Ghosted: A Novel

Early March—Three Months Later

The day my life changes forever, I’m gearing up for my first Tinder date. I feel quite stupid with nerves. (It doesn’t help that Alan is texting me on the hour, every hour, to check I’m not backing out.) She is called Heather, and she has nice hair, and she seems smart and funny. But I still don’t want to go. I actually caught myself earlier, wondering if I could hammer a nail through my hand so I’d have the excuse of an afternoon in the emergency room.

I have not admitted this to Alan.

It’s also Mum’s sixty-seventh, so I’ve taken her for lunch in Stroud. We’re in Withy’s Yard, which has always been a safe place for her—presumably because it’s hidden up an old stone alleyway, visible to almost nobody—and today she’s full of chat. Felix took her shopping yesterday, and he’s better at it than I am. His only downfall is that he can’t carry as many shopping bags because he has only one arm.

In all honesty I’m only half listening, because I’m busy imagining tonight’s terrible silences and oddly pitched laughs—so it takes me a little while to realize Mum’s stopped talking.

I look up. She’s frozen, staring off to her right, soupspoon hovering inches from the bowl. I follow her line of vision.

I don’t recognize them, at first. They just look like two middle-aged people eating salads. She’s wearing a checked shirt and is talking on a mobile phone. He is wearing a cord jacket, and he’s watching her. Like Mum, both of them appear to have stopped eating. I feel a vague shift of recognition, looking at the man’s profile, but nothing more.

But as I glance back at Mum, I know exactly who they are. The only people who could have this sort of effect on her. Her spoon has been dropped into the soup now; its handle is slowly disappearing like the stern of a sinking ship.

I look back at Sarah Harrington’s parents. I do recognize them. Of course I do; they often came to pick up Alex for playdates, or to drop little Hannah off for the afternoon. I remember them always being friendly. So much so that I sometimes wanted to go and play in Frampton Mansell, too. They seemed so solid together; a proper family, whereas mine was made up of a father hundreds of miles away with a new baby on the way, and a mother crippled by bitterness and depression.

I have two distinct thoughts: First, what am I going to do with Mum? She cannot be here, two tables away from Michael and Patsy Harrington. And second, if it’s not Michael or Patsy Harrington who died last year, who was it?

I distinctly hear the woman saying, “We’re on our way.” And then they’re both up and gone, not pausing even to straighten up their chairs or apologize to the lady behind the café counter. Sarah’s mother is pulling on her coat as she hurries down the alleyway toward the High Street. Mum and I sit still for a few moments, silent amid the hum of conversation and clinking cutlery. It’s not until the milk steamer starts screeching that we look at each other.

•   •   •

In the end we go to the farm shop on the Cirencester Road to get some nice soup to have at Mum’s: after the Harringtons left, she said that her birthday lunch was ruined and she wouldn’t eat any more.

The extent of our conversation about them has so far been this:

Me: “Are you okay?”

Mum: “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I haven’t pushed her. But I can’t think about anything else. Sarah’s parents. The people who made her. Where were they off to? What was wrong? It didn’t look like a good-news sort of call.

Sarah looks like her mother. Although, actually, she looks like her father, too. I could have stared at their faces for hours, scouring them for tiny details of her.

We get back to Mum’s and I heat the soup, put some beautiful-smelling sourdough under the grill, but I know she’s not going to eat. She seems angry at me, although I’m not sure why. Was I meant to go over and punch Sarah’s parents for having created her? I stand in Mum’s kitchen feeling hollow and uneasy, wondering again who died last August. At the end of her garden, under the plum tree, there’s a little pool of gold where celandines jut bravely through patchy grass. I remember those wildflowers on the coffin and have to have very stern words with myself about the direction these thoughts are taking.

As predicted, Mum won’t eat. “They’ve ruined my day,” she repeats. “I’ve no appetite now.”

“Okay,” I say. “Well, I’m going to eat mine. You can always heat yours up again if you want it later.”

“I’d get food poisoning. You can’t reheat twice.”

I’m about to say, “Mum, it’s tomato soup!” but I desist. It’s pointless.

So, solo spoon chinking against china, I eat my soup, soaking in big chunks of buttered sourdough. I finish, wash up, offer Mum her present, which she says she’ll open later, and eventually get my coat.

