Ghosted

by Rosie Walsh

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  penguin.com

  A Pamela Dorman Book/Viking

  Copyright © 2018 by Rosie Walsh Ltd.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  First published in Great Britain under the title The Man Who Didn’t Call by Mantle, an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  ISBN: 9780525522775 (hardcover)

  ISBN: 9780525522782 (ebook)

  ISBN: 9780525559627 (international edition)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_2

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Part IChapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Part IIChapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Part IIIChapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks first and foremost to George Pagliero and Emma Stonex, for that strange hot day when we all agreed that I was to write this book without further delay. For the tremendous support and enthusiasm that followed.

  Warmest thanks to Pam Dorman, my editor, for brilliant editorial wisdom and such strong vision for, and deep understanding of, the book. To Brian Tart, Kate Stark, Lindsay Prevette, Kate Griggs, Roseanne Serra, Jeramie Orton, and the rest of the team at Pamela Dorman Books / Viking. It really is an honor to be a part of such an exceptional list.

  Endless gratitude to Allison Hunter, my tireless U.S. agent, who nearly killed me in an exercise class but then turned it around and secured me the book deal of dreams. To my UK agent, Lizzy Kremer, who masterminded everything so superbly, and without whom I would be quite lost. Thanks also to Harriet Moore and Olivia Barber.

  Thank you to Sam Humphreys of Mantle, UK, for loving this story from the get-go, and for the incisive and thoughtful editing that made it so much better than it could have been. Thanks also to the other editors around the world who acquired it, too. I still can’t believe it! My gratitude to Alice Howe of David Higham Associates, and her mighty translation rights department: Emma Jamison, Emily Randle, Camilla Dubini, and Margaux Vialleron.

  Sincere thanks to Old Robsonians, a real football team of whom I am inordinately fond. They donated a very generous sum of money to the children’s charity CLIC Sargent for a mention in this book.

  To Gemma Kicks and the wonderful charity Hearts & Minds, for their generous help when I was researching Clowndoctor charities. I was amazed and inspired by the real difference their Clowndoctors make to children’s lives, each and every day. Thanks also to Lynne Barlow of Bristol Children’s hospital.

  Thank you to Emma Williams, community psychiatric nurse; James Gallagher, cabinet maker; and Victoria Bodey, parent of young boys. Thanks to the many friends who answered a neverending stream of (often very personal) questions on Facebook.

  To Emma Stonex, Sue Mongredien, Katy Regan, Kirsty Greenwood, and Emma Holland for valuable feedback on the manuscript in its various stages. And most of all to my dear writing partner, Deborah O’Donoghue, without whom I’m not sure I could have written this book. So many great ideas in this book came from you, Deb—thank you. I can’t wait to see your own novel on the shelves.

  Thank you to my SWANS—South West Authors and Novelists—for support, great lunches, and laughter. To the ladies of CAN for the same. Thank you to Lindsey Kelk for my LA research trip and mostly very un-writerly discussions. Thank you to Rosie Mason and family for the many memorable days playing in that beautiful valley, and Ellie Tinto, for keeping the spirit of Margery Kempe alive and very impious.

  Thank you to Lyn, Brian, and Caroline Walsh, who have always encouraged me in everything I do, and who’ve been so proud of me as I’ve forged ahead as a writer under my own name. And thank you, above all, to my darling George and our tiny, funny, perfect little man, who has changed forever my understanding of love.

  We can perhaps only ever fall in love without knowing quite who we have fallen in love with.

  Alain de Botton

  Essays in Love

  Part I

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dear You,

  It’s exactly nineteen years since that luminous morning when we smiled and said good-bye. That we would see each other again was never in doubt, was it? It was a question of when, not if. In fact, it wasn’t even a question. The future might have seemed as insubstantial as the curled edge of a dream, but it unequivocally contained us both. Together.

  And yet it didn’t. Even after all these years I find myself stunned by that.

  Nineteen years since that day. Nineteen whole years! And I’m still looking for you. I will never stop looking for you.

  Often you appear when I expect it least. Earlier today I was trapped in some pointless dark thought or other, my body clenched like a metal fist. Then suddenly you were there: a bright autumn leaf cartwheeling over a dull pewter lawn. I uncurled and smelled life, felt dew on my feet, saw shades of green. I tried to grab hold of you, that vivid leaf, cavorting and wr
iggling and giggling. I tried to take your hand, look straight at you, but like an optical black spot you slid silently sideways, just out of reach.

