The Man You Meet in Heaven: An absolutely feel-good romantic comedy

by Debbie Viggiano

  ‘Sure,’ I nodded, eyelids visibly drooping.

  ‘And I’ll be there, in the background, ready to help if you need it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, yawning hugely.

  Josh grinned. ‘Go and get some shut-eye.’

  I didn’t need telling twice. Flopping down on the luxuriously soft bed, I wondered if, when I next opened my eyes, this plush pink and white room would still look as it did now? Or whether it would once again morph into my tiny but cosy bedroom in Honeysuckle Cottage. I felt a pang of longing and hoped I’d awaken to beams peeking out of old plasterboard, rather than this flawless white ceiling that seemed to shimmer and glow like Josh’s jeans and shirt. I ached to hear Buddy barking comfortingly in the background and the soothing murmur of Fin chatting to a mate on his mobile.

  When I next opened my eyes, I was in an altogether different bedroom. I recognised it immediately. Naturally it was from the past. The room bore all the markings of belonging to a single male with sky-high testosterone levels. The furniture was a mix of black and polished chrome, the walls a stark white, one of which held a framed cityscape hanging at a slightly crooked angle. A leather sleigh bed dominated the centre of the room. And I was lying upon it. A quick glance under the duvet revealed I was completely starkers. I hastily placed the cover over me again and wondered where Josh was. I presumed he was here somewhere, on a different frequency, and that I couldn’t see him.

  ‘Are you there?’ I hissed.

  No reply.

  Hmm. I wasn’t sure if Josh was just being diplomatic given my state of undress. I mentally concentrated on clothing myself, so easily done in the Halfway Lounge but, peeping back under the duvet, I could see the attempt to manifest garments hadn’t worked. I was still in my birthday suit. Damn. Right, so it was only in the Halfway Lounge that one could manifest itsy-bitsy bikinis and a Hollywood body. I looked back under the duvet again. Actually, on closer inspection, the body didn’t look too bad. This episode of my life was pre-Fin, so my belly was smooth and flat, the muscles taut. Even so, I didn’t want Josh seeing me in the nuddy.

  Clutching the duvet tight to my bosom, I leant out of bed and scanned the floor. A familiar pair of size eight jeans came into view. I stared at them. Size eight! Snaking out an arm, I scooped them up. My pants were still inside them, as were my socks, such was the urgency with which the garments had been shed. A moment later the pants were on – bugger, back to front from the feel of it – but there wasn’t a moment to lose, so I ignored the discomfort and wriggled into the jeans.

  I hastily averted my eyes, not quite ready to embrace the situation I was in, or the glaring clues that were telling me what this episode in my life was about. The faint smell of last night’s takeaway hung in the air. My memory was piecing everything together. I remembered that takeaway – it had been shared on a Saturday night. Okay, so that would mean that, in review time, it was now Sunday morning.

  Happily, my t-shirt was lying in a creased heap by the bedside cabinet, but I had no idea where my bra was. Hadn’t I been wearing one? I went a bit hot at the memory of how I’d dressed on this particular occasion. Right, definitely no bra. Clearly I’d been dressed to thrill, willingly flashing my threepenny bits. I grabbed the t-shirt and disappeared right under the duvet, fighting my way into the garment, swearing when an armhole evaded me, finally surfacing with my hair mussed up so that I looked like Ken Dodd. All I needed was a red, white and blue tickling stick to complete the look. However, unlike Ken Dodd’s famous catchphrase, there was absolutely nothing about this situation that tickled me.

  Eighteen

  The bedroom door swung open just as I was emerging from under the duvet.

  ‘Hey, babe!’ said a familiar gravelly voice that, back in the real time of this moment, would have had me weak-kneed with longing but which, revisiting years later, simply left me cold. ‘Why are you dressed? Never mind, I’ll enjoy peeling those jeans off you again in a little while.’

  I stared at Nick Green, the man who would eventually become my husband. Ten years older than me, he was in his prime at thirty-six. He was naked, apart from his Calvin Klein underpants, and had a body that showed he didn’t waste a penny of his Gold gym membership when he wasn’t wheeling and dealing and cinching deals. He was carrying a breakfast tray bearing tea and toast for us both and came towards me beaming a smile capable of melting the stoniest of hearts. Devastatingly good-looking and lethally charming, it was rumoured that his soft line in patter frequently charmed the knickers off women.

