Ghosts

by Dolly Alderton

  We drove down in his car and arrived Friday afternoon. Sleeping in a new place that wasn’t his or mine, but ours—even just for three nights—felt like we were playing house. As we unpacked our bags and put groceries in the fridge, we seemed like two children pretending to be adults. It reminded me of the first night Katherine and I spent in our first flat-share as graduates. “Grown-ups now,” she said through a smile as we ate beans on toast while sitting on the stained carpet in a living room with no furniture.

  In the late afternoon on Saturday, he went for a run. When he returned, pink-faced and damp-haired, I was making pastry for dinner. He stood, leaning in the kitchen door frame, catching his breath.

  “Fuck.”

  “What?”

  “This is all I want.”

  “What is?”

  “Walking into a room to find you doing something with flour and butter.”

  I laughed. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” He made a lustful groan. “That’s exactly what I want. But I also want you to have some flour on your face, just like a streak on your cheek, that would make it perfect.”

  “Women only bake with a perfectly placed streak of flour on their face in films. All domestic fantasies are a lie in films—we don’t drape a sheet around ourselves in the morning. And we don’t wear our boyfriend’s shirt and nothing else when we’re doing DIY.”

  “Just put a bit of flour on your face, c’mon,” he pleaded. I reluctantly smeared some on my cheek. “Perfect. And I want you in a really big kitchen, maybe a barn kitchen.”

  “Okay, into that.”

  He walked towards me and wrapped his arms around me from behind. He spoke into my hair. “And you’d be totally naked other than an apron.” He kissed my neck. “And I’d obviously have to pinch your arse.” I turned around to face him. “And you’d say, ‘Not in front of the kids.’ ”

  My heart double-pirouetted. I had been betrayed by my biology, which was a bandersnatch, a sneaky, fast-moving nuisance that was indifferent to logic. It would be a terrible idea to have a baby with Max any time in the near future—it was inappropriate to even talk about it. And yet, my body reacted to the thought of it as if it were the only solution. His joking words awoke an insatiable craving—deeply embedded desires that were placed inside me without my approval. Who had put them there? Had I inherited it? Was it my mother? Or my grandmother? I hadn’t made this choice. I got to choose the number of espresso shots in my coffee, the colour of my light switches and the accent and gender of my satnav’s voice. I was tirelessly in charge of every single tiny decision I made, every single day. So who had decided I wanted a baby, more than anything, on my behalf?

  “Why would I be cooking naked if I was in front of children?”

  “Shh,” he said.

  “You’re conflating two fantasy narratives that should be kept completely separate.”

  “Fine.”

  How easy it was for him to play this game. How enjoyable it must be, to throw these hypothetical scenarios into conversation, knowing the primal panic it might ignite in a woman over thirty. How powerful he must have felt. This was not the first time we had done this sort of wholesome role play and every time he pushed it a little further, to see how deep into the fantasy we dared to go. It was the dirty talk of this decade—when once couples whispered in each other’s ears about going out and picking up a girl who we’d take home and have a threesome with, now we talked about baby names and whether we’d have sons or daughters. Who cared if we’d ever see it through? That wasn’t the point of the game. It was exciting enough just to hear the words being spoken aloud.

  “And, Max,” I said with a reprimanding tone, “watch yourself. Remember, I’m not saying any of this, it’s you. We don’t want you getting all confused and scared again.” We had finally got to a point where we could laugh about what had happened, as it no longer threatened to repeat itself.

  “I know, I know,” he said, giving me a playful spank and leaving the kitchen. We didn’t talk about it again.

  * * *

  —

  We spent the following afternoon in a local pub. When he came back from the bar with our third round, he had a packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps in his teeth and the newspaper and supplements in his hand. He dropped them both on the table.

  “You’re in today’s, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Column about rhubarb. And an interview with a chef.”

  Max opened up the magazine and flipped to find my pages. He pointed at my severe by-line photo. “Look!” he said.

  “Yep.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Really? It’s not that big a deal. You’ve read my work before.”

  “Yeah, but it feels so much more real and immediate sitting with you now, knowing that these words are reaching thousands of people today as they drink their pints or ate their breakfast.”

  “I suppose—”

  “Shh,” he said, putting his hand over my mouth while keeping his eyes on the page. “I’m reading.”

  I’d never watched Max read my words before. He nodded occasionally, he sometimes laughed. I knew he would have had thoughts that weren’t all positive—he was always observing and analysing. But I could tell that we were experiencing a relationship milestone—when you see the person you love through the eyes of strangers for the first time. As he read me, he could imagine other people reading me, and remember what it was like to see me and speak to me that first night we met.

  He put down the magazine.

  “I don’t think you know how envious I am of you, Nina,” he said, knocking back the last of his beer. “This pays your mortgage. Your interests pay your mortgage. It’s amazing.”

  “Well,” I said, “interviewing a hero is a particular highlight and doesn’t happen that often. It’s not all like that. Last week, thousands of people wanted me dead on Twitter because I miscalculated the ingredients for a recipe and said it needed ten kilos of Cheddar, rather than a hundred grams.”