  I will never stop looking for you.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Day Seven: When We Both Knew

  The grass had become damp. Damp and dark and full of industry. Stretching away toward the blackened ridge of the woods, it quivered with battalions of ants and ponderous snails and tiny, gossamer-spinning spiders. Underneath us, the earth drew to itself a last residue of warmth.

  Eddie, lying next to me, was humming the Star Wars theme tune. His thumb stroked mine. Slowly, gently, like the clouds moving across the fine clip of moon above us. “Let’s search for aliens,” he’d said earlier, as the violet sky had thickened to purple. We were still there.

  I heard the distant sigh of the last train disappearing into the tunnel farther up the hill and I smiled, remembering when Hannah and I used to camp out here as children. In a small field in this same small valley, hidden from what still felt like a small world.

  At the first sign of summer Hannah would beg our parents to put up the tent.

  Sure, they said. As long as you camp in the garden.

  The garden was flat. It was at the front of our house, overlooked by almost every window. But it was never enough for Hannah, whose spirit of adventure—even though she was five years my junior—had always exceeded mine. She wanted the field. The field straggled up the steep hill behind our house, flattening just enough at the top to fit a tent. It was overlooked by nothing other than the sky. It was speckled with hard Frisbees of cowpat and was so high up you could almost look down our chimney.

  Our parents were not so keen on the field.

  “But I’ll be perfectly safe,” Hannah would insist, in that bossy little voice. (How I missed that voice.)

  “I’ll have Alex with me.” Hannah’s best friend spent most of her time at our house. “And Sarah. She can protect us if any murderers come.”

  As if I were a well-built man with a reliable right hook.

  “And you won’t have to make our dinner if we go camping. Or our breakfast . . .”

  Hannah was like a tiny bulldozer—she never ran out of counterarguments—and our parents inevitably gave in. At first they camped in the field with us, but eventually, as I fought on through the knotted jungle of adolescence, they allowed Hannah and Alex to sleep up there alone, with me as bodyguard.

  We would lie in Dad’s old festival tent—a lumbering thing made of orange canvas, like a small bungalow—and listen to the symphony of sounds in the grass outside. Often, I’d stay awake long after my little sister and her friend had slackened into sleep, wondering what kind of protection I’d actually be able to offer were someone to burst in. The necessity of protecting Hannah—not just as she slept in this tent, but always—felt like molten rock in my stomach, a volcano barely contained. And yet what would I actually do? Karate chop them with my teenage wrist? Stab them with a marshmallow-toasting stick?

  Often hesitant, not entirely certain of herself, was how my form tutor had described me on a report.

  “Well, that’s really bloody useful,” Mum had said, in the voice she normally reserved for telling off our father. “Ignore her, Sarah. Be as uncertain as you like! That’s what your teenage years are for!”

  Exhausted, eventually, by the competing forces of protectiveness and powerlessness, I’d fall asleep, waking early to assemble whatever disgusting combination of things Hannah and Alex had packed for their infamous “breakfast sandwich.”

  I laid a hand on my chest; dimmed the lights on the memory. It wasn’t an evening for sadness; it was an evening for now. For Eddie and me, and the great, still-growing thing between us.

  I concentrated on the sounds of a woodland clearing at night. Invertebrate rustle, mammalian shuffle. The green whisper of moving leaves, the untroubled rise and fall of Eddie’s breath. I listened to his heart, beating evenly through his jumper, and marveled at his steadiness. “More will be revealed,” my father always liked to say about people. “You have to watch and wait, Sarah.” But I’d been watching this man for a week, and I hadn’t sensed any disquiet. In many ways he reminded me of the me I’d trained myself to be at work: solid, rational, untroubled by the shifting tides of the nonprofit sector—but I was someone who’d spent years practicing, whereas Eddie seemed, simply, to be that way.

  I wondered if he could hear the excitement careening around in my chest. A matter of days ago I’d been separated, approaching divorce, approaching forty. Then this. Him.

  “Oh! A badger!” I said, as a low shape shuffled across the darkened edge of my vision. “I wonder if it’s Cedric.”

  “Cedric?”

  “Yes. Although I suppose it probably isn’t him. How long do badgers live?”

  “I think about ten years.” Eddie was smiling: I could hear it.