  ‘H-hi,’ I gasped, tugging my t-shirt down. I saw his eyes stray to my nipples pressing against the thin fabric and immediately let go of the cotton hem, slouching forward and rounding my shoulders like a hunched gnome.

  He placed the tray on the bedside cabinet and then, in one swift move, kissed me full on the mouth.

  ‘More of that in a minute,’ he said, waggling his eyebrows.

  Dear Lord, please not. My brain was struggling to remember what came next in this little episode of life. Had we abandoned the breakfast, pulled off each other’s clothing – well, just the pants on his part – and then got down to it on this ridiculously vast hotbed of lust that had no doubt seen frenzied action with countless other women? I wasn’t going to wait to find out.

  ‘I’m starving!’ I chirped, reaching for a piece of toast and shoving it between my lips. If my mouth was out of action, he wouldn’t be able to stick his tongue in and wrap it around my tonsils. ‘Mmm,’ I groaned, in apparent ecstasy, spraying crumbs everywhere. ‘Heaven.’

  ‘Wasn’t it just, Hattie?’ he murmured, looking at me intensely, his eyes quickly moving off my face and flitting over my t-shirt again. ‘I never expected this to happen between us, you know.’

  ‘No, nor me,’ I lied, swallowing the toast quickly, lest it stick in my throat. It came to me in a blindingly clear flash of recollection that this was the first lie I had told Nick. A second one would follow in the not-too-distant future.

  I’d first met Nick Green temping. I was having a quarter-life crisis, not knowing what I was doing with myself. Having graduated from university with a degree in biochemistry studying cellular and molecular biology in cells and tissues, post-uni life had come as something of a rude shock. I’d waved goodbye to my friends and sailed off into the world thinking it was most definitely my oyster and that I’d land a pearl of a job. I’d naively believed I’d walk straight into a laboratory-based career in the dynamic pharmaceutical industry, only to discover that for every interview I attended, hundreds of other applicants were vying for that one position, too.

  ‘Darling, you don’t seem to be doing anything with your life,’ my mother had said, puffing away on one of her perpetual ciggies after I’d drooped through the door, mouth downturned.

  ‘Well I’d hoped, by now, I’d be peering down a microscope and discovering a cure for lung cancer,’ I’d quipped, flapping my hands through the air in a quest to avoid having a passive smoke. At this point, I’d not long since given up the ciggies myself. However, almost overnight, I’d gone from craving the damn things to complete abhorrence.

  ‘I don’t know why you bothered with all that university malarkey,’ Mum had mused. ‘In my day a girl did a secretarial course, set her cap at a handsome boss, and then got down to the serious business of raising a family.’

  ‘God, Mum, you sound so old-fashioned. And anyway, I’m not sure I ever want children,’ I’d said, getting up and opening a window to let out the fug.

  ‘Of course you will, Hattie. Your ovaries are programmed to do that. One day you will be scaling one of those ridiculous rocks you like climbing with Martin, then you’ll stop dead in your tracks and listen to your body screaming to be impregnated. You will yearn for broken nights, dirty nappies and regurgitated milk.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure my boyfriend has no plans to become a father for the foreseeable future.’ At this point in my life, Martin was my long-term boyfriend, whom I’d met at university. The M word had never been
mentioned as such, but everybody took it for granted that one day he would make an honest woman of me. But all that was way in the future, along with the broken nights, dirty nappies and regurgitated milk. I’d wrinkled my nose. ‘And anyway, Mum, if that’s your sales spiel for parenthood, you’re definitely not selling it to me. Apart from anything else, I want to be my own woman and have financial independence from a man.’

  ‘Take it from me, darling, all that burning your bra nonsense is very overrated.’

  I’d silently gnashed my teeth. ‘I’m sure Emmeline Pankhurst would spin in her grave if she could hear you talking.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know Mrs Pankhurst had burnt her bra? I just thought it was chaining herself to railings that she had a thing about.’

  ‘Honestly, Mum, I can’t believe the way you speak sometimes. Women burned their bras because they felt it made a statement when they were making a stand for Women’s Rights. It was symbolic. It showed independence of men. And the women who didn’t burn their bras often didn’t bother wearing one at all, just to show their support.’