“I can stay and talk if you want,” I say. Mum is burrowed into the corner of her sofa like a cat.

“I’m fine,” she says stiffly. “Thanks for coming.”

I go over and kiss her. “Bye, Mum. Happy birthday.”

I pause by the door. “Love you.”

I’m at the front door when she calls, “Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

I go back in, and this is the moment that will change everything, although I don’t know it yet.

“There’s something you should know,” she says. No eye contact.

I sit warily on the chair opposite her. Over her shoulder is a photo of Alex on a swing, shortly after she started primary school. She’s screaming with happiness as she flies toward the photographer. Totally ecstatic. Over the years I have wondered if perhaps Mum got pregnant deliberately, to try to stop our father leaving—the affair with Victoria Shitface had been going on for a long time apparently—but whenever I look at that picture, I remember that it doesn’t matter. Alex brought nothing but joy to our lives, with or without Dad.

“Seeing the Harringtons earlier has ruined my day,” Mum repeats after a pause. She bites a fingernail.

“I know,” I say tiredly. “You said earlier.”

She looks around her, runs a hand along the edge of her side table, checking for dust. “I don’t know how they can forgive that daughter of theirs . . .”

I stand up, ready to leave again, but something in her face makes me sink back down onto the arm of the chair. She knows something.

“Mum, what was it you wanted to tell me?”

“Hannah’s turned out well, at least,” Mum says, ignoring me. “She still visits me, you know. She still cares, even if the parents don’t.” She pauses, alternately clenching her fists and splaying out her fingers. “Although in truth I haven’t seen her since just before Christmas. We had a bit of a set-to.”

“What about?”

Mum continues to look anywhere but at me. “About that witch of a sister of hers.”

“Sarah?” I lean forward, staring at her. “What did she say about Sarah?”

Mum offers a little shrug. Her face is jammed tight and I’m suddenly petrified of what she’s hiding.

“Mum. . ?” I can feel my heart pounding. This has something to do with Sarah’s parents, rushing out of the café today. “Mum, please tell me.”

Mum sighs. She untucks her legs so that she’s sitting formally on the sofa, as if being interviewed. Her hands are folded tidily in her lap. “Hannah came over just before Christmas. She told me she had some news I might find difficult. Well, she wasn’t wrong there.”

She stops, as if unable to find the words, and I begin to feel sick. What happened to Sarah? Oh God, what happened to Sarah? My hands scrabble like spiders, although what they’re clutching for, I don’t know.

“What did she tell you?” I ask.

Mum doesn’t say anything.

“Mum, it’s very important that you tell me.”

She clenches her jaw and her temples bulge. I can’t remember the last time I felt so anxious. Eventually, she says, “Sarah’s moved back to England. She moved back in August last year.”

Blood rushes to my face, and I lean back in the chair. I thought she was going to tell me . . . I thought she was going to say—

I’ve wondered, again and again, who that funeral was for. Whose life was being mourned and celebrated by those beautiful wildflowers. I’ve done my best to talk myself down from paranoid theories, but those insidious questions never quite went away. What if she died? What if it was Sarah in the hearse?

Sarah is alive and well. She’s in England.

It takes a while for all of these words to register. “Hang on,” I say, sitting up. “Mum—did you say she moved back here? To England?”

Mum springs out of the sofa with an energy I seldom see. She stands in front of me, her tiny frame rigid with anger. “How can you look so pleased?” she hisses. “Look at your face, Eddie. What’s wrong with you? She—”

“Where is she?” I interrupt. “Where has Sarah been living?”

Mum shakes her head and walks over to the window. “With her parents, from what I gather,” she mutters. After a moment she turns round and walks back to the sofa, looking at Alex’s photo. I suspect this is for my benefit. Just look at your poor sister.

“Living with her parents, like some sort of parasite. Penniless and . . . apparently . . . pregnant.” She shoots a hand up to her mouth, as if she hadn’t meant to say this. After a pause, she sits back down, closing her eyes and sinking back into the sofa. She shudders. “I mean, if at her age you still haven’t got your act together, then what hope is there?”

I stare at her. “Pregnant? Sarah’s pregnant?”