  “Well, then it’s definitely not Cedric. But it could be his son. Or maybe grandson.” I paused. “We loved Cedric.”

  A vibration of laughter traced through his body, into mine. “Who’s we?”

  “Me and my little sister. We used to camp quite near here.”

  He rolled over onto his side, his face close to mine, and I could see it in his eyes.

  “Cedric the badger. I . . . you,” he said quietly. He traced a finger along my hairline. “I like you. I like you and me. In fact, I like you and me very much.”

  I smiled. Right into those kind, sincere eyes. At those laughter lines, at the heavy angle of his chin. I took his hand and kissed his fingertips, rough and mottled with splinters after two decades of woodworking. Already it felt like I’d known him for years. For a lifetime. It felt like someone had matched us, maybe at birth, and nudged and aligned and planned and schemed until we finally met, six days ago.

  “I just had some very mushy thoughts,” I said, after a long pause.

  “Me too.” He sighed. “It feels like the last week’s been set to a score of sweeping violins.”

  I laughed, and he kissed my nose, and I wondered how it was that you could spend weeks, months—years, even—just chugging on, nothing really changing, and then, in the space of a few hours, the script of your life could be completely rewritten. Had I gone out later that day I would have got straight on the bus and never met him, and this new feeling of certainty would be no more than an unheard whisper of missed opportunities and bad timing.

  “Tell me even more about you,” he said. “I still don’t know enough. I want to know everything. The complete and unabridged life story of Sarah Evelyn Mackey, including the bad bits.”

  I held my breath.

  It wasn’t that I hadn’t known this would happen at some stage, more that I still hadn’t decided what I’d do when it did. The complete and unabridged life story of Sarah Evelyn Mackey, including the bad bits. He could take it, probably. There was an armor on this man, a quiet strength that made me think of an old seawall, an oak tree, maybe.

  He was running a hand along the curve between my hip and rib cage. “I love this curve,” he said.

  A man so comfortable in his own skin you could probably sink any secret, any truth into him, and he’d be able to hold it without sustaining structural damage.

  Of course I could tell him.

  “I have an idea,” I said. “Let’s camp out here tonight. Pretend we’re still young. We can make a fire, cook sausages, tell stories. Assuming you have a tent, that is? You seem like a man who’d have a tent.”

  “I am a man who has a tent,” he confirmed.

  “Good! Well then, let’s do it, and I’ll tell you everything. I . . .” I rolled over, looking out into the night. The last fat candles of blossom glowed dully on the horse chestnut at the edge of the woods. A buttercup swayed in the darkness near our faces. For reasons she’d never deigned to share, Hannah had always hated buttercups.

  I f
elt something rise in my chest. “It’s just so lovely, being out here. Brings back so many memories.”

  “Okay,” Eddie smiled. “We’ll camp. But first, come here, please.”

  He kissed me on the mouth and for a while the rest of the world was muted, as if someone had simply pressed a button or turned a dial.

  “I don’t want tomorrow to be our last day,” he said, when the kissing came to an end. He bandaged his arms more tightly around me and I felt the cheerful warmth of his chest and belly, the soft tickle of his cropped hair under my hands.

  Closeness like this had become a distant memory, I thought, inhaling the clean, sandy smell of his skin. By the time Reuben and I had called it a day, we were sleeping like bookends on either side of our bed, the stretch of untouched sheets between us an homage to our failure.

  “Till mattress us do part,” I’d said, one night, but Reuben hadn’t laughed.

  Eddie pulled away so I could see his face. “I did . . . Look, I did wonder if we should cancel our respective plans. My holiday and your London trip. So we can roll around in the fields for another week.”

  I propped myself up on an elbow. I want that more than you will ever know, I thought. I was married for seventeen years and in all that time I never felt the way I do with you.

  “Another week of this would be perfect,” I told him. “But you mustn’t cancel your holiday. I’ll still be here when you get back.”

  “But you won’t be here. You’ll be in London.”

  “Are you sulking?”

  “Yes.” He kissed my collarbone.

  “Well, stop it. I’ll be back down here in Gloucestershire soon after you get back.”

  He seemed unappeased.

  “If you stop sulking, I might even come and meet you at the airport,” I added. “I could be one of those people with a name on a board and a car in the Short Stay.”

  He seemed to consider this for a moment. “That would be very nice,” he said. “Very nice indeed.”

  “Done.”