Ghosted

by Rosie Walsh

  “Are you still there?” I heard her say.

  “Yes! Can you hear me?”

  “Just about. What the hell’s going on there?”

  I knew what Hannah looked like: Mum and Dad used to send me photos, until it had become too painful for me to see them. It was almost impossible to imagine that the woman from the pictures was the woman talking to me now. The woman with the curly-haired husband, the two children, and the dog. My little sister.

  “Look, Hannah, let me cross the road. I’m at a bikers’ café; there’s a lot of noise, but it’ll be quiet over there . . .”

  “Are you a biker?” There was just a corner of a smile in her voice.

  “No, I’m not. I— Hang on, let me just get across to the other side. Please stay on the line . . .” There was a gap in the southbound traffic. For no earthly reason, I didn’t turn to check the northbound lane. I just ran. Toward the sea, toward Hannah.

  * * *

  • • •

  I heard nothing; I saw nothing. Not the deadly lumber of a truck traveling at high speed. Not the screech of brakes, not the panicked yells from the terrace. I didn’t hear my own voice, forced out of me in a guttural scream, then falling sharply into silence, like an ambulance turning its siren off because there was no longer any point, and I didn’t hear the wail that came out of Jenni’s mouth as she pummeled her way out of the restaurant.

  I didn’t hear a thing.

  Part III

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Eddie

  Dear You,

  It’s 3:37 A.M., nearly eighteen hours since I touched down at Heathrow.

  Nobody was waiting for me, of course, because the only person who knew I was coming back today was Mum. I feigned indifference as I scanned the sea of welcome cards that didn’t say my name. I whistled a bit of Bowie.

  I called Mum on my way to the Long Stay car park. For reasons as yet unclear, she seems to have found my absence particularly hard this time. Maybe it was the distance that threw her. It certainly isn’t the first time I’ve gone away for two weeks. Anyway, she told me she’d been up all night worrying about my plane crashing. “It’s been awful,” she told me. “I’m so tired I can hardly speak.” But she must then have made an immediate recovery because she went on to spend ten minutes telling me about the things her sister failed to do in my absence. “She still hasn’t taken the recycling away. It’s just sitting there by the front gate! I can’t bear to look out of the window. Eddie, do you think you could pop over on your way home?”

  Poor Aunty Margaret.

  Mum came close to a panic attack when Margaret tried to take her for her psychiatrist’s appointment apparently, so I’ve got to take her next week. She said she just couldn’t cope with cars, hospitals, people. Not without me. The conversation was plowed with deep furrows of guilt. Mine, for having just buggered off—even though Mum’s always telling me I’ve got to lead my own life—and hers, because she knows this is what happens when I do.

  I picked up the Land Rover and drove back down the M4. Back to Gloucestershire, to Sapperton, to this life. I listened to the radio for a while, because it stopped me thinking about Sarah. I came off at Membury Services for a cheese sandwich.

  Then something weird happened as I headed down the Cirencester Road: I didn’t slow down for the Sapperton junction. I didn’t even indicate; I just shot on past. I carried on to the Frampton turnoff, but I didn’t come off there, either. I found myself driving to Minchinhampton Common. I parked at the reservoir and got an ice cream and walked round Amberley, and then dropped into the Black Horse. I had an orange Henry, then sat there for about two hours, just staring across the Woodchester Valley.

  I’m not sure what was going on in my head. Everything felt oddly detached, as if I were watching CCTV footage of myself. All I knew was that I couldn’t go to Mum’s.

  By this point she’d texted and called me several times, worried I’d crashed on the motorway. So I told her I was fine, had just got held up sorting something out, but that was more because I didn’t know what I was doing than because I was hiding something specific. At about four I was back at Tom Long’s Post, and that’s when it got really worrying, because rather than turning right toward Sapperton, I found myself turning left toward Stroud.

  I went for a pint at the Golden Fleece and then popped in on Alan and his wife, Gia. They were lovely. So kind and supportive. Let me share Lily’s tea and told me I’d done the right thing, walking away from Sarah. They had no idea I was hiding from my own mother.

