I jutted my chin out. ‘I don’t know anything about you. You’re stranger danger.’
Jill sighed. ‘Please?’
‘I’m not getting on that bus until I know more.’
She closed her eyes and her shoulders slumped. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Fine.’
‘WELL THEN?’ I said.
Jill pushed her glasses up her nose and they slid back down again.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘There are lots of reasons why people don’t properly die. But the most common one is that there’s a toodoo.’
I almost laughed. ‘Pardon?’
‘A toodoo. Hanging over you.’
‘Say it one more time.’
‘You’ve got unfinished business,’ she said firmly.
‘Huh?’
‘There’s something you haven’t done yet that you have to do. Hence, a —’
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘A To Do.’
‘That’s what I said,’ she said.
‘Like what?’
‘Gordon Bennett, Frances, how am I supposed to know? It might not be a big thing. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who forget to turn their kitchen appliances off. Have you left the gas on?’
‘I’m eleven years old.’
‘Oh. In that case, any homework you forgot to hand in?’
I thought for a while. From the top deck of the bus, I saw a boy I recognised from Year Ten. We waved at each other.
‘Maybe?’
The strange woman in front of me sighed. ‘Right, well, you think about that. Because the moment you do it, you can die properly.’
‘What if I can’t think of a To Do? What if there isn’t one? What if I’m an All Done?’
‘Well, another possible reason you’re still around could be that you’re a Difficult Button.’
‘Difficult Button?’
‘The ones that are too stubborn to totally pass over to the other side. Very common in this age group, actually.’
She threw a frustrated glance behind her, barked ‘QUIET!’ at the fierce row blossoming on the top deck over whose turn it was to sit next to the window, and flicked an eye-roll at me.
‘It’s all in the slideshow,’ she said hopefully.
‘Nope.’
Her eyes revealed a great deal of inner suffering. ‘Think of yourself as a button.’
‘Button?’ I said helpfully.
‘Now, think of Life as a shirt, and all the buttonholes as Death.’
‘Er,’ I said.
‘Now, normally, when a button – sorry, human – dies, they pass through the buttonhole easily enough, slip right through, and they come out the other side, and they’re properly dead. Or what we in the trade call “dead dead”. Everything’s gone: consciousness, spirit, soul, the whole shebang. They’re buried, there’s a funeral, everyone has a cry, then there are sandwiches, right? The normal way. The proper way.’
‘Okay.’
‘But if you’re a Difficult Button, what happens is, you don’t quite get through the buttonhole. You’re stuck in the midway point – one foot in death, one foot in life – causing an administrative headache. Anyway, it’s normally the stubborn, hard-headed, challenging types …’ she gave me a loaded look I didn’t appreciate, ‘who don’t die properly. They don’t fully surrender to death. In other words …’
I remembered, for a moment, how I’d told myself that the wave would turn back, that it wouldn’t really break over the harbour wall. Even as the water ripped Mum’s hand out of mine, there’d been a tiny part of me insisting, This isn’t happening, this isn’t—
‘… they resist. At the very point it matters most, Difficult Buttons do not accept death, and their consciousness somehow drags them into this sort of halfway house. An existence, without a proper life attached.’ The woman shook her head. ‘Therefore they’re stuck in the buttonhole. Honestly, why they don’t cover this in schools is beyond me.’
‘So, which one am I? A To Do, or a Difficult Button?’
Jill squinted at her clipboard and then back at me. ‘It’s not clear yet. You might be both. Between you and me, these files they send from the back office aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. I’m sure it will all be sorted out eventually. In the meantime, you need to get on the bus. You’re an unaccompanied minor, which means you’re not permitted to be dead by yourself. You need a guardian, and that is me, and you need a new place of abode, and that is the bus.’
‘I can’t be dead by myself? Says who?’
‘Says the ones in charge.’ Her voice was matter of fact yet also firm. ‘We’ve got a strict code of conduct to abide by, rules and re-ghoulations. You might be dead, Frances, but there’s no need to be reckless.’
I had another disturbing thought. ‘Are you … God then? Or …’ I swallowed, ‘the other one?’
It seemed for a moment that her pupils had grown oddly yellow, like the headlights on the bus. Yet her smile was kind and wise. Or was that just the moonlight rippling over her face?
My thoughts grew electric and wild, as if I’d started flicking through a private diary that I had no business in, and I was afraid. She regarded me a minute, and coughed slightly. Now she just looked like a middle-aged woman in a shapeless suit again, and I was surprised at how much of a relief that was.
‘Calm yourself. I’m Jill. I’m a death guardian. No one important, just an employee. Thirty-three years of service, thank you very much, ever since lung cancer did for me. Cigarettes …’ she fixed me with a longing look, ‘do kill you, as it turns out.’
‘So … where does the bus go?’
‘Everywhere,’ said Jill simply. ‘Well, anywhere there’s a children’s attraction, at any rate. This bus will take you around the world – not in style, admittedly.’ She shot it a rueful look. ‘But it does the job. We make a lot of scheduled stops on the way – lots of chances to get off and stretch your legs, and of course plenty of chances to go on rides completely free of charge. Theme parks, water slides, and of course the Harry Potter studios are very popular—’
‘How long’s the trip?’
‘It can be as little as a couple of
