Ghosts

by Dolly Alderton

  “Ah,” she said, like she had found the glasses she’d been looking for under the sofa cushion. She was so hard to faze or shock, and it was deeply reassuring. “Has he been seen yet?”

  “No, they’ve said they want to do some checks? But we’re not sure what checks.”

  “It will be a physical and blood pressure. They’ll be trying to work out if he fell and hit his head or if he had a mini-stroke and that was the reason for his fall.”

  “Okay.”

  “He’ll be out by tonight. And I’ll be round at the house first thing in the morning and we can talk it all through.”

  “Thank you, Gwen. We’ve decided we need some more help. We want to know our options for hiring a carer.”

  “Of course,” she said. “We can look at all the care agencies in your area and work out which one will be most suited for what you need.”

  “Great.”

  “Is everything all right between you and your mum?” she asked.

  “It wasn’t,” I said, looking up at Mum who was diligently reapplying concealer under her eyes. “It is now.”

  “Okay, that’s good,” she said. “Do you know, Nina, I’ve been doing this job a long time and if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that when someone stands at the end of an aisle aged twenty-seven and says ‘in sickness and in health,’ and they mean it with all their heart, no one specifically imagines this.”

  “You’re right,” I said.

  “Take it easy on her.”

  “I will.” Mum gestured that she wanted to speak to her. “I’m going to pass you on to Mum now. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  When I returned to the cubicle, Dad was sitting up in the bed. His eyes were brighter.

  “How you doing?” I asked, sitting by the side of the bed and passing a paper cup of water. “Bit better for having had a nap?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But how are you?”

  “I’m okay,” I said, removing the lid of the cold, bitter coffee and taking a sip.

  “No, come on, tell me everything, I want to hear it all,” he continued. “Because the last time I saw you, you were Peter Pan.” I laughed. He looked surprised. Then he started laughing too—big, bellowing guffaws that turned into wheezes. Every time the laughter subsided, we’d catch each other’s eye and laugh some more. He laughed so much he did his hissing Muttley cackle through his teeth. I knew why I was laughing—because of the absurd mess we had all found ourselves in; a chaos we could have never predicted. And though he didn’t say it, I knew that’s why he was laughing too.

  As I watched him surrender to the silly, untameable joy of hysterical giggles, I realized that while the future might strip him of his self, something mightier remained. His soul would always exist somewhere separate and safe. No one and nothing—no disease, no years of ageing—could take that away from him. His soul was indestructible.

  “Oh dear,” he said, after our laughter had finally quietened. “You seem fretful. Why are you so fretful?”

  “Can I be honest?”

  “Yes, please do be honest.”

  “I’ve found everything really difficult recently. And I can’t work out if this is just a tricky period or whether this is what adulthood is now—disappointment and worry.”

  “What are you worried about?”

  “I’m worried I’m not going to live the life I always thought I’d have. I’m worried I have to come up with a new plan.”

  “There’s no point coming up with a plan,” he said, shaking his head sternly. “Life is what happens…”

  “I know, I know,” I said, acknowledging our favourite Lennon line—as glib as it was profound. “I know that clever women aren’t meant to worry about having a family. And I know I still have time. But I’m scared that if I don’t plan for it, it will never happen.”

  He shrugged. “It might not ever happen.”

  I found the starkness of this fact strangely comforting. No one had ever said it to me before. Everyone had always said, in one way or another, that I could have whatever I wanted.

  “Now look,” he said, “you got a distinction for your grade seven violin exam.”

  “That’s right,” I said, unsure of where this fact would take us.

  “You know you can’t pass grade seven in all this,” he said, presenting me with one of his riddles with which I had become so familiar. I knew, if I thought for long enough, I could find the logic within it—I always did. “Listen to me: you will not be able to get a distinction with all of this,” he said slowly. “And that’s half the experience. That means everything’s going right. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Dad,” I said. “I understand.”

  The doorbell rang at ten o’clock on a Friday night. It had been three weeks since I had last seen or heard from Max and, just like last time he disappeared, every time there was someone at the door, I would walk to it saying a silent incantation: Please be him. Please be him. Something terrible happened and he couldn’t get hold of me. But now he’s here. Please be him.

  I opened the door to find Katherine. She was leaning against the wall and everything about her looked a little skew-whiff—slightly bloodshot eyes, stringy hair overdue a shampoo. She carried a blue corner-shop plastic bag in her hand.

  “Nina!” she cried joyfully.

  “Hi,” I said, unsure of whether she was here for confrontation or reconciliation. “Why are you in London?”

  “Seeing you! I miss you!” she said, lunging towards me with open arms and pulling me in for a hug. She let herself in and walked up the stairs, the plastic bag swinging in her hand. “I had a free night without the kids and I thought: where do I want to go, who do I want to see? I want to get pissed with my best and oldest mate, that’s what I want to do.” She was talking to herself, wittering aloud the way Olive did when she played with her toys. She was either in the midst of a breakdown, or spectacularly drunk. “Because how long has it been since I got pissed? Er: a hundred years, I think! And how long has it been since I’ve seen my best friend?”

  “About two months,” I said humourlessly as I led her into the flat.

