Ghosts

by Dolly Alderton

If there’s one visible warning sign that a friendship has become faulty, it’s the point when you realize you only ever want to go to the cinema with them. And not dinner and the cinema—I mean meeting outside the Leicester Square Odeon ten minutes before a specifically late showing of a film, then having a “quick catch-up” during the trailers and an excuse to leave as soon as it’s over because all the pubs are about to close. It is the platonic version of no longer wanting to have sex with your long-term boyfriend. It is the lingering, looming sense that something is no longer working, pervaded by a reluctance to fix it.

“I’ve started seeing someone,” I said reflexively. “Have you?!” she yelped, with more surprise than I would have liked. “Yes. Well, just one date. But he’s brilliant.” “What’s he called?” she asked, her pupils—I swear—dilating. I knew she’d love this—I was speaking her language now. Dates, man, love, potentially someone for me to bring round for Mark to talk about rugby and traffic with.

I couldn’t really remember what Max looked like. My brain had grabbed hold of just four specific details of him. I had spent the week since we’d last seen each other circulating those memories around my mind like four separate plates of canapés at a party. Once I’d had enough of memory platter one, I’d take a bite from memory platter two. When I was satisfied with that, I’d switch to another one and so on and so on. Not only were these four memories just enough to satiate my daydreams, working out exactly why my memory had clung on to the specific vignettes also fascinated me.

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. Sometimes I took a wrong turn on the Heath and ended up in woodland or a field and felt the unique disorientation that comes from involuntary memory, like I was standing in a half-finished watercolour painting of a landscape. Returning to it gave me the same satisfaction as finally remembering a word I’d been searching for, then haunted me with a sinister sense that there were important things I couldn’t remember and never would. Hundreds of black holes in who I was, as bottomless as a night spent drinking tequila.

“I think something happens in your thirties where you slightly let go of this idea of the perfect career. I have so much fun outside of work, maybe it’s enough that it’s just fine. It pays okay, I get on with my colleagues. At the end of the day, it’s just ye olde day job.”

I could sit an A level in the details of Katherine and Mark’s life together over the last decade. Every asset, every purchase, every detail of their wedding, every potential baby name. Tradition dictates that metamorphoses belong to the married—the rest of us exist in a static state. “It looks lovely,” I lied. “It’s got a great garden for the kids,” Katherine said. “So brilliant,” I said, already running out of adjectives.

Being a heterosexual woman who loved men meant being a translator for their emotions, a palliative nurse for their pride and a hostage negotiator for their egos.

It was strange, to have all your screens finally fail you. I didn’t know where to get the delicious chemical hit psychologists always warned against—I couldn’t seem to feel it, as much as I clicked. Google wasn’t giving me the content I wanted, neither was Linx. Perhaps this was why Lola was always online shopping and sending everything back, like a retail bulimic—to feel something even for just a second.

Lola had a bad case of mentionitis—when thoughts of a lover are so pervasive, they find their way into every topic (“Jethro has the grey version of your bath mat!” she said at one point, like she’d discovered we shared a grandmother). A diagnosis of chronic mentionitis—that another human has bought a permanent property on a road that goes right through the middle of your soul—means that you are truly, irreversibly, horrifically in love.

I took a deep breath. I couldn’t believe I was finally going to say it—the speech I’d been angrily rehearsing for months, that I never thought would be spoken anywhere other than when I was alone in the shower.

I have to celebrate when you get your kitchen retiled, but anything I do is trivial and meaningless because I’m not in a relationship and I don’t have children.

I would make a strong case for the argument that every adult on this earth is sitting on a bench waiting for their parents to pick them up, whether they know it or not. I think we wait until the day we die.

In my fantasies, “Hello” is exactly what he’d say first. It had the classic cadence of romcom dialogue—uncomplicated and yet loaded with subtext.

I knew I would let him in and I knew that we would talk, rigorously and deeply, into the night. But I saw the words of every sassy self-help book sloganism I’d heard second-hand my whole life: play hard to get, make him wait, show him what he’s missing. I pretended to be in conflict about my decision and continued the silent stand-off for a minute. Then I walked to the front door, turned the key and entered, feeling him close behind me.

“I’ve known I’ll be fine. It’s easier, being heartbroken in your thirties, because no matter how painful it is, you know it will pass. I don’t believe one other human has the power to ruin my life any more.”

How easy it was for him to play this game. 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.

