Page 30 of The Time of My Afterlife

I open my mouth but then close it. I hate to say this, but he has a point. We’re in a precarious situation.

‘If I go get my whiteboard and bring it back here, you can’t sit and make unhelpful comments about my creative problem-solving process.’

He arches an eyebrow, and I can see the faint hint of a smile. ‘I won’t do that. What does this process involve?’

I feel the prickle of familiar irritation. He finds my whiteboard amusing. ‘I’m not going into detail, Clark,’ I sigh. ‘You can stay here or come with me. The choice is yours.’

12

CLARK

Florence’s whiteboard is now attached to her living room wall. It’s bigger than I expected. We had to move a bookcase to set it up.

The board has been up for six minutes, and already it’s a chaotic mess of arrows, wonky circles and… What are those things at the bottom? I take a closer look. Oh, God, she has even drawn dodgy stick people. Her creative problem-solving process is like watching a tornado cause havoc. It was frantic, aggressive and, honestly, a little scary.

She’s out of breath and admiring her handiwork.

‘This is very retro,’ I say, glancing at her board, the collection of coloured markers she’s clutching and the collection of cloths to wipe it clean. ‘You know, there are phone apps that could do all of this. There’s no need to travel back to the nineties every time you have a problem.’

‘I’ve tried phone notes, Post-its and notebooks,’ she says with a sigh. ‘They don’t come close to giving me the sort of joy I get from my whiteboard.’

‘Joy? Seriously?’

She looks at me as though I’ve just questioned the sky being blue. ‘You can’t dramatically clean a notebook, important Post-its fall to the ground when you’re not looking, and my phone notes give me cryptic messages which I don’t understand, like – “Buy that thing,” or “Do that thing.”’ She gestures at her board. ‘This allows me to get creative.’

I glance at one of her stick people with spiky hair and jug-like ears who looks like they are being electrocuted. ‘You can say that again.’ Hang on a minute – is that stick person me? The next person has long, flowing hair and is wearing what appears to be an apron. I touch my ears – are they really jug shaped?

‘Even the sound of the markers on the board does things to me.’

I stare in amazement at Florence. This is a strange and quirky side to her I never knew existed.

‘When did this board come into your life? You didn’t have one when we were kids.’

She shakes her head. ‘I got it last year after I lost…’ Her words stop, and she flicks her eyes to the floor. I know what she was going to say. She got the board after she lost her baby. I take in a shaky breath. Florence doesn’t know that her mum told me about her pregnancy and even texted me in a panic before she rushed Florence to the hospital.

‘You’re a project manager,’ she says, changing the subject quickly. ‘Surely you must love planning?’

I laugh. ‘At work, yes, I do plan things, but in real life, I do the exact opposite. Do something and think about it later.’ Margo’s face from the car flashes up in my mind.

‘What other things have you planned on your board?’ I ask, staring at her creation.

‘Decorating the first floor of the café, starting a vegetable patch and other things,’ she mumbles.

She hasn’t done anything with the café’s floor above or the vegetable growing. So much for her creative-planning process.

I look at the thoughts she’s scribbled down. They’re mainly about what Iris and Hilda said to us back in the afterlife, a few relate to the grotty bedsit, and one is about being forced to share a bed with me. This is not really a plan. More of a brain dump.

She sighs, grabs a cloth and starts to vigorously clean her board.

Once finished she reads my mind and says, ‘Now the planning can start.’ I watch as she taps the marker against her chin.

‘Are you going to think of ideas for the both of us?’ I ask.

‘Clark, I’m not doing all the hard work. You need to contribute.’

I scratch the back of my neck. ‘This is new to me. I do whatever comes into my head.’

She draws a line down the middle of the board and writes our names at the top of each column. She turns to me. ‘What do we change?’