Ghosts

by Dolly Alderton

  “Hello, Bean,” he said.

  “Hi, Dad. Is everything okay? Sounds like there’s been a lot of drama about nothing today.” I forced a chuckle, keen to placate the situation into relaxed normality.

  “Paul died. Paul Goldman. Such a lovely bloke. We once all went to the Lake District together and we saw a deer. He hadn’t been looking well for a while, but these things still take you by surprise.” I heard Mum groaning in the background. “Are you coming for dinner today?”

  “Not today, Dad, I’m coming in a few weeks.”

  “Is it a few weeks already?” he said with surreal dismay, like a character in a suburban Alice In Wonderland. “Blimey, blimey. How time flies.”

  “Don’t worry about what Mum’s saying about Paul and Mary, she’s just cross she doesn’t get to go on her big night out.” I heard Mum call his name.

  “I better go. I think your mum wants me.”

  “Okay, Dad,” I said, resolutely cheery. “Lovely talking to you and I’ll call you again tomorrow.”

  “All right, Bean. Bye, love.”

  I kept the phone to my ear and heard the loud, flat beeps of Dad jabbing at keys that weren’t the button to hang up. Then I heard Mum’s voice, weary and waning, edge closer to the phone. “It’s this one, Bill,” she said, then ended the call.

  I put my mobile in my jacket pocket and pressed my face against the bus window, which was speeding over Hungerford Bridge, willing London’s sparkling outline to distract me from the curdle of emotions in my stomach. I had never known a feeling as unbearable—as sour, wrenching and unshakeably sad—as pity for a parent.

  * * *

  —

  I went to bed as soon as I got home. I had never had trouble with sleep—it was something I was increasingly grateful for as I watched friends battle through nights of shallow-breathed tossing and turning or the repetitive servant’s-bell ring of a hungry, wailing baby. Unusually, I was woken up two hours later by the sound of loud male laughter coming from the garden below me. I drew the curtains and saw Angelo and another man sitting on plastic chairs, smoking, drinking beers and speaking in Italian. I lifted the window ajar.

  “Excuse me,” I hissed. “Would you mind keeping the noise down? I was asleep, you woke me up.” They both stopped talking, looked up briefly, then returned to their conversation.

  “Angelo,” I hissed again. “Angelo.” They continued to talk. “Angelo, it’s half twelve on a Monday night. On a Saturday I could understand, but it’s Monday. I’ve got a really early meeting tomorrow. Can you talk inside?” They began laughing again, so loudly it became an orchestra of wheezing hi-hat cymbals and honking horns. Angelo’s friend slapped him on his knee from the sheer hysteria of it all. “Excuse me!” I pleaded. They raised their voices, trying to rub out my voice like a pencil mark. “ANGELO!” I shouted. He snapped his head up at me with the sudden pep and fixed expression of a marionette.

  “Do not. Shout at me. Like a dog,” he said with a light garnish of threat.

  “Go talk inside.”

  “No,” he said, turning his head away from me again. I closed the window with a bang, put on a jumper, coat and a pair of trainers.

  * * *

  —

  After a phone call and a taxi, I stood outside Max’s front door and the breeze bit my bare legs, alerting me to autumn’s arrival. Max opened it and I smiled apologetically. He pulled me into the warmth of his hallway and body.

  “This is a lovely surprise,” he said as I pressed my face into his chest, my arms wrapped pathetically tightly round his middle like a child meeting a character at Disneyland.

  “You don’t have a woman here, do you?”

  “Three of them,” he said into my hair. “They’re all very cross you’ve prised me away from the bed.”

  “Weird dinner with my ex,” I said, looking up at him. “Then sad conversation with my mum and dad. Then run-in with my horrible neighbour.”

  He kissed me. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want a glass of wine?”

  “A gallon.” We walked to his kitchen and I pulled myself up to sit on his counter as he retrieved two glasses from the cupboard.

  “I’ve never knowingly had a dinner with an ex that wasn’t weird,” he said.

