If This Is Paradise, I Want My Money Back Read Online Free PDF Page A

you hear me?’
    A man’s voice. Soft and gentle. One I haven’t heard in the longest, longest time.
    A shiver shoots down my spine, and suddenly I know exactly who it is.
    It’s my dad.
    Slowly, disbelievingly, I open my eyes and . . . there he is, right here beside me, reaching out to take my hand. My darling dad, looking better than I ever remember, so fit and healthy and wearing the same old corduroy trousers and big baggy jumper he used to wear whenever he was pottering around the house, doing bits of DIY, and puncturing holes in my mother’s good furniture with a power drill, when he was always at his happiest.
    ‘Dad?’ is all I can manage to stammer weakly. ‘Dad? Is it . . . is it really you?’
    ‘Shhhh, come on, pet, it’s OK. You’ve been through a terrible time, but it’s OK now, shh.’
    ‘But, if you’re here, then . . . then . . . I must be . . .’
    ‘Plenty of time for that later, pet. For now, all you need to know is that you’re safe.’
    I’m barely able to take it all in, and the next thing I know it’s all just too much. Everything comes crashing down on top of me: James and the accident, and the last few awful days, and whatever happened at the hospital just now, and suddenly, out of nowhere, I’m sobbing helplessly like a child. He folds me in his arms, just as he used to do when I was little, his arms tightly wrapped around mine.
    ‘It’s OK, Charlotte, I’m here. I’ve been here with you the whole time. And nothing bad will ever happen to you again, I promise, pet.’
    Pet. I forgot the way he always used to call me pet. I forgot so much: the smell of him, his soft, gentle voice, the way he always managed to look a bit like an off-duty golfing priest. (Dad found his style back in 1982 and never saw any reason to change it since.) And how much taller and broader he seems, just like in the photo I have of him, taken in his prime, way back in his rugby-playing days, years before he got ill and wasted away to nothing.
    ‘Dad . . . Dad . . .’ I keep sobbing over and over, half-hysterical, half-overjoyed just to see him again. ‘But . . . but . . . if I’m here with you, then it must mean that I . . . that I just . . .’
    I can’t even bring myself to finish that sentence.
    But I must be dead, I’ve got to be.
    Dear Jaysus. Like things weren’t bad enough?
    I think about Mum and Kate and Fiona, and what they must all be going through right now, right at this very moment. And I honestly think the heartbreak and anguish at being wrenched away from them like that will kill me all over again. If I wasn’t already dead, that is.
    A fresh bout of crying, but this time it’s so violent, I think the tears might choke me.
    ‘Shh, shh, pet, you’ve had a shock, that’s all.’
    ‘Oh, Dad . . .’
    ‘I’m here now, Charlotte. Just remember everything’s going to be fine.’
    ‘But . . . I don’t understand, where am I?’
    I can’t even see properly, everything around us is just all blurry and blindingly white.
    He grips my hand tight.
    ‘The easiest way for me to describe it to you, is that you’re in a sort of, well . . . assessment area, really, would be the best way of looking at it, pet. Just till it’s decided where’s the best place for you to go, that’s all. The main thing is not to be frightened.’
    My mind starts to race. Mainly because whenever anyone tells me not to be frightened, then that’s when I panic. An assessment area? Like . . . like purgatory or something? Suppose they assess my miserable little life, decide I was a crap human being, stamp me with a big F for failure, then send me straight to hell?
    ‘Oh, come on now, pet, look at you, all worried.’ Dad smiles gently at me, gripping my hand tight. ‘I faithfully promise you, there’s nothing at all to be scared of.’ Then he puts his arm around me reassuringly, which does calm me down a bit. ‘Have a look around for yourself, if you don’t believe me.’
    For the first time since I came