Page 4 of Inbetweeners
Not even a slight smile this time.Maybe I’m not a funny guy. Why would I think I was?Tar sat watching him and Emmett thought there was probably more he should be asking, but his head was spinning.
“Do you remember how you died?” Tar asked.
“No. Why?” All he could recall was opening his eyes and thinkingToto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.Not that he’d ever been to Kansas.Have I? No.
“I was going to tell you not to make the same mistake again, if it was a mistake you made.You might be dead, but you can be killed again. If that happens, you’ll come back to life and it’s painful. Lose nine lives and you’ll be returned to Heaven, so be careful. Avoid hospitals. Your body will heal without human intervention. Avoid the police. Drawing the wrong sort of attention is dangerous for all of us.”
“Is there anything else I should be asking you?” Emmett blurted.
“My number is in both phones in the flat. There’s food there, money, bank cards, driver’s licences. Transport is in the car park below your building.”
“Will there be anyone trying to stop us doing this?”
Tar sighed. “Yes.”
“Sorry. I suppose that was an unnecessary question. The…person or persons who are convincing the dead not to leave.”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t know who or what they are or why?”
“Not yet.” Tar pushed to his feet. “Be careful not to confuse the reluctant dead with vampires.”
“How can I tell the difference?”
“Vampires have fangs.” Tar smiled and for a split second, Emmett thought he saw sharp teeth in Tar’s mouth.
Emmett made his way down Trafalgar Road marvelling at how noisy it was and how the cars seemed to be moving so fast. In Heaven everything was slow. Even in the half-light, the world looked dirtier than he remembered. But he’d swap Heaven for this in a heartbeat.
I have.
So how long is this heartbeat?
He ought to have asked Tar how much time he and this other guy had to do the job. Or pressed him abouthowto do it. Make the dead go where they were supposed to go? Right. Somehow that didn’t sound as if it was going to be easy because if they’d wanted to…move on, they would have. Emmett didn’t remember thinking about not moving on. There hadn’t been a choice. He was alive and then he was in Heaven.
It was hard not to feel sad as he passed Greenwich Park. He used to walk through it every morning on his way to the Tube to get to work. Another memory. He waited, but he had no recall of where he’d worked or what he’d done. But he’d decided not to remember for a reason and seeing the people he’d loved, assuming he had people he’d loved, wouldn’t make him feel better, because when the job was done, he’d be back in Heaven.Miserable.
There must have been people he’d loved and who’d loved him, mustn’t there? He swallowed hard. Someone had to have missed him, surely.
He came to a halt in front of a relatively new block of flats. Emmett’s former home—though he couldn’t recall exactly where it was—had been old with a temperamental boiler and cracks around the windows he used to stuff with paper in the winter. If he passed it, would he remember it? What did it matter if he did? Someone else would be living there now. He unlocked the outer door, went inside and up the stairs to the top flat. Once the door was open, he fumbled for a light switch, and when it came on, he exhaled, closed the door and leaned back against it.
He’d thought he’d never see anything like this anymore, let alone get to stay in it. In Heaven, his white cube-shaped pod held little more than a bed and a tasteful mosaic table with a light that came on when he needed it, but had no power source. Now he walked forward into a large room with a couch, easy chair, coffee table and a TV. It was divided from the kitchen by a small dining table with two chairs. On top of the table lay two blue folders secured by string, plus two phones, keys, a laptop and chargers.
Everything looked clean and tidy. Emmett checked out the other rooms. A bathroom with a showeranda bath, plus plenty of toiletries, and one bedroom with twin beds.Oh.He just had to hope that Phoenix was a reasonable roommate.Oh fuck, please don’t let him be one of the perfect people.Emmett had a horrible suspicion that he would be.
Clothes hung on both sides of a large inbuilt wardrobe with mirrored doors. Pairs of shoes were lined up at the base. Size tens on the left, Emmett’s size, and elevens on the other. So Phoenix had the bigger feet. Emmett assumed the clothes hanging above the size tens were his. Two sets of drawers were full of clothes too: black and grey underwear, plain T-shirts, grey and blue sweaters, black socks.
He returned to the main room and opened the folder with his name on it. No passport, but driver’s licence, bank card, bank statement showing two thousand pounds in his account, a wallet with cash and a few business cards showing Emmett Taylor was a private investigator. Thirty-four years old. His birthday was March the third. That felt right, but the surname rang no bells.
Why couldn’t he remember what he’d done for a living? Maybe it was linked too closely to stuff he’d chosen not to remember. He pocketed the phone and wallet, and put the rest back inside the folder. He was tempted to unfasten the other one to see what Phoenix looked like, but didn’t.
Instead, he looked in the kitchen cupboards and checked the fridge. There was plenty of food, but he wasn’t hungry. Food was provided in Heaven, though it wasn’t necessary to eat or drink. Most did so out of habit and for pleasure, in large halls. You could eat what you liked without putting on any weight. Private dining was not allowed. If Emmetthadchosen to eat, he’d always consumed the food quickly and left without talking to anyone, which made him wonder why he’d bothered.
His head was buzzing and he hovered between rerunning all he’d been told, googling Emmett Taylor or trying to sleep. Googling won, but there was no Emmett Taylor of his age who looked like him, or one who’d died a year ago, or one who’d lived in Greenwich. He was wasting his time searching further. How did it work that he looked as he remembered, but people he knew wouldn’t recognise him? He supposed he just had to accept that was the case.
He went over what he’d been told.I’m a cat with nine lives?Or eight really because the ninth would send him back. But needing nine lives sort of implied this job wasn’t without danger.Am I brave?He had sneaky feeling he wasn’t. Could he still feel pain? He pinched his arm.Ouch.Now he had his answer. Yes, he could, though coming back from the dead on eight occasions did sound sort of cool.
When he was a kid, he’d dreamed of being invincible, like one of the superheroes he watched on TV. That memory hadn’t been lost. Usually, the superheroes had a super power or extraordinary ability: great strength, invisibility, teleportation, telepathy, stretchability. Emmett appeared to be an introverted loner. That didn’t seem to be an asset. Why had they chosen him for this job?
