Chapter Four
Jake
One second we’re in Belle’s hotel suite, the next … marigold walls. A living room, aggressively warm. Belle lands beside me, exactly as she was a moment ago. So that’s how this works, then.
Every part of the room is covered – the walls dense with family photos in mismatched frames, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves absolutely loaded with everything from Dostoyevsky to David Jason’s biography.
Wooden sideboards are home to incense holders and stuffed animals.
A glass dome containing a small bird perched on twigs sits on a shelf next to a rat wearing a top hat.
‘Wait, is this your aunt Susan’s house?’ I laugh. It has Susan written all over it. She was the wild child of her mum’s siblings, with a hankering for hoarding and taxidermy.
I look down at Belle and realise we’re still holding hands.
Belle clocks it at the same moment I do and she pulls away sharply, wiping her palms on her dress.
She avoids my eye and she’s not looking at the room either.
Her eyes sweep past the clutter and land straight on the mantelpiece.
She’s looking for a clock. There isn’t one.
Her wrist flips over, checking for a watch she’s not wearing, and her fingers pat down her hips for a phone that isn’t there.
She’s flushing as she whispers, ‘Shh, she might hear us!’
‘Belle, I promise you she won’t hear us.
I’m a ghost, remember?’ I say with cocky assurance, despite being totally unsure.
Pans clatter from what I presume is the kitchen, and laughter floats up the hallway.
Belle turns to a bookshelf and picks up a blue-and-white china teacup, home to two taxidermied mice.
‘She taxidermied these two herself, you know.’ Belle laughs fondly. I lean in, my face grimacing – it looks like the nose of one of the mice has been pushed in too far, and the other one looks scrawny, with wire poking out from its feet.
‘Hope she didn’t quit her day job,’ I remark.
My eyes flick to a photo on the wall of Belle as a baby. She’s lying on a red floral pillow, on her front, smiling into the camera, dribble leaking from the corner of her mouth, while her cousin Harry sits upright beside her, dummy in his mouth, clutching a baby blanket.
‘You look exactly the same.’ I nudge and wink at Belle, who scowls.
‘Let’s get this over with,’ she says, grabbing hold of my elbow and dragging me towards the door.
Out in the hallway, we stop with a jolt, almost colliding with Aunt Susan herself.
I feel Belle’s grip tighten on my arm and she pulls back, but Aunt Susan has no reaction.
She looks like the sort who’d be thrilled a ghost had come to visit – immediately usher you in, sit you down for a cuppa, dig out the Ouija board from the back of a cupboard.
She’s certainly dressed for a séance – layered up like she’s expecting a chill from the other side: a floaty purple paisley blouse studded with brooches, over a long-sleeved peacock-print top, a long swishy brown skirt and a bright yellow scarf wrapped in her updo, accentuating her huge, oversized earrings.
I hesitantly reach out and tap her shoulder.
Nothing. She stands transfixed, peering through the open basement door under the stairs.
‘Oh my God, she was spying on us!’ Belle squeals, cheeks flushing.
‘I wondered why she made us keep this door open, but I thought it was because of a possible fire emergency!’ I smirk as Belle stands there, aghast. It’s my turn to lead her now, so we squeeze past Susan and follow the sound of laughter leading down to the basement.
As we walk down the stairs, I halt. Two teens are snogging at the bottom while a group of rowdy youths cheer them on.
They pull back and I realise one of them is Belle.
She looks flustered, her face flicking from ‘I’m having the time of my life’ to ‘I’m SO bored’ to ‘I hate you all’, in the space of a second – like she’s concentrating too hard on her appearance and can’t settle on which persona to wear.
I continue down the stairs and look over to Belle. ‘Look how young you are here! How old were you?’ I nudge her, teasing.
But she’s not with me – she’s looking back up the staircase, one hand gripping the banister like she’s about to bolt.
‘How long is this gonna take?’ she asks quietly.
Just then the lad she was kissing turns to sip his drink and … ‘Wait, were you in love with Peter Cox?’ I stop.
Belle rolls her eyes. ‘I was fourteen, thank you – and no, I was not in love with Peter. I wanted to snog Matty.’
I look over to Matty, with his silly fringe, so long I can hardly understand how he could see from behind it. Why do all teen girls love an emo skater boy?
I narrow my eyes. ‘Why are we here, then? This is supposed to be about something important.’
‘Because we said we’d try a quick one! Anyway, it didn’t mean much,’ she replies nonchalantly, twiddling with her earring.
‘No, Belle, this is serious. You’re the one worried about timekeeping but you’re missing the point.’ I face her now, throwing my hands in the air. ‘This memory has to mean something or it wouldn’t have worked, so what is it? What am I— are you supposed to be learning from this?’
We both turn as sharp howls rupture from the centre of the room.