  “I know. I thought Joe and I had nailed it, but maybe we haven’t.”

  “Did he beg you to come back to him?” he asked, pouring red wine into two glasses. “Because you know that’s not allowed.”

  “No, no. He’s getting married, which took me by surprise. We always said we’d never get married.”

  “How did it make you feel?”

  “I don’t know. Not jealous or sad or anything. He said this thing that I can’t stop thinking about—that you decide what you want from your future anew with every new partner.”

  He gave me my glass, then took a sip of his own. “I think he’s right, isn’t he?”

  “I suppose he is, I just hadn’t thought of it that way before. I thought we decide what we want, then find someone who wants to do it with us.” I reached down to my plimsolls and unlaced them. They dropped to the tiles and I pulled my feet up on the counter, my chin resting on my knees.

  “Look at your sexy socks,” he said, moving towards me and tugging at my feet. “Bare legs and socks on you does something to me.” He stood between my thighs and I clamped them around him. I thought of the perfect moment we had found ourselves in, entwined on a kitchen counter on a weekday evening—the ephemeral period of a new relationship when everything domestic could be erotic. When watching someone pour milk on their cereal or towel-dry their hair was more entrancing than the ocean. When smelling their morning breath or unwashed scalp was exciting because it took you one step further into their high-walled palace of privacy, where you hoped only you were allowed to roam. Sexed-up to saturation point, therefore trying out the novelty of being humdrum. If this turned into a long-term relationship, one day we’d be only humdrum and we’d have to revisit the novelty of being sexy again—arranging “date nights” and putting on our best clothes for each other and purposefully lighting candles. We trick ourselves into being close until we really are close, then we trick ourselves into seeming distant to stay as close as we can for as long as possible. Sometime soon, our socks would no longer be seductive, they’d be a source of an argument (not rolled up, left on the radiator, left in the washing machine). For now, our socks were symbols of something secret and sacred.

  “God, I love this bit,” I said. “This bit where you melt over my socks. How do we keep it in this bit? How do we freeze this in time? There must be a way of tricking all the laws of monogamy. There must be some sort of gaming hack.”

  “No, no, no,” he said, pushing my fringe back off my face and kissing my forehead, then my cheeks, then the end of my nose. “We need to keep going. We need to keep pushing through to all the next rounds. Your socks are only going to get sexier, I know it.”

  “I’ll have the burger, please, with a gluten-free bun and mac and cheese on the side.” Lola registered my confusion. “What?”

  “Your order makes no sense.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s gluten in the macaroni.”

  “Yeah, but at least then I’m halving my gluten intake.”

  “But you’re either allergic to gluten or you’re not,” I said. “It’s not like fags, it’s not a bit of gluten is better for you than lots of gluten. Flour is just an ingredient.”

  “You can opt for wheat-free pasta?” the waitress suggested.

  “Blurgh, no thanks,” Lola replied, tossing her menu on the table. I stared at her, unsure of where to begin.

  “Burger with cheese, jalapeños and fries,” I said. Lola’s phone rang.

  “Hang on,” she said. “I left my cosmic shopping list at the li
brary.” She picked up the phone. “Hello?…Yes, we spoke earlier…well, I definitely left it there, so I’d appreciate it if you could look one more time…it’s just a piece of A4 paper with a list of words on it like ‘twin daughters’ and ‘my own events company’…okay…appreciate it, thank you.” She hung up.

  “Lola.”

  “What?”

  “Why can’t you just write another one?”

  “Because, my life coach and I did a whole ritual with that specific list and I can’t afford another session to do it all over again. I know you might think this stuff is silly, but it’s very easy to dismiss it when you’re all…loved up.” Our drinks hadn’t yet arrived and she had already said the thing she’d been wanting to say to me for weeks.

  “That’s got nothing to do with it, I thought you were loopy when we were both single.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “Thank you for coming to this thing with me tonight. I know you hate singles events. And I know you’re not technically single any more.”

  “Don’t be silly, I’ll always come to them with you.”

