Ghosted

by Rosie Walsh

  Welcome home!” Jenni shouted.

  In all the years I’d been flying across the Atlantic I still hadn’t mastered jet lag. The bursting pressure in my chest as I emerged into blinding sunshine and cementlike heat, the zigzags skirting my vision as I sat in a taxi on the 110. The first time I’d flown out here, in 1997, I’d been convinced for the first two days that I was very seriously unwell.

  “I’ve missed you, Sarah Mackey.” Jenni pulled me into a brisk hug. She smelled of baking.

  “Oh, Jenni, I missed you too. Hello, Frap,” I said, stroking Jenni’s dog with a tired foot. Frap—short for Frappuccino, one of Jenni’s vices—tried to cock his leg on me, like he always did, but I jumped sideways just in time.

  “Oh, Frappy,” Jenni sighed. “Why are you so determined to urinate on Sarah?”

  I leaned forward and clasped her elbows. “Well?”

  She couldn’t quite meet my eye.

  “The pregnancy test? Wasn’t it today?”

  “No, tomorrow.” She turned away. “I’m supernervous, so the less said about that, the better. Come in, get yourself on that couch.”

  I stepped into a haven of cooled, chocolate-scented air, and noticed that Jenni had bought another piece of artwork. This one was an abstract silhouette of a pregnant woman made up of thousands of tiny fingerprints. A coach she’d been seeing had recommended positive visualizations during the IVF process; this must be part of her response. The picture hung above the easy chair Javier used from 5:15 P.M. until he went to bed at 10:30 P.M. On the counter separating the living room from the kitchen, there was a two-layer chocolate cake, and a bottle of sparkling rosé in a bucket.

  I smiled, exhausted and close to tears, as Jenni went into the kitchen and started throwing scoops of ice cream into the blender. “Jenni Carmichael, you are very kind and very naughty. We don’t pay you enough to be buying champagne and cakes.”

  Jenni shrugged, as if to say, How else would I welcome you home?

  She added more ingredients to the blender—few of which resembled food—and switched it on, yelling over the noise. “I had Javier go play some pool with his friends, so we could catch up,” she bellowed. “And I couldn’t have you come back here without a sugar binge. It’d be wrong.”

  I fell into her enormous couch, with its mallowy spread of cushions, and felt relief so sharp it was almost like a pain. I would be safe here. I would reflect, recalibrate, move on.

  Jenni switched off the blender. “I went for bubblegum flavor.”

  “Jesus Christ. Really?”

  Jenni laughed. “I’m not messing around today,” was all she said.

  * * *

  • • •

  A good couple of hours later, when we had drunk our thick shakes, eaten several slices of the gigantic cake, and binged our way through a large packet of pita chips, I lay back and belched. Jenni did the same, laughing. “I never burped before I met you,” she admitted.

  I poked her foot with mine, too bloated and heavy to move. “This has been a magnificent feast. Thank you.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome,” she smiled, rubbing her tummy. “Now, Sarah, I shouldn’t have a drink, but you must try some pink fizz, okay?”

  I eyed the bottle and felt a strong, physical sense of dread. “I can’t,” I said. “Thank you, darling, but I got a bit too drunk with Jo last week and I haven’t been able to face booze since.”

  “Seriously?” Jenni looked shocked. “Not even a little glass?”

  But I couldn’t do it. Not even for her.

  Then I told her everything. Even the awful bits at the football ground when, at the same moment that I’d been confronted by a stranger’s backside, I had also been confronted with the immutable fact that I had lost my mind. Jenni awwwed and tutted and sighed and even, when I showed her my final message to Eddie, welled up. She did not mock me for any of it. She did not even raise an eyebrow. She just nodded sympathetically, as if my actions had been entirely understandable.

  “You can’t let a shot at love slip through your fingers,” she said. “You were right to try everything.” She eyed me. “You did fall in love with him, didn’t you?”

  After a pause I nodded. “Although you shouldn’t be able to fall in love after only—”

  “Oh, quit it,” Jenni said quietly. “Of course you can fall in love after a week.”