  “God, I bloody love this place!” she said, flinging the plastic bag on the sofa, along with herself. I hadn’t seen Katherine like this in years—sloppy and enthusiastic about everything. It was rare she got drunk—she always liked to be in control of herself—it was even rarer she got this drunk.

  “Where’s your handbag?” I asked.

  “Don’t need one, FUCK handbags! It’s like our whole lives we’re…carrying things? As women? You know? And we just don’t need to.”

  “Where are the kids?”

  “Ugh,” she said, throwing her head back on the sofa. “With Mark.”

  “Is he…all right with them?” I realized how ridiculous this question was as I asked it.

  “Of course he’s all right with them, he’s their fucking father, not their teenage brother. Although, you wouldn’t know it.” She took two gin and tonics in a can out of the clanking plastic bag and threw one to me. She cracked the other one open and took a swig. “Do you know, when Olive was one—ONE—I had my first night away from home for a friend’s hen do. Mark was so nervous about being on his own with her, I had to write him this long bloody manual on how to operate his own bloody daughter, like she was a new iPhone. Anyway, I didn’t hear anything from him all night, I was so pleased it had gone well. The next day I find out he’d hired a babysitter.”

  “Did he go out?”

  “Nope. Just sat in the next room, watching A Question of Sport.” She tipped her head back to drink more from the can and its contents spilt down her chin. She wiped it with the sleeve of her blouse without acknowledging her clumsiness. She sank further into the sofa and splayed her legs as far as her skin-tight jeans would allow. “Have you got any weed?”

  “Of cours
e not.”

  “Let’s buy some! Let’s take some weed!”

  “Katherine, last time you and I ‘took’ weed we both vomited. We’re not party girls and we never will be.”

  “Speak for yourself, maestro!” she shouted. Maestro? “Right, we’re going out dancing.” She stood up purposefully and walked out of the room. I didn’t know how to respond to any of this. She was clearly too drunk to talk about our friendship in any meaningful way, but I felt too unsettled by our argument to pretend we were fine and have a big night out together.

  I followed her into my bedroom, where she was standing in front of my full-length mirror.

  “I hate all my fucking clothes,” she said. “I look like a soon-to-be-retired school registrar all the fucking time. Can I borrow something of yours?”

  “Sure,” I said, sitting on the bed and observing her. She took her peach blouse off and lassoed it round her head. She went to throw it on the bed and it got caught in the lampshade, which she found implausibly funny. I laughed along for the appropriate amount of time, while she continued for longer and louder than was necessary. Her face fell when she caught mine.

  “Oh, come on, Nina, HAVE A LAUGH!” she shouted wearily. Was there anything more annoying than someone so drunk they could barely stand up telling you what was and wasn’t funny?

  “I am having a laugh,” I said unconvincingly.

  “Get another drink down ya!” she said, throwing open my wardrobe and flipping through my clothes like pages of a magazine. I decided she was right and went to the kitchen to pour myself a whisky. I needed to smooth the edges of this jagged encounter.

  I came back to find her in my black swimsuit with cut-outs revealing bare skin at the sides.

  “Love this top,” she said, hopping up and down as she yanked her jeans on over her thighs.

  “That’s a swimsuit.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Do you really want to go out wearing a swimsuit?”

  “Yeah, come on. Upcycling. Haven’t you heard? The end of fast fashion! Austerity Britain!” She guffawed at her own non-joke that made no sense. “See? You think I’m some provincial potato-head who doesn’t read the Guardian but I do read the fucking Guardian.”

  I took another large mouthful of whisky, which burnt deliciously as it slid down my throat.

  * * *

  —

  I took her to The Institution. The last time I’d been here was on my first date with Max, at the end of last summer. Here I was again, at the beginning of this summer. I imagined going back to myself as the ghost of summer future, telling that girl in her high heels and jeans what this first online date with a man would lead to. I wondered how long she might have stayed. I considered floating this observation to Katherine then decided not to. She was at a level of drunkenness where I had to assess everything I was about to say, to work out whether she’d understand it or if the act of explaining it would be more hassle than it was worth. We queued at the busy bar while Katherine’s bare shoulders bopped up and down in front of me in time with the music.

  “Max and I came here on our first date,” I said into her ear.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. We got back together, by the way.”

  She turned to face me. “What? When?”

  “That night I last saw you, actually.” I waited for her face to register an emotion at the mention of our argument—nothing.

  “And?” she said. “How’s it going?”

  “It was going great, but he’s ghosted me again.”

  “No!” she cried. “When?”

  “Few weeks ago. It’s completely my fault. I’m an idiot for taking him back.”

  “Hey,” she said, holding me by both of my arms. “You are not an idiot.” I was about to be hit with a series of meaningless declarations about how amazing I was, I could tell. These drunken niceties are what these once-solid-now-flimsy female friendships relied on. They were the string that kept us connected, as thin as dental floss. “You are an amazing woman, Nina. No, honestly. You’ve got a great career, loads of friends, a flat, you’re gorgeous. He was very, very lucky to have known you, let alone been with you!”

  “Thanks.”

