Ghosted

by Rosie Walsh

  “Oh, right,” the man says. “Yes, I know who you are. You’re the older brother of Hannah’s childhood friend—” He breaks off awkwardly, although whether it’s because he’s forgotten Alex’s name or doesn’t want to bring up my dead sister, I can’t tell.

  “Alex,” I supply, because I haven’t time for awkward pauses.

  He nods. Deeper in the house, there is a loud thump and the sound of children screaming. He looks nervously over his shoulder but is reassured when one of them starts yelling something about preparing to die by the sword.

  He turns back to me and I feel quite insane with desperation. I need information, now.

  Smelly sniffs my crotch.

  “So, this might sound strange, but . . . I believe that Hannah’s sister might have just had a baby, or is just about to have one. I mean, I suppose she could even be having it right now . . .”

  The man smiles. “Indeed! Hannah’s at the hospital with her now. Poor Sarah’s been in labor two days. Are you a friend of hers?” Then he pauses as he tries to square the fact that I’m Eddie Wallace with the idea that I might be a friend of Sarah’s. Confusion becomes alarm as he realizes he might have told me something I’m not entitled to know.

  For a moment I can’t speak, so I just stand there, stroking Smelly. The dog smiles at me, and despite myself, I smile at the dog. Then I level with Hannah’s husband. I don’t have time to make up some excuse he’ll never buy. “Not a friend, exactly . . . more, the father of her child.”

  Silence.

  The man merely stares at me. “I’m sorry?”

  “I had no idea, until about thirty minutes ago . . .” The man frowns. It is inconceivable to him that I could be the father of Sarah’s baby. I swallow. “It’s a long story, but I wouldn’t have come to your door if I wasn’t certain it’s mine.”

  Silence.

  “Look—I’m just a decent bloke who’s found out he’s a father, or nearly a father, and I’m not going to force myself on Sarah or anything, but I . . .” I trail off, because, to my horror, my voice is beginning to crack. “I just want to be there for her. If I can.”

  “Right,” the man says eventually.

  Smelly sits by my feet, staring up at me. I can tell I’m a disappointment.

  “Without meaning to pile undue pressure on you, I’m going out of my mind, wanting to just get there, and help if I can, or send her my love, or . . . I don’t know. So I wondered if you could tell me if she’s giving birth in Stroud or in Gloucester. Or somewhere else.”

  The man folds his arms. “I’m going to have to run this past Hannah,” he says at last. “I hope you understand.”

  Of course I understand. I want, also, to punch him.

  I take a deep breath and nod. “I get it. Although if it helps, Hannah’s phone’s switched off. I tried it earlier.”

  The man nods. “Yes, that’s most likely.” But he persists with calling her anyway, moving off down the corridor so I won’t be able to hear him when he says, “You won’t believe this . . .”

  A few moments later he’s back. “No answer,” he says. He jigs the phone up and down in his hand, uncertain as to what to do. He gets it, as a father—I can see he wants to help me. But this is no ordinary situation.

  I begin to panic. He might not tell me.

  “I could just turn up at Stroud, or Gloucester, I suppose . . . But would you be willing to tell me how the labor’s going, at least?” I ask. I’ll take anything, at this stage. Any crumb he’s willing to throw from the table. Smelly sighs, leaning his big square head on my thigh.

  He pauses. “All I know is that it’s been going on two days. And that they’ve taken her out of the midwife unit and transferred her to the consultant-led bit.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “When it happened to us with Elsa, it meant things weren’t going brilliantly,” he admits. “But it could be anything—she probably just got tired and wanted some decent pain relief. I wouldn’t worry too much.”

  “Please tell me where Sarah is.” My voice is too loud, but I think I probably just sound desperate rather than threatening or mad. “Please. I’m a normal guy. Not a psychopath. I just want to be there.”

  He sighs, defeated. “Okay . . . Okay. They’re at Gloucester Royal. I think the maternity complex is called the Women’s Center. But be warned, they won’t let you through the door unless Sarah tells them to. I’ll text Hannah and let her know. I shouldn’t do this, really, but . . . well, if I were in your shoes and all that.”