  “I got ghosted last week.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s when a person just stops speaking to you instead of having a break-up conversation.”

  “Why’s it called ghosting?”

  “Number of schools of thought,” she said, with the command of an academic. “Most commonly, it is thought to have come from the idea that you are haunted by someone who vanishes, you don’t get any closure. Others have said it derives from the three grey dots that appear then disappear when someone is writing you an iMessage and then doesn’t send it. Because it looks ghostly.”

  “I see. And which guy was this?”

  “Jared. Works in the charity sector.”

  “Oh no!” I said. “He seemed great.”

  “Yeah, well, they always do.”

  I wished, more than anything, that I could buy a Durex for her heart.

  “Didn’t he say he wanted you to meet his parents or something?”

  “Yep,” she nodded. “The last time I saw him he said: ‘If you fancy a weekend away from London, I’d love for you to come meet my parents.’ Then he kissed me goodbye and I never heard from him again. It’s been three weeks. I’ve sent nine messages, ten was my limit. So I’m saving it up to compose a really good one, I’m going to really give him a piece of my mind.”

  “Let’s write it together,” I said.

  “You are the only one who I could talk to about all the stuff we talk about.” Lola closed her eyes and flapped her hand gently, a pre-emptive dismissal of comfort as her eyes filled with tears.

  “Sweetheart,” I said, my hands reaching for hers across the table. “What’s the matter?”

  “I am so happy that you’ve met someone, I really am, I promise,” she said. “But now I really am all on my own. I’ve been left behind by everyone. I’m going to have to become that woman in the office who befriends all the graduates.”

  “No, you’re not!” I said. “First of all, I’m exactly the same person and we can still do exactly the same things and talk about the same things and hang out just as much. And secondly, who knows what will happen with Max and me. It’s not like once someone is in a relationship, they’re sorted for ever.”

  “No, but I want it to work out for you two. I don’t want to be one of those single women who resents the happiness of her friends, that’s not who I am. Oh God, I don’t know, maybe it’s—” Lola turned her phone over, opened the cycle-tracking app that every thirty-something woman I knew now seemed to be obsessed with. “No,” she said, defeated and sniffing. “Not even premenstrual.” The waitress arrived with our bottle of Pinot Grigio and poured it, while Lola dabbed her eyes with the frilly cuff of a strange Edwardian shirt she was wearing, replete with diamanté buttons.

  “Where are you taking me to tonight?”

  “An astrological matchmaking event. Everyone gets their birth charts done and then we get paired up with our most compatible partner, horoscopically speaking.”

  “Okay,” I said, happy to have distracted her. “And what are you?”

  “Your classic, middle-of-the-road, straight-down-the-line Pisces. We’re so predictable. I can spot one anywhere. I met my friend’s beagle the other day, and I guessed instantly that he was a Pisces, and he was!” She was clearly fragile, so I let this one go without mockery.

  “How interesting.”

  “Ideally, I’m looking for a Cancer, but they can be a bit too home-orientated and weirdly I’ve noticed often have psoriasis, which isn’t a problem of course.”

  “Mmm.”

  “You’re a Leo. What’s Max?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I hope he’s a Libra,” she said, crossing her fingers excitedly. “I’ve always wanted you to be with a Libra. Relaxed but fiercely loyal, that’s what you need. And they have whopper shlongs!”

  “Lola, come on.”

  “They do.”

  “I’ve already seen his cock, his cock isn’t going to suddenly enlarge once I discover he’s a Libra.”

  “It’s strange,” she said, wrinkling her nose slightly. “I’ve always been so unconvinced you’re a Leo.”

  I knew this was an insult, despite knowing nothing about horoscopes. “In what way?”

  “You’re just a bit…fussy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No, in a good way. You have much more of a controlled Virgo energy.”

  “Do you think, maybe…maybe…it could be a lie?”

  “Your birthdate? Could well be, actually. Could well be. I’ve heard of birth certificates being a few days out.”

  “No, not my birth certificate—star signs.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes squinted slightly as she conjured this thought as a possibility. “No.”

