Searching for Nicola

ONE

The present

I have finally realised I’m dead!

   ‘Don’t be so silly,’ I can almost hear you saying, no doubt scoffing at the absurdity of it. ‘Of course, you’d know if you were dead,’ Oh really! Would you? Are you so sure about that? I wouldn’t be if I were you. Let me tell you what happened to me.

   Well … er…actually, I would if I could, but I just realised I can’t because I just don’t know. I can almost hear you snorting in derision but wait! Please wait before you start reading something else and allow me to explain. The reality is that when it happened I was genuinely completely confused. Honestly! Hands on heart – if I still have one that is! Think what you like, but it was only when I realised I wasn’t breathing that it dawned on me that I must, in fact, be dead. It was only then that I began to panic; well, believe me, you just would, take my word for it, you just would?

   It was the breathing, or lack of it that convinced me. Strange how we take that for granted really, isn’t it? It’s so automatic. So, surprise, surprise, when I realised I wasn’t – breathing that is – I got all stressed out which didn’t last long because I soon realised I just didn’t need to breathe anymore. Yes, yes, it really was as simple as that!

   So here I am in Terminal Three, Manchester Airport. God knows what I’m doing here. Sorry, no offence to you God but I am a just poor, confused BBC journalist who has no idea what is going on or what she is doing here. No change there, I can hear some of you out there jeering mockingly. Well anyway, here I am dead as a Dodo and without a clue about what is supposed to happen next. Answers in an email please. OK.OK. Of course you can’t. Sorry, sorry. You must think I’m an idiot.

   Anyway, here I am at Terminal Three. I have no idea whether anybody can see me. I don’t think it matters anyway because everyone here seems to have other things on their collective minds. But what the hell am I doing here? How did I get here? Did I black out or something? Was it the booze? No, that is crazy. You don’t find yourself in an airport, dead as a Dodo, no matter how riotous a party was the night before. Do you?

   Nope, it can’t be that because I definitely was not at a party. At least I don’t think I was, so it has to be something else. Is it possible I have been sleep-walking? I used to when I was a lot younger. I would find myself trying to fry fish fingers in the middle of the night. My mum and dad were frantic and resorted to locking my door every night.

   No, that is crazy too. Even I couldn’t sleepwalk over twenty miles or so which is how far from the airport is from where I live in Tarporley, Cheshire.

   So, if it weren’t that, could I have somehow blacked out. It wouldn’t be the first time I have woken up on somebody’s sofa, but finding myself in an airport, and dead at that: nope, that really would be a first, even for me.

   So, here I am standing like a lost soul with people rushing past me, laden with luggage wearing expressions of grim determination. I have no idea whether people can see me or not. Probably not. Anyway, only the Brits in what is laughingly called the holiday season can look as hassled as they all do. I guess that may explain why nobody is taking the slightest notice of a strange woman looking vaguely lost near the British Airways check-in desks . . . always assuming I am somehow visible, naturally.

   The last thing I seem to remember is having a few vodkas with my best friend Evie. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. I can almost hear you sneering. No, we did not get completely wasted like we sometimes do. It literally was just a couple of vodkas and orange because I have work tomorrow, or should I say today because I notice the sun is shining brightly outside.

   God, the office. I should be at work. What time is it? I can’t see a clock anywhere. It’s a bloody airport for heaven’s sake. There should be clocks everywhere, surely. Wait, wait. I forgot. I’m dead. Dead people don’t go to work, do they?

   I’m wearing my usual slumming outfit – faded jeans, a rather trendy, fashionable pair, but jeans all the same I grant you – and a plain cream top. Everyone is dead casual these days. (forgive the pun!) Anyway, that doesn’t matter. The first problem is finding out what I’m doing in this place and then find out what is supposed to happen to me.

    I take another good look around. I know its Terminal Three because I flew from here many times to Heathrow before flying on to Canada to visit my lovely nieces in Canada.

   I also suddenly realise I don’t have a hangover. I suppose dead people don’t have hangovers. I guess that must be one advantage of being dead! I know I certainly would have had one if Evie and I had enjoyed a real ‘session.’ Trust me, I should know because a Major Session has a brother called Major Hangover. They are old friends. I experimentally turn my phantom head to the left and then to the right and it does not feel as though my brain is being dislodged. So far, so good! There I go again. I don’t have a head anymore; not a solid one anyway!

   I have known Evie – Evie Gardner to give you her full name – for what feels like centuries. As I have said, she is my best friend and works for a local newspaper as a feature writer. We were at primary school together and she followed me through secondary school and then to the same university. Like me, she is in her early thirties but unlike me she is glamorous in an unintended and almost accidental way.

