Desperately Seeking Heaven by Jill Steeples

small way to making me feel better. I slipped off my shoes and kicked them under the coffee table, trying for relaxed.
    ‘No,’ he said, turning and giving me an indulgent smile. ‘It’s all under control. Just sit back and enjoy.’
    ‘So where did you learn to cook then?’ I asked a bit later, when we were sat at the table tucking eagerly into the tagliatelle. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was.
    ‘At uni. I had a few months living off pot noodles, and then decided, for the sake of my health, I needed to learn a few basic dishes that included some green stuff. Thinking about it, I needn’t have worried. Could have stuffed myself silly with burgers, fries and beers.’ He gave a wry shrug. ‘Funny how you spend a lot of time sparing yourself for the future when in a lot of cases there won’t be a future. Let that be a lesson to you, Alice.’ He pointed a friendly finger my way ‘Get out there and live your life to the full, young lady. And eat as many burgers and fries as you want to.’
    I laughed, my insides squirming uncomfortably at the further reminder of Jimmy’s perilous condition.
    ‘Hmm, trouble is, knowing my luck, I’d do exactly that, put on sixteen stone, become an alcoholic bag lady and live to 105. Very old, very fat, drunk and lonely with no one to care for me.’
    ‘Now that is hard to imagine. But you know what I’m saying, don’t you?’ There was a sincerity in his voice which was hard to ignore. ‘Make the most of what you’ve got, your time here because it could all be over in an instant.’ He clicked his fingers in the air. ‘Work out what’s important to you and go for it.’
    I twirled my pasta around my fork, absent-mindedly. That was easy for him to say but then I guessed he had the benefit of hindsight; he was looking at it from the other side. Literally. Like a lot of people, I had a vague idea of the things I wanted from life, but most of those I had pencilled in for some time in the future. But what if my future were to be cut short, like Jimmy’s? A feeling of unease tempered with impatience niggled along my veins.
    ‘Do it, Alice, before it’s too late,’ he said, as if reading my mind. ‘It’s all too easy to put things off, but my advice to you is to go out there and grab life with both hands. And it’s not things like your career and money that are important, you know that. It’s your friends and family.’ He paused. ‘Your relationships.’
    I laughed, looking up into his eyes.
    ‘Oh dear, you’re beginning to sound like my mother. And my sister.’
    ‘Really? I’m in good company then. What is it they say exactly?’
    ‘That I should get our more. Start dating again. I think they’d like to see me settled with someone. It’s been a while since Mike.’
    ‘Mike?’
    ‘Yeah, he was my last serious relationship. We were together for about five years and everyone thought we would have the Happy Ending, but it wasn’t to be. We sort of fizzled out.’ I laughed without a smidgeon of self-consciousness. It was such a long time ago now it was almost like talking about another person. ‘That’s not strictly true. Not so much a fizzle as an explosion when I found out he was cheating on me with a couple of other girls. I haven’t really got back into the dating scene since.’
    ‘His loss, definitely,’ said Jimmy, looking at me intently from beneath long dark lashes. ‘There’ll be some good guy out there for you, Alice. Someone you can be happy with. You’re such a great girl, you deserve to be happy, but you need to get out there and find him. Take it from me, you don’t have as much time here as you might think.’
    ‘I suppose you’re right,’ I said with a pang of regret. It felt so easy to be talking with Jimmy, safe and reassuring as if I could tell him anything and he would never judge me in any way. Perhaps that was because I knew he wasn’t of this world. That we had something special and sacred that would only ever exist between