Ghosted: A Novel

Ilaid a hand on my belly. I am pregnant. I am carrying a baby.

Jenni was telling Javier about a Slovenian genetics researcher she’d met in the waiting room at the acupuncture clinic yesterday. Javier was listening attentively to his wife while keeping a keen ear on the lady dispensing orders at the counter. The last number she’d called had been eighty-four. Our ticket, curled between Javier’s fingers, said eighty-seven.

I imagined cells multiplying, all those weeks ago. Sarah cells, Eddie cells. Sarah-and-Eddie cells, splitting into more Sarah-and-Eddie cells. The Internet said it would be the size of a strawberry by now. There was a computer-generated picture on the page, and it looked like a tiny child. I’d stared at that picture for what seemed like hours, and felt things I had never felt before, things to which I couldn’t even put a name.

I am nine weeks pregnant.

But we’d been careful! Each and every time! And how could I be pregnant when I was three pounds lighter?

“You told me yourself you’ve struggled to eat,” the doctor had said patiently. “Weight loss is not uncommon with morning sickness.”

Nausea. Fatigue. Tumbling hormones, food aversions, a brain packed with thick fog. The real surprise, I supposed, was not so much that I was pregnant but that I had failed to spot so many obvious markers.

A parcel had arrived for me this morning. I’d been lying in bed, filling in the paperwork for my scan, and had felt so dislocated from reality that for a moment I had wondered quite seriously if it might be Eddie. Eddie, curled up inside a box, ready to spring out, shouting, “I’ve changed my mind! Of course I want to be with you—the woman who killed my little sister! Let’s start a family!”

Instead I had unwrapped a toy sheep, with little leather hooves and a wool coat, and a note round its neck saying—in Eddie’s handwriting—LUCY. There had been a letter, too, in an envelope that smelled oddly of sherbet. I took it outside.

On Jenni’s deck, I curled myself into a chair and stared at the dirty jumble of air-conditioning units and satellite dishes stretching out below me. I ran my fingertips along the tiny indentations that Eddie’s pen had left where he’d written my name. I knew what this letter would be. It would be the final punctuation mark to a relationship that had ended nineteen years before it had even begun, but I wanted a few more minutes before I saw that final full stop. A few more minutes of precious, poisonous denial.

I watched a cat for a while. The cat had watched me. I’d breathed the slow, steady breaths of someone who knows the drama is over, who knows herself to be truly beaten. When the cat had marched off disdainfully, tail in the air, I’d slid my thumb into the gap at the top of the envelope.

Dear Sarah,

Thanks for your honesty yesterday. It was very comforting to know that Alex was happy that day.

I want to say everything’s fine, but it’s not, nor can it be. For that reason I think it best we don’t stay in touch—it would be too confusing to be friends. I do wish you well, though, Sarah Harrington, and will always remember the time we had together. It meant everything to me.

What a terrible coincidence, eh? Of all the people in the world.

Anyway, I wanted to send a little something to make you smile. I know how rough this whole thing has been for you, too.

Be happy, Sarah, and take care,

Eddie

I read the note three times before folding it back into its envelope.

Be happy, Sarah, and take care.

I’d leaned my head back against the outside of Jenni’s bungalow and stared at the sky. It was milky and expectant up there, smudged with clouds the color of Turkish delight. A sweep of birds passed high above, and, beyond them, a plane on its ascent.

I hadn’t told Jenni about the baby. I couldn’t bear it; couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I’d got pregnant while using birth control, when for more than ten years she had put every scrap of her emotional, physical, and financial resources into creating a family of her own.

I’d stared at my abdomen, trying to imagine the tiny beginnings of a person in there, and felt an odd sensation in my heart, like my chest was being compressed. Was that pleasure? Or panic? It had its own heart now, the doctor told me. In spite of the poor nutrition, the wine, and the stress I’d fed it. It had its own tiny heart that was beating twice as fast as my own, and I would see it on a scan tomorrow afternoon.

I stared at the sky. Was he up there already? Still waiting at the gate to board? I half rose out of my chair. I had to go to the airport. Find him. Stop him. For the sake of this baby I had to talk him round, convince him that I—

What? That I wasn’t Sarah Harrington? That I hadn’t driven his sister into a tree that day?