  He laughed into his pint.

  “And a huge portion of my days are spent on the phone to accounts departments, asking to be paid for work I completed months ago. And I had an argument with a really difficult food stylist on a shoot last week.”

  “But you love your job.”

  “I’m very lucky. For the most part, I love my job.”

  “You’re not just lucky, I know you’ve worked hard for it.”

  “Lots of people work very hard and they still hate their job.”

  “Like me,” he said, spinning his circular beer mat on the table.

  “Do you really hate it that much?”

  “Hate it.”

  “There has to be something else you can do that uses your skills and makes you all right money that you don’t dread every morning.” He nodded. “We’re all going to live for much longer than ever before, so we’re going to be working for the majority of our lives. We can’t hate the majority of our lives.”

  “I know,” he sighed. “Trust me, I think about it a lot.”

  “I have an idea!” I said with drunken enthusiasm. “Let’s make a list of all the things you like doing. Have you got a pen?” A waiter walked past. “Excuse me, could I borrow your pen, please?” He pulled a biro from his pocket and handed it to me. “Thank you.”

  “Nina—” Max protested.

  I took a notepad out from my handbag.

  “Right, let’s make a list of everything that you love and everything that you hate. Can be big or small, professional or completely random. Even if it doesn’t feel relevant, we should still write it down at this stage. So. What makes you happiest?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do. Being outside. Nothing makes you happier.”

  “Can we not do this?”

  “Come on, it
’s only between us.”

  “Can you please stop acting like a school careers adviser?” he said. “Sorry. I know you’re trying to be helpful. But it makes me feel like a child.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Don’t worry,” I said. I finished my wine and we left.

  * * *

  —

  Max was mostly silent on the walk back to the cottage, it was only me who spoke with enforced, drunken jolliness, desperate to keep the light mood of the afternoon afloat. I had never seen him so absorbed in his own thoughts and unresponsive to me. Eventually I stopped trying to make conversation.

  “Why did you do that stuff with the condensed milk company?” he asked.

  “You know why,” I said. “I’ve told you about it before. Those jobs pay the bills.”

  “You shouldn’t do them any more. It’s really clear that your writing is best when you actually believe what you’re saying.”

  “I always actually believe what I’m saying, otherwise I wouldn’t say it. I’m not that much of a sell-out.”

  “Like me?”

  “Max,” I said, stopping on the empty, winding lane lined with foxgloves. He stopped walking as well. “Do you want to talk about this or not? I’m happy to talk about your job, but please don’t say you don’t want to talk about it then make passive-aggressive digs at me.”

  “I’m not being passive-aggressive. I’m giving you constructive feedback.”

  It was the first time I’d seen any sign of insecurity in him. For a moment, his carapace of cool masculinity had cracked. I saw him without his props. Without the big salary and the sports car, without the Americana on vinyl and the Bob Dylan CDs in his glove compartment, without his weathered knitwear and the desert boots caked in mud. The bricks of self had fallen, just for a few minutes, and all I could see was a nervous little boy who had been hiding underneath. I could forgive, just this once, his belligerence.

  * * *

  —

  “This nose,” I said as we lay in bed that night. I dragged my finger along the hard curve of it. “It’s the most assertive nose I’ve ever seen. That nose has never been wrong about anything.”

  “I have my dad’s nose.”

  “Do you look like your dad? I’ve never seen a proper photo of him other than that one in your flat.”

  “I don’t think I have one,” he said. “But yeah, I do look like him. A lot like him.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I once read Freud say that when two people have sex, there are at least six people in the room. The couple and both of their parents.”

  “What a thoroughly unenjoyable orgy.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you think that’s true?”

  “I think my dad is always going to be a missing piece for me, in every situation. No matter how much I talk or think about it, no matter how much I analyse it. It’s always going to torment me in a very quiet way.”

  “Boys and their dads,” I said. “I don’t think there’s a parent-child dynamic that’s more potent.”

  “Yeah,” he said, rubbing his head as if to iron out the uncomfortable creases of his thoughts.

  “Why did he leave your mum?” I asked. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

  “He met someone else.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Two.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “How did your mum cope with it?”

  “Emotionally, she never really gave anything away. She just got on with it. Financially, it was tough. I remember, when I was eight, she gave me a fiver to get some milk from the shop in the village. I bought her a box of chocolates as a present, because I was aware she didn’t have a husband like the other mums, and when I got home and gave it to her she burst into tears. It was only recently she told me the reason she was crying was that was the last five-pound note she had to feed us for a week.”

  “God, Max. That’s a horrible memory, I’m sorry.”

  “I think that’s why I feel so wedded to a job I hate. Because I don’t ever want to worry about money like that.”

  “How old were you when you met your dad again?”

  “Nine. I came home and Mum told me he was waiting in the living room. We had nothing to say to each other, he didn’t know how to talk to me.”

  “What’s your relationship like now?”

