Desperately Seeking Heaven

by Jill Steeples

  Chapter Nine

  Banging on my front door early on a Sunday morning could only mean one thing.

  ‘Lexie, can you not sleep?’ I said, grumpily, tying my towelling robe around me, ushering her inside.

  ‘Clean living, that’s me. Early to bed, early to rise.’ She breezed past me, her eyes doing a quick scan of every nook and cranny of my small flat, before turning to give my dishevelled figure a cursory up-and-down. ‘Obviously, the same can’t be said for you,’ she said, looking at me suspiciously.

  ‘Can’t I even have a lie-in now? It is the weekend!’ I wandered out into the kitchen, filled the kettle with water and flicked it on. Jimmy wafted in and helped himself to a grape from the fruit bowl.

  ‘God, your sister can be a real pain in the butt at times, can’t she?’

  That was all I needed. Jimmy putting his two pennorth in.

  ‘No you can’t,’ she said, forcefully. ‘Not until you tell me what you’re up to. You’ve been acting odd for weeks now. And what’s all this nonsense about you going off to some aunt’s funeral? Which aunt of ours would that be?’ she asked, arching an eyebrow.

  I dropped my gaze from her accusatory stare, my mind darting in all directions for an answer.

  ‘I spoke to your office on Friday,’ she went on. ‘So unless you didn’t want to burden me with the tragic news of the death of our beloved relative, I suspect you either had a job interview or you were up to something illicit with someone highly unsuitable. I do hope it’s the latter,’ she said, with undisguised glee.

  I gave her a withering glance and Jimmy one too, for good measure, because he was looking at me expectantly waiting for my response. I could so do without all this this morning.

  ‘Well, sorry to disappoint you.’ I shuffled around the kitchen, pulling mugs from cupboards. ‘But it was neither of those things. I did go to a funeral, if you must know. Not an aunt’s obviously, but a friend’s. I didn’t want to make a big thing of it at work, that’s all.’

  Lexie didn’t look disappointed, just amazed. Her eyes had grown wide and her mouth gaped open.

  ‘A friend? Oh my God! Really? That’s terrible. Which friend? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  I sighed and handed her a steaming mug, trying to avoid Jimmy’s gaze. Clearly, Lexie wasn’t going to drop the subject and Jimmy’s ghostly presence was doing nothing to help my squirming discomfort.

  ‘Oh, it was no one you knew, just someone I…’

  ‘Alice, come on, stop messing me around. Just tell me who it was.’

  I was going to get so much ribbing over this, I just knew it.

  ‘Jimmy,’ I said quietly into the collar of my dressing gown as I picked off an imaginary thread from the arm.

  ‘Jimmy? Who the hell was Jimmy?’

  I sat down at the kitchen table sighing and folded my arms defensively.

  ‘Jimmy Mack,’ I said, my gaze drifting over to the man himself.

  ‘What!?’ Her mouth curled up in disbelief. ‘Jimmy Mack? You went to his funeral? What on earth for?’

  Now there was a question. How could I possibly explain to Lexie? And even if I did would she ever believe such a far-fetched story? It was all such a mess and really I had no idea how to get myself out of it.

  ‘I just felt as if I wanted to,’ I said with growing conviction. ‘When I heard he’d died I felt a connection with him. A loss, I suppose.’ In the background Jimmy nodded approvingly. ‘He’s been so much a part of our lives, we practically grew up watching him on the telly.’

  ‘Ouch, that makes me feel really ancient,’ grumbled Jimmy.

  ‘I wanted to say my goodbyes to him that was all.’

  Inwardly, I glowed with satisfaction thinking I’d handled the whole thing really rather well, but Lexie was looking at me as if I’d suddenly grown a second head.

  ‘Oh my God, that is so sad,’ she said, a tad dramatically.

  ‘I know, it was wasn’t it? I was so upset when I found out the news, I…’

  ‘No, not sad sad, but pathetic sad. You really must get out more, Alice, make some new friends.’ Lexie tilted her head, adopting a pitying expression. ‘You clearly haven’t got enough going on in your life if you feel the need to go to some celebrity has-been’s funeral.’

  ‘Bloody cheek!’ said Jimmy, folding his arms crossly.