I’d sat there, drumming my fingers on my thighs, until Javier had let Frappuccino out into the yard and the dog peed on my leg. I’d started laughing, and then crying, wondering how I could possibly have a baby when I’d spent my whole adult life avoiding children. Wondering how I could bring anyone into the world, knowing the father wanted nothing to do with me. Yet somehow knowing that it was already too late to turn back. That I wanted this baby in ways I didn’t even understand.

I continued in this vein for hours. Jenni, when she finally got out of bed, tried to look after me, but she had nothing left to give. We spent two hours sitting together in grim silence.

When Javier was unable to bear the emotional potency a moment longer, he offered to drive us all up to Neptune’s Net in Malibu—a bikers’ café—for fried fish. It was his solution to all serious problems. He had hunched over the wheel as he’d motored up the coast, although whether to speed us on toward the comfort of food or to protect himself from all the messy feelings surrounding him, I didn’t know.

And now here we were, jammed like sardines into a booth. The restaurant was packed. Every table was full, and the entrance was packed with people waiting for a seat. We, the seated, ignored them. They, the standing, stared determinedly at us. Music was drowned out by the deafening roar of conversation, Harley-Davidsons revving outside, and the furious sizzle of that morning’s catch hitting boiling oil. It was a big, long motorbike ride away from calm, but, in some small way, it was working.

“Eighty-seven!” called the lady at the counter, and Javier sprang up, shouting, in a voice hoarse with relief, “Sí! Sí!”

Jenni seldom acknowledged her husband’s limited emotional capacity, but today, just for me, she allowed herself a quick eye roll. Then she fixed me with one of her looks and asked me what I was going to do about Eddie.

“Nothing,” I said. “There’s nothing I can do, Jenni. You know it. I know it. Even Javier knows it.”

Javier silently placed a seafood basket between us, handing Jenni a Sprite and me a Mountain Dew. Then, letting out a quiet but perfectly audible sigh of relief, he turned to his own pile of shrimp tacos, pale-battered calamari, and cheesy chili fries, knowing it would be some time before he might be expected to contribute.

“He really left no doors open? Not even a glimmer of hope?”

“Not so much as a dust mote,” I said. “Look, Jenni, I’m going to say this one last time. Imagine it was your sister, Nancy. Imagine that a man drove lovely Nancy into a tree. Would you contemplate a relationship with him? Would you really?”

Jenni put down her cutlery, defeated.

“Ninety-four!” yelled the woman at the counter.

I speared a scallop.

Then: Should I be eating this? I wondered suddenly. I was sure I’d seen pregnant friends avoiding shellfish. I looked at the meal in front of me. Seafood, shellfish, and a large glass of Mountain Dew. Wasn’t caffeine banned, too?

Yet again, the tectonic plates of my life shifted underneath me. I am nine weeks pregnant.

“Here,” Jenni said heavily. “Take some scallops before I eat it all, Sarah. I’m sensing another binge coming on.”

I declined.

“But you love scallops.”

“I know . . . I’m not feeling the love today, though.”

“Seriously? Well, at least have some of this blue-cheese dip for your fries. I think it’s actually real cheese. It’s good.”

“Oh, I’m fine with ketchup. You have it.”

Jenni laughed. “Sarah Mackey, you detest ketchup. No scallops, no blue cheese—anyone’d think you were pregnant. Look, please don’t try to starve yourself, honey. It won’t help anything, and besides, life is totally miserable without food.”

I laughed, a little too loudly. Picked up a scallop to prove that I was fine, and certainly not pregnant, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make myself eat the stupid thing. I had a baby the size of a strawberry growing in me, a baby I’d neither planned nor asked for, but still I couldn’t eat the scallop. The edge of a frown crossed Jenni’s face.

“Best to just ignore me,” I said, in a voice stiff with forced jollity. Javier glanced up. “I’ve got a funny appetite today.”

“That’d be the ultimate irony, wouldn’t it?” Jenni said. “You being pregnant.”

“Ha! Can you imagine?”

Jenni went back to her food, but after a few seconds she looked at me again. “I mean, you’re not, are you?”

“Of course I’m . . .”

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t lie to her. So I shut my mouth.

Jenni lowered her fork to the table. “Sarah? You’re not pregnant, are you?”