  Lily refused to go to bed. She sat on my knee and drew mermaids. Since meeting Sarah, I’ve felt a strange breathlessness when I hang out with Lily, a pressing sadness mingled with the love and affection I feel for my best friend’s little girl. Sarah broke some kind of a seal in me, I think. After years of disregarding the idea, I began to be able to imagine myself with a child of my own. Lily drew an ink mermaid on my hand and I felt a deep trench open up inside me, like a fissure in the ocean floor.

  I texted Mum and said something had come up with Alan and that I wasn’t going to make it tonight. I’ll be over in the morning, I promised. She wasn’t happy, but she took it. It’s not as if I make a habit of standing her up.

  Relief, despair, when I finally unlocked my door. I love that barn more than I ever imagined loving bricks and mortar, but it’s also a grim reminder of the facts of my life. To the outsider, my barn says, The Good Life. Glasses of crisp Picpoul as the sun sets over the trees! Dinner made of foraged organic vegetables while the birds roost! Crystal-clear Cotswold water, pulled fresh from the earth!

  They have no idea how trapped I am. Even if I told them what it’s like with Mum, they wouldn’t believe me.

  Later on I gave the workshop a bit of a tidy and organized the whiteboard for tomorrow. I didn’t make dinner. When I walked into the kitchen, I was assaulted by memories of Sarah and me in that same space, cooking and talking and laughing, our minds galloping wildly into the future. And of course then I couldn’t face cooking alone, in silence. So I ate some Bombay mix and went to bed. Letting Sarah go was the right thing to do, I reminded myself, while I was brushing my teeth. I noticed I had a minor suntan.

  Then I lay under my skylight, stars winching slowly across the sky, congratulating myself on my fortitude, my determination, my willpower. Well done, mate. It wasn’t easy but you had to do it.

  Only, the longer I waited for sleep, the less I believed that.

  For a while I got up and tried to watch television. Take my mind off things. But all I got was a news report about a terrible pileup on the M25, multiple fatalities and severe injuries, and before I knew it, there was a voice in my head asking me how I would feel if Sarah died. (Really helpful.) What if you had a call to say she’d been in a motorway pileup? it asked. Caught in a cartel shoot-out? Run over by a truck? Would you still feel like you’d done the right thing?

  I turned off the telly and went back to bed, but the idea was there by then. Like a rusty hook in my consciousness. Pulling and dragging. If Sarah died, would you still think you’d done the right thing?

  And that’s the problem, Alex, because—if I’m honest with myself—I would not. If Sarah died, I would regret it for the rest of my life.

  I’ve lived well these last two decades. Fought my way out of grief and into life. But I’ve allowed Mum to be more important than me, all that time, because I’ve felt I had no choice. What decent human being wouldn’t look after his mother if she needed help? But something changed when I walked away from Sarah on the beach. Choosing Mum didn’t feel right. And it still doesn’t.

  It’s 3:58 A.M. Am literally praying for sleep.

  Me x

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  That man. He keeps staring at me.”

  I look at Mum, pressed back into her seat, her neck thrust forward like a turtle. Then I look at the man, who’s vast, poor sod, absolutely e
normous, spilling over three chairs and chain-drinking Diet Coke from a two-liter bottle. Above his head, a bluebottle bats at the window, again and again, like a child telling the same joke because it made someone laugh half an hour ago.

  I watch the man for a while, but he doesn’t look at Mum. He’s reading an NHS leaflet entitled “Let’s Talk.”

  “He’s not staring at you,” I whisper. “But we can go and sit over there if you’d prefer.”

  I point at a row of green chairs, facing away from this perfectly innocent man, but I know she won’t go for it. At the end of the row, there’s a mother with her baby asleep in a buggy, and Mum can’t cope with children these days. Last month she locked herself in the toilet at her GP practice because a toddler was handing her Duplo bricks in the waiting room.

  “I think I’ll stay here,” she says eventually. “Sorry, Eddie, I don’t want to make a fuss, but will you keep an eye on him?”