  I gave him a reassuring shrug of my shoulders, out of Lexie’s line of vision, and listened as she continued on her rant.

  ‘Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time?’

  ‘He wasn’t a has-been.’ I felt duty bound to correct her with Jimmy looking increasingly disgruntled. ‘I’m sure lots of people feel the same way as I do. He’s left a huge gap. I know he’ll be sorely missed.’

  ‘You reckon? Hmm, I’m not so sure about that now.’ She dropped the day’s papers on my coffee table, a look of triumph on her face. ‘Didn’t I say there’d be something fishy behind all this? I don’t think your Mr Mack was such a gentleman after all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Both Jimmy and I leant over the table, craning to read the headline. “Exclusive: Jimmy Mack’s secret lover, the mother of his unborn child revealed!”

  ‘Oh my God!’ My fingers tore through the pages to the double-page centre spread.

  A picture of reality TV star Donna Diamond with her peroxide blonde hair and surgically enhanced chest leapt off the page. “Read about my passionate nights with sex-crazed Jimmy Mack.”

  ‘Oh my God!’ I repeated, as my eyes struggled to make sense of the words.

  ‘Shit, no!’ said Jimmy, burying his head in his hands. He rubbed his scalp furiously as Lexie read out the juiciest snippets.

  “Jimmy was a voracious lover. He was unlike any man I’d ever met before.” ‘Oo-er.’ Lexie helpfully filled in the appropriate sound effects.

  “We were soul mates.” ‘Oooh!’

  “Our plans to marry devastated by his premature death.” ‘Aahh.’

  “I’ll always have a part of him in our unborn child.” ‘Sob.’

  Lexie rolled her eyes dismissively, pushing the newspaper aside.

  ‘So Mr Squeaky Clean didn’t lead such a blameless life as he’d have us believe, eh? Who’d have thought it? Him and Donna Diamond. A most unlikely couple, don’t you think?’

  My mouth opened, but the words caught at the back of my throat.

  ‘Was she there?’ Lexie asked.

  My mind was awash with all sorts of thoughts and feelings. My throat was dry and I felt sick, unable to even look at Jimmy. And what was that other peculiar feeling? The gut-stirring emotion in the pit of my stomach. I paced up and down the living room, my arms hugging my middle.

  Betrayed, that was it. I felt betrayed. What was that all about? Jimmy had played no part in my life when he’d been alive so I had no reason to feel hard done by now, but I did. I felt I’d come to know the real Jimmy Mack, sweet and gentle and funny, but here in black and white I was confronted with a totally different version of the man who was taking up so much of my head space.

  ‘Is it true?’ I asked, looking across at Jimmy, totally forgetting Lexie’s presence.

  ‘What? Of course, it’s true. It says it here, doesn’t it?’ said Lexie. She’d always loved a bit of gossip. ‘So was she there, at the funeral?’

  ‘What? No. No, she wasn’t.’ From the little I knew of Donna Diamond she wasn’t the blending into the background type. If she’d been there, we would have all known about it.

  I looked across at Jimmy again, my skin fired with outrage. A dozen questions danced for attention on my tongue, none of which I could voice with Lexie in the room. Jimmy was poring over the paper shaking his head, his skin turning an unbecoming grey even for a ghost.

  ‘No, of course it isn’t true,’ he said, looking affronted. He stood up, sighing heavily, and walked over to the window, resting his hand on the ledge as he gazed out at the city below. ‘Unless of course it was an immaculate conception. I mean, I don’t even know the woman. We
sat together at some charity luncheon a couple of months ago, that’s all.’

  He looked totally defeated and vulnerable standing there and my heart ached for him. I wandered over to the window, longing to touch him, but aware that Lexie was watching me all the time. Why would Donna Diamond be so cruel as to make up something so damning and awful?

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Lexie, eyeing me warily. ‘I honestly didn’t realise you were such a fan of the bloke, but this sort of thing, well, you’d kind of expect it, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘No,’ I said, sounding suitably outraged.

  ‘No!’ cried Jimmy, echoing my sentiment.

  ‘OK, OK,’ said Lexie huffily, folding her arms across her chest. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s not my fault if the object of your affections was a player.’ She folded up the paper and put it to one side. ‘Really though, Alice, maybe you should think about finding someone new and, um, alive and kicking, you know, someone you can have a proper relationship with.’

