Page 84 of The Art of Loving You

Still smiling.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The world let go of me and I crumpled to the floor. Jack stretched out his hand towards me and I felt … nothing. No warmth of blood. No solidity of bone. Nothing.

‘You’re not here,’ I whispered. I closed my eyes. ‘You’re not here.’ I peeped out from beneath my lashes.

‘I’m here,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve been trying to be here for a very long time.’

I scrambled to sitting and shuffled quickly backwards until the wall was hard against my spine, as if I was afraid of him and – in a way – I was.

‘This isn’t real. You’re not real.’

He looked real though. He looked like … Jack.

‘I don’t understand what’s happening.’ My heart broke open as we faced each other. ‘Is this one of those extraordinary experiences?’

‘I don’t know what it is, Libs. All I know is that I’ve missed you. Really missed you. I’ve been back before and there are times I was sure you’d heard me, seen me but …’

‘You can’t be here.’ Logically. Scientifically. Everything about this was wrong.

‘Don’t be shellfish, Libby. This is my house too.’

He tried to lighten the mood and the intervening time melted away, my final memory of him no longer sick in bed but here, now, in front of me.

But …

Tentatively, I reached out my fingers, touched his face, my skin connecting with nothing but air.

‘I can’t touch anything, I’ve tried,’ he said. ‘It makes sense you can’t touch me either.’

I recoiled, serpent fast, curling my fingers back into my palms.

Once, when we’d both been ill, Jack and I had curled under blankets on the sofa for days, watching reruns ofRed Dwarf. We’d laughed so hard, holding our sides which already ached from coughing. In the first episode the technician, Rimmer, died. He was brought back as a hologram, an H stamped onto his forehead. He still had the same thoughts and feelings that he’d had when he was alive but he was unable to touch anything. During later episodes he was upgraded, able to touch solid objects, people, and, later still, he was brought back as flesh and blood.

‘Imagine that,’ Jack had said. ‘Living forever as a hologram.’

‘At least you’d still be around the people that you love.’

‘But … food!’ Jack said, a pained expression on his face. ‘I’d really miss food.’

‘You’re thinking of your stomach rather than … other bits?’ I said.

‘Other bits?’

‘You know.’

‘I don’t.’ He had tried to keep a straight face.

‘You just want me to say it.’

‘You know I love it when you talk dirty, Libby. What would I miss?’

‘Sex. Me. Sex with me.’

He had rolled on top of me and held my wrists above my head. ‘I can’t imagine being with you and not being able to touch you, it would be torturous.’

I had agreed but now, now the fact I couldn’t touch him, that he couldn’t touch me didn’t seem so important.

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