Ghoster

by Jason Arnopp

  So why does Scott have Gwyneth’s own picture of Ali on his phone?

  Thanks to vodka, I can’t be bothered with fabricating some story for Ali’s benefit. “Scott did a runner on me. Could’ve gone off to be with your sister… but actually, that doesn’t make sense.”

  Ali cocks her head, defensive. “Why not? She’s a fucking stunner.”

  “That’s not what I mean… it’s a picture of you he’s got on his phone.” As I say this, I pat my pocket where Scott’s phone lives. Ali notices.

  “Hold up,” she says, looking at me like I’m an escaped lunatic again. “That’s his phone?”

  “He left it behind. And…” Sod it, Ali’s so drunk she won’t even remember this chat. “And I unlocked it to have a look inside.”

  Ali weighs me up, stony-faced. Then she says, “Good on you, if he’s fucked you about. I’d probably do the same. Weird, though, that he has that picture. Ah, you know what? Gwyn tweeted it from the top of the mountain. That could be why.”

  Ah yes, Twitter. A mostly public space. But why would Scott want that picture? He fancied Ali?

  “Is he into mountaineering?” she asks, as if following my train of thought.

  “I have no clue what he’s into,” I say, knocking back my second vodka shot to drown the humiliation. “So, if I haven’t been too much of an arse-pain already, could you maybe ask your sister if she knows Scott? I just want to find out what kind of guy I almost moved in with, and where he might be, and—”

  Ali halts me with a flat palm. “I haven’t spoken to my sister since July.”

  “Oh. Did you guys fall out?”

  To my surprise, Ali looks bewildered. “I don’t even know. She seems to have kind of… disowned us. Even our mum. To be honest, it was on the cards for a while, because we always argued.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Yeah. Gwyn won’t even reply on Facebook or owt now. Mum’s convinced she’s run off to join a cult or summat.”

  A dark bell rings in my head. Joining The Death Grip Cult.

  “That’s so strange,” I say. “And such a shame.”

  Ali shrugs a little too hard. “Her choice, innit. You can’t force people to stay in your life. But yeah, it really is a shame. You grow up with someone, and then suddenly your only window into their life is their fucking Twitter feed.”

  “Tell me about it. Do you ever think it might be better not to look?”

  Ali nods. “Don’t know why she didn’t just block us.”

  Her tortured expression tells me everything I need to know. She knows she should stop looking, but she can’t seem to follow through. When temptation waits permanently on a screen, twenty-four-seven, while constantly updating itself, what can you do to avoid that? Take down the entire internet?

  After being confronted with her own online addiction, Ali has had enough. She downs her second shot and makes for the door, her face and voice lemon-sour. “Well, this has been fun. Good luck with stalking your ex, but me babysitter needs paying.”

  “What’s your surname?” I blurt. “Maybe… I’ll… see you on Twitter?”

  “McBeal,” she says, then heads for the door.

  I piece her alleged full name together in my head, remember the TV show Ally McBeal, then call out, “And what’s your real surname?”

  She laughs. “Cooper. Now sod off.”

  I smirk back at Ali Cooper as she leaves, then I order another shot. These cheeky little drinks are well moreish. Pulling out Scott’s phone, I fruitlessly check for new calls or texts – nothing – and launch Twitter to search for Ali and Gwyneth. Even as the app opens up, my heart sinks. Ali Cooper sounds all too much like the rock star Alice Cooper. Did she feed me another fake name?

  Brilliantly, her full name genuinely is Alice Cooper. Her Twitter bio says, No, I’m not that bloke who bites the heads off bats. I wonder why, in all her time on Twitter, none of the platform’s resident Um actually brigade have popped up to tell her the bat-biter was Ozzy Osbourne, then I see she only has twenty-one followers.

  Despite Alice and Gwyneth being half-sisters, they share the same surname. Here’s Gwyneth Cooper’s unmistakable face on her Twitter profile, wearing a big friendly grin. Below this pic, there’s a slew of tweets, mainly sharing memes and animal abuse petitions. Gwyneth makes no mention of Alice, or how great her new life in a cult might feel. All I see is the usual pile of inconsequential shite that people post in a bid to stave off the daily boredom and grab some attention.

