my return. Especially when it was Primrose waiting for me. But it was only at this precise moment that I appreciated just how much it meant to me, for now there was nothing. No sound of voices, no music, no small running footsteps. Nothing. But no, that wasn’t quite right. It was the feeling of something missing that held me there.
I was suddenly afraid to move.
Surely the police, the detective superintendent called Sadler, should be here breaking the tragic news to Andrea, commiserating with her, asking questions about me? Had I got here ahead of him? But the place was quiet.
Maybe it had taken only minutes for me to reach here, I told myself. Maybe the journey was quicker than I thought and my timing was all askew. My family was not at home and the policeman hadn’t yet arrived. Yes, that was it. There was no strange car parked by the roadside or in the drive, and perhaps Prim was being collected from school at this very moment. But then, outside, the blood-orange sun was already settling behind the spread of buildings to the west and I’d left the hotel when it was high and brighter in the sky. I checked my wristwatch.
Yes, it was there all right, although I had to pull my shirtcuff back to see its face.* It was a reflex action because I did not feel dead. The digits told me it was 1.32 a.m. But that was impossible. It was not yet dark enough outside. And anyway I couldn’t have lost that amount of time getting here from the hotel. It wasn’t possible! Then it struck me: 1.32 a.m. was the time of my death. That was the precise moment natural things stopped for me. The shirt and trousers I was wearing (I had no jacket) and the watch on my wrist accompanied me into this other existence because they were an intrinsic part of me. Somehow I knew that the digits on the watch would always be set at the same time unless I concentrated hard to make them change, and the clothes I wore would never need cleaning or ironing as long as I didn’t “see” them as dishevelled. This awareness seemed to come as naturally to me as other realizations surely would.
*This is just one of the many peculiar things about being out-of-body. You assemble everyday clothes and accessories upon yourself, your hair is combed the way you usually comb it and it can become mussed when you mess with it; you even wear shoes when walking isn’t essential. I knew if I put a hand in my pocket I could pull out a handkerchief, because I existed in a state of false normalcy, so subconsciously I equipped myself with normal paraphernalia, even though those things and I have no substance. I think it’s just a way of preventing your mind from going AWOL; you cling to things that are familiar in order to maintain some kind of reality you can work with.
The digression was quickly over with and my thoughts returned to the house’s emptiness. And that was when at last I heard the small sniffling sounds, then the murmur of a soft, soothing voice. Andrea’s voice, Prim’s sniffles. I hadn’t heard them until now because I was too out of my mind with anxiety to take in much else.
I moved fast. I walked or glided, I don’t know which, through the open door to my left, following the sounds. They were sitting cuddled together on the long sofa in the lounge, arms entwined round each other, Prim’s small head buried into her mother’s chest. It was such a heart-rending sight that my own eyes stung with tears.
I rushed to them and tried to smother them in my embrace, but of course, there was no contact, only an unintended sinking into their flesh. I pulled away, startled, even though by now I should have known what could happen. But I’d been caught off guard and I guess, under the circumstances, it was understandable. I backed off: the utter misery I’d partially absorbed from them was even worse than my own. I could only gaze at them.
While journeying through the streets, and even as early as back there in the hotel suite, I’d been aware of a kind of fuzziness around individuals, shallow halos that had not quite impressed themselves upon me enough to give them any thought—let’s face it, I’d had plenty to think about at the time. When I inadvertently got too close to people (and remember I was doing my best to avoid them) I could see those halos more clearly, softish, but often
