Ghosted, p.16
Ghosted, page 16
‘So today’s a big day for us,’ he said, ‘because you saw my dad. And Ariel? I saw your mum. I didn’t handle it very well, but tomorrow I will. She’s here. She’s in town. She lives in my world. I met her.’ I watched him force a smile. ‘I guess we’ve met the parents.’
26
‘I saw your mum,’ I say. I am so pleased that, for once, I have something to give to Ariel after everything she’s done for me. ‘I didn’t handle it very well, but tomorrow I will. She’s here, Ariel. She’s in town. She lives in my world. I met her. I guess we’ve met the parents.’
‘Did you take a photo?’
‘Not today, but tomorrow I will, I promise. I know what to do now. I talked to her, Ariel. She was carrying Sasha, so now I’ve met Sasha too! Cute baby. Tomorrow I’ll say the right things.’
My dad is married to Mrs Dupont. It sounds like they’re happy. Good, I guess.
‘Tell me everything,’ Ariel whispers, and I do, although there isn’t much more to say. I knocked on the door, knew her mum’s name and her baby’s name, and told her I was a ghost. She pushed me out, locked the door and closed the curtains. I sledged down a cliff a few times and walked through the sea.
‘She looked like you,’ I say when I’ve finished. ‘Completely like you. So much that I thought it was you with Sasha’s baby and that I’d gone further into the future. You can’t be at all like your dad. How old is your mum?’
‘Twenty-six,’ she says, so quickly that I know she calculated it long ago. ‘Sasha’s six months old. Mum was twenty-six when she had Sasha and thirty when she had me. She had two miscarriages in between.’ She frowns a little in thought. ‘Ask if you can tidy the garden or something, for charity. Something that doesn’t involve you going into the house. Then chat about the baby and tell her your mum left you to move to India. She’ll feel sorry for you.’
I say, ‘I guess your dad would be around in my time then?’
She shrugs. ‘Maybe. He can go fuck himself.’
‘I was just wondering if I could go and find him and tell him that. Just because it would feel good.’
Ariel grins. ‘Yeah. You can.’
‘Have you not heard from him at all?’
‘No. Can you believe that? I sent him an email that one time. I didn’t tell Sasha. And he ignored it.’
Ariel stops abruptly and takes some deep breaths. ‘I guess I should be charitable and look on it as him having a mental breakdown, but I can’t. I feel stupid for trying to contact him. He’s as dead to me as Mum is now. More so.’
‘Was he bad before? Before your mum got ill, I mean?’
She looks into my eyes. ‘Yes. Sasha could never do anything right as far as he was concerned. He was always making sure she knew he was disappointed, whatever she did. And he was mean to Mum. He always shouted at her that we needed to move out of this dead-end town, that she’d forced him to live a small life in a crap place.’
She reads my unspoken question and answers it. ‘He was never violent. Not exactly. He would punch the walls, or smash things, right next to Sasha or Mum, but he didn’t hit them.’
‘Still sounds violent.’
‘He did the same thing to me, just before he left. I said I wasn’t going, and he punched the bed and then the wall. I’m almost glad, you know? I felt bad when he was treating me differently. It was uncomfortable. He’d take me to the arcade, but if Sasha wanted to come he’d say things like, “No, this one’s just me and Ariel.” He’d often come home with little presents for me, but not for her. I was never in trouble, but she’d be pulled up on every little thing. I was his golden child and I hated it. I knew it wasn’t because he liked me. I was just a way for him to get at Sasha.’
‘That must have been weird.’
She shrugs. ‘I guess it came to a head when he tried to get me to creep out of the house with him to go to Scotland, and when I said no he turned against me too. It’s a relief, in a way, but a bigger relief for Sasha. I thought it might be awkward as we’d always been treated so differently, but she’s full of Mum’s kindness. If it was me who’d told him I was pregnant, and planning to have the baby, he might have got on board with it. Because it was Sasha, he ignored her for a bit and then ran away. It was when she found out she was having a boy. Maybe that made it more real to him?’
‘Bastard.’