  “I suppose so.” I picked at the hem of my top. “Anyway, I want to get back to what I know. I want to win that hospice pitch in Fresno; I want to get George Attwood on board in Santa Ana. It’s time to move on.”

  “Really?’

  “Really. There’ll be no further attempts to reach Eddie. In fact, I’m going to remove him from my Facebook friends. Right now, with you as witness.”

  “Oh,” Jenni said, unenthusiastically. “I suppose that’s for the best. But it’s so sad. I thought he was it, Sarah.”

  “Me too.”

  “To have met him on that date, in that place—it was just so perfect. It sent shivers down my spine.”

  I said nothing. I’d been trying to forget what Tommy had had to say on this matter. Jenni’s explanation, on the other hand, was more comforting. A big, romantic coincidence; an incredible piece of timing. That worked for me.

  I glanced over at her. “You okay?”

  She sighed, nodded. “Just sad for you. And full of hormones.”

  I flopped back down next to her as I waited for Facebook to locate Eddie from within my friends list.

  My stomach turned over.

  “He’s unfriended me,” I whispered. I reloaded his profile, in case it told me a different story. It did not. Add friend? it asked.

  “Oh, Sarah,” Jenni murmured.

  The freezing pain returned to my chest, as if it had never gone away. The bottomless longing, a well down which a pebble could fall forever.

  “I . . .” I swallowed hard. “I guess that’s that, then.”

  At that moment Frappuccino exploded into life as the front door opened and Javier strode in. “Hey, Sarah!” he said, offering the weird salute he always offered in place of a hug. Javier did physical only with Jenni and cars.

  “Hey, Javier. How are you? Thank you so much for giving us some time alone tonight.” My body felt droopy and unformed.

  “You’re welcome,” he told me, mooching off to the kitchen for a beer. Jenni kissed him and passed through to the bathroom.

  “You been looking after my girl?” he asked. He sat down in his chair and opened the beer.

  “Well, she’s mostly been looking after me,” I admitted. “You know what she’s like. But I’ll be here for her tomorrow, Javi. I can be here all day if she needs me.”

  Javier took a long swig of his beer, watching me with guarded eyes. “Tomorrow?”

  I looked at him. Something wasn’t right. “Er . . . yes,” I said. “For the test result?”

  Javier put his beer bottle down on the floor, and I knew, suddenly, what he was going to say.

  “The test was today,” he said shortly. “It didn’t work. She’s not pregnant.”

  Silence echoed between us.

  “I guess she wanted you to be able to talk about your own . . . ah, problems . . . first,” he said. “You know how she is.”

  “Oh . . . Oh, God,” I whispered. “Javi. I’m so sorry. I . . . Oh, God, why did I believe her? I knew it was today.”

  I glanced at the kitchen door. “How’s she been?”

  He shrugged, but his face told me all I needed to know. He was lost. Out of his depth. For years, there had remained avenues of hope, and keeping Jenni plugged into them had been Javier’s job. It had shielded him from the lead weight of her fear, given him an active role. Now, there was nothing, and his wife—whom, for all his emotional limitations, he loved with every cell in his body—was in a deep well of grief. He no longer had a role, or
any hope to offer.

  “She has not said too much. Silence in the clínica. I don’t think she is letting herself think about it. Not yet, anyhow. I thought she would tell you and then she would cry, let her emotions come, you know? That’s why I went out. Normally when she can’t talk to me, she talks to you.”

  “Oh, no. Oh, Javi, I am so sorry.”

  He swigged his beer and sank back into his chair, staring out of the window.

  I looked over at the door. Still nothing. The clock on their kitchen wall ticked, bomblike.

  Several minutes passed.

  “She went to the bathroom on purpose,” I said suddenly. “To hide. She knew you’d tell me. We should . . . we should go and get her.” I got up, but Javier was already up. He strode across the kitchen floor, shoulders hunched.

