Oh Great, Now I Can Hear Dead People: What Would You Do if You Could Suddenly Hear Real Dead People?

by Deborah Durbin

  It’s good to see Annette again and it’s good too to be back in the studio with familiar faces. I get the standard thumbs up from Jeff and surprisingly from Liam too – considering I used every excuse in the Girls-Guide-of-Handy-Excuses-For-Not-Going-On-a-Date book, Liam and I are still good friends. I think he probably thinks he had a lucky escape anyway since I was suddenly spread across every tabloid in the county.

  Annette spots me and Jack and waves. I see she has Colin the Carrot Man in the booth with her and what’s that? Oh no. My mother is sitting next to Colin. I drag Jack into the reception area and we listen to Colin’s tales about white carrots – I didn’t know you could get such a thing, but apparently you can.

  ‘And that’s not all…’ I hear my mother’s posh voice – this is the one reserved for talking with the vicar, estate agents and apparently now radio show hosts. This is similar and yet quite different from my mother’s telephone voice. My mother’s telephone voice is more clipped than her posh I’m-a-radio-presenter-voice and she uses it on the likes of unsuspecting sales people who dare to call her after 7pm.

  ‘Did you know Annette, that just half a cup of cooked carrots contains four times the recommended daily intake of vitamin A and they are an excellent antioxidant for combating diseases such as lung cancer, protection against strokes and heart disease? Research also shows Annette, that the beta-carotene in vegetables supplies this protection, not the vitamin supplements, so it doesn’t matter how many vitamin tablets you take, you can’t beat the carrot for the real thing!’ My mother enthuses.

  Annette nods and when she can get a word in edgeways says things like, ‘really?’ and ‘wow!’

  ‘And they are an excellent source of fibre, vitamin C, vitamin K, folate and iron,’ Colin adds. Blimey, you’d think they were a double act for the Save the Carrot Campaign.

  ‘Well, Cathy, Colin, I would like to thank you both for coming in this week and telling us all about the wonderful health benefits of the humble carrot and if you wish to buy a copy of Cathy and Colin’s book, The Truth About Carrots, it will be available in all good books stores in time for Christmas. If you can’t wait until then, Cathy and Colin have very kindly given us a signed copy to give away, if you can answer this question...’ I can see that Annette is desperately trying to take all this very seriously, despite wanting to wet herself laughing.

  ‘OK,’ Annette coughs, ‘please tell us one disease that carrots can prevent. Answers on a postcard to Town FM, Windsor Street, Weston-super-Mare, BS49 5TT, to arrive before next Saturday where Colin will draw out the correct answer.’ Annette flicks a few switches on her dashboard and heaves a sigh of relief.

  ‘Was that OK?’ My mother asks, ‘they seemed very responsive, don’t you think?’ She looks at Colin who pats her hand with his own freckled mitt.

  ‘I think you did marvellously, Cathy,’ Colin smiles.

  ‘Really?’ My mother blushes.

  Annette takes a sip of bottled water and suggests the pair of lovebirds go to the canteen to get some refreshments.

  ‘Oh, thank you so much for this wonderful experience,’ My mother says as she is practically pushed out of the door by Annette who has well and truly had a gut-full of carrot talk for one day.

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ Annette says and flumps down in her seat. ‘Is your mother always this enthusiastic?’ she asks as me and Jack sit down in the reception.

  ‘Um… yes,’ we both chorus.

  ‘Oh, Sammy, Jack, did you hear me?’ My mum says as she spots us.

  ‘You were brilliant, Mrs B,’ Jack says and throws his arms around her and kisses her on the cheek.

  ‘Yes, you really were, Mum,’ And she was. I sometimes forget that my mother is a person too and it’s been a bit of a struggle for her the past two years. She is finally coming out of herself and gaining that much needed confidence.

  As I enter the studio ,Annette throws her arm around me and hugs me to her while Annie Lenox warbles her way in the background.

  ‘It is so good to see you again, young lady,’ She says kissing me on the cheek, ‘and this gorgeous young man is?’ she says looking at Jack and smiling flirtatiously.

  ‘This gorgeous young man is the lead vocalist on the record you just played. Make Time for Time by Otherwise,’ I say proudly, smiling up at Jack who has gone a lovely shade of scarlet and is busy studying his feet.