‘Right?’ Ariel sighs. ‘I wish I could step into your time.’ She looks at the door. ‘The idea that Mum is there is such a headfuck.’
‘Do you still see the 1999 people at school?’
‘Yeah, they’re still around, but they don’t bother me any more. They’re a part of you, in a way. I like to think of the colour blue and watch a room light up. I look for you, you know. I’ll keep looking. They used to terrify me. Now I’m just pleased to know that I’m seeing your friends.’ She stops and frowns. ‘I’m going to try to talk to them again actually. You never know. That might really help.’
‘I haven’t been to school much lately. I might go, though. Maybe we could see each other.’
Ariel grins. It lifts my heart. ‘Let’s try it! Why don’t you go tomorrow, and I will too, and we’ll see if we can meet? Let’s go in early. You know the geography corridor? Second floor?’
‘My tutor room’s up there.’
‘Perfect. Meet there at eight twenty? It might work.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Let’s try it. It’s a date.’
We grin at each other. The word date sparkles in the air between is. I can almost see it there, hanging in the stillness as we both hold our breath. D-A-T-E.
I have a date with Ariel, outside this cupboard. It may be taking place on the geography corridor, but it’s a date nonetheless, and I’m grinning stupidly when the door opens and everything goes blank.
27
I got up at half past six, had a shower, ate a big breakfast and left a note for Sasha:
Gone to school early. Coursework project. Remembered at midnight x
She’d be pleased with that: it was exactly the kind of thing that she wanted me to do. I used to be conscientious about my work and always do it as well as I could, right on time. Now I was more distracted than ever. I didn’t care what grades I got this summer as long as it was enough to get me into sixth form, and even then I couldn’t bring myself to be that worried about it because I was pretty sure the college would take me anyway, and Joe was more important. If it was a choice between getting the best possible grades and saving someone I cared for, with every atom of my being, from being trapped in an abyss outside of time and space I knew what I had to do.
I texted Izzy and told her I was going in early to do some work. She replied k, which meant she was annoyed, but I’d make it up to her at school.
We always walked there together. She had listened to me for the past few years and, now that I was coming through the grief, I was hearing more about her own stuff too. I loved it when she talked about her home, which was happy and normal, and made me feel warm inside.
Now I knew she felt I was shutting her out and she was hurt. I was going to have to give her something, but I couldn’t tell her the truth. I hit the same barrier every time I thought about confiding in someone. I couldn’t tell Izzy, I couldn’t tell Sasha, and I couldn’t tell Gus or Abby, or Ms Duke or Jasper, because none of them would believe me, and all of them would think I was crazy, and the people in Joe’s family would be horribly hurt.
An empty school is an eerie place. My shoes squeaked along the corridors and up the stairs, and then I was outside the geography rooms, where there were posters of volcanoes and oxbow lakes, and right at the end of the corridor … there he was. There was Joe. He had that blue thing around him right away because I’d looked at a picture of a river just before I saw him.
I ran to him, my arms outstretched. I ran through him, just for fun, and shivered at the sensation. ‘Oh my God!’ I said, laughing.
‘Well, hello, you,’ he said. ‘It worked.’
‘Look at us!’
We couldn’t stop smiling at each other. I didn’t think I’d ever been so pleased to see anyone.
‘What does this mean?’ I was trying to work it out. My phone pinged. I ignored it.
‘It means we’re amazing!’ said Joe. ‘That’s what it means.’
‘Right?’ I did a little dance. No one in 2019 was watching after all. Joe joined in. He grinned and attempted a cartwheel. It was shit, but that didn’t stop him doing another three. I could see him beginning to embrace his world.
‘And it might –’ He stopped abruptly, then started again. ‘It might mean that if we can be in the same place at the same time of day, and if it’s a place that exists in both our worlds, we can meet up and do things. Or it might not,’ he added quickly. ‘I have no idea.’
‘Let’s work out a time and place. See if we can do it. It would be the most …’ I had to stop speaking. It was too much. I checked my phone instead, then grinned and held it out.
‘Hey! Look!’
Ariel. Sorry for short notice AGAIN, but could you babysit for a couple of hours tomorrow, 4 to 6ish? My mum’s going into hospital and I really want to be with her. It would involve picking up the girls from after-school club, because I know you have school yourself so can’t be there at 3.20, and taking them home, just hanging out, and then Gus will be back at 6. I understand short notice & that you’re prob busy. Could’ve asked other babysitter, but girls insist on you!! Abby xxx
I closed my eyes for a second and did my breathing exercises. In for a count of five, hold for five, out for five. Cloud tops of Venus. It was the idea of someone’s mother being ill.
I calmed myself down.
‘Do it,’ Joe said. I wasn’t sure whether he’d noticed me panicking. ‘I mean, if you want to. I can manage without seeing you tomorrow. Plus, I’m seeing you twice today.’
I nodded and gathered myself to reply to Abby. Sorry to hear about your mum, I wrote. Hope she’s OK? Yes, that’s no prob.
You are amazing!! she replied. Mum’s fine. It’s a scan, nothing immediately worrying. So it’s Manor Park Primary and the after-school club is in the hall. The girls will be deeeee-lighted! xxx
I turned back to Joe, aware that people would start to arrive soon, and I had an idea. Of course it was fine to be holding one side of a conversation in a deserted corridor. I could be as animated as I wanted, as long as I changed one thing.
I fished my earphones out of a pocket, plugged them into my phone and put one into my ear. ‘Now I can say what I want without looking mad,’ I told him, pleased with myself.
He nodded. ‘Don’t you feel stupid, though? Talking on a mobile phone? I do when I use mine.’
‘Not at all. Everyone does it.’
He looked around. ‘I can’t believe we can meet somewhere else. This kind of opens things up?’
‘I saw a boy once,’ I said, remembering. ‘He was writing “help me” on the wall out in the playground. It wasn’t you. I don’t know why it wasn’t you. It should have been, don’t you think?’
‘What did he –’ Joe started, but then a boy came into focus. He walked up to Joe. I thought of blue and he was blue.
‘Talking to yourself?’ he said.
Joe sighed and pulled a face I hadn’t seen before – irritated, mean even. ‘Lucas,’ he said with a bit of a swagger – maybe this was what his human self had actually been like. ‘No, you twat. I was practising for the play.’
‘What play?’
‘It’s not a school thing. It’s for a drama course I got into. National Youth Theatre.’
I laughed at that. What a random lie, and how easily he’d told it.
Lucas laughed too, not believing him any more than I did. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Right. Sure it is. Shouldn’t you be parlaying en fransay today?’
‘If I knew how to say fuck off in French, mate, then believe me I would.’
Joe walked away, looking cocky and completely unlike the Joe I knew.
I walked with him.
‘Hey there, Mr Attitude,’ I said. I looked back at Lucas, who was clearly hurt. ‘National Youth Theatre? Congratulations. I hear that’s an incredibly difficult audition to pass.’ Joe gave me a side-eye and a half-smile. ‘So that’s Lucas,’ I said, still pretending I was talking into my phone. ‘I could totally see and hear him. You were pretty harsh.’
I remembered that I was going to try again to talk to Joe’s people, and spun round. ‘Lucas!’ I called. I waved my arms. ‘Hey, Lucas Ingleby? You OK?’
He couldn’t hear me. I turned back to Joe, who whispered, ‘How did he feel to you?’ I could see his anxiety. He was the Joe I knew again now. ‘My mind always comes back to him, and that must mean something. Maybe he …’
I interrupted. ‘You were much worse to him than he was to you. You f-bombed him. He was just mildly taking the piss.’
He looked surprised. ‘D’you think?’
We both jumped as a bell rang. It meant we had to go to registration. I was standing outside a geography room that was a tutor room in my time too, so lots of people were suddenly pushing past.
‘See you later,’ I said, and I reached out so my hand could float through his, and then set off down the corridor, alone, between the crowds of Joe’s people and mine, shivering as I went.