  I slump, my hand reaching instinctively for Smelly’s shiny black head. It’s a reassuring block, warm and—yes—probably smelly. “Thank you,” I say quietly. “Thank you so much.”

  “Dad?” A child’s voice from above. Behind the man, I see a head appearing, upside down, from upstairs. Auburn hair trails down toward us. “Who’s that man?”

  “Good luck,” he says, ignoring his daughter. Sarah’s niece, Elsa, whom she thought she’d never meet. He leans forward and shakes my hand. “I’m Hamish.”

  “Eddie,” I say, even though I’ve probably already told him. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

  And then I’m off.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  The drive is one of the longest half hours of my life. By the time I hit the A417, I’m frantic.

  Alex would have loved a niece or nephew, I think, as I wait on a roundabout. (And: How can this light still be red?) She would especially have loved a niece or nephew related to Hannah.

  And me? Of course I want a child. I’ve known for years, I think, but it’s not something that ever felt possible—at least not until I met Sarah. Then it stopped feeling like a remote fantasy and started feeling like an obvious desire.

  I love her, I think, as I accelerate ferociously out of the roundabout. She made everything seem possible.

  Sarah Harrington has been carrying my child, all these months. Along with her grief, and her sadness, and the loss of her grandfather. She’s moved to the other side of the world, back to a place to which she thought she’d never return, and has somehow patched up the scar that was riven down the center of her family. All on her own. Knowing I didn’t want even a friendship with her.

  I recall the unbearable sadness in her eyes when she talked of Hannah and her children, and I wonder again how it has been for these two women, trying to rebuild their relationship in such extraordinary circumstances. I hope it’s made Sarah happy. I hope the fact that Hannah is with her for the birth means that they’ve become as close as they deserve to be. As close as sisters should be.

  HOSPITAL 1 MILE, says a sign. One mile too far. I pass under a railway bridge and climb a hill, cursing the traffic. I drive, far too slowly, past a fish-and-chip shop. A man stands outside it in the fading light, a plastic bag of warm paper packages swinging from his wrist. He’s on his phone, laughing, completely oblivious to the desperate man stuck in slow-moving traffic in a Land Rover.

  A minute or so later there’s a sign saying the hospital is half a mile away, but that’s still not close enough. Another traffic light turns red. I seem unable to stop swearing.

  The Land Rover is silent, save for the old-fashioned ticker-flicker of the indicator. I imagine Sarah, my beautiful Sarah, exhausted on a bed somewhere. I think of all the labors I’ve seen in films: terrible screams, panicking midwives, doctors shouting, emergency alarms going off. It’s like someone’s taken an ice-cream scoop and hollowed me out. I am weightless with fear. What if something goes wrong?

  I turn left, reminding myself that problem-free labors happen all day, every day—they have to: the human race wouldn’t have survived, otherwise—and the brown hulk of Gloucester Royal slides finally into vision.

  The hospital’s busy. Illness, I suppose, is a 24-7 business. Several people cross the roadway in front of me. There are speed bumps everywhere. The first car park is ful
l and I want to scream. I want to hurtle to the nearest entrance and abandon my car there.

  And I know, finally, how Sarah felt the day she set off in pursuit of her boyfriend and her little sister. I know the terror that gripped her, the instinct that sent her spinning off the road to prevent a car crash Hannah would never have survived. I know she didn’t swerve because she didn’t care about Alex. It was love and fear that made her wrench that steering wheel. The same love and fear that, right now, I am feeling for her. I would do anything to keep her safe. I’d block a hospital car park. I’d break the speed limit. And I, too, in that same situation Sarah found herself in, in 1997, would have swerved left, if it meant saving the person I loved most.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Hamish is right, of course: they don’t let me in. The lady on the other side of the intercom sounds amazed that I’d even try.

  “Is there anywhere I can wait?” I ask her. “I’ve told Sarah’s birthing partner that I’m here . . . Um, and I am actually the father, if that helps . . . Or at least I think I am . . .” At that point the woman stops replying. I wonder if she’s calling security.