   Have I told you who I am? Probably not, but I suppose I might as well. My name is Nicola Westbury and I work – or worked – as a researcher for BBC TV in Manchester. I live – or lived – in a tasteful semi in Tarporley left to me by my gran with my wonder dog Sonny, a Golden Retriever.

   I also had a live-in boyfriend called Alex Thompson who I thought I was in love with a few months ago but who was becoming increasingly possessive and annoying which is why I escaped now and then for a ‘session’ with Evie. It goes without saying that he hates that as much as he hates her. It is entirely mutual, you won’t be surprised to hear, and that she frequently refers to him as ‘that boring slob you live with.’

   Anyway, that’s enough about Evie and all that for the time being. I must try and concentrate and figure out how I got here and, more to the point, what I am going to do about it. At the very least I should ring the office. And tell them I’m dead? Hmm. I don’t think so. I’m being silly, aren’t I? Anyway, I don’t have my bag which has my purse, which has my money, which has my plastic. It doesn’t matter anyway. As you can tell I’m just not used to this yet. I must repeat to myself a few times that I don’t need money anymore. Or anything else either, I suppose.

   I begin to wonder if I could make a phone call. I remember hearing about people who have had phantom calls. Maybe I could make one. Just one! To my sister Pam or Evie. I just want to tell somebody what has happened to me. So, I drag out my mobile and switch it on, but nothing happens. The screen stays frustratingly blank. I give it an encouraging shake, but it stares back at me in that mocking way electric things do when they don’t work. Why doesn’t the bloody thing work?

   This really isn’t my day. I look at my watch. That appears to have stopped as well. Does everything stop when you’re dead?

   I haven’t been taking too much notice of my surroundings while in deep dead mode but now I appear to be in a lengthy queue all pointing in one direction (as queues normally do!). How have I managed to join a queue? I’m dead. I don’t do queues. I have never actually done queues and I would rather have my toenails torn out by a duck billed platypus than line up. . . for anything.

   Everyone around me is moaning; to each other, to the people around them, and to anyone in a uniform within spitting distance. All we need is a baby to start crying, and sure enough one nearby obliges and is almost immediately joined by another obviously keen to add to the air of dismal frustration.

   I smile grimly. This is fun and it’s likely to be fun for quite some time judging by the length of the queue and the speed of the shuffle as it heads towards the Promised Land which appears to be the entrance to the security hall I can just about spot in the far distance.

   If I had any doubts I am now certain it is the start to the British Season of Holiday Hell when everyone is grimly determined to enjoy themselves despite everyone having the same idea, which is to lie on a beach for a fortnight and demand bacon, egg, and chips irrespective of the country they have inflicted themselves on. What happened to the ‘good old days’ when you just took your bucket and spade to spend a week in Rhyl? OK, so it was usually cold and invariably rained but at least there weren’t any queues.

   I slip out of the queue and spot a pair of payphones in the distance and head for them. Time to try and deliver the bad news to Evie or Pam and make a ghostly phone call.

   Do I need money to do that? Hmm. Tricky. Obviously, I don’t have any and even if I did, would it work?  I’m not sure how to go about it. How do you make a call from the spirit world? If I do find out I’m sure she wouldn’t be put out, until she finds out I’m dead, I suppose, then she would probably think I’m playing some sort of practical joke. I smile at the thought.

   I have lost count of the number of times I have had to ‘rescue’ her from the clutches of an unwanted barfly, as we have come to call those irritating men who lean up against a bar all day and who think that any passing woman is an easy target.

   Anyway, I have arrived at a pay phone and reach for the receiver but then something really weird happens. I don’t seem to be able to get hold of it. At first, I think there must be something wrong with my eyes or that my hand is going to the wrong place. But it isn’t. I slowly reach for it again and it goes right through the receiver as though it isn’t solid. I stare at it. I want to scream in exasperation, but I can’t. Dead people can’t scream as far as I can tell. Maybe it’s something you have to practice at. And also, as I have just discovered, we can’t do anything physical. So, no phone calls. I don’t suppose that matters because it looks like I’m not going nowhere. 

   There is something that puzzles me as well. I would imagine that dead people usually know why they are dead and where they died for that matter as well. And I just don’t. I don’t remember anything before I ‘arrived’ here in Manchester Airport.

   I stare at my hands. They look real enough and feel real enough, just like they did when I was alive. Well, OK so I’m dead. I am just going have to get the hang of it. What am I supposed to do? There must be a reason I’m here and at a guess it must have something to do with the way I died. Perhaps it will be shown to me in time. Not having been dead before I have no idea what is supposed to happen when you die. Like most people I have vague ideas about heaven and hell and why we are destined to go to one or the other. I wonder which category Manchester Airport is in! I daresay people in the queues would have a set view about that. I realise I must be here for a reason. My mission must be to find out what that is.