  What to make of this whole Cooper sisters thing? Could Scott really have swanned off to be with Gwyneth? Did they bond over their penchant for shutting out family members? I’m pretty sure Maureen hadn’t seen or heard from Scott for even longer than the fortnight she claimed.

  I spend ten minutes burrowing down the rabbit hole of Scott’s social media, for which he uses the same vulnerable-looking profile pic as seen on Tinder. His Twitter bio quite simply reads: Just another face in the IT crowd. He has 878 followers. A quick skim through these reveals a high ratio of female faces, none of which are Alice or Gwyneth. They’re not among his FB pals either.

  Scott’s last tweet was today. A retweet, to be precise, involving that meme image of the grinning cartoon dog seated in the burning room, saying, This is fine. I’m okay with all the events that are unfolding currently.

  Hmm. Why does this image strike a chord with me?

  Best not to think about that.

  Scott’s latest FB post was also today. He’s filled in a survey about his personality, namely Which Historic Royal Would I Be? and nominated five friends to do the same.

  Turns out Scott would’ve been Henry VIII. Quelle fucking surprise.

  The realisation hits me that I’m no longer looking at my own social media accounts. I’m using the apps that take you straight into Scott’s Twitter and Facebook. This means I’m actually piloting the fuckers and could therefore post as Scott.

  That’s pretty big.

  If I were feeling really vindictive, which I am, I could post something absolutely foul on his behalf and make a social media pariah of him. So very tempting. But what’s the first thing someone does when they think they’ve been hacked? Scott would reset all his social media account passwords, then surely realise his lost phone was to blame. He’d finally get around to changing everything and I’d be locked out. Counterproductive.

  While skimming over Scott’s tweets and posts, both public and private, what I notice more than anything is the conspicuous absence of me. I’m not mentioned anywhere. Clearly, I only ever registered as a brief anomaly on his radar.

  The night melts like Dalí clocks. Before I know what’s happening, I’m striding down Queen’s Road towards the seafront. Wind and rain team up to punish me, as I finally check out Tinder with the true recklessness of a drunk.

  The first thing I see inside Tinder is Scott’s face, and my dumb heart swells. The heart does, after all, take longer to process a break-up than the rational mind. You can never kill love outright. You can only leave it to die a slow, lingering death.

  Entering self-destruct mode, I open Scott’s matches. This is a visual list of the people he’s Liked, who have also Liked him right back. Some of these people he has engaged in conversation. Claire from along the coast in Peacehaven, for instance, who has lovingly selected the following three words for her profile bio: I’m just me! Thanks for that, Claire, I really feel like I know you already. As far as Scott was concerned, your cleavage made up for your lack of brain cells, because here the two of you are, chatting away one month ago. On 4 September, to be precise. One week after Scott asked me to live with him.

  Hey, Scott, what the hell were you doing? If your proposal of domestic cohabitation really was at all sincere, then were you seized by the urge to fill your boots before all that nasty monogamy descended upon you? Was that it? Or were you trying to find someone better?

  Reading Tinder can only damage me. And yet, in order to finally kill off any lurking vestige of feelings I have f
or Scott Palmer, I need to suffer the truth.

  Hmm. This probably isn’t the best time to ask myself while I’m loaded on ale and vodka, but do I still have any feelings left for Scott?

  Yes, in a way, I do. But those feelings only apply to the version of Scott I thought I knew. The carefully crafted specimen of manhood that he chose to present to me. In fact, I still love the living hell out of that Scott. He was awesome.

  The real Scott, though? The one I’m unveiling on this phone, kilobyte by kilobyte? He can jettison himself so far into hell’s bowels that he bursts straight out through the other side and ends up in the Earth’s core.