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, with the sort of hangover that makes you google ashrams, I found myself ten and a half miles away from my sofa and once again on Wandsworth Common against my will. The original plan was for Katherine to come to my flat to help me choose a paint colour for my bathroom, then go for a walk and lunch nearby, but at the last minute she said she couldn’t do the journey because of a childcare glitch. I was totally unsurprised—such is the superior trump card of motherhood that she once cancelled dinner with me an hour before we were meant to meet via a text explaining she had to “wake up in the morning etc.,” as if being childless gave me an option of not existing for the day.

  “And did she get any matches?” she asked as we strode beneath the tupelo trees, their amber leaves flickering like flames in the October wind.

  “No,” I said. “We turned up, and it was thirty-five women and five men.”

  “How poorly organized.”

  “I know, she was so disappointed. And the five men were all air signs, which apparently are the worst matches for Pisces, so we decided to cut our losses and we went to the pub instead.”

  “What’s she going to try next?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, my black lace-up boots pressing through ochre leaf mulch. “We decided to widen her Linx location preference from ten miles to fifty miles, as she’s heard some rumours of there being single farmers in the Home Counties. It just all feels so overwrought and I’m starting to finally see her patience run out. Like she might give up.”

  “I’m trying to think if Mark has any nice friends,” she said. I could tell her in one short answer: no, no he doesn’t. But Katherine couldn’t pass off an opportunity to act as The Gatekeeper To All Things Matrimonial. “Dear old Lola, I do worry about her.” There it was again.

  “How’s the baby?”

  “Good!” she said, stroking her small bump swathed in the grey wool of her coat. “Did I tell you we’ve found out the sex?�
��

  “And?” I yelped excitedly.

  “We’ve decided to keep it just between us,” she smiled.

  Ten and a half miles, I had travelled that morning. Ten and a half miles. “Why’s that then?” I asked flatly.

  “Just something for the family, you know?”

  “Mmm. Cool.”

  “But, yeah, we’re pleased,” she said enigmatically, as if she were a Hollywood starlet in an at-home shoot and I was a pushy journalist for Time magazine, following her around with a notepad. I could see the spread now, her dripping with diamonds and lounging on the sofa in a housecoat. The headline: My Weekend With Katherine. “So now we’re starting conversations about godparents,” she said.

  “Starting conversations,” I said. “And how many of the UN are involved?” I watched the inner conflict manifest on her face, trying to decide whether to jump on the joke and be a satirist with me, or defend her pomposity and be an arsehole.

  “Oh, we’re at the General Assembly next week,” she said. “Expect to see it on the front of the New York Times.”

  I laughed, begrudgingly. My best and oldest friend, stuck somewhere between her former earth-bound self and a new life, floating up and away from self-awareness and a sense of humour, to a place I couldn’t reach her. You don’t get to be both, I wanted to say to her. Which are you, Katherine? A satirist or an arsehole?

  * * *

  —

  We went back to her place for lunch. It was two o’clock and Mark was asleep—it turns out the “childcare glitch” was that he was too hung-over to look after his daughter and she’d had to be taken to Katherine’s mum for the morning. He had rung the doorbell at four a.m. because he was so drunk he couldn’t find his keys, and when Katherine answered the door and told him he had woken up Olive, he replied: “Who’s Olive?” Katherine told the story with a sort of rolly-eyed, boys-will-be-boys joviality she often employed when talking about her husband. Not for the first time upon looking in on my friends’ long-term relationships, I marvelled at how a marriage ironically seemed to provide men of my generation with even more of an excuse to not grow up. When Olive was still a newborn, Mark once spent the day at Twickenham with some colleagues and got so drunk he passed out in a friend’s wardrobe and woke up soaked in his own urine. They still talk about the incident with the warmth of a family anecdote to be passed along the generations. If Katherine had done the same, either social services would have been alerted or at the very least she would have been spoken about as a new mother free-falling into self-destruction and parental neglect. For Mark, it was just a big day out at the rugby.