Chapter Eighteen
Jake
The floors are so sticky that my trainers are squelching.
There’s also that familiar smell of damp mixed with hops mixed with stale beer that I didn’t realise I’d missed so much until now.
It takes me back … Crowding around pool tables, beer in hand.
That feeling of hitting a bullseye, sight sightly hazy, flashing pearly whites at girls huddled in the corner.
This pub isn’t quite as rough as my local back home, though.
No pool table in sight. Instead, looking out of the windows, it appears we’re practically sat on the Thames.
It’s all wooden beams, pirate maps on the walls, and The Smiths playing on knackered old speakers mounted on a brick wall.
I lean forward, spotting what looks like a noose hanging from a pole outside.
Only in London would that be considered atmosphere. I shrug. I’ve seen worse ways to go.
On a specials board above the bar, burrata with nduja is written in chalk.
I have no idea what nduja is – I assume it’s some sort of fancy Spanish ketchup.
I’m fairly certain Belle knows, though. A bloke at the bar gets a round in and I catch him wincing at the price as he taps his card to a machine.
He then juggles four pints back to a table without spilling a drop.
What a skill. Still, at eight quid a pint, I wouldn’t want to waste an ounce either.
I scan the crowd. My guess is it’s a Sunday afternoon.
There’s a couple with their jumper-wearing dog lying under the table, a woman reading alone at the bar with the confidence of someone who does this on the reg.
An old couple occupy a table next to us – they’re eating scampi, chips, and neon green peas.
Behind them a young family plays a card game.
It seems like the kind of place where you could become a regular, where the staff might remember your order. I wonder if this is Belle’s local.
And then I spot her – young Belle. She’s wearing an oversized jumper, and there are big silver hoops in her ears; a finger is fidgeting with a loose wave of her dark blonde hair which is long and curled. I got her a pair of earrings like that for one of her birthdays.
She’s sitting, leaning in, eyes locked with another man.
Cosied up in a wooden corner booth, the stocky guy sitting in front of her wears thick-rimmed glasses and dons a slightly ginger beard.
His arms are covered in black-and-white tattoos.
I can make out a PlayStation controller on his bicep and three love hearts in a line on his wrist. The words ‘Endure and Survive’ on his forearm in a weird script – a proper hipster.
‘Who’s this guy, then?’ I quip, looking him up and down. His black T-shirt has its sleeves rolled up. A grey knit beanie hat sits next to his beer on the table.
‘That would be Arthur,’ she says, twitching her nose.
‘He’s been my only other proper boyfriend, aside from you and Timothy.
’ She says this while looking at him, not me.
I guess moving to London will do that for a girl – gentrify her, make her fall for this dude.
Anyway, we saw from Matty she had a thing for the alternative types.
I give him a once-over, watch as young Belle picks a cat hair off his shoulder, then flicks it away without thinking.
He has puppy-dog eyes, thin lips, brows slightly upturned that make him look permanently introspective.
His hand is resting on her knee in a polite way and he’s nodding along as she talks.
Belle liked guys wearing jewellery. I note the metal bracelet on his wrist. I used to wear one like that.
Same type. Same wrist. I bought mine at a market stall outside a gig, lost it somewhere but never replaced it.
This could have been us … But it’s not. Anyway, I’d have much better taste in tattoos than those if I hadn’t been so scared of needles.
A howl of laughter erupts from the beer garden outside, and Belle shuffles beside me.
‘How’d you end up here with him?’ I ask.
‘Tinder.’
‘Oh. Yeah, before my time, I guess.’ I shrug.
Belle laughs. ‘Tinder was around when we were together, Jake.’
‘Well, I never got the chance to use it—’
‘You never got the hang of MySpace. Tinder was beyond your technological capabilities,’ she says, rolling her eyes.
‘That might be true.’ I laugh.
Call me crazy but … are we starting to get along? I don’t seem to be driving her to bouts of anger anymore. She hasn’t thrown a vase at me for at least a few hours.
‘What did you like about this fella, then? He looks as if Boxpark and Spitalfields Market had a baby. Was he born in a food truck?’
‘Hey, now,’ Belle protests.
‘He looks like he ferments his own kimchi.’ I’m on a roll now. Belle’s biting the inside of her cheek. ‘He looks like a sensitive soul. The type to make you a mixtape. But like, on an actual cassette.’