  ‘Or lack of it, surely?’ said Mum, with a shudder. ‘Nothing worse than floppy tits.’

  I’d sighed and written my mother off as a lost cause. But after nearly a year of trailing after job after job after job, finding myself shortlisted several times over but getting precisely nowhere, I’d arrived at a point of desperation. Many of my friends had also been on the receiving end of the same demoralising experience and ended up drifting into jobs that weren’t degree-related. Some were even getting married. But all of them were independent of their parents. Apart from me. Martin had landed himself a prize job and, thanks to a massive handout from his parents, had got himself on the property ladder. He’d suggested I move in with him and submit my CV to the Co-Op around the corner who were looking for a shop assistant. I didn’t know what was worse: seeing all that studying go to waste whilst accepting the charity of a roof over my head from my boyfriend… or being as independent as I could be from Martin, but remaining at home, sponging off my parents. Either one was a bitter pill to swallow. I opted for the latter, staying in my childhood home and having no desire to wash Martin’s socks and underpants. And anyway, lately I’d had some doubts about Martin being someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. If he honestly thought I’d be happy working at the Co-Op, what did that say about him truly knowing me? I was aware that things needed to change in this relationship – maybe even end – but I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it, especially as I didn’t know who would be the most upset, Martin or my mother. For now I was taking the coward’s way out and doing nothing.

  Meanwhile, I found myself turning into my mother – doing exactly what she had done as a young woman and enrolling at a local college for a secretarial course. I’d told myself it was just a means to an end. That it would be a springboard to a job which would catapult me into joining the workforce and, from there, I would eventually find my niche – if not in the pharmaceutical industry, then maybe the agrochemical sector. Secretarial work was simply a stepping stone to rest upon until the right job came along, something to put money in the purse and fill the days until I finally got to take part in clinical trials, or even patenting. I had a brain, damnit! There simply had to be loads of fabulous opportunities waiting for me somewhere.

  Meanwhile, after dipping my toe in the clerical waters, I eventually opted to become a temp. I told myself it would be easy to extricate myself quickly from a temporary working situation when that real job came along.

  It was at this point my intellectual brain did a total bunk, along with all the common sense I’d ever possessed. Emmeline Pankhurst would have been horrified, and no doubt supporters of Women’s Rights might have felt compelled to strangle me with the straps of their abandoned bras. Little had I known, on this particular Monday morning, as I’d slipped into my cubicle at Shepherd, Green & Parsons, turned on my monitor, and tapped in the password for a six-month maternity cover stint as Mr Nicholas Green’s assistant, that life was about to dramatically change.

  Nineteen

  The moment Nicholas Green, Director, strode through the open-plan office with a ‘Good morning, Caitlin’, my fingers had paused over the keyboard and my jaw had been overtaken by gravity. I’d gaped after the vision that had whizzed past my desk knowing I was in serious trouble. Nick had reversed backwards, peered at me in horror and said, ‘You’re not Caitlin.’

  ‘N-no,’ I’d stammered, suddenly overcome with shyness. ‘I’m H-Hattie. Your temp. Caitlin is on maternity leave.’

  ‘Of course she is,’ he’d nodded.

  I’d looked up at those dark brown eyes knowing that all thoughts of going to a previously scheduled interview for a coveted position at Jones Pharmaceuticals were flying right out of this office’s floor-to-ceiling windows.

  ‘Until Caitlin returns, you’ve got me,’ I’d added timidly, hoping in my heart of hearts that Caitlin would fall so madly in love with her new son that she’d ring the office, weeping into the telephone that it was absolutely imperative she never leave her baby’s side until the day he married, and that therefore it was impossible for her to ever return to Shepherd, Green & Parsons. And then Nick would summon me into his office and ask if I would step in permanently because, actually, I was far more efficient than Caitlin had ever been and frankly, he didn’t know how he’d ever managed without me.

  ‘Coffee-making skills up to scratch?’ Nick had asked.

  ‘Definitely,’ I’d nodded enthusiastically. If this man had asked me to go to Guatemala and personally pick the beans for his morning fix, I’d have gladly taken the next jumbo jet to Central America to do his bidding.

  ‘Excellent,’ he’d smiled, ‘so grab yourself one too and then pop along to my office with your notebook.’