  “We don’t have one. He still doesn’t know how to talk to me. He sent me an email for my birthday last year two months late, wishing me a happy thirtieth.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I worked out a long time ago that the best way to not be disappointed is to not give him a chance to disappoint me.”

  “Is he with the woman he left your mum for?”

  “No. He left her when she was pregnant.”

  “Has he been with anyone since?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How many?”

  “Lost count,” he said.

  “Did he have more than one child after you?”

  “Yep.”

  “How many?”

  “Lost count,” he said with a defeated laugh.

  “Do you worry you’re like your dad?” I immediately regretted the question—it was goading and seemed to relate his experience back to me.

  “We’re all like our dads,” he said. “Come on then, what ghosts are you bringing to the orgy?”

  “I don’t know, really. My parents’ relationship is very boring. I don’t think they’re soulmates, they’re so disconnected in so many ways, but they’re complementary to each other. And they’re best friends, they really have a good time together. Well, they used to. It’s hard to remember what their relationship was like before Dad got ill. His behaviour is so different now, obviously, but so is hers. I can’t remember her being this self-obsessed. And there must be a reason for it—but I can’t work out what it is. I think she is just pretending what’s happening isn’t happening. Or maybe she doesn’t want to care for Dad any more, I know how upsetting it must be. Maybe she just finds it too hard.” Max had become completely quiet as I spoke. We had never talked about our families like this. “It was always Dad and me who were the closest—he was the one who I talked to the most when I was a teenager. He taught me how to drive. He taught me everything. Mum and I were never like those mums and daughters who are best friends. But I’ve never felt quite so distant from her as I do now. And that scares me because Dad’s not going to be here soon. I don’t know how soon, it could be years and years, but sooner than I thought. And it will just be me and her. That will be my whole family. And I don’t know how I’ll have any sort of relationship with her when he isn’t here. I think Dad is the only thing we have in common.” My words hung above the bed. More silence. I couldn’t work out exactly when he’d fallen asleep.

  * * *

  —

  We drove back to London on Monday morning in contented quiet. We had entered the stage of our relationship where not every journey had to be filled with conversation, where we weren’t greedily trying to eat each other up, as if we feared we had a use-by date. We knew we had time now. It stretched ahead of us endlessly like the tarmac of the motorway. My palm rested on his leg as he drove. Hot, thick sun poured over us, warming the leather of his car seats.

  He dropped me off outside my flat. His car ignition gave a leonine roar as he drove away down my road. I stood on the doorstep to wave him off—romantic and corny, but the kind of gesture he appreciated. I blew him a kiss. He held his hand aloft, waving goodbye without looking back. His car turned left and he disappeared.

  When I agreed to meet Jethro and Lola at the pub, I knew that I was in for quite an afternoon. Their continuous stream of social media posts, captioned with long declarations of love and littered with in-jokes, had foreshadowed this lunch. But I hadn’t anticipated quite how oxyt
ocin-drunk the pair of them would be. When Jethro saw me, he opened his arms wide and embraced me for longer than I was comfortable. “Nina,” he said, on a deep outward breath. “Nina, Nina. At last we meet. How long I have waited.” The whole thing felt unnecessarily ceremonious, like I was the wise, elderly leader of a tribe and Lola had returned with a partner for approval. Lola was no better—every time Jethro said anything, even something as innocuous as “I live in Clerkenwell,” she would look to me with an expectant smile as if to say Isn’t he amazing?! and wouldn’t break my gaze until I gave her a grin or a nod to confirm that, yes, he really was amazing. The pair of them finished each other’s sentences so smoothly it felt choreographed and, on the rare occasions they interrupted each other, they’d touch hands and say: “No, you go, darling, I’m so sorry, I spoke over you. No, I insist, my love, you go first.”

  They loved explaining things about each other to me: “Jethro doesn’t need much sleep whereas I, as you know, need nine hours”; “Lola is someone who very much carries the emotions of others”; “More and more, we are seriously considering a move to Mexico City.” Lola kept finding ways to join us together with tenuous links, whether it was what food we ordered or what we both laughed at—she would turn to Jethro and say, “See? What did I say? Like twins, you two,” and he would nod with knowing gravitas.

  They also loved telling stories that either heavily hinted or explicitly described how much sex they were having. Jethro was clearly a man who thought he knew the female body better than any woman; that it was not only his job but his gift to the world, to educate us on how it all worked.

  “Any woman can have an internal orgasm if their G-spot is stimulated correctly,” he told me as he tucked into shepherd’s pie.

  “They can, Nina, they really can,” Lola said excitedly. She had not only lost her mind, but all sense of social appropriateness.

  “Very interesting,” I said. When Lola wasn’t hinting at the sexual awakening she was currently undergoing, she relished telling me the mundane details of their cohabitation. She told me about the surprising amount of grooming products he’d left in her bathroom; how annoying it was that he filled the fridge with green smoothies. This was something she’d never experienced before—she’d never been close enough to a man to do the “him indoors” bit. She was not only in love with being in love, she was in love with finally being able to complain about someone. It would have been churlish of me not to allow it.