  I find a small waiting area at the entrance to the Women’s Center and sit under an escalator, opposite a set of lifts I’d probably be arrested for attempting to use. And here, in the strip-lit reality of a hospital corridor—with proper families, proper couples everywhere—the stupidity of this enterprise is suddenly so blindingly apparent I almost laugh.

  What was I hoping? That Hannah would pause from her duties to check her messages, maybe catch up on some e-mails? That she’d read Hamish’s text and think, Oh fantastic! The father’s Eddie Wallace! And he’s turned up here—how lovely! and pop out to invite me in?

  I sink my head into my hands, wondering if Hamish is doing the same back in Bisley.

  If I stand any hope at all of getting Sarah back, it’s going to take a damn sight more than a dash to Gloucester Royal. Six months she’s lived less than a mile from me. Six months she’s had to get in touch, to tell me I’m going to be a father, and I haven’t heard a peep out of her.

  But even though I know it’s almost certainly pointless, I stay. I can’t leave. I can’t turn my back on her again.

  The lift dings and I start, but, of course, it’s not Sarah, holding a baby, it’s a tired-looking man with a lanyard round his neck and a packet of fags already halfway out of his pocket.

  We have a choice, I told her, the day we met. We are not just victims of our lives. We can choose to be happy. And yet I chose not to be happy, in spite of all I’d said. I turned my back on Sarah Harrington, and this once-in-a-lifetime thing that existed between us, and chose duty. A life only half lived.

  * * *

  • • •

  An hour passes, two hours, three. People come and go, bringing with them blasts of icy air that quickly turn stale. A lightbulb breaks; it flickers intermittently, but a man comes to fix it before I’ve so much as thought of telling anyone. I offer silent prayers for the NHS. For Sarah. For my mother, whose feelings about this situation I can’t even begin to imagine. Maybe Felix will have popped round. Felix with his good humor and his determination to remain positive, no matter what life throws at him.

  Sometime after dark has wrapped itself around the Women’s Center, a family joins me in the little waiting area, a mother and father and a kid. The boy has a blond Afro and a naughty, impish little face that I immediately like. He assesses the waiting area, declares it boring, and asks his mum what she’s going to do about it. She’s fiddling with her phone, preoccupied. She says something to her husband about visiting hours.

  Then the child says—and my heart stops—“Why hasn’t Sarah’s baby got a dad, Mum? Why is Sarah’s sister helping her and not the baby’s dad?”

  I stare into my lap and my face burns.

  The mother replies, “You’re not to talk to Sarah about that, babe. If we get to go in and see her, you can ask about anything other than dads. Rudi, are you listening?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “If you promise me you won’t, I’ll take you to the ice cream factory tomorrow, the one I told you about near Stroud.”

  My heart is hammering. I chance a look at the boy, but he’s not even remotely interested in me.

  “Is it the man who broke her heart? The one who made her cry because he didn’t call?”

  And I feel like ripping off my skin.

  * * *

  • • •

  The woman—Sarah’s friend Jo—receives a call on her phone. She wanders off toward the lifts to take it, and Rudi plays with his father. Except it can’t be his father, because after beating him at rock, paper, scissors five times in a row, he calls the man Tommy.

  Tommy! Sarah’s childhood friend! Although, I realize, that doesn’t quite tally with what she told me in her life story. I know those messages off by heart: she never said Tommy and Jo were a couple. Maybe I misread? I wish I knew more about Sarah and her life. I wish I’d known what she ate for breakfast the day she went into labor, how her pregnancy has been, what it’s like to have a relationship with her sister after all these years. I wish I knew she was safe.

  When Jo returns, she starts packing up their stuff. Above Rudi’s Afro, she catches Tommy’s eye and shakes her head.

  “Mum? Why are you going? Mum! I want to see Sarah!”

