Soul Beach

think I am crazy, but I’m gonna say it anyway. Tomorrow I can blame the booze.’
    The sounds from the shore change and the party music becomes distant, drowned out by the waves and a kind of crackly noise, like static electricity.
    ‘Don’t. This sounds to me like a serious conversation and it’s always a mistake having those when you’re drunk.’
    Danny smiles. ‘I disagree. It’s a bigger mistake not to say the things that should be said, when the timing’s right. That much I’m learning from being dead a long time, Alice.’
    There’s not much I can say to that.
    ‘Before you came . . .’ he stops. ‘No, let me start at the beginning. When I first washed up here, I was so angry you wouldn’t believe it. With life, with myself, with everyone. But I figured out pretty soon that anger was pointless. It wasn’t going to get me anywhere.’
    ‘I wish you could make Triti believe that too.’
    ‘I’ve tried. But not everything I’m saying is about Triti.’ He reaches out, but then he slaps himself on the forehead. ‘If this was normal life, I would be taking your hand now, Alice. The fact I can’t makes this harder to say somehow.’
    ‘Because you’re a bit pissed?’
    ‘No, I’m not angry with you . . . oh, I see. Pissed in the British sense: drunk. Yeah. But that should make it easier.’ He closes his eyes, then opens them again, extra-wide. ‘Back on track, back on track. So I decided to choose a new Danny to show the world. Back in real life, I made everyone see what I wanted them to see: I was easy-going, the guy with the joke and the smile for anyone.’
    I know, I think, I’ve seen you on that video, only a few precious seconds’ worth, but it was enough to understand you.
    To fall for you.
    ‘On the Beach, I decided to be different. I had to conserve my energy. Keep myself to myself. I’ve gone from being the life and soul of the party, to the wallflower. The observer. Well, for the foreseeable future, anyhow. I mean, right here we all have time to be a thousand different versions of ourselves and we still won’t have scratched the surface of the time ahead.’
    I look out at the horizon, where the sun is beginning to set. That’s what it means to be here. Eternity. I shiver.
    ‘I made a few buddies. I deliberately chose people who were different to the meatheads and the cheerleaders I’d partied with on earth: Javier, Triti, your sister. They’re good people. Loyal. They understand that this is not just an endless party.’
    I nod, even though I always think of my sister as a party girl. But that was the old Meggie. Perhaps she has had to change, too.
    He continues. ‘Sure, that makes them awkward to be around sometimes, but it’s good not to pretend all the time. To be able to be vulnerable, now and then.
    ‘And then you showed up,’ he continues.
    God, I need a drink.
    ‘You were different.’
    ‘Alive?’ I say, then wish I hadn’t because it sounds flip and sarcastic.
    But he just smiles. ‘Sure. But you were also different to everyone around me because you still had hope.’
    ‘I don’t feel like I do.’
    ‘Believe me, when you’re used to the Beach, then even the tiniest remainder of hope shines like a lighthouse to a shipwrecked sailor.’
    ‘You really are drunk, aren’t you?’
    ‘Do me a favour, Alice, let me say what I want to say, huh?’
    He waits till I’ve nodded and mimed zipping up my mouth. ‘OK, so where was I? Hope. You take it for granted when you’re alive but, Jeez, you miss it when you’re dead. You arrived and, of course, you were beautiful, but then that’s so standard here that it’s boring. You were more than that. It was like someone holding up a mirror to my own face and all I could see there was hopelessness and longing.’
    I nod. ‘From the first time we met, I did feel you needed something you couldn’t have.’
    ‘Something? Or some one ?’
    I blush. This is getting weird.
    ‘Jesus Christ, why can’t I come out with it? I have several hundred nymphomaniac dead girls here on the Beach with nothing to do for the next few millennia except tell me how great I am, massage my ego and perfect their oral sex technique, and I’m falling in love with the one girl I cannot touch . . . ‘Love?’ He drains the last of the cocktail. ‘Let’s not say love. Let’s say like. Can you fall in like?’ He laughs.
    But he didn’t say like . He said love.
    And that’s when I know.
    When he looks at me again, the longing in