Chapter Thirty-One
Belle
If this bed wasn’t haunted already, it is now.
We lie still, side by side, the sheets crumpled around our thighs. My head rests on his chest and I wait for a heartbeat that doesn’t come. I’d been listening for one without realising. I pull up the duvet and we sink beneath it. Outside, the Whitby wind batters against the windows.
Is it still cheating if it’s with a ghost? More importantly, is sleeping with a spirit the night before you wed another man the ultimate form of betrayal? Am I a slutty Scrooge? Am I now pregnant with ghost babies? I press my cold feet against his legs. It doesn’t help warm them much.
I don’t regret it.
An awful part of me has wanted this. I had missed him so desperately that I’d forced myself to stop thinking about him and now I can’t stop.
His hands, God, those hands, the way they know exactly where to go, without fumbling.
How they moved across me like he was relearning something he’d never actually forgotten.
The way he’d cupped my face before kissing my neck and my chest, taking his time in a way that made me want to scream at him not to stop, never stop.
And his eyes. The way he’d entered me slowly, watching my face the whole time.
The way he’d looked up at me from between my thighs like he had absolutely nowhere else to be.
I’d forgotten what it felt like to be looked at like that.
I press my thighs together now, lying here, still feeling the echo of him.
I’ve known for a long time that I wasn’t finished. That I’d never be finished with Jake. I just wish that wasn’t true.
I should be furious. An hour ago I was telling him to leave and I meant it, but now I’m lying here, drawing circles on his chest with my finger, and I can’t really explain what changed …
except a folded piece of paper with his terrible handwriting all over it and the fact he came back and for the first time, maybe ever, said the thing he’s spent a decade avoiding.
He came here for himself, but he stayed for me. I hold on to him tighter. It feels like nobody has chosen me freely in a long time.
‘Where did you go?’ I ask, nuzzling into his neck.
‘Huh?’
‘When you left earlier? Where did you go?’
‘No, you’ll laugh.’
‘Go on.’
‘I walked down to Whitby Abbey. Moped around like a sad puppy. Lots of goths hanging about up there. Turns out goths can see ghosts too.’
‘What?’
‘Did you know they hold a goth weekend here in Whitby twice a year?’
‘Stop!’ I laugh into his neck, breathing in that scent of him I missed so much.
Our laughter dies down and it’s just us and the silence and the realisation that the day is nearly over.
This is the closest we’ve been in a decade, but time is running out. My eyes keep closing against my will so I press my fingers into the sockets, forcing them open. I’m not ready for sleep. Sleeping means morning. Morning means no Jake.
He’s gone quiet in a way that I can’t read. One of us has to say something.
‘Ten years and you still steal all the duvet,’ I whisper. The way he smiles back is not quite right.
He kisses my head and we watch the window.
‘Is there a way we can go back?’ I ask softly. ‘Can you take us back to our first memory? Back to our first summer together? We could stay there.’
I look up to him. His nose in my hair, his arm around my back, settled on my waist.
‘I wish … I wish.’ He pulls me closer towards him.
‘But we could try?’
I feel the slow shake of his head.
‘Here, take my hands, we have to try,’ I say, sitting up, pulling my pillow onto my lap as he uncurls his arm from my waist.
‘No. It won’t work.’
‘Why not?’
‘I had strict instructions. Once my mission is complete, I’ll be delivered to the next life if I pass.’
He can’t look at me, so we both stare at his hands instead. He’s picking the skin around his thumb nervously.
There has to be something I’m not thinking of … some other angle. I’m good at angles. I find them for a living. If we can’t go back, maybe there’s another option.
‘If there’s an in-between, there must be a way … some kind of, I don’t know, loophole? There’s always a loophole.’
‘Belle,’ he says and there’s something in the way he says it – not harshly, but with a kind of finality – that makes my stomach drop.
‘I’m serious. I don’t want to lose you again.’ My hands flop to the pillow. ‘I’ve just got you back.’ He’s quiet, which makes me feel stupid, like I’m arguing with myself. My cheeks burn hot and I can tell they’re probably beetroot red, but I don’t care.
He wraps the duvet around his waist and looks at me properly for the first time since we collapsed together. There’s something in his face, hard and stern, that I haven’t seen before.