  ‘No! No way!’ Annette says, ‘so it was you who left the demo on my desk?’

  ‘No. Yes. Well, not intentionally. When I got the job here Jack asked me if I would give you his demo and I completely forgot…’

  ‘And she calls herself a friend,’ Jack says. ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Anyway, I’d put it in my bag and it must have dropped out the last time I was in here,’ I explain.

  ‘Well, I’m glad it did,’ Annette says, ‘I hope you don’t mind Jack, but I’ve given a copy to my brother, Kevin who works for Music Management. He wanted me to track down where you were but with only a demo to go on and no name I was beginning to think that we would never track you down. You think you’d like to meet with him?’ Annette asks Jack.

  ‘Hell, yeah.’ Jack says, ‘I mean yes please.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Don’t you just love Christmas Eve? It doesn’t seem to matter where you are in the world, it’s always the same: husbands rushing around for the last minute suitable gift, which looks nothing like a just-remembered-at-the-last-minute-bottle-of-perfume for their wives; mothers rushing around for the packet of chestnut and cranberry stuffing that they had forgotten; children rushing around with that pre-Santa excitement look upon their faces.

  For me, Jack, Mum and Colin, Miracle and Max, and Paul and Matt, this Christmas Eve is being spent in the land of sea and sun - Australia. After the past four weeks of having to prove myself to the world that I am not a fraud, Paul suggested we all fly out there for a holiday and I have to say, the offer of sunning myself on a lounger on a paradise beach couldn’t come at a better time.

  Since the, prove-you’re-a-psychic-or-we’ll-hang-you-out-to-dry incident with Bobby Walters, Larry has been inundated with offers of work for me: everything from endorsing a collection of wailing dolphin meditation CDs to writing a book called How You Can Become Psychic. How you can become psychic? I haven’t the bloody foggiest idea, so that’s going to be a short book isn’t it? I mean, one minute I am desperately ringing up for guidance so that I can pay Ms Morris her rent and the next I’m hearing voices in my head. I don’t profess to know how all this psychic stuff happens. I try not to read for friends and family because I think it would feel a little uncomfortable if I were to see something bad happening, but I have found that suddenly people who wouldn’t normally give me the time of day are asking me to tell them what is going to happen to them – and, thankfully I’m always spot on.

  The bit in the middle is still a complete mystery to me and what I want to know is why, if all these dead people insist on talking to me, they can’t tell me something useful such as next week’s lottery numbers or how much is too much luggage to take on an aeroplane to the other side of the world?

  ‘I’m telling you, you’ve got too much luggage,’ Jack said prior to leaving for the airport.

  ‘Have not.’

  ‘Have so.’

  ‘Not.’

  ‘So.’

  ‘Not, infinity.’

  ‘So, infinity and one.’

  Well, you get the idea and as it happened, Jack was right. I did have too much luggage. Quite a bit too much in fact and had to pay a surcharge or face leaving it at Heathrow airport.

  ‘So, have you decided if you are going to go for this qualification thingy? I’ve never heard of it before,’ Jack asks as we on the beach, basking in the hot sunshine. Being of dark complexion anyway, Jack has already got a beautiful bronzed body and we’ve only been here for three days. I on the other hand, being fair-skinned, have bright red feet with white marks on them - a telling sign to everyone that I’ve been wea
ring flip-flops and my shoulders look like two big fat tomatoes – and they sting quite a lot too.

  ‘I guess I might as well,’ I say. Having gotten over my hissy fit with the world and taken a few weeks off to recover from the press attention, I think I might as well take up the offer from Miracle’s suggestion and study the paranormal to get accredited by the British Association of Clairvoyants and Mediums. It will mean taking more tests, but this time I won’t feel under any pressure to prove myself to some jumped up tosser on the telly. Now I have discovered that I can hear dead people, I would quite like to explore the possibility of being able to see them. As things stand I have a feeling of who I am talking to, or rather, who is talking to me, but it would be quite nice to be able to see them once in a while.

