A Dream to Die For Read online

  For Gloria, Gabriel and Giorgia

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  The writing of this book has been rewarding and relaxing simultaneously! However to bring this to publication has not been without the assistance and support of a number of people. Principally my wife Gloria and children Gabriel and Giorgia have had to suffer as husband and father tried to pretend he had some creative talent beyond the day job. When it came to that day job, my team in the Portsmouth office have had to listen to a variety of drafts over lunch hours for months and their continued support has been great. Particular mention should go to Sarah Metherell who contributed the idea for the title. Finally my thanks to Steve Clark who, as well as being one of my oldest friends, has piloted me through the publication process with a balance of patience and tenacity.

  PROLOGUE

  MIKE opened his eyes to a bright light. His head felt as though he had the hangover from hell. His mouth was dry and his throat hurt. His head pounded so badly he did not want to lift it from the pillow, yet he needed to look around as he was unsure where he was.

  ‘Would you like a sip of water?’ A calm smiling face was by his side, a nurse, so, he concluded, he must be in hospital.

  ‘Thanks, God my head hurts,’ Mike replied. He watched the nurse lean down and move a lever so the back of his bed started to raise gently. As it did so, the little hospital room where he was lying started to come into view. He was alone in the room, which had space for his bed, a chair to the side under the window and then various monitors on stands either side of the headboard. Each one appeared to be connected to him through tubes and wires. Screens showed continuous graphs of thin lines running across from left to right. His left arm had a drip line attached to a clear plastic bag which stood on a stand just beside one of the monitors. A small side table to his right contained a vase with flowers, a book and two Get Well Soon cards.

  After the bed stopped moving the nurse passed him a small glass of water that she had poured from a plastic jug. It had been placed on a table that seemed to cover the bottom part of the bed and hide the lower part of his body.

  ‘I know you are very thirsty, but please try and just sip this a little at a time. You may feel nauseous, in which case I have a bowl just here.’ The nurse stood to the side of the bed and Mike thought she looked rather concerned.

  ‘Please don’t worry, I am sure I will be fine. I am just so thirsty.’ Mike took the glass and started to drink. He quickly passed the glass back to the nurse as he started to retch. The nurse gently held his head with her right hand and Mike was sick into the waiting bowl that she held in her other.

  ‘Oh God, I am so sorry,’ said Mike as he looked up from the bowl and the splatters of vomit that were across his bedclothes. His mouth now tasted even worse than it had done so before.

  ‘I’ll go and fetch something to get you cleaned up and then the doctor will want to examine you.’ The nurse continued in a calm voice. ‘I think your parents are in the canteen, they are probably grabbing something to eat – they have been here all the time. I shall let them know you have woken up.’ The nurse turned and left through the open door to the corridor. Mike noticed she shut the door as she left the room.

  Mike sat back on his pillow, propped up in his bed, and looked again around the room. The pain in his head was eclipsed by the taste of vomit in his mouth. He had time to think.

  He remembered graduating and collecting his scroll in the great hall. He had liked swanning around for most of the day in his gown and mortar-board hat, but what had happened next?

  He remembered a meal, yes a long table in that nice Italian restaurant by the river, his parents were there, and there had been a lot of noise, laughing… he could not remember who else had been at the table, but he did remember the feeling of happiness.

  Mike’s mother opened the door of the room and walked in. Behind her was his father and then a doctor with a bow tie and a white coat, a stethoscope hung around his neck like a scarf.

  ‘Oh darling, you must feel dreadful,’ his mother uttered, as she came straight across to the bed and hugged him, tears almost instantly cascading down her face. She straightened up and as she did so the nurse came back with an even larger bowl and a flannel and towel folded across her arm.

  ‘Mrs Stapleford, if you could let the nurse just clean up young Mike and I can have a quick look at him.’ The doctor removed his stethoscope from the back of his neck and clipped the ends into his ear. He held Mike’s wrist, looked at his watch and then listened to his heart, all as the nurse cleaned up the vomit and gave his face a wash with a warm damp flannel.

  All the time Mike’s father stood at the bottom of the bed, not saying anything. Mike could see the tears running down his cheeks and his shoulders shuddering as he tried to keep his emotions in check. At last the doctor had finished and, after another small sip of water that Mike managed to keep down, the nurse left the room, closing the door behind her.

  ‘Can someone tell me what the hell happened and for that matter when?’ Mike could not contain himself any longer, his head was starting to clear and he felt as though everyone was in on the secret but him.

  ‘What do you last remember?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘The graduation ceremony and it gets kind of hazy but a meal at the Italian by the river. You guys were there,’ Mike nodded his head towards his parents, ‘but I can’t really remember anyone else, except I know we were in a big party, we were celebrating.’ Mike felt a little uncomfortable, he didn’t like not being able to remember.