‘So what’s the alternative? Pretend tonight didn’t happen? Marry Timothy?’
‘Belle,’ he says simply, matter-of-factly, with no hesitation. ‘I watched it tonight, you and Timothy. I saw how he looks at you. You built something real with him, Belle. Don’t ruin it for a ghost.’
I fight the urge to look away from his face but it’s there in his eyes. A sadness, a knowing, and I know deep down he’s right. And the fact he can see it, that he can even say Timothy’s name without flinching – that’s new. That’s not the Jake who made that video or laughed in my bedroom.
So, Timothy. That’s my alternative. A man that will hold my hand at dinner parties and remember which of my colleagues I don’t like and say the right thing at the right moment, but who will never make me howl with laughter.
Who has never really looked at me as Jake has, like he can’t believe that I’m his.
Could I really continue living a half-lie?
I picture the chairs already laid out for the ceremony.
The flowers already in water downstairs.
Jules’s dress, which she bought especially, the tags cut off because she was so certain.
Timothy’s mother, who I’m sure has never thought I was good enough – the look on her face, like she knew this was coming.
If I did call it off, what then? I’d be alone.
I’d start again. I’d meet prospects at industry dinners, have them slide into my LinkedIn DMs. I’d be introduced to friends of friends and spend the rest of my life doing this quiet automation of comparison that I can’t really explain to anyone.
Holding each one up against something that doesn’t have a name. Against this.
‘I’d rather have one real thing in my life, than fifty years of just fine,’ I say, unsure whether to myself or to Jake.
‘Belle.’ His jaw is locked. ‘You’re not thinking rationally.’
‘Don’t patronise me,’ I snap before I have a chance to think. I know he’s not wrong, but I can’t locate the part of me that cares about that right now. ‘I don’t understand why you don’t want to fight for a chance to keep us together.’
‘Because even if it was possible …’ He stops and looks at me as something moves across his face that he doesn’t manage to hide in time. ‘I wouldn’t let you.’
We sit in silence.
I’m waiting for the part of me that would think clearly, weigh this up, talk myself down, remind myself what I’m willing to throw away: a three-year relationship, a new house with a pantry that we’re about to put an offer on, a man who has never made me feel small. I wait and she doesn’t say anything.
I should get up. Go wash my face. Down some water, make a new list, do something useful.
I start making the list in my head and get as far as putting the wedding dress up on eBay, before something stops me.
For one night I’d forgotten I was supposed to be managing myself.
I hadn’t even noticed until now that that’s what I’m always doing.
Managing. I’d got so good at it – the controlled breathing, the game face, pretending not to fall apart.
We used to be chaos, Jake and me. Since he died, I just replaced that with control.
Turns out it only takes one night to realise that just isn’t me.
‘It’s shit, Jake.’ My voice comes out smaller than I want it to. ‘For one night I remembered what it felt like to be myself. And it’s because of you. And tomorrow that’s gone.’
He takes my hands in his as the tears fall. I hate myself for it. The body shuddering, the snot, my face is so scrunched it gives me a headache, but he holds me through it. He wipes my tears with his thumb and kisses my head.
I’m getting married in – I check the clock – twelve hours, and I’m crying in the arms of a dead man.
I can’t bear to look at my wedding dress hanging nearby, the matching veil I’d spent half an hour steaming.
The shoes I’d spent a month deciding on.
How Timothy’s speech will be perfect, how it’ll make everyone in the room cry, and I will be sat next to him, smiling but thinking of a ghost.
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes.
‘I don’t know how I’m supposed to be okay with feeling this alive … and then, somehow, I have to go back to sleepwalking through my life. How will I wake up tomorrow and pretend I’m choosing him when I know I’m really just choosing safe?’
Jake looks caught, stuck for a moment. I can see his jaw twitching.
He whispers that it’s okay. He pulls me close, wraps his arms around mine and I let him, which is not something I do easily these days, and we both know it.
In his stillness I know he’s thinking. I know he’s weighing up options and so I wait.
He’s going to say yes, I think. He’s going to find a way. He’ll tell me there’s something else Gabe told him, some clause or technicality. I let myself melt into his arms, tell myself that this is going to be all right.
He presses his lips to my hair, takes a breath.
‘Listen to me …’