  The idea of providing therapy to veg phobics seems less appealing to me than it originally did. My original visions of being the answer to every lachanophobic’s prayer was that I would have a lovely little clinic, over looking the city of Bath, where every day I would calmly get to the root of my clients problems and happily sit back at the end of an evening, feeling content that there was one less lachanophobic in the world. I was going to be the Paul McKenna of veg fearing folk.

  In reality, I discovered that people who have a problem looking a carrot in the eye have more to worry about than vegetables attacking them – they are stark raving bonkers, and also dress really badly.

  ‘And what about you? Are you going to go ahead with the contract with Annette’s brother Kevin?’

  ‘Hell, yeah!’ Jack says at the prospect of signing the band with Music Management. ‘Though Dillon and Steve reckon we should just carry on as we are. Dillon reckons we have more control over our music…’

  ‘What? Playing the odd gig in the Pig and Whistle? Jack you’ve wanted this chance for ages. Don’t let it go now just because Dillon and Steve don’t like it.’

  ‘I know. He’s always complaining that he hates his job and this is his big chance to get out of insurance and into the music industry. Did I tell you they want us to play at The Brits?’

  ‘Only about a million times, Jack. Humm… playing to millions of people at The Brits, or playing to a handful of piss-heads at the Pig and Whistle…tough one.’ I laugh.

  ‘Oh, you know Dillon, he’s not big on change, is he?’

  ‘Well, tell him Mystic Crystal told him that if he doesn’t take up this opportunity he is doomed for a life of assessing other people’s insurance claims and his ears will shrivel up and drop off.’

  ‘I’ll tell him then,’ Jack says, not taking his gaze from mine.

  ‘What?’ I ask, feeling a little self-conscious.

  ‘Nothing, I was just thinking how good it is to see you smile again,’ he says.

  Oh thank God for that.

  ‘Well, I’ve got you to thank for that ,haven’t I? If it wasn’t for you picking me up from the hotel and sorting things out for me, I would probably still be hiding underneath that bloody hotel bed.’

  ‘That’s what friends are for – helping each other out of tricky spots like being accused of being a fraud, that sort of thing,’ Jack laughs.

  For some reason unknown to me I have an urge to jump on Jack and kiss him and if I had the courage do it, I would, but I don’t. I have no idea why I have this sudden urge. It’s like one of those times when you see your work colleagues out of work for the first time and they look so different, more relaxed. Maybe it’s the location or the fact that we have spent three days more or less sprawled out on the beach watching the world go by, but Jack just looks different here on the beach in Australia. No, stop it, Samantha!

  ‘I still can’t believe that it was Amy. Mum was livid about it,’ I recall my mum’s reaction when I finally told her who had gone to the newspapers and sold a false story on me.

  “After all I’ve done for that girl,” My mum said, and I could see she was bitterly disappointed in Amy.

  I go quiet for a moment as I look up to see a bright red kite flying against the backdrop of the cloudless, blue sky. Two little boys are desperately trying to keep it suspended in the air, despite there being a serious lack of wind available.

  ‘What are you two up to?’ My thoughts of how perfect it is here are disrupted by Miracle and Max walking up the beach toward us. They are holding hands and look like a couple advertising a sun-drenched Saga holiday.

  ‘Just discussing what we are going to do after Christmas,’ I say smiling up to the pair of them. They look so happy together – they even step in time with each other!

  ‘And? Have you decided to take up all these offers from Larry?’ Miracle asks as she plonks herself down at the bottom of my lounger.

  ‘I think I just might, and I also think I will take you up on that offer of training,’

  ‘That’s good because I’m getting too old for this game and at some point in the near future we will want to retire. I will need someone I can trust to take over the business for me.’ Miracle says with a smile.

  ‘Hang on…we?’ I ask, a bit surprised to hear Miracle suddenly speaking in the plural tense.

  She smiles as she looks up at Max.

  ‘Are you going to tell them or am I?’ he says.

  ‘We’re getting married!’ Miracle screams.

  ‘Married?’ Jack and I chorus in unison.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Miracle says smugly as she looks adoringly at Max, who looks equally adoringly at his new fiancé.

  ‘Well this is cause for celebration, don’t you think?’ Jack says as he launches himself up from his lounger and heads for the surf-bar to get the drinks in.