I feel a pain so sharp it’s as if she’s guided a blade between my ribs.

Mum doesn’t answer.

“Mum!”

Just once, and with palpable disgust, she nods. “Pregnant,” she confirms.

“No,” I say, although the word doesn’t quite make it to my mouth.

No. No, no, no.

Sarah can’t be having another man’s child. Mum slides out of focus and my head begins to explode with misery, a hundred different shades of it, spattering in all directions. But then the roller coaster dips, yet again, and another sensation bursts in: hope. The speed at which I’m feeling all these things is dizzying. But the hope stays—two seconds, three, four, five . . . It doesn’t go away. It could be mine, I’m realizing. It could be mine.

“She came back because her grandfather died,” Mum says tightly. “That funeral procession we saw was probably for him.”

I register relief, somewhere, that it was her grandfather, but I’m far too shocked to feel guilty about such a thought. Sarah is pregnant, and it could be my child.

“What else do you know, Mum? Please tell me.”

Mum picks up her still-full soup bowl and takes it to the kitchen. I follow her like a faithful dog. “Mum.”

“It was Hannah who called her sister with the bad news,” she says eventually. Her voice is barely audible. “Apparently the shock of hearing Hannah’s voice on the phone almost killed her. Walked out into a road, nearly got hit by a truck, stupid girl. But”—she puts down her soup bowl and gazes around her spotless kitchen—“for better or worse, the truck swerved, so she stayed in one piece.”

Mum stops. She’s becoming agitated; her breathing is shallow and she can’t stand still. Neither can I. Sarah is here in England, and she’s pregnant. I follow her back to the lounge, where her breathing gets worse.

With a mechanical detachment I start talking her through one of Derek’s breathing exercises. I guide her into long, slow out breaths, and I wonder why she’s speaking up now, after having kept all this secret for so many months. It’s not in her interest to be telling me Sarah’s back, let alone pregnant. Mum hates the idea of me even thinking about Sarah Harrington.

It’s got something to do with Sarah’s parents, I think. It’s something to do with them leaving the café at a run. I stare desperately at Mum as she gets her breathing back under control. Tell me! I want to yell. Tell me everything! Instead I go with a mild, “And do you know anything else? About how she is? How things have been?”

“I believe she has been in a very depressed state,” Mum says, eventually. “Wouldn’t tell any of them who the father was.”

Hope starts to bud.

“The funeral was the first time she had seen Hannah in nearly twenty years. Hannah told me she and her sister . . . they . . . agreed that there had been enough loss. They agreed to patch things up.”

Mum looks disgusted by the words coming out of her mouth, and I see now why she’s fallen out with Hannah. Years and years, Mum’s managed to keep Hannah on her side: it must have felt like a terrible defection.

“So Sarah’s been living in Frampton Mansell all this time? Six months?”

Mum nods, glancing over at me. “I take it you haven’t seen her then.” I think it’s probably fairly clear from my face that I have not.

“Are you absolutely certain she’s pregnant, Mum?” My words get caught in a dry part of my throat.

Mum looks over at me, and her face clouds with disappointment. She can see what this means to me. “I’m certain.”

“When is it due? The baby?”

“I don’t know.” Mum twists her hands. I can tell she’s lying.

Whatever it is that’s prompted her to tell me all this is waging a terrible war in her head. She starts the breathing exercise again.

“You really have no idea when it’s due?” I prompt. I can’t bear it. “Not even a vague clue? I’m going to find out anyway,” I add. “So you might as well tell me.”

Mum closes her eyes. “February 27. Six days ago,” she says eventually. “Which means that the child must have been conceived in June last year.” She flinches as the words come out of her mouth.

Absolute silence.

“And nobody knows who the father is?”

“Just some stranger, I’d imagine,” Mum says primly, but she doesn’t mean it. She knows perfectly well what these dates signify.

I’m shaking as I crouch down in front of her, and my legs aren’t working, so I end up sliding sideways, onto my bum. I sit on the carpet in front of her like a child at story time. “Are you telling me this because you think it’s mine? Mum? Is that what you think?”

She opens her eyes and they film with tears. “I can’t let Sarah Harrington have my grandchild,” she says, in a tiny voice. “Eddie, I can’t cope with that . . . But I . . .” Her voice shakes. “But I can’t stop thinking the child might have been born, by now, and it could be . . .”

