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

nearly swear there was CCTV footage with twenty-four-hour live coverage of what’s going on in all our little lives below, a bit like the command centre at Cape Canaveral.
    He’s just extraordinary. He knows all about Kate’s marriage to Perfect Paul, and that she’s desperately trying for a baby; he knows tiny, inconsequential little things like that Mum’s joined a book club, and how she pretends to have read all these literary books, but if they bore her, she cheats by reading the reviews on Amazon, then throws in the odd knowledgeable quote to impress her pals, and just blags the rest. He even knows stuff about Fiona, and I only met her when I went to college, not long after he died.
    ‘Dad,’ is all I can keep saying over and over again, alternately through sobs then smiles, rubbing his big, rough, red, shovelly hands, terrified that he’ll disappear or beam up or something in a minute. ‘I love you and I missed you so, so much. There’s not a single day I don’t think about you.’
    Funny that. I was never able to tell him that I loved him when he was alive, but now that I’ve passed over, there’s no shutting me up.
    ‘But I’m right here, pet. Even when you don’t realize it, I’m never too far away,’ he smiles softly. ‘Like in that beautiful poem that you read out at my funeral. I’ve never left you, just stepped into the next room, that’s all. I’m always close by. I’ve never stopped watching out for you, and I’m certainly not going to stop now.’
    ‘And Mum and Kate, too?’
    ‘Come on, pet, do you honestly think I’d let my three best girls out of my sight even for a moment?’
    No, no, of course he wouldn’t. He adored us all so much, and was always happiest when it was just ‘we four’ as he used to say, all together. Suddenly I remember being eight years old and nagging him incessantly to let me get the bus to school, so I could be a proper, grownup ‘big’ girl. He eventually gave in, but I’ll never forget him driving behind the bus in his car, just to make sure that I was OK. Then there was the time, aged fourteen, I begged to be allowed to go to Wesley, the local disco, with the rest of my pals. Oh, the teenage mortification; not only did he drive me there, he walked up to the DJ and politely asked if he’d mind keeping an eye on me for the night.
    Always minding, always protecting, never letting go.
    ‘I often send you little signs.’ He smiles, giving my hand a gentle squeeze. ‘Just to let you know that I’m right here. Your mum’s by far the most open to that, though.’
    ‘How do you manage that?’ I ask, thinking . . . signs ? Isn’t that just a bit . . . Close Encounters of the Third Kind ?
    ‘Lots of ways, you’d be surprised. Sometimes I can suggest things to her, random thoughts, like hypnotism. The easiest thing, though, is to wait till she’s asleep, and then have a proper chat with her while she thinks she’s dreaming. She’s got so open to that now; all I need do is give her a wee nudge every now and then to remind her to put out the bins, or to lock that back door which she’s always forgetting about. “Is there oil in your lamp?” I’m always asking her.’
    I’m all lumpy-throated now. That was a phrase he often used; his worried way of asking us if we were prepared for all eventualities and emergencies when outside the front door and away from his watchful gaze. You know, stuff like: have you enough petrol in the car/ cash in your purse/a first-aid kit if travelling/have you allowed time for TWO punctures if you’re going to the airport? (Because once, back in the seventies, honest to God, this actually did happen to him, and decades later he still never let any of us forget it. Or did you allow for an extra hour if you’re on the way in to do a big exam? The list was endless.
    ‘Or sometimes, if your mum’s a bit low, I get her to turn on the radio so she can hear . . .’
    ‘. . . “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves