‘Could be your guardian angel,’ muttered Anya. She pressed ‘share’ on her Instagram post and put down her phone.
Jessi and Anya were not as quick to laugh Celeste out of court as she had expected. But then, they loved a bit of drama and were fans of the supernatural and the sensational. Celeste remembered that Anya, who had an interest in researching family ancestry, had even been taken to some weird séance by a friend of hers to try and make contact with her great-great-grandmother who had ‘disgraced’ the family by eloping with her lover aged sixteen.
They quizzed Celeste about her experience in the cemetery – What did he look like? How did it feel? How long was he there? What made her think he was a ghost?
‘Well there wasn’t any spooky music playing, if that’s what you’re suggesting,’ said Celeste disdainfully, grabbing the remote to turn down the volume on the TV. ‘There was nothing malevolent in the presence. But it was such a strange atmosphere. Deeply unsettling. Everything was shimmering, and my ears were ringing, and yet it was so still, like I’d stepped out of ordinary time.’
‘It was probably just that you were feeling faint, low on blood sugar,’ said Jessi, when Celeste told them how she hadn’t eaten, and had been feeling so weak. ‘It can do strange things to your brain.’
‘I would have dismissed it as just my mind playing tricks on me,’ said Celeste, ‘but look – here’s another photograph that I took in Cambridge.’ Celeste passed across her laptop to show them the picture of the Bridge of Sighs. ‘There it is again – that’s the figure I saw. I’m sure it was the same person or apparition or whatever it was.’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Anya, magnifying the screen to scrutinise the photograph with her forensic legal eyes. ‘It looks like the shape of a man, but you can’t see his face.’ She handed back the laptop. ‘And if it is a man or the ghost of a man, I agree that it looks like he’s wearing a leather bomber jacket, but you can’t really be sure. It could just be the play of light and shadows from the bridge.’ She turned up the volume on the TV again dismissively. ‘Perhaps the ghost is stalking you.’ She laughed unkindly. Then taken aback by the look of genuine fear on Celeste’s face, said, ‘Joke! I’m sorry, it was a joke.’ She smiled at Celeste reassuringly. ‘Anyway, I love the photograph. Looks like a great place and I like the idea of punting. I must get Miles to take me there.’
But Celeste was not finished and didn’t appreciate Anya making light of her confusion and disquiet. The events of the weekend had jolted her fragile mental equilibrium.
‘There’s another strange thing,’ she said. ‘And this definitely wasn’t a trick of the light. Just as I was leaving Eugene’s grave to walk back to my car, I heard a motorbike revving up and then driving away. It sounded like one of those old-fashioned bikes from the war movies. It was coming from the direction of the trees. But there wasn’t a road there – it was just a copse of trees with fields all around.’
Jessi looked at Celeste with concern in her eyes.
‘You were exhausted from the early start and the long drive, you were low on blood sugar, you were emotional and upset. You said so yourself! You thought you had a funny turn. If you imagined a man, you could have imagined the noise of a motorbike engine.’
Celeste snapped her laptop shut and went to her bedroom, slamming the door. She understood that look on Jessi’s face. Only four years previously she had been mired in depression and prone to episodes of paranoia and delusions triggered by post-traumatic stress disorder. Her flat mates knew all about the mental health issues she had suffered from before they became close and were always vigilant, always on the lookout for a recurrence. But this was for real.
‘They’re gaslighting me again,’ she muttered to herself. It was infuriating to have her best friends making her doubt her own sanity just because she had a history of depression. Not everything in the universe could be explained by low blood sugar levels and neurons misfiring in the brain!
She sat up on the bed and wrote a long email to Barbara, enclosing the photographs she had selected of Eugene’s grave, the surroundings at the American cemetery and the enchanting views of The Backs and the bridges over the River Cam. She wrote that she had been ‘honoured’ to decorate the grave of United States Army Air Corps Navigator Lieutenant Eugene Jack Ashford, and that she had felt a strong connection to Barbara’s father when she had sat quietly at his graveside.
‘I sat there very still,’ she wrote, ‘reciting to myself the words of a poem that you must know by the Canadian poet John Gillespie Magee, Jr.’ Celeste had learnt this by heart some years previously in preparation for the paper on war poetry that she had taken as part of her GCSE exam in English literature. ‘While I sat there saying the words in my head, and keeping perfectly still, I felt very close to your father. I could feel the sun moving and his aircraft circling in the heavens and I heard his laughter coming down from the skies.’ She knew that she was straying into purple prose, using phrases her English teacher would have highlighted with imperious red lines and exclamation marks but she didn’t care. ‘And he told me that he died loving you and doing the thing that made him happy.’ She wasn’t sure if she really remembered feeling this or if she had created the memory in the act of writing to Barbara – but as she typed the words, they felt sincere.
For completeness, Celeste had reproduced a few lines from John Gillespie Magee, Jr’s poem ‘High Flight’ at the bottom of her email.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue…
Just before she pressed ‘Send’, on impulse she added a postscript to her message.
‘Do you happen to know if your father drove a motorbike while he was stationed in England during the war?’
PAST
17
As the night goes on, Celeste finds a way of getting back at her father even though she’s locked up in her old bedroom as his prisoner. In fact, you could say he’s to blame for what happens next. Her father thinks he can stop her having fun. But he’s too old to know that the power of social media transcends physical boundaries. The party she is missing out on ends early when the host’s mother walks in on a pair of partygoers popping pills and making out in her en-suite shower, after which Ben invites Harry, Lucie and a few others back to his place – his parents are more chilled. Soon there are more Facebook shots in his games room for Celeste to torture herself with of Ben and Harry and Lucie (in various compromising combinations), slow dancing and drinking and kissing, in gradual stages of undress.
Suddenly, a private message pops up on her phone. It’s Ben.
‘come over’
She replies:
‘grown dead sorry’
She’s had so much neat vodka that she can’t remember how to spell ‘grounded’, but the predictive spelling makes it look like a Freudian slip. Ten minutes later he sends another text.
‘hey can you send me a pic’
That’s a first for her. Any other time, she would have deleted his text. Sending nudes is not her thing. ‘Demeaning,’ her mother would say. But tonight, she is tempted – if only as a small victory to spite her dad. He smashed up her face but he can’t stop her having a bit of fun. She hesitates.
‘you first’
He sends back a photo – something dark and shapeless – it could be anyone or anything, but she gets his drift. It comes with a message:
‘your turn’
She giggles but also feels vaguely ashamed.
She ignores it for a few more minutes. Another text comes through from Ben.
‘want to be my girlfriend?’
He must be soooo drunk, she thinks cynically…
Just typical that tonight of all nights when Ben’s got the hots for her, she’s locked in her bedroom. She looks at her face in the mirror. The tender sp
ot below her eye is now puffy and bruised and her mouth is distorted by her swollen lower lip.
‘I look like a freak,’ she says to herself. ‘Even if the sick bastard hadn’t locked me in, I wouldn’t be seen dead at the party looking like this.’
But Ben’s not interested in receiving pictures of her face. Defiantly, she adjusts the neckline on her dress to make it more revealing, stretches out her arm, takes a shot of her nascent cleavage and pings it across.
‘c’mon,’
he texts back, remarkably lucid all of a sudden.
‘get serious! wanted to get with you tonight. Luce coming on to me all night. I fought her off. you owe me.’
Whoever said romance is dead? It’s the longest text she’s ever had from him and it’s all the encouragement she needs. She strips off her dress, lies back on the bed, takes six photos in quick succession of herself in various poses, uploads without reviewing, and presses ‘send’.
He comes back with one word – NICE – and lots of exclamation marks.
Celeste curls up under the sheet and smiles to herself – empowered and exhilarated. At last she’s got Ben’s attention – and more importantly she has the secret satisfaction of getting ‘one over’ on her overbearing father who thought he could control her and spoil all her fun.
As she lies back on the pillow triumphantly, another text comes through from Ben.
‘Ten out of ten’
PRESENT
18
You’re seeing another man. Is it that dolt You were with at the cinema? Is he your boyfriend now? Or is it the man from the club? I can sense there is history there.
What do I care who it is? He means nothing. All that matters, is that it isn’t me!
Right when I think you’re about to turn around and open your eyes—
You betray me.
I follow You into the tube. I make an exception. I conquer my fears despite my phobia of being underground in confined spaces.
You are swinging a bottle of red wine in one hand as You skip down the escalator – that is proof You are cheating on me.
You stand looking out of the window at the black wall of the tunnel spooling by. The carriage is crowded so I’m able to come close without drawing attention to myself… close enough to smell your fragrance – Flowerbomb (of course!) by Viktor&Rolf – I’ve done my research – I saw it in your bag… close enough to shuffle towards You with my back turned and to position my mobile below the hemline of your dress.
‘Up-skirting’ I think they call it. I’m not proud but I’m not sorry. You can call it deferred payment for services rendered, if You like. I can’t help myself. You make me angry… giving yourself to another man… when I’ve offered myself up to You for free!
When we get to your stop, I follow You out of the tube and along the streets. You have to put the address into your phone. That cheers me up a little. This is your first time here. Maybe it’s not too late. I hang back at the corners of each street, and when You reach your destination, I retreat between two parked cars, watching You waiting for the door to open. You take a mirror from your bag to check your face and retouch your lipstick and run a brush through your hair. Damn! You care!
You’re taking me for granted. It’s time to teach You a lesson. I know what I need to do. I could fix this in a matter of minutes once I put my mind to it.
Any day now the website of CelestialHeadstones.com will become inaccessible to users due to a catastrophic error in the web server software. Then for sure you’ll come crying back to me! But I won’t make it too easy for You. I’ll make you wait for your fix. This time we’ll do it on my terms.
*
‘You’ve got a text,’ squealed Anya. She put down the chopping knife and peered at the message that popped up on Celeste’s mobile, left lying face up on the kitchen table. ‘Come and see. It’s from Steve. That’s the guy you went to the cinema with, isn’t it?’ Celeste was lying down on a rubber mat, following a YouTube exercise video on her laptop that was open on the floor. She sighed, put down her hand weights, pressed pause on the video and wandered over.
‘God, anyone would think you were on Love Island!’ said Celeste, affecting indifference. ‘Calm down.’
‘He’s asking you for a date, wants to see you again this weekend!’ Anya was virtually jumping up and down in her excitement. Celeste helped herself to a raw carrot that Anya had just finished peeling, ignoring Anya’s complaint. ‘Hey! That’s my supper. Make your own food.’
She picked up her phone and read the message. Steve was one of the guys she had hooked up with in a very casual way on Tinder. He was the best of the bunch she had matched with after that night out clubbing at Heavana. They were in a ‘thing’. He made her laugh and didn’t take himself too seriously and he got on well with her new college friends. He wasn’t one of those self-important losers who claimed in their profiles to be ‘polyamorous’ as an excuse for sleeping around and their pathetic failure to commit. He wasn’t too pushy. And for now, he seemed happy just to be friends. He hadn’t tried to grope her yet. He hadn’t even held her hand. He was obviously playing the long game.
As far as she was concerned, it was just nice to have someone around to meet at the pub or for a trip to the cinema or a tour round an art gallery or a walk in the park. If she was honest with herself, she wanted a companion, not a lover.