  ‘We were celebrating after the graduation, darling, your dad and I are so proud of you, a law graduate. All your friends were at the restaurant: James, Ed, Stuart, that lovely girl Frances… well there were loads of us. And after the meal you went off to have fun and your father and I went back to our hotel. That was last Friday, I am afraid it’s now Wednesday. We have been so worried about you.’ Mike’s mother burst into tears again and his father moved a comforting arm around her shoulders.

  ‘We don’t really know what happened,’ said the doctor. ‘You were found in a street. From your injuries, you were clearly knocked down by a car.’

  ‘Well I guess that explains why I feel so bloody awful!’ Mike replied. ‘Although I’m shocked to have lost four days or so, have I been unconscious all that time?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ said the doctor. ‘We have been keeping you sedated, as we had to perform some major operations. I am sorry to have to tell you, Mike, but I am afraid your legs were one hell of a mess when they brought you in.’

  Mike realised that he had not yet moved his lower body.

  ‘What do you mean? How much of a mess?’ Mike’s voice quivered, he wanted to keep it together, but seeing his parents crying again did not help.

  The doctor sat down on the side of the bed and took Mike’s hand.

  ‘Look Mike, it’s like this. We saved both your legs, but you will find it almost impossible to walk again unaided. The bone damage is such that they will not support your weight as they used to. After some physio, you’ll be fine to walk short distances, but we’re going to spend a lot of time with you…’ the doctor paused ‘…getting you used to a wheelchair.’

  ‘Nooooooo!’ Mike screamed as loud as he h
ad ever done in his life.

  CHAPTER 1

  HE HAD not even attended her funeral.

  It was his first thought as he woke.

  He turned to pick up his watch from his bedside table, it was luminous and the silent dials told him it was 2.45 in the morning. He got up and walked rather unsteadily to the en-suite for a pee. His trip being a succession of lurches from one piece of furniture to another. Ever since he had been a small boy whenever he woke during the night he took the opportunity of going to the toilet, a habit he could not change, even if he wanted to.

  The crescent moon was bright through the window, shining across the fields and silhouetting the tree line. He climbed back into bed and curled around his wife. She was fast asleep, unaware of his disturbed slumber, his dream, his conversation with the dead.

  For the next hour, Mike replayed the dream in his head. He had been sitting in a room, talking with Andrea.

  ‘I know you’re dead,’ he had said. It sounded accusing but he had not meant it to be.

  ‘Yes I am, but that doesn’t stop us from chatting. It’s rather strange here, although to be honest I am not really sure where here is.’ Her voice was the same as he had remembered: light, clear, soft but not too girlie.

  She looked the same, her blonde hair just flowing over her shoulder, those amazing piercing blue eyes. She was in a grey dress that ended just below the knee, and black boots. The dress curved around her hips and breasts but did not hug her figure. She looked smart, professional, business-like in fact.

  ‘It is amazing to see you, to talk to you, I miss you.’ Mike had often thought of Andrea since last October, when he’d received news of the accident.

  ‘I wanted to get in touch, but I couldn’t work out how to do it,’ she replied. ‘There isn’t a manual here to look things up.’ She laughed at her own joke. ‘I suppose it is a little like living, you’re not given a manual there either and you work things out or ask others.’

  ‘Is there anybody to ask?’ Mike was intrigued, he wanted to find out more, but did not want to appear pushy.

  ‘Not really.’

  This was not the reply Mike had been hoping to hear. He was sat opposite Andrea to the side of a table, his arm leaning casually on it. It felt as though they were sitting in a sort of kitchen, although there wasn’t the usual cooker, fridge, cabinets or anything else in sight. In fact Mike couldn’t tell what was in the room except the chair he was sitting on, the table and the chair that Andrea was sitting on.

  She was about five feet away from him. Sitting cross-legged, looking smart, chatting… but she was dead.

  ‘It’s not as though it’s lonely here. You see people and everyone seems friendly, as though you are sort of distant acquaintances or you met them at some work function and cannot quite remember their name!’

  ‘Have you met anyone you knew before?’ Mike asked the question before he had really thought about it. He had no idea if her parents were alive or dead or if she had lost any other close relatives. How insensitive could he get! Still, too late now, the question had been asked. He wondered if he could offend someone who was already dead.

  ‘No not yet, and in fact I don’t know if I was expecting to.’ Andrea had not seemed to notice Mike’s thoughtless question. ‘When I say you see people it is not in the same way. You don’t see with your eyes, you sort of sense them being around and it’s comforting.’

  ‘That sounds rather difficult to understand. I guess you have to be there, wherever there is!’ Mike liked talking to Andrea, yet he could not quite get his head around the fact that he was talking to someone who was dead.

  ‘Well, however it works here, all I can tell you is I wanted to contact you and I am pleased I did. What I’m not certain is how long I can stay. I think I should be getting going soon.’ Andrea stood and went to move out of the room. Only there was no door to open, the wall just seemed to melt away.