  This had set the pace for a morning ritual, and over the following few months of the booking I had come to love the next bit that followed. I’d sashay into Nick’s office, heels click-clicking on the polished floor, two mugs of coffee held aloft, notepad tucked under one arm, biro clamped like a rose between my teeth. Setting one cup down on his desk, I’d take the other and retire to the sit-soft area reserved for clients, crossing my legs and unashamedly flashing a bit of thigh as I sipped my coffee companionably with him. Unlike my boyfriend Martin, Nick was a real charmer. He was prone to banter which was full of comical innuendo, and there was a relentless flirty undertone. He was careful not to cross boundaries in the workplace, but would nonetheless push it right up to the line. We got on so well together, and I’d become increasingly smitten. One or two female employees of the Mrs Pankhurst mould disapproved of Nick’s waggling eyebrows and smooth patter, but I wasn’t one of them. In fact, I lapped it up, so much so it had started to put some definitely non-PC visions in my head. Flashing a bit of thigh was nothing compared to my thoughts.

  It was at this point of the mundane morning routine that I’d conjure up the most unspeakably outrageous visions of him locking the office door, then loosening his tie before growling, ‘Hattie, you’re playing havoc with my heart and bedlam with my Dictaphone.’ In two huge strides, Nick would then cover the distance between the door and sofa and roughly pull me to my feet, all the while gazing lustfully into my eyes, which would cause me to swoon prettily before he kissed the life out of me. Needless to say, I’d also taken to reading a lot of Mills & Boon romances where women were maidens and men were… well… men. Sexual harassment in the workplace didn’t exist, and nobody had any desire to burn their bras or chain themselves to railings. That said, one particularly lurid reverie had featured chains, but not in any way that Mrs Pankhurst would have approved of…

  In reality, of course, the coffee break comprised of a ten-minute pleasant chat about everything and nothing, before the day got well and truly underway with Nick alternatively barking into either the telephone or his Dictaphone, while I sat in my cubicle typing at one-hundred-and-twenty miles per hour. Sometimes Nick asked me to work late. On these occa
sions I’d be in heaven, with my imagination conjuring up all sorts of improbable scenarios. Like leaving the office late but, just as the lift doors closed, there would be a power cut, and nobody around to come to the rescue. We’d be forced to spend the night together, hugging each other for warmth. Naturally one thing would lead to another. Nick would pin me against the defunct lift buttons, kissing me deeply as his hands came up and cupped first my face, then my breasts, then down a bit more and… oh, it was the work of a moment imagining myself in so many sizzling situations.

  The fact that Nick was married was neither here nor there.

  Twenty

  Ah, yes. Unfortunately, there was a Mrs Green. His second wife by all accounts. This was most definitely a blot on my Mills & Boon landscape. When I wasn’t daydreaming about my romantic life with Nick, another goodly part of my time was taken up with the fantasy of Mrs Green conveniently clearing off. In my head I magicked up a vast number of reasons for her packing her bags that included falling madly in love with the gardener, her tennis instructor, and even becoming a lesbian and eloping with her best friend. Anything that would enable me to give a discreet cough and step into the empty void, whereupon Nick would say, ‘Good heavens, Hattie, whatever did I see in her? How could I have been so blind to what was so obviously under my nose all along?’ True love, albeit, heavily rose-tinted on my part and disappointingly colourless on his part. I was pretty damn sure that, flirty banter aside, outside the office I didn’t register on Nicholas Green’s radar.

  Meanwhile my own boyfriend was wondering why I was so distracted. We’d been seeing less of each other by this point – mostly by design on my part – but Martin hadn’t been ringing me as often either. But the next time we did hook up, maybe I gave the impression of being elsewhere. It caught his attention… my glow of secret happiness… occasionally hugging myself… and even making the odd excited squeaking noise. It was then that Martin raised his eyebrows in suspicion and asked me outright if I was having an affair. Which I was, of course. In my head. In fact, there was so much going on in my head back then that if I’d dared to share it with a bestie, no doubt I’d have been given a stiff talking-to and told to take a reality check. Instead I prayed a lot. Not for redemption, you understand. Oh no. I prayed for quite the opposite. That Mrs Green would look at Nick over their evening meal of lamb chops and vegetables and say, ‘I have a confession to make. I’ve fallen in love. With God. I’m going to become a nun. Don’t ever contact me again.’