This sounded a bit more intense though. He was inviting her for dinner at his place on Saturday night. She didn’t reply straight away and instead went back to her exercise mat to finish the routine. She didn’t want to appear too keen. So far, she’d been careful not to lead him on or give him false hopes. Was he planning to make his move? Was he going to ask her officially to be his girlfriend? Dinner at his place seemed to be taking it to another level – out of her comfort zone. On the other hand, she knew that Anya was going away for the weekend with Miles, and Jessi had a reunion that had been planned with some of her old uni friends weeks ago. She’d be facing another Saturday night on her own in the flat, listening to the creaking floorboards and gurgling pipes, if she didn’t accept.
In the end, egged on by Jessi and Anya, who nagged her all evening, she replied to his message.
‘Sure, sounds great. What shall I bring?’
Celeste was irritable and stressed for the rest of the week. Though she didn’t say anything to them, she felt annoyed with Anya and Jessi for having talked her into accepting this date. Now she felt trapped. As she caught the tube over to Steve’s flat in Putney, she couldn’t wait for the evening to be over. To avoid any misunderstanding, she had already booked her Uber home with pick-up from his place at 11pm.
*
Steve lived on his own, in a neat, functional one-bedroom flat in a new development just over the river in Putney designed with single professionals in mind. Celeste knew he had recently qualified as a chartered accountant with one of the big London accountancy firms – she couldn’t remember the name. But she’d decided not to hold his profession against him. ‘He’s not as boring as that makes him sound,’ she had told the girls. In fact, he actually did have the proverbial ‘GSOH’ that every man seemed to lay claim to in his Tinder ads. He was also quite good-looking in a conventional way and worked out regularly in the gym. He liked the cinema and he liked to travel. That was pretty much all she knew about him so far. And when he buzzed her in through the door, her first impression of his dwelling place, uncluttered and stylish in a predictable kind of way, suggested that he enjoyed an ordered and uncomplicated existence. That was a plus.
Steve handed her a gin and tonic. He’d taken care over preparing it – served in a highball glass, with ice and lemon.
‘It’s slimline tonic,’ he said. ‘I know that’s what you like.’ And coming from Steve, she knew that wasn’t meant to be an insensitive comment (even though she was always hyper-sensitive about her weight despite being on the thin side). On the contrary, he was considerate and attentive to her preferences – unlike most of the guys she had known i
n the past.
Dinner was surprisingly un-awkward. He’d made a tasty chicken-in-wine casserole, one of his mother’s recipes, with steamed vegetables. He hadn’t been as clichéd as to put out candles, but he’d dimmed the lights, and put on a CD of greatest hits from the previous decade that he’d come across when having a clear-out of his CD collection.
‘I saved this one for you,’ he said. It included the songs of her favourite pop artists from when they were both in their teens. He’d taken note of her taste in music in their earlier conversations. ‘It’s a throwback to the time we were students. I’ve got a weakness as well for the music we were listening to then – all those parties in the college bar.’ He wasn’t to know that Celeste had missed out on going to university. She’d never spoken of it to him. And because he knew she’d been to such an academic school and seemed so interested in literature and history of art, so all-round educated, he’d made an assumption – wrongly.
They chatted about this and that. There was a new exhibition at the Royal Academy that he thought might interest her. He told her about a film he had seen. He asked her how CelestialHeadstones.com was going, and her eyes shone as she replied that it was really taking off, she was receiving lots of new orders and finding it so interesting discovering new places and learning about people’s lives.
‘I love it,’ she said. ‘I love designing the website, taking photographs and learning about recent history and exchanging poems all round the world with my clients. I’ve learnt so much about the Second World War since I started it.’
Celeste told him about her trip to Cambridge, and how it was such a beautiful city and how she’d like to go there again.
‘Perhaps we could go there together one weekend,’ he said. ‘I’d love to take you.’ He was a good listener, showing a real interest in her floristry work, with helpful suggestions about how she could grow the grave-tending business. As she sipped her red wine, she began to feel relaxed and opened up to him, telling him about her strange experiences at the cemetery and the Bridge of Sighs. And he didn’t laugh at her or explain it away as a trick of the mind.
No Smoke Without Fire Page 10