What are you working on now?

Aside from my poetry, I am working on my third novel, which is about a grieving widow who takes her daughter and mother-in-law on a journey around Europe to scatter her husband’s ashes and heal their fractured family unit.

Read on for the opening of Carolyn Jess-Cooke’s
internationally bestselling novel

THE GUARDIAN

ANGEL’S JOURNAL

A CELESTIAL PEN

When I died I became a guardian angel.

Nandita broke the news to me in the afterlife without any ice-breaking small talk or comfort-inducing chit-chat. You know the way dentists ask what your Christmas plans are right before they yank out a tooth? Well, I can tell you there was none of that. There was simply this:

Margot is dead, child. Margot is dead.

No way, I said. I’m not dead.

She said it again. Margot is dead. She kept saying it. She took both my hands in hers and said: I know how hard this is. I left five kids behind in Pakistan with no papa. Everything will be all right.

I had to get out of there. I looked around and saw that we were in a valley surrounded by cypress trees with a small lake a couple of metres away from where we stood. Bulrushes fenced the edge of the water, their velvet heads like microphones waiting to broadcast my reply. Well, there wouldn’t be one. I spotted a scribble of grey road in the distance amongst the fields. I started walking.

Wait, Nandita said. There’s someone I want you to meet.

Who? I said. God? This is the summit of Absurdity and we’re hammering in the flag.

I’d like you to meet Ruth, Nandita said, taking my hand and leading me towards the lake.

Where? I leaned forward, looking amongst the trees in the distance.

There, she said, pointing at my reflection.

And then she pushed me in.

Some guardian angels are sent back to watch over siblings, children, people they cared about. I returned to Margot. I returned to myself. I am my own guardian angel, a monastic scribe of the biography of regret, stumbling over my memories, carried away in the tornado of a history that I cannot change.

I shouldn’t say ‘cannot change’. Guardian angels, as we all know, prevent our deaths a thousand times over. It is the duty of every guardian angel to protect against every word, deed and consequence that does not correspond to free will. We’re the ones who make sure no accidents happen. But change – that’s our business. We change things every second of every minute of every day.

Every day I see behind the scenes, the experiences I was meant to have, the people I was meant to have loved, and I want to take some celestial pen and change the whole thing. I want to write a script for myself. I want to write to this woman, the woman I was, and tell her everything I know. And I want to say to her:

Margot.

Tell me how you died.

Carolyn Jess-Cooke is the author of The Guardian Angel’s Journal, which was an international bestseller. Also the author of the award-winning poetry collection Inroads (Seren, 2010) and four academic titles, Carolyn is published in over twenty languages. She was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1978 and now lives in Gateshead with her husband and three children.

Carolyn’s website is www.carolynjesscooke.com.

Also by Carolyn Jess-Cooke:

Table of Contents

Copyright

Also by Carolyn Jess-Cooke

Chapter 1 Ruen

Chapter 2 Wakeful Dream

Chapter 3 The Feeling

Chapter 4 ‘Who Gave You That Scar?’

Chapter 5 ‘Tell Her Who I Am’

Chapter 6 The Silent Toll

Chapter 7 The Ghost

Chapter 8 Demon Hunting

Chapter 9 Invisibility

Chapter 10 The Thin Edge of Belief

Chapter 11 Strawberry Picking

Chapter 12 The Paintings

Chapter 13 The Unbested Friend

Chapter 14 Mists of the Mind

Chapter 15 The Greatest Dream of All Time

Chapter 16 The Bitter Side of Freedom

Chapter 17 ‘Remember me’

Chapter 18 Ruen’s Questions

Chapter 19 Escape

Chapter 20 A Love Song For Anya

Chapter 21 Hell

Chapter 22 The Composer

Chapter 23 The Things That Are Real

Chapter 24 The Newspapers

Chapter 25 Swapping Cards

Chapter 26 The Call

Chapter 27 The Pit

Chapter 28 The Answers

Chapter 29 A Friend

Acknowledgements

Letter From the Author

The Boy Who Could See Demons

Reading Group Discussion Points

Author Q&A

The Guardian Angel’s Journal

A Celestial Pen

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