  I nod, closing my eyes. It’s too warm in here. Nothing to do with the sunshine outside; it’s that flabby medical-waiting-room heat, fired by anxious breath and underused bodies.

  “Are you missing the beach?” Mum says. She has on that tone she uses when she’s worried she’s annoyed me. Lighter than normal, full of overinflection. “Santa Monica?”

  “Ha! No, not really. Did I tell you about it?”

  She nods, her eyes skittering over to the Diet Coke man before returning to my face. “It sounded lovely,” she adds, and I wonder what jet-lagged lie I told her about my day on that beach. I can’t stand lying to her. It’s hard not to take the view that life has betrayed my mother, so it feels extra sickening when I do the same. No matter that I do it for her own good.

  Mum turns away and my thoughts return to the funeral procession I saw earlier, heading down past the green toward Frampton Mansell. The hearse had been full of wildflowers, bunches and sprays of them, toppling down over the sides of the wooden box as if on the banks of a stream. It was followed by three empty black cars. Must be a young person, I thought. The aged seldom had so many mourners. I wondered who they were off to collect. Which broken, desperate family was gathered in a house somewhere nearby, draining their coffees, adjusting their uncomfortable black clothes, and wondering, over and over again, How can this be happening to us?

  I’d glanced sideways at Mum as the procession passed, hoping it wouldn’t throw her off-balance.

  I found her with an ugly expression on her face. “Looks like they’re heading for Frampton Mansell,” she observed, sounding oddly pleased. Spiteful, even. “Let’s hope it’s that girl who’s died. Sarah.” Then she looked at me, as if expecting me to agree.

  I couldn’t say anything for several minutes. I just breathed through my mouth—a sort of Eddie Emergency Response that I remember well from the weeks following Alex’s death. I felt sick. Physically sick, a banding round my chest. I tried with every resource I had to bury what she’d just said, but I couldn’t.

  No wonder Sarah moved to the other side of the world, I thought weakly. How could she ever have survived here?

  The bluebottle at the window falls silent for a moment, and I think, now, about how strongly Sarah would approve of wildflowers on a coffin. She brought bunches of them into my house during our week together. Filled almost every mug I own. “Is there anything more beautiful?” she asked, smiling down at them.

  You, I thought. You’re the most beautiful thing that has ever come into this house.

  Save for my mate Baz, who works for the Natural History Unit in Bristol, Sarah’s the first person I’ve met under sixty who knows much about wildlife. I remember her voice rising in excitement when I quizzed her on birds from that Collins Gem book. Nuthatch! Stonechat! Then her laughter, wonderfully dirty and full of life.

  God, it hurts. It hurts in ways I never imagined.

  I turn to look at Mum, to reinforce to myself that Sarah is the very last woman on earth with whom I could have a relationship. This is your mother, I tell myself. Your mother, a mental health services user for nearly two decades. A woman who can’t remember the textures of life, the rhythm of the world, because she’s become so isolated. She needs you.

  Mum’s pretending to rest her head in her hands, as if dead tired, but she’s just watching the guy with the Diet Coke through splayed fingers.

  “Mum,” I whisper. “It’s okay.”

  I’m not sure she even hears me.

  When I went over to Alan’s the other night, he said I should join Tinder. I said okay, because that’s what he wanted me to say, and then had to go to the loo, as if to flush away, turdlike, the horror I felt. Tinder? Nobody warns you that life continues to be complicated after you’ve Done the Right Thing. That there is no reward, beyond some intangible sense of moral fortitude. I’ve been back eleven days now, and if anything, I feel worse than I did when I left Sarah standing on the beach.

  Tinder! I mean, for fuck’s sake!

  “Where’s Arun?” Mum whispers. “We’ve been waiting ages.”

  I check my watch. We’ve been waiting ten minutes.

  “Do you think he’s off sick, Eddie?” she asks. “Do you think he’s left?” Her face clouds at the thought.

  “No.” I tuck her hand into my elbow. “I think he’s just running late. Don’t worry.”