  Scott and Claire’s Tinder chat doesn’t last long before he suggests signing off to head over to WhatsApp. Ah yes, I’d almost forgotten about WhatsApp. Part of me wants to migrate over to that messenger portal so I can follow the rest of their chat that night, while the rest of me would rather go jump in the sea.

  Sticking with Tinder, while navigating the seafront towards the flat I laughably call home, I read Scott’s conversations with the likes of Holly, Julie…

  … don’t forget to look for women whose names begin with “V”…

  … and Emma. These chats all took place between June and October, when Scott and I were seeing each other. I could forgive him for any shenanigans up until 12 July, because we had yet to officially become an item, but anything after that is unforgivable.

  Although some of these Tinder chats fizzle and die, others end up switching over to WhatsApp. Given that Scott and I only saw each other once a week at most, and occasionally not for a whole agonising fortnight, he had ample opportunity to hunt down and meet whoever the hell he liked. So did I, of course, but this fact genuinely never crossed my mind.

  Finally, I have confirmation. I have certainty. Scott Palmer is what Britney would refer to as a womaniser, over and over again.

  The guy even liked Crafty Fox ale, for God’s sake. The clues were there.

  Tinder delivers one last bitter blow. Turns out Scott paid the subscription fee for extra features, including the ability to set his location to anywhere in the world. I find a pictorial grid which gathers the faces of no fewer than eighty-nine women, all of whom told Tinder they Liked Scott. Seems he never got around to either dismissing them from the list or saying he Liked them too. And so these hopeful dames exist in a kind of limbo, neither accepted nor rejected, which is somehow worse than either outcome. These women simply did not warrant any kind of judgement, one way or the other.

  And of course here I am, positioned smack-bang in the middle of all the other limbo ladies. Schrödinger’s twat. To make matters worse, my avatar pic is shaded blue, to denote that I’d Super-Liked Scott. Clearly, even my OTT act of enthusiasm hadn’t inspired him to decide whether he Liked me back.

  Was my main Tinder photo really all that bad? Hmm, well, it was the same pic I have on all my socials: me, sticking my tongue out at a jaunty angle. Always best to deliberately make yourself look ugly before someone else can make that judgement.

  On Tinder, Scott deemed me unworthy of any judgement at all. And yet, when we happened to meet, four months later in Wales, he gravitated straight to me. Couldn’t get enough. Guess I must have struck him as the kind of dimwit he could take for a ride.

  At least there was one night in August when I came to question his bullshit.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  20 August

  Scott and I have a window table at Food For Friends. Since the most amazing black olive polenta is melting in my mouth, I believe Scott when he tells me this is one of Brighton’s greatest veggie restaurants. I love how this is a relatively fancy place, and yet we have nothing special to celebrate except getting to see each other. That’s one of the nicest things about a long-distance relationship: every date feels special. Every date feels heavy with meaning and spark.

  On this particular evening, however, Scott seems to feel less pressure to make the most of our limited time. His mind has left our table without making its excuses. Having finished his starter, he’s checking his phone. After every series of intense taps and flicks, he flashes me a smile, so I don’t feel wholly ignored, but I no longer have full access to his mind.

  I wonder what Scott looks at most often when he’s on that thing. Checking his email, his texts, his WhatsApp, his share prices? How many steps he’s walked today?

  He could be obsessively checking out an ex’s every move. Not that you’d know anything about that, obvs.

  Is this unreasonable? Do I really want to be that partner who demands full attention at all times? But I mean, fuck, we’re having dinner here. Scott’s phone siphons away more and more of his attention – especially now that he’s upgraded to this fancy new model.

  This may simply be the way of all modern relationships. The pleasure of a digital fix will inevitably outshine the pleasure of connecting with your partner. These days, you face the impossible task of vying with the internet for their attention, and that’s just the way it is.

  Yeah, that’s one idea. Or maybe Scott and I only get to see each other once per week at most, and I should speak the hell up.

  “Shall we go for a drink after this meal we’re having together?” Can’t help loading that last part with sarcasm, but it doesn’t register. “I like the look of the Mesmerist, across the road.”