  Mike followed and they were walking through grass. It wasn’t exactly a field, it was cut and felt tended. Mike was unaware what he was wearing; he just kept following Andrea as she walked purposefully in a diagonal direction past blocks of white. The blocks seemed to be like caravans, only they had no windows. It did not seem cold or wet or windy yet they were outside. It was daylight but not bright sunshine. Mike was intrigued, was this the afterlife? It seemed rather grey and dull, not quite what he had hoped for when he had made those all too infrequent visits to his local church and had prayed to heaven.

  After a few hundred yards, Andrea turned and looked at Mike.

  ‘I am off now. It would be nice to see you again for a catch up. Shall we say the same place?’

  With that Andrea just vanished. Mike stared at the space where she had stood. How could he remember where to come back to? Was it here by the hawthorn hedge that they were meant to meet again?

  ‘When?’ Mike shouted after Andrea. Even if he could find the place, a time and date would have been useful! Somehow he thought he would need to write it in his Filofax. Although Mike tried hard to keep up with modern technology, he still trusted his handwritten diary and contacts pages.

  Mike snuggled his nose against the back of his wife’s neck, he must have been thinking about that dream now for over an hour. How silly, he could not have been talking to the dead. He stretched his arm over his wife’s body and pulled her close. She made a slight sound – an acknowledgement of pleasure – while not actually waking up. He felt the warmth of her body beneath one of his T-shirts that she always borrowed to sleep in. He felt safe.

  He always felt safe as he held Victoria in bed. He had been married now for almost twenty years. Whenever something was out of the ordinary, he felt safe when he held his wife as she slumbered.

  There was no doubt as to why he hadn’t attended Andrea’s funeral after the accident. So many of his colleagues had been there. And, despite the fact that her family had been rather distant, they had attended and he would have felt far too uncomfortable to be there.

  What would they all have said if they had seen him convulse in agony as he had seen the open coffin with her body inside. Would people have put two and two together and realised that they had been so much more than colleagues? They had shared those long lunches over the last year or more, those snatched moments in the office kitchen as they made coffee and pretty well everything in between except a bed for the night.

  As much as Mike had tried to reconcile the situation since Andrea’s death, there was no doubt in his soul that they had been having an affair, even if they had not consummated the relationship.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, how close did he have to be!’ He thought to himself as he wrapped his wife up in his arms. Yes he had felt so much more for Andrea than he had done for anyone else in years… but she was dead!

  Victoria was here, now! She was his wife, he could smell her, taste her and feel her. And yet he knew she was not and never would be the Andrea that had never left his thoughts since that ghastly day last autumn when he had received the news.

  Reading that email about her sudden death had simply knocked the stuffing out of him. Just two days earlier he had found an excuse to ‘have a word’ and, as he waited near her desk for her to finish the telephone call, he had spent the time watching her, her dazzling eyes, her long blonde hair as it cascaded over her shoulders, the curves of her breasts in that lovely silk dress. He was captivated by Andrea and had been for the last four years since she had joined the practice.

  At first he had worried if his contact with her had caused any sort of notice from his peers, but apparently it had not. No one had assumed that anything had ever gone on. And so he and Andrea had grown fond of each other. The lunches had grown in length and frequency. He had enjoyed their texts in the morning as they travelled on their respective trains into London.

  The funeral however had presented an entirely different level of problem. Surely everyone would notice Mike’s grief – it would be better if he stayed away. Better for him no doubt, but not better for hi
s soul that craved the chance to say its goodbye. In the end, he had decided to spend the hour or so of the funeral sitting quietly at the back of St Paul’s Cathedral, thinking of his lovely Andrea and how they could no longer be together. He had sobbed to himself and only just managed to pull himself together as a lone attendant had come and stood quietly behind him, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  Like many decisions in Mike’s life, he had learned to live with it, or so he thought. He had learnt to live firstly with the guilt of the relationship, then the loss and finally the grief at not being able to say goodbye. Most of all, he had learnt to hide his feelings for such a wonderful woman deep inside him so no one but he knew of their love.

  And so what the hell was that dream all about, out of nowhere?

  The alarm came from out of the blue, heralding another Wednesday. As usual Victoria stretched across from under the duvet to press the snooze button for another ten minutes. Mike rolled over on to his side to cuddle his wife.

  ‘Love you, gorgeous,’ he said as he put an arm over her body and they settled down for those last few precious minutes before they would have to start their daily routines.

  ‘You seemed to have a bit of a disturbed night, darling,’ she said, as she sleepily relaxed in his embrace.

  He thought about saying, ‘Yes, sorry about that, I was having a conversation with my dead friend!’ but Mike knew he could not say a word. He did not want to keep a secret from Victoria, but he also realised the more he told her the more questions there would be about his relationship with Andrea.

  He knew it had been a dream, but somehow he had felt he had really had a conversation with his dead friend. That conversation had been personal, somehow Mike felt he had a need to keep it private, it was his and he didn’t want to he share it. His dream was just an extension of his relationship with Andrea.

  Even the whole idea was so far off the scale as to have him worry about his own sanity… conversing with the dead indeed!