Two teens are making out so hard that they’ve spilled the Pringles tube and one has salsa on their knee.
Harry is frantically trying to pick up crumbs from the carpet.
Teen Belle helps him by sweeping them into her hands.
She looks around, unsure of what to do with them, and sits, holding broken crisps in her sweaty palms.
I sigh. ‘I don’t want to watch a bunch of fourteen-year-olds snog if it doesn’t even matter.’
We both watch as young Belle fidgets with the black choker on her neck, twisting it so much while staring at Matty that it’s leaving a red mark. The adult Belle next to me winces with embarrassment.
‘Stop looking at me like that,’ she mutters.
I shake my head. ‘Did something happen with Peter or not?’
She shuffles her feet on the dingy basement carpet, frowning and avoiding catching my eye. ‘No, it’s not like that.’
‘Who was your first love, then?’ I want to know what I’m going to witness as the night goes on. What the point of any of this is. And, honestly, I didn’t think she’d be so embarrassed, considering I used to know every part of her.
‘You’re right, this is a waste of time. Can we just go back?’ I notice she wraps her arms around herself, but she can’t get away this easily. Surely, the hard bits are still to come – this should be the easy bit.
I cut in, almost pleading now. ‘I mean, who was your first actual relationship?’
‘I have a wedding to get back to, Jake.’
There it is again. The way she says my name, like I’m a misbehaving dog. Like she’s the adult here and I’m just wasting her precious time. I step towards her now, jabbing a finger in her direction. ‘Right, and I think your first love would be a decent place to start.’
‘Jake, just take me back,’ she whines.
Why is she being so shitty? We used to be able to talk about everything and now she’s acting super shifty.
Is there something I’m missing? I look back at young Belle, who has moved now, perched on the side of a ratty sofa, swigging Fanta from a chipped teacup, shoulders hunched like she’s trying to disappear into herself.
She still keeps glancing over to Matty, who’s now trying to balance a can of Strongbow on his forehead.
His tragic fringe keeps getting in the way.
‘Oh my God!’ I’m grinning now – I know I am, because Belle’s face is doing that thing where she shuts down when she knows I’ve got her. ‘You were in love with Matty!’ I bark out a laugh, a sound I haven’t heard in years.
Belle physically steps back. ‘I wasn’t!’ Her tone is climbing, like a hungry bird, the more we argue.
I don’t believe her at all. ‘Then why are you being so weird?’ I say, stepping forward and grabbing her arm.
She shakes my hand off and looks up at me. ‘Because my first love was you! Okay?!’
The voices drop away. The CD player clicks to silence. The only sound left is Belle’s flustered breathing. I watch as Harry walks over to put in another disc.
I’m her first love? That can’t be right.
I shake my head, confused. ‘But what about that guy from uni? What was his name … Xavier?’
Belle’s face turns beetroot red. ‘Ugh! I made him up, okay! I made him up so you wouldn’t think I was a total love virgin!
I was embarrassed.’ She throws her hands up and starts backing towards the stairs.
‘Now can we please go back to my wedding? I’m going to lose it if I have to listen to another second of smooching and shitty pop. ’
I stand, genuinely stunned, for about five seconds. Then it hits me and I can’t help it. I start laughing. Properly laughing, belly deep, shoulder-shaking laughter. ‘Oh, that makes SO much sense!’
‘Jake.’ She balls her hands into fists at her side, jaw tight. ‘I am warning you.’
‘No, genuinely, I always thought it was so weird how much you clammed up when I asked about him.’ I feel my cheeks aching; I haven’t smiled this much in a decade. ‘What was that story again? Met in an art gallery, broke up because he was too emotionally unavailable?’
‘Shut up.’
Belle is practically vibrating with rage, which is only making this funnier.
‘Didn’t you give him a tragic backstory too? Lost all his poetry in a house fire? Had to live on the streets until his parents came to the rescue?’
‘I hate you.’
‘Oh, it’s coming back to me … You even gave him a Facebook page, didn’t you?
’ I can picture it now: Belle, aged twenty-one, hunched over her laptop at the kitchen table in her parents B&B, Photoshopping some random fit bloke’s profile picture to make it look like he’s in an art gallery.
‘How many mutual friends did you get in the end? Wait, didn’t you make him grow up in France, too, so no one could verify him? ’
I’m still grinning but it’s slipping. The Tesco bloke didn’t work, but this – a basement full of sweaty teens and a first kiss – this worked. So it’s not just random memories, it’s ones that mattered. The ones where she actually felt something?
And Xavier wasn’t real, but I was. Shit. So is that what comes next?
‘JAKE!’ She lunges forward and grabs my hands, yanking hard enough that I stumble into her. Her eyes are squeezed shut, jaw clenched. The basement vanishes.