If This Is Paradise, I Want My Money Back by Claudia Carroll Page B

an English accent so cut-glass you’d swear she just stepped out of an Agatha Christie whodunnit.
    ‘Typhoid.’
    ‘Typhoid?’ I can’t help repeating after him, stunned. In fact, I couldn’t be more stunned if he’d just said ‘the Black Death’.
    ‘Yes, dear. Perfectly common in 1849. How about you?’ he asks shingle-head.
    ‘Influenza.’
    ‘Flu?’ I blurt out. Sorry, couldn’t help that, either, I’m too busy thinking, do people really die of flu?
    ‘They certainly did in 1919,’ she replies curtly, reading my thoughts. ‘More people died of influenza than did in the whole of the Great War, you know . . . ah, here’s Minnie now.’ She breaks off as a little girl of about ten or eleven comes in, with long brown hair tied in a ribbon, wearing hobnail boots and a kind of smock dress. She’s adorable and looks a bit like one of the Railway Children, and I’m just about to ask her to come and sit beside me when she strides up to the top of the class and, in her sweet little-girl voice, tells us that today we’re going to be learning about giving signs, communication through dreams, and guiding without interfering with free will.
    ‘But she’s only a kid!’ I whisper to shingle-head on my left.
    ‘Oh, don’t make that mistake, dear. Minnie’s an older soul than any of us. She’s had over two hundred earthly charges to date you know.’
    Bloody hell.
    We learn so much I can barely take it all in. And let’s remember that up till this intensive crash course, my knowledge of the spirit world was pretty much derived from movies like The Sixth Sense and Ghost . Then something that Dad said comes back to me, about how he sends little signs to Mum all the time. And now I’ve learned how to do exactly that. At least, I think I have.
    My head is swimming, and all I really want to do is rush back to Dad and fill him in on everything. But things don’t seem to happen like that here. No sooner has Minnie wrapped up, than I’m whooshed back to Regina in her bank-manager’s office, where she looks like she’s been sitting alone, just waiting for me.
    ‘All right then, love? Minnie is really something, isn’t she? I remember when she first came here, oh, must have been in Queen Victoria’s day, but she really is a wonderful spirit, and a very gifted teacher . . . now, my dear, I’ve got quite a challenging assignment for you. I haven’t just been pulling strings for you, I’ve been pulling ropes . Wait till I see, where on earth did I put that file? One of these days I am determined to clear this desk, once and for all . . .’
    I’m on the edge of my seat, all excited now. This is just like in a Bond movie, when Judi Dench tells 007 what his mission will be. Minus the gadgets of course, but . . . hmmm . . . wonder if I get issued with a set of wings?
    ‘Oh yes, here we are,’ she goes on. ‘Hmmm. Interesting. This charge’s last angel only left a few days ago. Wrote it off as a hopeless case. So why don’t we see if you can do any better, dear?’
    ‘Bring it on,’ I beam brightly, half-wondering if there’s any more training to come before I’m dispatched. Maybe some kind of angelic boot camp. Where they give lessons in, I dunno, flying and general miracle-working techniques.
    ‘Now, you do know that if the going gets too rough, you can come back here at any time?’ Regina asks, peering at me over the pink glasses, the big marshmallow face looking a bit worried. ‘No one would blame you a bit. It’s not everyone who’s cut out for angelic work experience.’
    Not likely, I think, a bit smugly. I was a total failure on earth, but by God, for once in my miserable life, I am going be a success. I’m going to put my mind to this task, totally apply myself and really impress everyone, myself included, at just how well I can do. I’ll wholeheartedly devote myself to spreading joy and happiness, a bit like an Irish version of Amélie , minus the subtitles.
    I’m going to spend my time