“You must. Go back once and it might help you accept.”
“I don’t want to accept. I can’t accept!”
“Before long you’ll grow tired of your own melancholy. That’s when everything will change for you.”
“Okay. I still love Andrea and I’ll always love Primrose.”
“And that’s precisely what will help you overcome your bitterness. In your present state you’ll soon begin to experience pure love. Love without jealousy or passion, without partiality or bounds, an unselfish love, because it won’t be burdened by need. Anxieties will soon disappear.”
“I could never forgive Oliver for what he did to me.”
“No, but sooner or later you’ll accept it. I hope for your sake it will be sooner.”
“Forgive him?”
“Forgiveness follows acceptance.”
“You sound like a priest.”
He laughed aloud. “Where I come from we all do. It’s something we have to resist.” He became serious again. “You mentioned one other person who deceived you.”
“Sydney. Sydney Presswell. He was the agency’s business partner and accountant. Sydney did more than just deceive me though—he was the bastard that killed me.”
My father nodded as if he already knew.
“He also stole money from the company and engineered a takeover bid that I was against. Seems he’s been fiddling the books for years.” I breathed a resigned sigh. “I used to like him. Didn’t always agree with some of his methods and business proposals, but I always thought he was a stand-up guy. That’s the kind of idiot I am— was.”
“Gullible?”
I looked at him, about to object, then thought better of it. Wryly, I said, “Yeah, that’s about it. Sydney had been cheating on us for years, but Oliver and I, well we didn’t have a clue.”
“No wonder you feel nobody was ever true to you.”
“Paranoid? Doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” An old joke that failed to raise a chuckle between us. “But you know what? I couldn’t care less about Sydney anymore. Weird, I know, because not only was he a crook, but he took my life away, too. I don’t feel hatred and I don’t feel forgiveness. I just feel kind of numb where he’s concerned.”
“That might be because he’s dead.”
“And I killed him. Retribution, I’d call it.”
“Is that how you feel—you’ve avenged yourself.”
I thought about it for a short while. “Well—no. Like I said, I don’t feel anything at all.”
“That’s good.”
“Is it? Doesn’t seem right to me. He turned out to be a complete sham, who even tried to get someone else blamed for my murder.”
“But you’ve accepted it.”
“I don’t know, I wouldn’t quite say that. Let me put it this way: the murder and the embezzlement are bothering me less and less with each day that passes.”
“You’re getting yourself ready.”
I looked at him sharply. “Ready for what?”
“Ready to leave this all behind you.”
It didn’t come as a shock. “So I really am dead? There’s no reprise, no coming back, not even as someone else?”
He shook his head, and he seemed pleased.
“You’ve lost your body.”
“Couldn’t I… couldn’t I find another one?”
“They’re all taken. You’d have to be born again to gain another and that would put you in a different time and place. You wouldn’t even remember this life.”
“I could live with that,” I assured him.
“I’m afraid the choice won’t be yours. There’s much more to learn on the other side, you see. Much more.”
“Oh.” I didn’t bother to hide my disappointment “So how do I get to this ‘other side’? I feel useless here.”
“You’re making progress all the time.”
“I am a ghost then.”
“Not quite. In your present form, you’re a transient spirit.”
“I thought that was the same thing.”
“No.”
“My body’s dead, so why do I have to hang about here?” I protested.
“You weren’t in your body when it died. Fortunately.”
“Fortunately? How so?”
“It enabled you to do something before leaving this world. Something important.”
“Kill the killer.”
“She was corrupted.”
“But her face—”
“Her soul was not deformed to begin with. Only her own resentment and wickedness changed that.”
“Where is she now? I saw her soul leave her body. I was kind of hoping she’d become extinct, you know, become nothing.”
“Not punished?”
I shrugged. “She was a woman. For her—I mean her soul—to be totally snuffed seems reasonable to me. She’d been punished enough in this place. I didn’t think she should suffer anymore.”
“They were right about you. Gullible. Perhaps it’s no bad thing though. It shows a certain innocence of heart.”
“So tell me.”
“Alexandra Moker’s soul? Nothing ever becomes extinct. Let’s just say her soul won’t be around for a very long time.”
“I see. No one’s punished throughout eternity.”
“There are exceptions. Fortunately for poor embittered Alexandra, she wasn’t one of them.”
“I don’t think I want to know what it takes to be totally cancelled.”
“Very wise, Jimmy.”
“Can we get back to me, my situation?”
“Your departure will be a gradual process. You have the opportunity to learn more about the world you’ve lived in, and that gift isn’t given to many.”
“Lucky me.”
“It’ll be worth it. First though, you must follow my advice.”
“Accept the bad things in my life?”
He nodded. “Go back. Be impartial. Learn.”
Right then, I couldn’t think of anything more to ask, so we just sat quietly.
47
I did some more roaming before I returned to my old home and my mother’s dismal flat because I was reluctant to follow my father’s advice immediately, too aware that being close to Primrose and unable to communicate would hurt and frustrate me even more. Aware, too, that I had to let them go, I shouldn’t haunt them, that it might be the last time I’d see Prim and Andrea. I knew how emotionally painful it would be.
So I drifted for a while.
Time began to mean less and less to me and I experienced those “blackouts” more and more. I’d wake, if that’s how it could be described, usually in a different place to the one I’d occupied before the unconsciousness. At first, this was disorientating, but eventually I got used to it. I realized I had always become very drained just before