  “Right, what are you drinking? Shots? Shots.” She leant over the bar and shouted into the server’s ear. “TWO VODKA TONICS PLEASE. DOUBLES. AND TWO SHOTS OF TEQUILA.” She turned to look at me and winked, then turned back to the barmaid. “FOUR, FOUR SHOTS OF TEQUILA. FIVE! ONE FOR YOU, LOVE.” The shots were lined up on the bar, along with a saucer of lemon wedges and a shaker of table salt. “HERE’S TO MEN BEING TWATS!” she shouted, clinking her miniature glass against mine and then the one belonging to the exhausted-looking barmaid.

  I tried to quickly catch up with Katherine’s drunkenness as we sat in a booth by the bar, gulping down our drinks.

  “So what’s actually happened with you and Mark?” I said. “You seem angry at him.”

  “I am angry at him,” she said. “We had a big row.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then I came to see you.”

  “Does he know where you are?”

  “Nope!” she said, popping the “p” enthusiastically.

  “Should I let him know where you are?”

  “No fucking way. I never misbehave. I always do what he wants. I took his stupid surname, I moved to stupid Surrey, I go on all-inclusive holidays with his stupid friends and their stupid wives and children. He can do what I WANT for a change. And what I WANT is to make him worry I’m DEAD. That’s what I want! That’s my new favourite hobby!” She cackled manically. “It used to be spin classes and now it’s making my husband worry I’m DEAD.”

  “Katherine,” I reasoned, unsure of what to say next. It was impossible to feel drunk around her. Everything she said made me feel sober and concerned.

  “Oh my God, Nina, listen! Listen!” The bassline of “The Edge of Heaven” reverberated from beneath us. “IT’S YOUR SONG!” Before I had a chance to protest, she yanked me by my hand and pulled me downstairs and on to the dance floor.

  I had forgotten what a terrible dancer Katherine was. I always found this particularly endearing about otherwise very beautiful and elegant women. It might have been the sexiest thing about her, in fact—the only wonky, weird physical flaw you could find. She had absolutely no sense of rhythm and moved herself with wild, jerky abandon. The longitude of her body stayed still and stiff while her long, gangly limbs moved like cooked spaghetti flailing around a colander. She bit down on her bottom lip and would only open her mouth to sing the wrong lyrics.

  “THIS ISN’T ACTUALLY MY SONG,” I shouted over the music as we danced.

  “WHA?” she shouted back.

  “THIS ISN’T MY SONG.”

  “YEAH IT IS. IT WAS NUMBER ONE WHEN YOU WERE BORN.”

  “NO, IT WASN’T,” I said, my throat scratchy from straining my voice. “MY MUM LIED. ‘LADY IN RED’ BY CHRIS DE BURGH WAS NUMBER ONE WHEN I WAS BORN.”

  Katherine stopped dancing and looked aghast.

  “Oh fuck,” she said, putting her hand over her mouth.

  “I KNOW,” I said, continuing to dance. “I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT.”

  “I THINK I’M GOING TO BE SICK.”

  I took her hand in mine and pulled her off the dance floor as fast as I could. We rushed upstairs as she clasped her palm to her mouth, gagging as she went. As soon as we were outside and engulfed by the cool night air, she folded in on herself and vomited. I held back her hair and she gripped on to my arm. We were by a long queue of people waiting to get into The Institution. All of them laughed or grimaced.

  “Oi,” the bouncer said. I looked up at him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “New mum. First night out since she had the baby.” I gentl
y guided Katherine to the side of the building, on to an empty street.

  “I love you, Nina,” she slurred, in between retches.

  “I know you do.”

  “I really love you.”

  We both sat on the pavement in silence, waiting for the sickness to pass. Hiccups came in its place. I ordered us a taxi back to mine.

  * * *

  —

  When we got into my flat, I had to help her up the stairs. She leant on the corridor wall for support.

  “What would you like?” I asked.

  “Water.”

  “Okay, I’ll get you a glass of water.”

  “No, on my body!” she protested. “Water all over my body!”

  I’d forgotten how melodramatic people this drunk could be.

  She lay on my bathroom floor and I undressed her. The overhead spotlights robbed her of all her dignity as she thrashed about unselfconsciously. I manoeuvred her into the bath, where she lay sprawled and half asleep. I held the showerhead and tested the water on my hand. When it was warm enough, I hovered it above her body and moved it from her head to her toes. She shut her eyes and gave a sweetly satisfied smile—with her dark wet hair slicked back, she looked like a baby otter. It was the first time I’d seen Katherine naked since she’d had babies. I noticed changes I could never have seen through her clothes. Her hips had expanded, magically, like a sponge blooming in water. Her tummy—formerly so taut and hard—had softened and, in one part, slightly crinkled. Her nipples were pinker and swollen; her breasts were big enough to lie down on her ribcage, whereas before they’d never touched it. She’d made two lives in that body. It was a reminder of the changes she’d been through, that perhaps I would never understand. I felt a pang of guilt.

  I gave her a pair of cotton pyjama shorts and a mug of black coffee. She got into my bed and sat upright against the headboard. The shower and caffeine had straightened her out. I perched next to her on top of the duvet.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so.”