I tried to concentrate all day, but I’d stopped caring. I cared about Joe, who was dead, but no one knew why. Joe, who was going to visit Mum and Sasha again today. I cared about my nephew and my sister, and Zara and Coco, and Izzy. I had no space left for quadratic equations after all that. I was going to get some GCSEs, but, more importantly, I was going to work out what had happened to Joe Simpson and free him from this glitch. I was hoping quite hard that I had it in me to do both those things at once.
Izzy, though, was pissed off all day. She barely spoke to me.
‘Sorry,’ I whispered when we were in tutor.
‘What for?’ she said tightly. ‘You haven’t done anything.’
‘Exactly. What’s up?’
She shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter. There was something I was going to talk to you about this morning, but you weren’t there. And you always run off after school. Are we even friends any more?’
‘Oh, Izzy!’ I felt terrible. ‘Of course we are! I love you. Let’s do something at the weekend.’ An idea was forming in my mind. ‘In fact, why don’t we go to London, like you said?’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Really?’
‘Really.’
Later I found Sasha watching Netflix from under a duvet, with a McDonald’s milkshake next to her. She looked exhausted, and I felt bad for being out after school every single day. Sasha never questioned it because she thought I was studying.
‘Hey.’ I climbed under the duvet with her, and she took my hand and placed it on the baby.
‘You OK?’ she said.
‘Yep.’
‘How’s revision?’
I sighed. ‘Boring.’ Boring and sketchy. ‘You know what it’s like. I’ll just have to hope I’m doing enough.’
‘You are. I have faith.’ She sighed. ‘Do you think we should move house? I’ve been wondering.’
I looked at the telly. Sure enough, she was watching Selling Sunset. People were looking round a huge mansion with a pool, in the Hollywood Hills.
‘We can’t move to that house,’ I said.
‘Yeah. But you know. A house. Smaller. One that’s not Dad’s.’
‘We can’t,’ I said. This was Mum’s home, and since I’d been seeing Joe I wondered whether she could still be here, walking round us every day, watching us, checking on us. She might be. She might be waiting for the baby, like Lara on the train.
‘Yeah,’ said Sasha. ‘It’s still Mum’s house.’
I nodded. We were silent for what felt like a long time.
‘I’m babysitting tomorrow,’ I said, remembering. ‘After school, up to six.’
‘Ariel,’ Sasha said, leaning back and frowning. ‘That’s when you study. Can’t you just do evenings? If you have to do it at all.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Sorry. But it’s only two hours. How about this: I won’t take any more daytime ones.’
‘OK. Do tomorrow, then stop. We just need to get through this summer. You pass your exams –’
‘And you have a baby.’
She stroked her bump and I noticed again how tired she looked. I wondered, all of a sudden, where her friends were. Sasha had always had a crowd of people around her. Now she was always on her own, at work at the cafe, or collapsed at home.
I knew where they were really: they were at university, almost all of them, and the ones who weren’t had still moved away to do apprenticeships and things. Sasha was the only one of her noisy, laughing gang who was still around.
‘You look exhausted,’ I said. ‘Let me run you a bath. And while you’re in it I’ll cook a chilli, and nip out for chocolate.’
Sasha nodded. ‘Now you mention it,’ she said, ‘those would be the best things in the world.’
28
I knock on the door of number twelve. Anna Brown answers with baby Sasha on her hip and looks at me with the same polite expression as she did the first time.
Today, though, I have a different script. Today’s lines have been written by the child who hasn’t been born yet.
‘Hi!’ I say. ‘My name’s Joe. I’m doing a charity thing. Sorry to disturb you, but do you need any help with the garden? We’re collecting for the children’s hospice.’
She looks surprised, then smiles.
‘Of course!’ she says. ‘What a lovely thing to do. I’ve been neglecting the garden a bit since this little one arrived. If you don’t mind, could you just pull out the weeds around the daffs? Pile them up in the little garden bin in the corner. That would be perfect. Thank you so much!’
‘No problem at all,’ I say, and I don’t put my foot inside the door, which, on reflection, was a pretty aggressive move last time. I kneel in the garden instead and start pulling out the weeds. I feel a bit shabby about the children’s hospice part of this, but I know that if I did make a donation to them it would be imaginary.