My face burned. I looked down, around, anywhere but at Jenni.

“That’s not why you . . . That’s not why you’ve been ill? The doctor . . . ?”

Javier stared at me. Don’t you dare, his face said. Don’t you dare.

Jenni watched me, and her eyes began to swim with tears. “Why aren’t you saying anything? Why aren’t you answering me?”

I closed my eyes. “Jenni,” I said. “Oh God, Jenni, I . . .”

Her hand rose to her mouth. She stared at me in disbelief, and her tears bulged and broke. “No, you’re not . . . You couldn’t be pr— Oh, Jesus. Sarah.”

Javier wrapped a protective arm around his wife’s shoulders. After a deep breath he looked up at me, and his face wore the first tangible emotion I’d seen in fifteen years: fury.

“Jenni,” I said quietly. “Listen, darling. When I went to the doctor’s, she said . . . She did some tests, and she said . . . Jenni, I am so sorry . . .”

“You’re having a baby.”

“I . . . Yes. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am.”

Into the perfect silence of our table, my phone started ringing.

“Eddie?” Jenni whispered, because even when her friend smashed her round the face, she couldn’t give up.

“I . . . I don’t know. I deleted his number. But it’s a UK mobile.”

“Take it,” she said flatly. “Just take it. He’s the father of your child, after all.”

As I reached the crowded doorway, phone in hand, it came to me that I should turn round to see Jenni’s face, one last time. One last time before what?

I turned, not fully understanding why, but a barrellike woman was craning herself into one of the fixed seats and Jenni was obscured.

So I carried on, threading my way through the diners on the outside terrace. I walked through the bikers, the bikes, down toward the highway. I wondered if Jenni would ever get over this. If our friendship would survive.

Wearily, I answered the call.

There was a delay of a few seconds while a voice whizzed through cables deep under the Atlantic.

Then: “Sarah?”

“Yes.”

After a moment the voice said, “It’s Hannah.”

“Hannah?”

“Yes. Er . . . Hannah Harrington.”

I put out a hand to steady myself, only there was nothing there. So I held on to the phone with both hands, because it was the only solid thing I had.

“Hannah?”

“Yes.”

“My sister Hannah?”

“Yes.”

A moment’s silence.

“I appreciate this might be a bit of a shock.”

“Your voice,” I whispered. “Your voice.” I held more tightly on to the phone. She started to say something but her voice was drowned out by a salvo of motorbikes swarming into the car park, all fitted out with powerful engines.

“Sorry?” I said. “What was that? Hannah?”

“Can you hear me now?” I heard her say. “I’m kind of bellowing . . .” The bikers, all parked, were now sitting, revving, for no reason. Unreasonable fury rose in my chest. “Shut up!” I shouted. “Please, stop it!”

On the other side of the road, a peaceful-looking path led haphazardly toward the distant sea. I have to get across the road, I thought desperately, as vehicles roared along the highway in front of me, and motorbikes revved behind. I have to get across the road, right now.

“Are you still there?” I heard her say.

“Yes! Can you hear me?”

“Just about. What the hell’s going on there?”

I knew what Hannah looked like: Mum and Dad used to send me photos, until it had become too painful for me to see them. It was almost impossible to imagine that the woman from the pictures was the woman talking to me now. The woman with the curly-haired husband, the two children, and the dog. My little sister.

“Look, Hannah, let me cross the road. I’m at a bikers’ café; there’s a lot of noise, but it’ll be quiet over there . . .”

“Are you a biker?” There was just a corner of a smile in her voice.

“No, I’m not. I— Hang on, let me just get across to the other side. Please stay on the line . . .” There was a gap in the southbound traffic. For no earthly reason, I didn’t turn to check the northbound lane. I just ran. Toward the sea, toward Hannah.

•   •   •

I heard nothing; I saw nothing. Not the deadly lumber of a truck traveling at high speed. Not the screech of brakes, not the panicked yells from the terrace. I didn’t hear my own voice, forced out of me in a guttural scream, then falling sharply into silence, like an ambulance turning its siren off because there was no longer any point, and I didn’t hear the wail that came out of Jenni’s mouth as she pummeled her way out of the restaurant.

I didn’t hear a thing.