“Yes, I really did,” I said. “I don’t know if he loved me. I think he thought he did. But it’s like he imagined me—I provided him with a feeling that he enjoyed. But he couldn’t quite see the actual outline of me. I don’t know if it counts as love if it was genuinely felt on my side but imagined on his.” “But—” She stopped herself. “Go on,” I said. “Well, whenever you’ve described him to me, it sounds like you’re imagining him a bit as well. He sounds sexy and interesting. But other than that, he seems pretty unfeeling and self-obsessed.” “Yeah,” I said. “I think I have to accept some responsibility with what happened. I wonder how much I really wanted to actually get to know the real him, and how much I wanted a storybook hero.” “What happened wasn’t your fault.”

A sensation rose inside me—one that had been long-repressed. Something I should have expressed, fully and freely, when Max first disappeared, but instead I had hidden everywhere else, to be a good girl. I had turned it in on myself, to examine all my possible imperfections. I had let it rise like hot air into my brain to analyse and pathologize needlessly. I had allowed it into my heart and let it melt down into something patient and forgiving. I had distributed this feeling into any part of my body so that it wouldn’t escape from my mouth; so that it couldn’t catch the air. That way, no one could accuse me of being intense or deluded or crazy. But it was time to breathe it out like fire. I had no interest in retribution, all I wanted was redress.

“I just need ten minutes to talk to you.” There was a pause, then the flat, obtrusive beep that let me know he’d let me in. I knew he’d cave—these men cared so little about their actions towards the women they hurt, but so much about what people who knew about those actions might think of them. I held a thumbs-up aloft to Lola, who was sitting on a doorstep a few buildings down with the bottle of champagne. He opened his front door. “Nina, hi, come on in,” he drawled in a demonstratively unbothered way, exposing his nerves. I scanned his flat, which was filled with the essential props of a try-hard renaissance man. The exposed-brick wall and original tiles of someone interested in heritage, but only of the building he lived in. Framed Pink Floyd albums, a pasta-making machine, linen cushion covers, a neat row of orange Penguin classics, herbal hand soap in an apothecary-style jar that cost £38 a bottle. There was an oil painting of a nude woman who was very slightly overweight with very slightly pendulous breasts, which probably made him think he was a feminist. He had bought his entire personality from a cobbled side-road of boutiques in Shoreditch.

I imagined him as a single forty-something, silvery strands streaked through his red hair, gallant crinkles around his eyes, a flat twice the size filled with twice as much detritus of an insecure man with too much money. He wouldn’t seem desperate or sad. Men like Jethro got to journey through life and be perceived as lion-hearted, intrepid explorers. Then I realized—he would be able to decide when he wanted to fall in love and have a family and it would happen. There would always be a woman who wanted to love him. He didn’t have to take this chance at all—he could wait for another chance. Then another one. The female population was just an endless source of chances and he could wait as long as he wanted. There was so little risk involved when it came to who and how he loved. Nothing meant anything to him. “You won’t marry a woman your age,” I said, understanding it as I said it aloud. “You’ll marry a woman ten years younger than you. That’s how this will work. You’re right, age doesn’t matter. To you.” He stared at me, his mouth tight and defiant, and said nothing.

Because these men wanted to want something rather than have something. Max wanted to be tortured, he wanted to yearn and chase and dream. He wanted to exist in a liminal state, like everything was just about to begin. He liked contemplating what our relationship might be like, without investing any time or commitment in our relationship. Jethro liked talking about the home he would buy with Lola, but he didn’t want to turn up to the viewing. They were like teenage boys in their rooms, coming up with lyrics to write in their notebooks. They weren’t ready to be adults, to make any choices, let alone promises. They preferred a relationship to be virtual and speculative, because when it was virtual and speculative, it could be perfect. Their girlfriend didn’t have to be human. They didn’t have to think about plans or practicalities, they weren’t burdened with the concern of another person’s happiness. And they could be heroes. They could be gods.

“It’s like what Joe said in his groom’s speech: love is being the guardian of another person’s solitude. Maybe friendship is being the guardian of another person’s hope. Leave it with me and I’ll look after it for a while, if it feels too heavy for now.” “I can’t do that, you’re already carrying yours.” “Oh, I’ve been carrying mine for a decade,” she said. “I won’t notice if I chuck a bit more in.”

We exchange pleasantries, both smoke a cigarette in the sun, and I tell him it’s my thirty-third birthday. He informs me I’m the same age as Jesus was when he died and asks what I plan to do to rival his achievements. I tell him I am sure I can save mankind in the next year. Or if not, I’ll definitely donate to food banks more.