Ghosts

by Dolly Alderton

The absence of individualism; the peaceful acquiescence to mundanity.

None of us are special. I don’t know why we fight it so much.

Being late is a selfish habit adopted by boring people in search of a personality quirk who can’t be bothered to take up an instrument.

He said, ‘But those are the best things about a person – the contradictions,’ with a faraway look in his eyes. I knew that very second that if I ever had a reason to hate Max, if he ever treated me badly, I would return to this sentence as proof that he was the worst person alive. But for now, I was able to nod dreamily and agree.

When I looked around the circle of women, the women I’d been dancing with since I was a teenager, I suddenly saw us as completely different people. Lola in her strapless jumpsuit, using a glass of prosecco as a microphone. Meera moving her hips rhythmically around her clutch bag on the floor. We didn’t look free or wild or mysterious, we looked like pissed-up thirty-something women pointing at each other to the beat of the music we grew up with that would now be played at a nostalgia club night.

Why was a sprinkling of the patriarchy so good when it came to dating?

It’s so hard to trace which memories are yours and which ones you’ve borrowed from photo albums and family folklore and appropriated as your own.

But the most compelling thing about Vivien was the spell of guruism she cast on whoever she met while being unaware of her own addictive didacticism.

eh?

‘Yes, he’s had a breakdown. He’s sold his house to go live in Belgium. But I’ve always thought Belgium would be a rather splendid place to go mad in, so good for him.’

I had never known a feeling as unbearable – as sour, wrenching and unshakeably sad – as pity for a parent.

Not for the first time upon looking in on my friends’ long-term relationships, I marvelled at how a marriage ironically seemed to provide men of my generation with even more of an excuse to not grow up.

I longed to point out that he seemed to think this ‘hellhole’ was more than suitable when he wanted to use it as a giant playground to destroy with other fellow man-babies on a Friday night out.

‘Don’t say that. Don’t give me a subtle warning that I’ve got to behave exactly as you’d like me to otherwise you’ll go off me.’

I’m strong-armed into silence by the fear of being called mad.

You’re not allowed to say what you want or what has upset you because there’s always this undetonated bomb underneath the relationship that goes off if you seem too “intense”.’

‘I’m not sure how far into this you are, but something we learnt with my dad is that it was much easier for him if we didn’t argue with any of the illusions he found himself in.’

Nostalgia: Greek compound combining nostos (homecoming) and álgos (pain). The literal Greek translation for nostalgia is ‘pain from an old wound’.

The contents of supermarket baskets are surely evidence that none of us are coping with adulthood all that well.

Alma had become obsessed with Max after he once carried her shopping up the stairs for her. Since then, every time I saw her she told me how lucky I was to be with him – what an extraordinary man he was. I decided not to point out that he too was lucky to be with me, a woman who had carried Alma’s shopping up the stairs more times than I could count.

What was it about mothers that lowered a woman’s irritation threshold by a metre just from speaking?

Getting older was an increasingly perplexing thing, but these moments – understanding that potential future memories were being taken from you year on year, like road closures – were the very worst of it.

I wished there was a way I could access the filing cabinet of his mind and keep track of which memories were being lost and when.

You’re my best and oldest friend and not only did you not want to be there, you didn’t even feel a sense of obligation to pretend to want to be there.’

I don’t know what’s happened to make you so relentlessly dismissive of anyone whose life isn’t exactly like yours, but you need to sort that shit out.

But you can’t phase me out of your life because I’m a bit too messy for whatever aesthetic mood board you’re currently living in. That’s not how friendship works.’

My dad was nearly eighty and he was still missing his mother. He’d found a way of concealing it for all of his adult life and now, as the facade of togetherness was being slowly taken apart without his knowledge: the truth. All he wanted was his mum.

How enjoyable it must be, to throw these hypothetical scenarios into conversation, knowing the primal panic it might ignite in a woman over thirty. How powerful he must have felt.

As I watched him surrender to the silly, untameable joy of hysterical giggles, I realized that while the future might strip him of his self, something mightier remained. His soul would always exist somewhere separate and safe. No one and nothing – no disease, no years of ageing – could take that away from him. His soul was indestructible.