  I hovered uselessly in the kitchen as he knocked at the bathroom door. “Baby?” he called. “Baby, let me in . . .”

  After a pause the door opened and I heard it: the desperate sound of his wife, my loyal friend, who’d postponed her own grief so she could look after mine, gasping for breath as tears and despair erupted savagely from within. “I can’t bear it,” she wept. “I can’t bear it. Javi, I don’t know what to do.”

  Then the unbearable sound of raw human misery, muffled only by the flimsy cotton of her husband’s shirt.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  When the hysterics had finally subsided, Jenni had sat on the couch between me and Javier and methodically binged her way through everything we hadn’t already eaten. I’d ignored the scream of jet-lag tiredness and stayed with her until midnight, eating the odd sliver of cake to keep myself awake.

  Now morning was here: the bright hot morning of which I’d dreamed, my first back in LA. During my final week in England I’d become certain that this first morning would bring with it renewal and hope: a sense of perspective I’d been unable to find in London or Gloucestershire. I would be happy. Purposeful.

  In reality I was bloated and uncomfortable, and far too cold after a night with the air-conditioning at superfreezing. I curled up in Jenni’s spare bed, too exhausted to get out and turn it down. I stared at myself in the mirror across the room. I looked puffy, white, unwell. Before even realizing what I was doing, I reached out to check my phone in case Eddie had replied to my farewell message. He hadn’t, of course, and my heart ballooned with pain.

  Add friend? Facebook asked, when I looked at his profile. Just to check. Add friend?

  * * *

  • • •

  An hour later, still awaiting serenity, I left the house for a run. It wasn’t yet eight, and Jenni and Javier—for once—were still in bed.

  I knew that running wasn’t kind, after a transatlantic flight and an evening of emotional tumult. Not to mention the sleepless night I’d had in London the night before, or that the thermometer on Jenni’s deck was already scorching its way to a hundred degrees. But I couldn’t sit still. Couldn’t be with myself. I needed to move so fast that nothing could stick to me.

  I had to run.

  * * *

  • • •

  Three hundred yards down Glendale Avenue, I remembered why I didn’t run in this city. I swayed on the corner of Temple, pretending to stretch out my quads so I could grab a lamppost. The heat was suffocating. I looked up at the sun, soupy and indistinct today behind a smear of marine haze, and shook my head. I had to run!

  I tried again, but as the Hollywood Freeway loomed ahead, my legs gave way and I found myself sitting on the grass by a municipal tennis court, sick and dizzy. I pretended to readjust my shoelaces and admitted defeat.

  Somewhere I could hear Jo’s voice, telling me I was a fucking fruit loop, and did I have any respect for my body? And I agreed with her; I agreed wholeheartedly, remembering how sad and sorry I used to feel when I’d seen skinny women rasping up the hills of Griffith Park in the scorching heat.

  I went back to Jenni’s, showered, and ordered a cab. It didn’t look like Jenni was going to make it to work anytime soon, and I couldn’t sit there a moment longer.

  * * *

  • • •

  During my journey to our offices in East Hollywood, I planned next week’s pitch to the directors of a hospice company in California. We were so used to having our services solicited by medical units nowadays, that I was a little out of practice at the art of sales. Vermont was all snagged up so I got out at Santa Monica and walked the last two blocks, rehearsing the pitch under my breath while sweat dripped, plock, plock, plock, down my back.

  Then: Eddie?

  A man in a taxi, waiting in the traffic jam on Vermont. Heading straight toward my office. Cropped hair, sunglasses, a T-shirt I was sure I recognized.

  Eddie?

  No. Impossible.

  I started to walk toward the car. The man inside, who I would swear was Eddie David, was looking out at the confusing proliferation of street signs and checking his phone.

  The traffic started to move at last, and honking started. I was in the middle of a six-lane road. Just as I was forced to turn away from the taxi, I saw the man take off his sunglasses and look at me. But before I could see his eyes, know for sure it was Eddie, I had to run or be run over.

  Eddie?