‘Jake!’ Belle squeals with a smirk. ‘He actually did that,’ she says, placing a palm against her forehead.
‘What, the kimchi or the mixtape?’
Belle playfully slaps my arm.
‘It had “Kiss from a Rose” by Seal on there.’ Browelle wobbles up and down.
‘Wow. I’m impressed, that’s a right tune.’ I scratch my head. I would have liked to have done that for her – made something for her to listen to, to remind her of me. It never occurred to me that I actually could.
‘He was very sweet. At this stage we’d been dating around three months. I liked him. I liked his humour. I liked that he cared deeply and I liked his sensitivity, but I wasn’t crazy about him … you know?’
‘Hmm.’
‘This was the night he told me about losing his mum. And I told him about losing you. It bonded us, I guess.’
I feel something in me jolt. Like an elastic band flicked hard to my chest. The classic ‘Dead Ex Sympathy Play’. Bound to connect. She used my death – not cruelly … She just carried it somewhere and it helped her to get closer to someone else. What do I do with that?
I look away, focus on the old couple and their scampi instead. The fish is almost demolished, leaving a wash of grease on the bottom of the plate, their empty ketchup sachets abandoned on the table. I change the subject.
‘So when did you get crazy about him?’ I say, nodding towards Arthur. ‘Did the kimchi do it for you in the end, or …?’
She doesn’t laugh. Tilts her head to the side and looks to the noose swinging in the breeze outside. Slowly, she says, ‘I don’t know if I ever really was. I was never really mad about him.’
My eyes wander back to Arthur, his bracelet. ‘No fireworks?’ I question.
‘No fireworks. Not like with us …’ She looks away. A flush starts at her neck and works its way up, slow and involuntary.
She continues, ‘But it was love … A safe love. A vanilla love. A deep connection. But I was never mad about him. I think I was still scared of being crazed. I moved in with him shortly after this, when I got kicked out of my last flat. That was about as crazy as we got. Just as well, too, with Covid. It made sense, really.’
I watch young Belle talk to this guy. They’re leaning towards each other, one elbow up on the table, heads resting in their palms, staring into each other’s eyes.
They’re mirroring each other and they look very in love, despite her downplaying it.
She tips her head back as he makes her laugh.
I used to love getting that reaction from her.
Why is this getting to me? I run through the options – nostalgia, FOMO, some general existential sadness about being dead – until I land, reluctantly, where I always do.
It’s jealousy. Obviously, it’s jealousy, and also something else underneath that I don’t want to name but that keeps bubbling to the surface. Regret.
Why couldn’t we have had fireworks without setting ourselves on fire?
I used to think that was what passion looked like.
That real love involved getting burned in some way.
That arguing was proof of something real.
But what if that tension we had – the arguments, the fire – wasn’t inevitable?
What if it was because we were young and stupid?
Neither of us knew how to love someone without making it a war.
Would it have been possible to keep the fireworks in the bedroom and find something steadier everywhere else? Is that even something that exists?
I look up to the ceiling. Tempted to swig some flat shandy from the table next to me.
Can’t change it now, which is a convenient thing to tell yourself when you’re dead – I’m ten years too late and she’s marrying the ‘love of her life’ tomorrow.
‘Do you have both with Timothy?’ I ask quietly. ‘The fireworks and the love?’
She meets my gaze and smiles. She blinks slowly and I watch as her eyes flicker just for a second to my lips. I resist the urge to reach down and cup her chin.
‘I do,’ she says.
For a moment we hold that look. It’s like everything around us has stopped. Two words to change a life, to bind someone to you. Two words meant for someone else, not for me.
‘Ignore the pun.’ She smiles.
She’s happy now. She’s got the best of both and I’m happy for her. I shuffle, loosening the collar of my T-shirt with a finger, while simultaneously rolling my neck.
‘I’m glad.’ It takes all my strength to resist the temptation to pull her closer towards me. I want to feel the warmth of her skin. Have her warm me up. Make me feel something other than grey.
Almost as if she’s read my mind, she leans in and rests her head on my arm. We stand there, surrounded by people walking past us, in the middle of this pub, but I can’t focus on anything else. Only the sound of her breathing next to me, the rise and fall of her shoulder against my arm.
Next to us, the scampi couple get up to leave. I curse them under my breath as Belle straightens.
‘To the end?’ she asks.
‘Let’s do it,’ I reply, opening my palm.