The Love of My Afterlife(39)

“So sorry,” Frida singsongs as the woman stalks away back towards the glass doors. “Come on then!” she says to me, pointing at the podium. “She’s still watching us.” I follow Frida’s gaze to see the stern woman—now outside of the room—peering at us through the glass doors.

“I’m not getting up on a podium!”

“It’s the only way we’re allowed in here without tickets.”

“But I…I don’t dance.”

“Everybody dances!”

“There’s no music!”

Frida takes my hand and places it on my chest. “The music, it’s in here.”

I snatch my hand away. “How are the other dancers dancing without any music—none of them are wearing headphones!”

“The headphones would crush their flower crowns,” Frida returns, as if this is obvious and I am thick. “Come on. From the podium you’ll see far and wide across the room—it’s much better for locating Jonah.”

That’s true—I’ll be able to see everything from up there. I glance back towards the stern woman. She’s gesturing madly through the glass that we should get a move on.

Fuck.

Following Frida—who seems oddly keen to get going—I climb atop the podium as elegantly as I can and peer out across the sea of bodies dancing before me, eyes peeled for Jonah’s soft shiny bronze mane. I’m momentarily distracted by the evening view out of the huge windowed wall. I can see the curves of the Thames, Tower Bridge looking like an expensive golden bracelet, the lights of a thousand buildings all twinkling, showing off like they know someone is watching. As the sun lazily bows out, the sky is a rich crocus purple, streaked with pink. God, it all looks so serene from up here. So simple.

I think about what Jonah said about London being magical. I’d immediately discounted it at the time, but I have to admit…from this angle it looks pretty damn special.

“Dance, Delphie!” I’m brought back to the room by Frida elbowing me in the ribs. She’s circling her hips, arms waving about in a delicate way, the floaty sleeves of her dress getting a chance to shine.

For crying out loud. I tentatively start to wiggle my hips from side to side and do the one and only dance I seem able to remember under such enormous pressure, which to my surprise and mortification is the hand jive from Grease.

“Don’t panic,” I mutter to myself, bumping my fists above one another, then jerking my flattened palms this way and that.

I must be doing quite a good job because the stern woman nods her approval before marching off, probably to make that complaint to Maurice what’s-his-name. Shit, what if she finds out that we’ve not been sent by anyone? That we absolutely do not belong here? What if we get kicked out before I can even say hello to Jonah?

Hang about—some of the people in the crowd are turning to watch Frida and me, like we really are professional dancers, here to dance for them. I glance at Frida, who has also started to do the hand jive, perhaps in solidarity, or maybe because it just looks good? The attention makes my heart flip nervously, and every cell in my body is telling me to run away. But then I realise that the crowd staring at me is actually a very useful thing indeed—if I can see everyone’s faces, then I can more easily spot Jonah’s! I speed up my hand jive to make it look even more impressive—Frida’s eyes widen but she keeps up like a champ. It works, and more people turn around to watch, some of them even nudging each other with what I think is admiration. Within a minute or so pretty much every eye in the room is on us. I smile brightly at the crowd and continue my hand jive while scanning the room for Jonah’s face. But I don’t see him anywhere. Damn it. He must be here. Kat said he would be here—that he was working here. He has to fucking be here.

At a loss for what else to do, I clear my throat and call out across the event space. “I’m looking for Jonah Truman,” I say, my voice piercing in the otherwise silent room. “Jonah Truman!” I yell again, even louder. “Are you here? I need to speak with you! Jonah Truman?”

Frida stops dancing before taking a deep breath and yelling “Jonaaaaaaaaaah!” out into the room.

This is not the fun, flirty, casual vibe I was going for. But what other options do I have left? I cannot have schlepped all this way for nothing—time is running out!

Now that we’re no longer dancing, the crowd starts to turn away. I step down from the podium with a frustrated sigh. Where the hell is he? Kat definitely said the Shard!

My stomach twists at the thought that I’ll never find him. I cannot die again. I cannot end up in Evermore, or Nevermore, or bloody Clevermore. I’ve been given this one chance—how many people get that? I can’t blow it.

I’m helping Frida down from the podium so we can decide what to do next, when a pixie-haired woman wearing a dress covered in multi-coloured jewels approaches us.

“You know Jonah?” she says excitedly, looking between the two of us. Her accent is Northern, her voice slightly gravelly.

“Yes, yes I do,” I say. “Mm-hmm. Do you? Is he here? Where is he?”

The woman sighs. “I wish I knew him! He was here about half an hour ago, dancing right there where you were.” She points up at the podium.

Jonah was right there?

“I was on the balcony having a ciggy,” the woman continues, “and out he comes ‘for a breather,’ he says. We struck up a conversation, but five minutes later he got a call from the hospital he volunteers at. Someone hadn’t shown up so he had to fill in.”