  Mum’s psychiatrist, Arun, is one of only two non-family members she can talk to without reaching overwhelm. The other is Derek, her community psychiatric nurse, who handles Mum better than any of us. She does have the odd visitor from elsewhere—the local vicar, Frances, pops in when she can, because these days Mum finds it too stressful to go to church with “all those people.” And indeed Hannah Harrington, Sarah’s sister, used to visit every now and then, although Mum hasn’t mentioned her in a long time, so I wonder if those visits have dried up. But neither Hannah nor the vicar ever stayed for long. After about half an hour Mum would be up and cleaning, glancing anxiously at the clock as if she had somewhere to be.

  Arun’s ability to get through to Mum is partly because he’s a really nice man, and great at his job, but partly because she has, I think, got a shy little crush on him. And of course he hasn’t left. Nor is he off sick. They’d have canceled us if he were, probably sent out the community psychiatrist. But the idea has lodged itself in her head now, just like those infuriating thoughts about Sarah have lodged themselves in mine.

  What if Sarah died? Would you still think you’d done the right thing? The question continues to seep into everything, like rising damp. Where has it come from? Why won’t it go away?

  Sarah is fine, I tell myself sternly. She would almost certainly be asleep now, thousands of miles away in her friend’s little bungalow. Breathing in and out. Limbs soft, face quiet.

  When I realize I’m imagining lying next to her, sliding a sleepy arm around her waist, I get up. “I’ll go and check how much longer,” I tell Mum.

  The lady at reception knows I’m not asking for myself. SUE, her security pass says. “You’ll be seen next,” she says extra loud, so Mum can hear. There’s a picture behind her of her family. A pleasant-looking man, two children, one wearing a lion costume. I wonder if Sue looks at families like mine and thinks, Thank God I’m not in their shoes! That’s pretty much what my last girlfriend, Gemma, said when we split up. She ended things after three months because she couldn’t handle me running off to deal with a Mum-related emergency once a week.

  I felt bad about Gemma for a while—she was the third girlfriend in six years worn down by Mum’s demands—but I bumped into her in Bristol a few months ago, holding hands with a bloke who called himself Tay and told me he did street art. He had a man bun. And I’d realized, as Gemma and I exchanged bland pleasantries on the pavement, that neither of us had ever been all that mad about each other anyway.

  Mad about each other—like Sarah and me—that’s how you have to feel. That’s how good it’s got to be.

&nb
sp; When I sit back down, Mum’s checking her hair in a pocket mirror. Her hairstyle has the contours of a rugby ball today. “It’s a beehive,” she says. “I used to have one in the sixties.” She peers at it. “Do you think it’s over the top?”

  “Not at all, Mum. It’s lovely.”

  In truth, the beehive is (a) hollow and (b) leaning to the right like the Torre de Pisa, but I know she’s done it for Arun.

  She puts her mirror away and starts doing something with her phone. After a few seconds I realize she’s pretending to message someone so she can take sneaky photos of the poor guy in the corner, presumably to be used in evidence when he has brutally murdered her. If Arun Sopori doesn’t come out soon, with his beautiful Kashmiri features and his warm smile, today is going to go very badly indeed. And I really need to get back to work.

  Then: “Hello, Carole,” says Derek’s voice. He ambles in—Derek never strides—and shakes my hand, taking a seat on the other side of Mum. “How are you doing today?” He stretches his legs out in front of him and I feel her begin to relax as she tells him she’s had better days, if she’s honest.

  “Storming hairstyle you’ve got there,” he tells her, when she’s finished.

  “You think so?” She’s smiling already.

  “I absolutely do, Carole. Storming.”

  Thank God for Derek! Week in, week out he visits her. He’s like a magician, I sometimes think—he can spot things nobody else can see; he can make her talk when no one else can get through. He’s never once lost his cool, no matter how unwell she’s gotten.

  “Does your mother have a specific diagnosis?” Sarah asked one day. I’d just mowed the lawn of my clearing because I was hoping to lure her back to England with the smell of cut grass. When I’d finished, we’d sat down with some cold ginger cordial, and she’d sniffed the air happily. Then she’d just turned to me and asked that about Mum—straight out, no pussyfooting around, and I’d liked her even more.