  * * *

  • • •

  Later that day, sent home by my colleagues (“We’ve got this, Sarah—go get some rest”) but unable to sit still, I walked home. I stood at that same busy intersection for fifteen minutes, watching cars and taxis. An air ambulance landed on the roof of the Children’s Hospital and I barely noticed.

  It was him. I knew it was him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Reuben and I flew in silence on a commuter plane to Fresno. Outside, the remains of a buttery sun melted over clouds; inside, civility hung between us on a fine thread. Tomorrow morning we would pitch to the board of directors of the hospice umbrella company, and Reuben was already angry with me.

  On Monday morning he had arrived at the office with Kaia and taken us all through to the meeting room. He hadn’t quite been able to look me in the eye.

  “So, I have some really great news,” he began.

  “Oh, great!” Jenni said. She didn’t quite sound like herself, but she was trying.

  “While we were in London last week, Kaia sent some e-mails to an old friend of hers, a guy called Jim Burundo, who runs a bunch of private special-needs schools in LA. Kaia told him all about our work, sent him some video clips, and he got back to her to ask if we’ll start regular Clowndoctor visits!”

  There was a short silence.

  “Oh,” I said eventually. “Fantastic. But . . . Reuben, we don’t have enough practitioners to take on a commitment like that at the moment.”

  And Jenni had added, “Reuben, honey, we’d need to cost this up and get me a fund-raising target. I need—”

  Reuben held up his hands to interrupt. “They’re self-funding,” he’d said proudly. “Paying one hundred percent of our costs. We can take on new Clowndoctors and train them and Jim’s company’ll pay everything.”

  I paused. “But we still need to go and visit the school, Roo. And set up meetings. And a million other things besides. We can’t just—”

  Reuben interrupted me with a smile that contained—shockingly—a warning. “Kaia has done a wonderful thing,” he said carefully. “You should be pleased! We’re expanding again!”

  Jenni seemed too worn down to intervene.

  Kaia tentatively stuck her hand up, as if in class. “I really didn’t expect Jim to say yes on the spot,” she said quietly. “I hope I haven’t made things complicated.”

  “I’m going to schedule some meetings so we can plan it out,” Reuben said. “But for now I think we have a big ‘thank-you’ to say to Kaia.”

  And with that he had started clapping.

  We all joined in. My life, I t
hought. Jesus Christ, my life.

  * * *

  • • •

  The first meeting had taken place two days later. And even though it did look like everything would work out, even though, yes, Jim’s people would fund everything, including training—Sure, just tell us what it is you need from us—I was on edge. It was all happening too fast. But when I tried to broach this with Reuben this morning, he’d actually snapped at me. Told me to be less corporate, more grateful.

  I snuck a sideways glance at him as the plane began to bank into Fresno. He had fallen asleep, his face baggy and unguarded. I knew that face so well. Those long, midnight-black eyelashes; the perfect eyebrows; the veins in the deep valleys of his eye sockets. I looked at this familiar face and my stomach moved uneasily. I was meant to be back to normal by now, I thought, as the plane turned in the air and the low, golden sun stroked geometric shapes across Reuben’s face. I was meant to feel fine.

  Later on, after we’d had dinner in a steak house next to our hotel, I went and sat outside by the small, probably never used pool. It was surrounded by a high metal fence, and its few lounge chairs were covered in mildew.

  For the first time I allowed myself to consider properly what Tommy had said about Eddie last week. What it might mean that Eddie and I had met in that place, at that time, on that day. Whether he had something to hide. It had felt like an absurd theory at first: Eddie had just gone out that morning because he’d needed a break from his mother, and had been delayed on the village green because he’d met a sheep. To read any more into our meeting would be wrong.

  But the problem was, I was beginning—at last—to get a handle on the thoughts that had been whispering at the peripheries of my consciousness these last few weeks. They were beginning to form a pattern. And I didn’t like what I saw.

  I went inside as the first silver forks of lightning reached down from the sky, unable to shake the sense that a crisis was looming.