I know what happens after you die. I know because I have died.

You have probably heard about near-death experiences, they always follow the same format. You go through a tunnel towards a light, at the end of the tunnel people who have passed are waiting for you. Your parents perhaps. They tell you it is not your time and that you must go back. You don’t want to go back because you are surrounded by such light, love and joy. You are unable to stay, however, and you wake up. Everything is as it once was – except life will never be the same again.

That is exactly what happened to me too. I realised immediately that I had been completely wasting my life. There was no love, no joy. Worse still,  I was not adding to the world, quite the reverse, I was making the world a worse place.

Today everything is different. I have a partner, Sophie, whom I met online and we love each other, despite the fact that I am a morning person and she definitely isn’t.

Before I died,  I used to work in the city. I worked ridiculously long hours making a ridiculous amount of money.

I should have seen it coming. My death I mean. As I said, I worked long, long hours. It was a stressful job, I was terrified other people might see that I didn’t really know what I was doing. Those other people were my colleagues, going around with the same expression on their faces I always had. It was not a happy expression.

I did no exercise, apart from the five-minute walk to Clapham Junction station from my immaculate four-bed, two-bath house (well I was hardly ever there to mess it up), then a five-minute walk from Bank station to work. There was a restaurant at the top of my office building where I ate breakfast at 7.30am, lunch at 1.30pm and dinner at 6pm. There were plenty of healthy options to choose from, but I never went for these. On the way home I would pick up a bottle of something. Wine on a good day, vodka on a bad day. The bottle was empty before I went to bed.

I was a heart attack waiting to happen. It wasn’t a heart attack in the end, but a stroke that killed me. It happened at my desk, a desk I never went back to after my brief demise. I didn’t even return to take my stuff. There wasn’t anything I wanted; certainly not all the empty bottles in the bottom drawer.

Before I embraced my new life, this life of caring and sharing, there was something I had to do. I wanted revenge. I wanted blood on my hands.

I have never felt bad about ending the life of my persecutor. Apart from wanting revenge, I reasoned that either the world would be a better place without this monster in it, or he would have a near-death experience too, survive and change his ways. Like I did.

Naturally, before committing murder, I had therapy. Naturally, I never told my therapist that I was planning to kill someone, or after the act, that I had succeeded. I chose the type of therapy that doesn’t focus on your past traumas, but rather helps you find techniques for moving on and not being damaged by your past. It doesn’t advocate killing those who have traumatised you for obvious reasons, but let me tell you, it was only after I killed Jim that I was able to properly recover.

My therapist, a wonderful woman called Janet, never expected me to excavate my past and dig up the past horrors that were buried. So I never did. But suffice to say, Jim was my stepfather. Stepfathers have a bad rap for molesting their stepdaughters – in this case for good reason. Jim didn’t just hurt his stepchildren, he also worked in a youth centre which offered him access to other victims. The world is a better place without him.

It was easy to kill him. He lived alone, he had no friends and no other family that wanted to see him. The night I chose was Halloween. He lived in a residential part of Whitton, in a street full of families, so Halloween night was a busy evening, with parents escorting mini draculas, giggling pumpkins and green-faced witches. The pavements were crowded, so I was unlikely to be noticed.

I thought Jim might have a lit pumpkin outside his house, the signal that he was happy to have kids knocking on his door. Another excuse to get close to local children, but there was no pumpkin and no light at all. I was worried he wasn’t in.

When I rang his doorbell, it took a while for him to answer, which further confirmed my fears that I would have to come back and kill him another time. Eventually, however, he opened the door an inch, saw it was me and let me in.

He said: “Let’s go into the sitting room at the back, I don’t want to put any lights on in the front, don’t want my doorbell ringing every five minutes. I haven’t got anything in the house to give to trick or treaters.”

Despite what Jim did to me, we remained on civil terms until his death. I used to go and see him fairly regularly after mum died. We never discussed his trips into my bedroom when I was aged from eight to thirteen. At thirteen I started fighting him off and he must have been worried our scuffling would alert my brother or mum. He said if I told anyone about his bedroom visits no one would believe me. I didn’t want to talk about it to anyone at the time anyway, I thought it was my fault somehow.

For Jim’s last night I brought him his  favourite wine, which luckily is screw topped, so was easy to lace with ground up sleeping pills. Before he fell asleep on his sofa, I asked him what I should have asked him years ago.  

“Why did you do it to me Jim?”

If Jim was taken aback, he didn’t show it, he just shrugged his shoulders. If he had said sorry, or tried to explain himself, who knows? I may have had a change of heart.

I smothered him with one of his nasty little scatter cushions. Nasty because it had a sick-green nylon cover, nasty because it was grubby and nasty because it was a murder weapon.

The murder was super easy and I never got caught. Honestly, the police must be struggling these days, or simply useless, not to have worked out what happened and who did it. I got away with murder. That bastard deserved to die. My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.

Life hasn’t been completely peachy since his death. Jim still haunts me. Not metaphorically, I am not kept awake by guilt over what I have done or by reliving all the awful things he did to me. I mean he literally haunts me.

If you don’t believe in ghosts, that’s good news. It means you probably have never seen or experienced one, or admitted to yourself that you have. To be fair, I haven’t actually seen one either. But one is living in my house nevertheless, moving stuff around and generally being a horrible nuisance. I am sure it is Jim, just from the stuff he scrawls on my mirror in lipstick.

Waking up and seeing “Die bitch die!” written in red as you are brushing your teeth is not the perfect start to one’s day. Even though I know that death is nothing to be afraid of, quite the contrary, I am looking forward to it. But not before I have spread a little joy. My first act was by killing Jim.

Four other ways I have helped improve the world are:

First, I sold my house and gave half the money to a rescue animal charity. I now live in a two- bedroom flat overlooking Bushy Park with my two cats. Sophie and I live separately because my cats would not be happy living with her two dogs, plus I am worried that Jim would carry on haunting us which could be awkward. Sophie knows a lot about Jim, but not everything – I never mentioned on my online dating profile that I killed him – but she knows he was an abusive stepfather who is still with me, in poltergeist form.

I used to live such a tidy life, but when I get home now, all my cushions are all over the floor (no surprise Jim doesn’t like cushions), there are a few sweary messages on my mirrors and there is a rather unpleasant smell. Like a decomposing mouse under the floorboards. I used to think it was something to do with the cats, but they have never brought in any prey.

The cats know about Jim, because one minute they will be fast asleep next to me and then they will both suddenly jump up, all arched backs, hissing and bushy tails, so I know he must be in the room.

The second way I try to do my bit is to volunteer one day a week for Citizens Advice. This is sheer hard work. I often wish I could advise people to kill a few of their persecutors too, but I can’t guarantee they would get away with it like I did. Even in this privileged part of London, you will be amazed at how many people are struggling. I am not supposed to do this, but occasionally I pass them bundles of cash folded into an envelope, just 100 pounds or so, and swear them to secrecy.

My third regular act of kindness is when someone in the queue behind me in Tesco only has a few shopping items in their basket, I let them go before me. If they look like they won’t be offended, I pay for their shopping too.

The fourth way I like to improve our local area is to plant flower bulbs and flower seeds in public places. You might notice a few unusual blooms in Bushy Park next spring and summer. If the deer and squirrels don’t eat them. It would be a treat for me to see my hyacinths, irises and sunflowers adding some colour in unexpected places.

Halloween is coming up soon, and as this is a special anniversary for me, I will make sure to celebrate by raising a glass full of non-alcoholic wine to Jim. And to death.

After all, we are all going to die and let’s face it, none of us have got that long left.