A Fate Worse Than Death by Jonathan Gould Page A

others.”
    “Leave to others like Sally?”
    “I didn’t say I was happy about it. I’d like to be able to go into the council and stand up to Sally. I guess I just don’t have the confidence.”
    She didn’t have the confidence? That didn’t just take the cake. It took the icing and the candles as well. The time for game-playing was over.
    I said, “You don’t have the confidence, and I have the credibility of a goose.”
    Jessie stood up. “Perhaps you’d prefer it if I left.”
    I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her back onto the bed. “You’re not leaving until you tell me the truth. You came to me yesterday, acting all flighty and mysterious, then disappeared when the questions got too difficult. You reappeared tonight and pulled this wilting rose petal act. You did it pretty well, but I‘ve seen it a hundred times before. Now call me a sucker, but I actually believe your fears are genuine and I’d like to help. But until you start giving me some information that vaguely resembles the truth, I don’t see how I can.”
    She sat motionless for a moment, then lay back and put her head on the pillow. “You’re right,” she said. “I have a confession to make too.”
    I didn’t say anything. It was her turn to do the talking.
    “There’s a reason you didn’t see my name in any of those council minutes. It’s because I wasn’t actually at any of the meetings.”
    “An absentee angel?”
    “No.” She paused. Her lips were pressed together tightly, as if she wanted to stop the words escaping. Finally, she forced them out. “An absentee, but not an angel.”
    It was my turn to be genuinely surprised. “What did you say?”
    “You heard,” she said, her voice now as bitter as coffee grounds flavoured with lemon rind. “Would you like me to say it again? I’m not an angel. Are you satisfied now?”
    “If you’re not an angel, who are you?”
    “Just a woman. Just a normal, everyday woman. I lived my life, I died, and I was sent . . . down below.”
    “Why were you sent . . . down below?”
    “I’d prefer not to talk about it. I didn’t live a particularly good life. I did a lot of things I wasn’t proud of, and hurt a lot of people. And that’s why they sent me down . . . Oh what’s the point in being precious about it? That’s why they sent me down to Hell, to do my time and endure the punishments of a life ill-spent.”
    “You don’t seem to be enduring much punishment.”
    She started to reply, but I placed a hand over her mouth.
    “Save it,” I said. “This is a story that should be told over a drink.”
    She nodded. “Last drink for a condemned woman.”
    I went back to the kitchen, grabbed the bottle and the glasses, and returned to the bedroom. I poured two glasses and handed one to her. She held it to her lips, and with a delicate flick she downed its contents. A second glass met with a similarly swift fate.
    “So, a funny thing happened on the way to Hell,” I said. She was right. The time for euphemisms was over. I felt a sense of release having finally uttered the word.
    Jessie shivered. “There’s nothing funny about Hell.”
    “It’s really that bad?”
    “The place you lived in before you died. What was it like?”
    “It was a charming place.”
    “Really?”
    “Oh yes. We had a wonderful family called the Bostinos, who looked after everyone and made sure nobody ever misbehaved. They had all these lovely little games they liked to play. Games where if you lost, they’d beat your brains out. Actually, that’s not completely true. If you won, they’d beat your brains out too.”
    “So you think it was pretty rough?”
    “I know it was pretty rough. If a boy didn’t have at least twenty knife scars by his fifth birthday, his sexuality was called into question.”
    She laughed. A cold, hard laugh. “Hell’s worse.”
    “You really think so?”
    “Listen to me, Jimmy. Anything your Bostino family dished out would be like a Christmas