  Jack and I are still sprawled out on the beach as the sun begins to settle on the horizon. In a few hours it will be Christmas morning and the beach will be choc-a-bloc with dads all firing up their portable barbecues in preparation for the traditional Christmas dinner on the beach. As nice as it is to be able to eat your Christmas lunch on the silky sand in 94 degrees, it’s not quite the same as snuggling up to a cosy, warm fire, is it? But then I guess the Aussies would say the same if they were to do Christmas in the UK: “Crikey mate, it’s not quite the same as sitting on the beach in 94 degrees is it?”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  My mother is the first one up out of our group on Christmas morning, and is eager to let everyone know that Santa has paid a visit to them. My mum’s favourite time of the year is Christmas and it shows. Seeing as Jack and I didn’t get to bed until four o’clock this morning, my mum’s six o’clock wake-up call is a bit like one of those Christmas presents that you really wish they hadn’t bothered getting – in other words, very much unwanted.

  Ever since we were kids, my mum has made Christmas a very special time of the year. Every Christmas Eve she would allow us to stay up very late and attend Midnight Mass at the local church and then we would be allowed to open what she would call our ‘Christmas Eve Present’, which would usually be an item of jewellery for me. and something grown up like a pair of cuff-links for the boys. This would be followed by being allowed to sleep in our parent’s bed, whilst they slept downstairs to let Santa in - because we didn’t have a chimney.

  Christmases at our house were always huge family occasions with uncles, aunts, distant cousins and basically anyone and everyone my mother had come into contact with being invited for a traditional Christmas dinner, whether they had prior arrangements or not.

  My mum would be up at five o’clock shoving home-made chestnut stuffing into a mammoth size turkey. She would have already made the Christmas pudding and brandy-laced Christmas cake back in May and would spend the entire Christmas morning stuffing, mixing, chopping and sautéing.

  The first Christmas without my dad was a tough one for all of us, especially my mum, who insisted that we should have the same traditional Christmas that we had always had. Paul, Matt and I spent Christmas Eve doing what was always Dad’s job - decorating the tree - and we all joined Mum in Midnight Mass. At our mum’s insistence that we stick with tradition, we retired to our rooms �
�� me in my mum’s bed and the boys in the spare room, I could hear my mum sobbing on her own downstairs as she waited to let Santa in.

  But this year is different. Having come to terms with my dad’s death in her own way, my mum is adamant about living life to the full and is determined to make sure everyone does the same. The fact that we are on the other side of the world and in the middle of a heat-wave has not deterred her in the least in giving us a traditional Christmas that we all know and love. The pudding and cake, which she made in May have flown half way round the world and she spent her first day in Australia tracking down a suitable turkey –despite the fact that the hotel we are staying in is providing all the usual food (including a turkey) at a lunchtime barbecue on the beach.

  ‘Come on, Sammy, up you get dear, it’s a beautiful day!’ I hear my mum sing from below the duvet. Before I have a chance to clamp the duvet shut over my head, my mum has pulled it from my paws and is grinning inanely at me from above.

  ‘Ho-ho-ho!’ I hear as I blink my eyes to make sure that I am not dreaming. There is a small green elf with huge pointy ears and a very red and very sunburnt, Father Christmas peering down on me.

  ‘Mum? Colin?’ I mumble. In some ways I hope it is my mum and Colin, otherwise this could turn out to be a very disturbing dream indeed.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Sammy!’ Mum and Colin chime in unison.

  Oh, God give me strength!

  ‘Come on, come on, up you get, lazy bones, it’s Christmas morning! Jingle bells, jingle bells…’ My mum, or Chief Elf as she will now be known, yells.

  ‘Okay, okay, I’m up!’ I yell back as I roll over on to my side in a bid to avoid another rendition of Jingle Bells from Santa and his bloody big-eared elf.

  ‘Come on, Colin, let’s see if Paul’s up yet,’ I hear my mum say as the pair of them leave my room, bells jingling on their hats as they go. Grrr, to my mother and Colin the bloody Carrot Man.

  Ah, peace at last.

  Before I can continue with my dream about being interviewed by a huge carrot – bloody carrots – Jack bounds in like a Jack Russell on speed and jumps enthusiastically on me. Oomph!