  “Uh…” Scott is sitting right across the table, but his brain may as well be in Sydney. “I don’t… know… We’ll have to decide in a bit.”

  “Okay,” I say, casual as anything. “Let’s talk when you’re back in the room.” And I glide off to the ladies’. Once inside the cubicle, I breathe deeply and think of a few gratitudes. I tell myself that Scott and I are not, repeat not, going to argue about this issue.

  Lost in the heat of argument, we walk the pavement, aimless, almost blind. Our mouths offload all the tension we couldn’t shift in the nice, quiet restaurant. Scott is all innocent, hard-done-by eyes – damn those eyes – and earnest spread hands. Me, I’m caught in that awkward position of not knowing whether I’ve made too big a deal of this, while feeling obliged to follow my complaint through.

  “Baby, you know I’ve been extra-busy with work lately. I’m sorry I pissed you off, but I do have to keep more of an eye on things than usual.”

  “You were keeping an extraordinarily good eye on those things, even during our main course. But I’m starting to wonder what sort of things we’re talking about here.”

  I know exactly what comes next from him. This pregnant pause will be followed by the classic utterance made in every couple’s argument at some point, the whole world over. Three, two, one…

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, how am I supposed to know what you’re looking at on there?”

  “Oh, Kate, come on. Please. Like what?”

  No matter how tightly I fold my arms, my insecurities keep on coming. “How do I know you’re not still looking at Tinder?”

  This time, the pause lasts for ten steps at least. “Tinder?”

  The words almost fly out of me, but I reel them right back in. Yes, Tinder! Can we finally talk about the place where you fully ignored my Super-Like on Valentine’s Day?

  I stop walking and round on him. “I’m using Tinder as an example: most people are on it these days… aren’t they?”

  “I was on there at one point.” He doesn’t try to escape my gaze, which is encouraging until I realise how political his answer sounds.

  “But are you still on there, or any other dating places?”

  He blinks. “I deactivated Tinder, soon as we became a thing. And that’s the only one I ever used.”

  Unsure as to whether he’s telling the truth, I don’t know what to do. Ask to look inside his phone? That would stray into obsessive territory. You either trust your partner or you don’t.

  “I’m getting tired of you spending so much time on that thing when we’re together,” I tell him. “Can’t some of this stuff wait?”


  “No,” he says. Actually, he doesn’t merely say this. He almost growls it, and now a shade of grey has crept into his eyes. A cold grey I rarely see. “It bloody can’t. Seriously, I’m under real work pressure at the moment, as I’ve told you several times.”

  “Don’t patronise me, Scott. Of course I remember you saying, but the question is, do I believe it? You could be getting up to anything while I’m in Leeds.”

  “So could you,” he says, still with that distinct edge, “but you don’t see me making a big song and dance about your phone.”

  “I can hardly do much with that thing, anyway.”

  Walking again, I hear the angry thud of his footsteps behind me. His voice sounds tight as a steel trap. “Fucking hell, Kate, you know what I think this is really about? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’re jealous of my phone.”

  Clipping on my finest scandalised, incredulous expression, I laugh in his face.

  While so very afraid he’s right.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  5 October

  Marching home along the beach, I stray as close to the violence of the sea as I can get. The wind mounts one attack after another, no holds barred, as if trying to rip the flesh off my bones. This feels appropriately masochistic.

  Okay, so Scott may have had a point about me coveting his phone, but he all-too-smoothly made me believe I was being unreasonable when I should have trusted my instinct that something was wrong. My instinct has, after all, helped save countless lives across the last fifteen years.

  By the time we got back to Scott’s flat that night, we were laughing about most aspects of our fight. He had apologised for his accusation, but I didn’t explicitly apologise for asking him about Tinder. So there’s one scrap of self-respect I can cling to.

  After some blazing make-up sex, I went to sleep. Roughly one hour after reassuring me that he’d long since deactivated Tinder, Scott then chatted with some floozy named Samantha on that very app. What’s more, he’d already exchanged two messages with her that night… while we were sitting at the fucking dinner table.