Chapter 42

42

With less than an hour left on Earth, I return to my building and immediately hear raucous laughter coming from Cooper’s flat. What’s going on? Who’s in there?

His door is ajar. I peek my head around it to find that most of the guests from the library party are inside, sitting on the sofas and the big windowsill. Jan is in the kitchen, head very close to Deli Dan, while Leanne chats to Cooper and Mr. Yoon. She laughs at whatever they’re saying, her head tipped back gleefully.

Aled spots me first and hurries over. “Delphie! We got busted!”

“What?”

“My colleague Laurel came into the library to pick up her forgotten umbrella and discovered us! I didn’t realise we’d been playing the music so loudly but R. L. Cooper’s little Bluetooth speaker packs a real punch. Anyway, in she storms saying that we immediately needed to vacate or else she would call the police.”

Frida joins him, in a much more sober state. “He shouted, ‘Leg iiiiiiitttt!’ Which in the UK means run! So we ran. Most of us anyway. Mrs. Ernestine told Laurel she was a miserable cow and should fuck off or else.”

“Cooper invited us all here,” Aled tells me, his cheeks red with booze. “We missed you, get yourself a drink.”

I nod and hurry over to Cooper, whose face breaks into a huge grin when he sees me.

Mr. Yoon types quickly into his VOCA. “We got busted,” says the Louis Theroux voice.

“I heard!” I say, thrilled that I can communicate with him so quickly but somewhat distracted by my impending death. “Cooper, I need a word.”

His eyebrows dip at the urgency in my voice. I grab his hand and pull him into the bedroom, closing the door behind us, shutting out the happy noises of the party.

“Are you okay, Delphie?” he asks, pressing his warm hand immediately to my cheek. I wish more than anything that I could just close my eyes, nestle into him like a cat, and ignore the reality of what’s actually going on right now. “Where did you go? I texted you, thought maybe you’d gone home for a bit of a breather. Wait…have you been crying?”

I catch a glimpse of myself in his wall mirror. Mascara streaked down my face, hair mussed up and sweaty from the run back. I look insane.

“I need a favour,” I tell him, my words tripping over themselves. “Can you drive me somewhere? You’ve not been drinking, have you?”

He shakes his head. “Just club soda. I laid off, in case Mr. Yoon felt ill again—it’s been a huge day for him. Are you alright? Where do you want to go?”

My heart lifts at Cooper’s innate thoughtfulness towards Mr. Yoon. I take a deep, steadying breath. “I need to get to Mayfair. Like right now, right this second. I’d get a cab but the wait is too long and it only takes about fifteen minutes in the car. I don’t have much time.”

I’m trying to sound reasonable, but my voice comes out low and shaky and desperate.

“Mayfair?” Cooper glances at his wristwatch. “Right now? Is everything okay?”

I bury my head in my hands, letting out a groan of frustration at the questions, his lack of panic. Although of course why would he be panicking when he’s completely in the dark about what’s been going on? “No. No, it’s really not okay. It’s the furthest from okay it could possibly be. And I wish I could explain it properly, Cooper, but, god, even if I did, you wouldn’t believe me. You couldn’t believe me. Just…come on, let’s go. We need to go right now! It’s literally life or death!”

Cooper pulls a face and sits down on the edge of his bed. No. I don’t need him to sit down. I need him to get in the car and drive me to Mayfair, to Jonah, who somehow I have to get to kiss me without any preamble. I think of the remainder of my savings in the bank. “Maybe I could pay him to kiss me?” I mutter to myself. He would still be kissing me of his own free will, right? Would that work? Would Merritt allow it? Christ, my head is spinning.

“Maybe we should just sit down for a moment,” Cooper says gently as if we have all the time in the world. He pats the bed beside him, his expression concerned. “Would you…would you like a cup of tea? Shall I telephone a doctor?”

I get a flashback to the last time he offered to telephone a doctor for me. When he found me on my living room floor in my nightie, confused and muttering about a missing burger. Fuck. He thinks I’m having some sort of episode. With trembling hands, I check the waiting time on my ride sharing app—it’s now thirty minutes. Way too long.

“We need to go!” I shout, sheer panic making my chest pound so hard in my skull that I can feel it in my nose. I grab Cooper’s hands, and despite my best attempts not to lose my shit any more than I already am doing, I start to fully sob. “Please. If I don’t kiss Jonah, then Merritt will send me back to Evermore and I don’t want to go there, not yet. I want to stay here. Alive. Please!”

Cooper inhales sharply, eyes flashing. “What did you just say?”

Shit. I’ve made it worse. I really do sound like I’m unwell. Cooper stands up from the bed. “Who…who is Merritt, Delphie?” he asks, his voice quiet and even.

