The Love of My Afterlife(40)
Jonah volunteers at a hospital?
“Which hospital?” I say frantically. “Did he mention where?”
The woman shakes her head. “All he said was that he couldn’t let the children down!”
Not only does he volunteer at a hospital—but for children? God, Jonah is a far better human than I am. If Merritt wasn’t so convinced that he’s my soulmate, I’d say he was too good for me.
“And he definitely didn’t say which hospital? Or a specific area he had to get to?”
“Nope. Just took off into the night like a beautiful and noble superhero.”
“Excuse me, I am not paying you to chat to the guests.” I spin around to see Headset Woman scowling at us, her cheeks red with fury. She throws her hands up in the air. “I have never, ever dealt with such unprofessionalism in my life. You are fired. Please leave. And if Maurice Alabaster has any sense, he will remove you from his books without a second thought.”
My mouth drops open, pride oddly wounded at being fired from a job I don’t actually have.
Frida steps in front of me, arms folded across her chest. “You can’t fire us because guess what, lady? We QUIT.”
I goggle as Frida grabs my hand and yanks me towards the exit. “Come on, Delphie. Let’s blow this joint.”
21
Outside, Frida erupts into giggles. “I always wanted to say, ‘I QUIT!’?” Her eyes shine. “But you don’t have much of a chance when you’re a dog walker. Haha! ‘Let’s blow this joint!’?” she repeats to herself. “I can’t believe I said that!”
I can’t help but grin at her excitement, despite my rising internal panic that not only have I missed Jonah again, but also the chances of finding him at a random hospital when there are so many in London, and all of them so big, is next to zero.
I need to get home and make a new plan. Maybe convince Merritt to give me a clue. Surely by now she can see that luck is not on my side, despite my very best efforts. We walk to the nearest bus stop, only to find that the queue is at least thirty deep on account of the Tube strike. One jam-packed bus drives straight past without even bothering to stop.
I open my car-sharing app and press the button, despite the surge pricing. Somehow, overspending doesn’t hold the same fear it once did—I have nothing to lose!
“I’m sorry you didn’t find Jonah,” Frida says, once we’re neatly in the back of a blissfully air-conditioned cab. “I can tell you are very much attracted to him. You made quite the fuss at our drawing class. I wonder if we’ll ever be allowed back in?”
“It’s much, much more than attraction,” I mutter. “I wouldn’t make such a fuss if it was just about attraction.”
“Ah. I wish I could find much more than attraction.” Frida looks dreamy for a moment, leaning back on the headrest, her arms behind her head. “But even just attraction is hard enough to find. I thought in London I’d meet lots of people but everyone is always”—she starts to do a sort of robotic impression—“eyes down to the ground, don’t talk to me, no eye contact allowed on the Central line! I thought maybe Claude at the drawing class would be nice. But he was not. I thought Gant was my soulmate. But he left me. So now what am I supposed to do?”
“I once heard that we actually have up to five soulmates,” I say, remembering what Merritt told me in Evermore.
“Who told you that?” Frida removes her arms from behind her head and leans forward. “Was it Gwyneth Paltrow? Because I do not trust her. Never again will I trust Gwyneth Paltrow or her magazine.”
I laugh. “I’m going to need to know more about what she did to make you so mad.”
“I’ll never share. It’s too humiliating.”
“No. It wasn’t Gwyneth Paltrow. It was a woman I met recently. She…well, she actually introduced me to Jonah. She was the one who saw that there was something special between us. Told me to go after him.”
“She sounds very insightful. I would love to meet her.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to meet this woman.”
“I think I’ll do whatever it takes to find love. I’ve even been learning about witchcraft, and though it can help in many ways, it can’t bring true love your way. That’s up to the Fates.”
I decide not to baulk at the bonkersly casual way in which Frida refers to taking up witchcraft, because who am I to question any supernatural inclinations when I am literally a dead person on the Earth for a borrowed amount of time? Instead, I ask her to tell me a little more about Gant. She talks about how she was with him for two years and how he broke up with her around once per month because he kept changing his mind about whether he was in love with her.
“I’ve been single for my whole life,” I tell her as we turn onto my road. “It’s not so bad. It sounds like Gant leaving was a blessing in disguise.”
“My brain knows that, but I think it’ll take my heart some time to catch up.”
When we reach my house I realise that Aled is leaning against my front door, looking intently at his phone. We climb out of the car.
“Aled!” I say, a swarm of guilt enveloping me at not replying to his text and a flicker of alarm that he has turned up to my actual house as a consequence. “What are you doing here?”