  “We’re going to stay with Sarah’s mum and dad,” she tells her son. “They just called to invite us for a sleepover. It’s getting late, you need to go to bed, and Sarah can’t have visitors today. She might not even be able to see us tomorrow.”

  “When can we see her, then?”

  Jo’s face is unreadable. “I don’t know,” she admits.

  An ugly scene ensues: Rudi obviously loves Sarah and has no plans to leave. But eventually—furiously—he gets into his coat. And they’re just about to leave when Tommy walks past me and does a double take. He carries on walking and then stops again, and I know he’s looking at me. And after a beat I look up at him, because I’m desperate. If a crawlingly awkward conversation with Sarah’s oldest friend is going to help, I’ll take it.

  “Sorry,” he says, when our eyes meet. “Sorry, I thought you were someone else . . .”

  Once again he turns. Once again he stops. “No, you . . . Are you Eddie?”

  Jo, who’s by the bottom of the escalator, wheels round. She stares at me. They both do. Rudi looks vaguely in my direction, but he’s too busy being pissed off to take any real notice. I see Jo mouthing a few choice words—although I’m not sure if they’re born of anger or shock—then she marches her son through an automatic door.

  I stand up and offer Tommy my hand, which he shakes, although it takes him a while.

  “How did you know?” he asks. “Did Sarah get in touch with you?” He’s blushed a deep, livid red, although I’m not sure why. It’s me who should be feeling ashamed.

  “I only found out this afternoon. It’s a long story. But Hannah knows I’m here, I think.”

  Before he’s worked out what to say, I blurt, “How is she? Is she okay? Has the baby been born? Is Sarah all right? I’m sorry—I know I sound mad, and I know I gave Sarah a terrible time last summer, but I . . . can’t bear it. I just want to know she’s okay.”

  Tommy blushes even more deeply. His eyebrows have taken on a life of their own, as if he’s thinking up a speech, or solving a puzzle.

  “I honestly don’t know,” he says eventually. “Jo’s just got off the phone to Sarah’s mum. I’m guessing she didn’t want to update me in front of Rudi.”

  “Shit,” I say. “Does that mean it’s bad news?”

  Tommy looks helpless and harassed. “I don’t know,” he repeats. “I hope not. I mean, her parents were here earlier and they’ve gone home, so it’s probably just . . . Look, I have to go. I . . .” He trails off, backing toward the exit. “Sorry, mate,” he
says, and then he’s gone.

  * * *

  • • •

  It’s the middle of the night. I’m pacing, like people do in films. I understand it now. Sitting down would be like staying still while someone pressed hot metal to your skin.

  I’m sharing the waiting area with an aging man in his pajamas, but neither of us has spoken to each other. He looks as anxious as I do. A grandfather, maybe. Like me, he can do little else but yawn, jiggle his knees, and stare intermittently at the delivery suite entrance.

  I’ve decided this must be what purgatory feels like. Perpetual postponement. Intense waiting in the key of fear minor. Nothing moving, other than the slow hands of a clock.

  Alan’s been trying to reassure me—keeps sending me articles about childbirth. Gia wants me to remind you that birth doesn’t need to be like those horror shows you see on the telly, he wrote earlier. Women give birth all day long, all over the world. She says you should forget about all that overproduced drama and visualize Sarah taking long, slow breaths. Bringing a baby into the world in slow breaths.

  Or something like that. I should take it seriously, but I’m too far gone.

  In desperation, I start reading the messages Sarah sent me last summer. I read the whole lot, from the day she left my barn to the day before we met on Santa Monica Beach. I read them twice, three times, trying to find something I know they can’t tell me.

  Then the delivery suite door opens and my heart starts galloping. But it’s just a staff member, pulling on a hat, yawning, plunging her hands deep into her coat pockets. She walks past us both with barely a sideways glance, patently exhausted.

  I can’t bear it.

  I scroll back to the first message Sarah sent me, twenty minutes after we said good-bye.

  Back home, it said. I had such a wonderful time with you. Thank you, for everything. X

  I had a wonderful time, too, I write now. In fact, I had the best week of my life. I can still hardly believe it happened.