I throw my hands up in the air. I give up. “Merritt is my Afterlife Therapist.” Cooper opens his mouth to say something but nothing comes out. I realise that I’m making absolutely no sense to him. I’m barely making sense to myself. “I know it sounds crazy,” I plead. “But…I died. Okay? I fucking died ten days ago. And I…I met this crazy woman in the afterlife who is obsessed with romance novels and she—” Cooper suddenly looks like all the air has been taken from him. He drops back down onto the bed as if his knees have stopped working. “She wanted me to kiss Jonah—that’s why I’ve been trying to find him—not because he’s the love of my life but because it’s a deal I made with Merritt. She wanted me to give her a real-life happy ending, like in her romances, otherwise I would have to die all over again. Which I thought I was okay with. But then today…the last few days, being with you. It’s made me realise that I’m not okay with it. I don’t want to die. Not at all. So please, please, please. Let’s go. Even if you don’t believe me and I completely understand why you wouldn’t, please just take me to Mayfair. I need to at least try! I know it makes no sense but I need you to please just help me.”

I’m properly crying now, panicked little breaths escaping me. How could I have played so fast and loose with this?

“Obsessed with romance novels?”

Thisis what he got from what I just told him?

“Look, I know it sounds like something I’ve invented, but I promise it’s real.”

Cooper stands up again and stares at me, his mouth set into a grim line. He trails the heel of his hand over his jaw, up to his forehead. His eyes are shining with tears. “Are you telling me the truth right now, Delphie? Because if this is some kind of sick joke about—”

“Why would this be a joke?” I run my fingers through my already messed up hair. “It’s not in the least bit funny.”

Cooper swallows hard, shaking his head slightly. He bites the corner of his lip, his eyebrows dropped low.

“Please,” I whisper. “Please drive me to Mayfair—I’m all out of options.”

Cooper’s eyes flick from side to side, like he’s weighing up his choices which I’m pretty sure are (a) do as I ask or (b) telephone for medical attention. He eventually lets out a sharp breath before grabbing my hand and leading me out of his bedroom, through the happy fracas in the living room, and out into his car.

He doesn’t say a word as he screeches away with such urgency that it slams me against the window. I feel like he doesn’t believe me as much as he wants to see where this is going. If he has somehow gotten himself involved with a psychopath. Either way, we’re finally on the way to Jonah. There’s still a chance.

“Address,” Cooper barks, tapping his hands against the steering wheel, impatient or irritated, I can’t tell.

I fumble with the paper in my hands. “Ten Berkeley Street…I have his number too. I should call him. Fuck.”

I stab the digits into my phone, hands trembling, tears obscuring my vision. I eventually get the right combination but the phone rings out.

Cooper turns onto Edgware Road and puts his foot down so that the cars and the trees lining the road flick past with increasing speed. He glances across at me, eyes narrowed, and even when he’s looking at me like he doesn’t know me at all, my heart lurches with the depth of what I’ve grown to feel for him in such a short time.

Cooper. Always there, downstairs. My dickhead neighbour who turned out to be the sweetest, funniest, sexiest, most interesting man I’ve ever known. And I think even if I’d met every man on Earth and every man in the afterlife, I’d still feel that way about Cooper…Cooper. Wait…I don’t actually know his full name…

“I…I need to know something,” I blurt out as we drive around the edge of Berkeley Square.

Cooper’s eyes are back on the road, his front teeth rubbing back and forth over his bottom lip. “What? What is it?”

“What’s the R. L., stand for? What’s your first name? I need to know.”

“Are you serious right now?”

“I…just want to know your name. Your proper name.”

Cooper’s nostrils flare. “Fuck’s sake…Fine. It’s Remington Leopold. My name is Remington Leopold Cooper.”

“REMINGTON LEOPOLD?” I repeat at full blast before bursting into shocked laughter. This cool, clever, sexy, despicable man is called Remington fucking Leopold.

It must be the nerves and the terror and the general batshitness of this whole thing, but once I start laughing, I can’t stop. It takes over my whole body until I’m convulsing with it. I feel like I’m going to throw up.

I manage to stop for a moment to see Cooper looking at me, a surprised laugh blasting out of him. And then, just as we turn onto Jonah’s street, there’s the sound of a car horn, so loud it hurts my ears. I turn to Cooper who is frantically turning the steering wheel to the left, a look of horror darkening his face.

Then there’s a loud bang, and the force of being thrown forward, my body straining against the seat belt of the car in a way that steals my breath. My head cracks against something. There’s a yell in the distance. A sharp surge of pain.

And then nothing.