The Love of My Afterlife

“I want to see fate in action. See if you can pull it off. Like I said, Deads are being stolen away from me left, right, and centre. A girl needs to get her kicks somewhere.”

Merritt says this to Delphie when she is explaining her reasons for sending Delphie back to Earth. Though Merritt’s intentions are not entirely clear until the end of the novel, her initial explanation highlights her interest in romance novels as a model for real life, foreshadowing the recurrence of this metafictional aspect of the story. Delphie is convinced that Merritt wants her to let her life play out like a romance and allow fate to guide her. However, Delphie also believes that because Merritt is treating her life like one of her books, Merritt must be sending her back to Earth for entertainment. Altogether, Merritt’s true intentions remain unclear to Delphie.

“I very rarely travel outside of Bayswater—why would I when it has everything I need?—but when I do, I always prefer to walk, preferably with my headphones on full blast so that no-one can talk to me. If they do, I can just pretend I didn’t hear them, because headphones.”

This quote highlights the extreme lengths to which Delphie goes in order to avoid other people and keep herself safe. Her lack of interest in traveling anywhere beyond her neighborhood shows how stagnant her life has become. She tries to cover up this issue with the excuses detailed in this passage, but the truth of the matter is that Delphie is afraid to take risks in life.