  Clearly, my sister thought I was emotionally unhinged and why wouldn’t she? But that wasn’t my concern right now. Jimmy looked crushed, all his energy had deserted him and I desperately needed to comfort him. There was no chance of doing that with Lexie around.

  ‘There is something I need to talk to you about, Lexie. Men problems.’ I sighed dramatically as though I had a whole list of them. ‘But not now. I’ve got one hell of a migraine and I’m going back to bed. How about we get together in the week for a glass of wine and a chat? I could do with some advice. Can we get together one night next week? How about Wednesday?’

  Both Lexie and Jimmy looked at me wide-eyed and doubtful as though I’d suggested I might join a nunnery.

  ‘Great,’ said Lexie, standing up and fastening the buttons on her jacket. ‘Wednesday it is then.’

  Hurrying back into the living room I found Jimmy sitting at my pine table, his shoulders hunched over the paper. My heart bled for him.

  ‘Don’t even bother reading it, Jimmy. You’ll only upset yourself. What is it they say? Today’s newspapers are tomorrow’s fish wrapping.’

  He turned his head and looked up at me, his deep-set grey eyes brimming with emotion.

  ‘They say a lot of things. “There’s no smoke without fire.” “Mud sticks.” “Dead men don’t tell lies.” The thing is I have no way of defending myself against this sort of thing.’ He shook his head, pushing the paper away in frustration. ‘What on earth will my parents and friends think?’

  I placed my arm around his shoulder and ran my fingers through his dark, thick hair. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to do, but it didn’t stop me from having an ‘Ohmygod, I’m fondling Jimmy Mack’ moment.

  ‘Try not to worry about it,’ I said, not entirely convincingly. ‘They know the real you, the person you are. It won’t change their memories of you. All this, well, of course it’s a shock, but it doesn’t really change anything.’

  He snorted derisively.

  ‘Oh, Alice, it changes everything. It’s more important now than if I were still alive. At least then I’d have the chance to give my side of the story, but what chance have I got now? This woman, well, she can just ruin me with her lies.’

  I hated seeing him like this. His life or afterlife, whatever you liked to call it, was frustrating enough as it was, stuck with only me as a companion in my pokey little flat, but having near strangers make up outrageous lies about you, it was downright unfair. What I still couldn’t understand was why Donna Diamond would go to all that trouble if there was no truth in the story. And however much I wanted to believe Jimmy, I knew I wouldn’t be happy until I’d satisfied myself that he was being totally honest about all of this.

  ‘Look, are you absolutely certain that nothing happened between you and Donna? A one-night stand, maybe? It happens all the time. Perhaps you’d had too much to drink and can’t remember the details. Umm…’ My voice trailed away as I noticed Jimmy’s thunderous expression.

  ‘What, you think I’d forget a shag with a pneumatic blonde bombshell? Well, thanks very much for the character reference. No, Alice, there was no one-night stand, not even a chaste kiss. God forbid. Have you seen the woman? She’d have eaten me up and spat me out for breakfast.’

  I giggled. Come to think of it, it was a huge leap of the imagination.

  ‘Sorry, it’s just hard to believe anyone could do that sort of thing.’

  ‘Welcome to the wonderful world of television. She’s looking for her fifteen minutes of fame, a book deal, TV interviews and with me off the scene she thinks she’s found the ideal opportunity. Hey, it’s a great career move. For her.’

  ‘But how can she live with herself? And what about the poor baby?’

  ‘That’s if there is one,’ Jimmy added bitterly.

  I sighed, realising the world Jimmy came from was a million miles away from the world I inhabited. I just wished there was something I could do for him.

  ‘Well, she can’t be allowed to get away with it,’ I said, feeling an anger stirring in my bones. ‘It’s totally wrong. Can’t you go and sort her out? Have a quiet word or something?’

  He chuckled, the sound of his laughter reminding me reassuringly of the Jimmy I’d come to know these last few days.

  ‘You’re so funny, Alice. I think that might be an abuse of my limited powers. No,’ he sighed, stretching his arms high above his head, ‘there’s nothing I can do.’

  I slumped back down in my seat, a heavy silence filling the space between us as we both mulled over this latest turn of events. Then, with a start, Jimmy jumped up from his chair and slapped me on the leg.

  ‘Don’t you see, this all makes perfect sense now! Didn’t we say there had to be a reason why I’m stuck here?’

  ‘Yes, but what’s that possibly got to do with this?’ I asked perplexed, holding up the offending newspaper.

  ‘Well, this is obviously it, why I’ve been kept here, to sort out all this mess in the papers. I can’t go to my resting place knowing all these lies are circulating about me. It wouldn’t be right. There’s a new life coming into the world and that baby has the right to know its true parentage. If I can put the truth out there then that’s when I’ll be able to pass over peacefully.’

  ‘Oh God! Do you really think so?’ I looked up into Jimmy’s eyes, seeing the hope there. ‘Do you think it’s some sort of initiation task then? Complete this and then you can come on over.’

  Jimmy laughed, shaking his head.

  ‘No, I don’t think it’s an entrance exam for Heaven if that’s what you mean,’ he said, chastising me with a look. ‘I think it’s free entry for all, but clearly I’ve got an opportunity to sort out this mess. Once it’s all untangled I’ll bet you anything I’ll be out of here and on my way to the top floor before you know it.’

  ‘I suppose it makes sense in a weird kind of way,’ I said, not really appreciating his flippant manner.

  ‘It makes absolute sense, Alice.’

  ‘But how on earth are you going to do that? It’s hardly as if you can go and speak to Donna and reason with her. Can you? I mean, have you tried?’

  ‘I know. I can’t seem to get through to anyone but you, Alice.’ He paused, a smile hovering on his lips as his eyes looked at me beseechingly. ‘There’s nothing I can do, but there’s nothing preventing you from going to see Donna. You could speak to her, explain the situation.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ I laughed, in a not entirely natural manner. Jimmy wasn’t laughing though, he had his ultra-serious face on.

  ‘Really, it’s the ideal solution. You must see the damage this rubbish will do to my reputation.’ He ripped the paper from my hands. ‘We have to do something about it. Especially now we know it’s the reason why I’m stuck here. You’re the only person who can help, Alice.’

  ‘But Jimmy, I don’t even know the woman. She’s hardly likely to listen to me, a lowly PA. And it’s not as if I can turn up and say, “Hi, you don’t know me, but I’m best mates with the ghost of
Jimmy Mack and he’d really appreciate it if you’d stop spreading filthy lies about him.” She’d laugh in my face.’

  My whole body sighed with exhaustion. Being entirely responsible for the physical and emotional well-being of a left-out-in-the-cold ghost was a huge burden.

  Jimmy’s eyes narrowed as he chewed on the inside of his lip.

  ‘Are you saying you won’t help me then?’ The grey eyes were giving me the full-on guilt trip treatment again. ‘You know I can’t stay here forever. You said yourself we have to find a way of getting me sent over to the other side and then when we do find a possible solution you’re not prepared to help.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be like that. It’s not that I don’t want to help, but really, think about it, what can I do?’

  He sank to his knees on the floor in front of me and clutched my wrists with his hands, looking up at me imploringly.

  ‘I know it’s a lot to ask of you, Alice. After everything else you’ve done for me. And I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to. But I’m begging you, Alice, I really need you to do this one thing for me. I have to clear my name. I have to move on. And you’re the only person who can help me to do that.’

  Looking down into his deep-set eyes boring into my soul, I sighed heavily.

  Oh good God. Please God. Your spiritual highness. Heavenly Master of all things ghostly. Anyone. Please. Help me. Do something, anything to sort out this unholy mess.

  I waited. And then waited a little more. There was no response from any of those higher heavenly authorities.

  ‘Of course I’ll help you,’ I said, smiling weakly.

  Chapter Ten

  If I’d hoped that the furore surrounding the revelations about Jimmy’s love life might have settled down after a few days then I was very much mistaken.

  By Tuesday morning most of the papers were running articles probing into the personal life of Jimmy Mack; his ex-girlfriends, his lifestyle, one even made a slur on his sexuality, but most focused on his doomed relationship with Donna. “Had Jimmy found true love at last” screamed a headline.