I watch her, even though I can’t see her anymore. Sarah. My baby. Everything sways like a cornfield.

I try to organize my thoughts. “Why do you think her parents left the café so quickly? Do you think something bad has happened?” I have to lean heavily on my right arm to stay upright.

From somewhere in front of me, Mum’s voice says, “I don’t know. But I’ve been extremely worried about it ever since. That’s why I decided to tell you.” She resumes her long exhales for the third time.

I put a shaking hand on her knee while she takes a few breaths. I have to find Sarah. “Mum . . . ,” I say. “Help me.”

After an interminable pause, Mum takes a longer, deeper breath, and nods over toward the phone, sitting on the side table. “The Harringtons’ number is probably still there. In the address book.”

I pull myself up and cross the room, knowing how huge this gesture is, knowing what it will have cost her. She’s still a good person, my mother. Still capable of love, no matter how bleak her life has become.

A great many years have passed since I last felt that way about her.

The number’s still there. Under “Nigel Harlyn,” an old accountant friend of Dad’s, and “Harris Plumbing of Cirencester.” Scribbled in by a busy mother from another lifetime: Patsy Harrington—Hannah from playgroup’s Mum—01285 . . .

I start to write the number into my phone, but my phone—of course—already knows it. Sarah gave me this number last June, when this baby must have been no more than a few cells.

“Mum,” I say carefully. “I have to go. Okay? I have to go and find out what’s happened. If you need someone, you’ve got the emergency outreach number, and you’ve got Derek’s number, and you’ve Felix’s number. But you’ll be okay, Mum. You’ll be fine. I have to go. I have to—” My voice thins out. I kiss my mother on the head, and walk, on trembling legs, to the car.

And Mum says nothing. She knows it could be her grandchild, and that’s bigger than anything else. She can’t say it—would rather die than admit it—but she actually wants me to go and find out.

•   •   •

“You’d better not be calling me because you’re bottling,” Alan says, when he picks up the phone. “Seriously, Ed—”

“Sarah’s had a baby,” I tell him. “Or she’s about to have one. And I’m certain it’s mine. I’ve tried to call her parents, but there’s nobody home. I need Hannah’s mobile number. Do you have it?”

There’s a long pause.

“What?” Alan says. He’s eating something, as always. Alan works at an architect’s practice. His colleagues have never quite been able to believe the extent of the provisions he keeps on his desk “in case of trouble.” “Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Wow,” he says, after careful consideration.

“I need Hannah’s number.”

“Oh, mate, you know I can’t give out a client’s details.” Alan recently drew up plans for a utility room at the back of Hannah’s house in Bisley. We agreed, when he told me about the job, not to discuss it, but the agreement is now suspended.

“Gia and Hannah used to go for coffee after yoga,” I say quickly. (About seven years ago.) “Gia would have her phone number. You’re just saving time by getting it from the computer that is right in front of your face, rather than calling your wife. Alan, seriously, give me the number.”

Alan starts whispering, as if that’s going to make him less conspicuous in a silent office. “Fine. But can you also text Gia asking for it, so if I was ever questioned about it, I could say, ‘No, he got the number through my wife.’”

I’m almost yelling. “Give me the fucking number, Alan!”

He does.

“I guess you won’t be going on that date, then,” he sighs.

•   •   •

Hannah’s phone is switched off. She sounds tantalizingly like Sarah in her voice mail, only more brisk, more businesslike. Probably how Sarah sounds when she’s speaking at a conference, or on the telly.

A child. My child. My head swims again. The sky is dirty white. My hands are still shaking.

I look at my watch: 3:45 P.M. It dawns on me that Hannah’s children must have finished school. And that, with any luck, she or her husband will just have picked them up. Feelings are pitching through me faster than I can identify them. I know only that I have to find her.

I start up the Land Rover and head for Bisley. I try not to think about Mum, home alone, wrestling with what must feel like a nightmare. But then I think, Three months, she’s known. Three bloody months!

She told me in the end, I remind myself, because I have to. Hating Sarah has prevented Mum from feeling the deepest pain—the most unbearable pain—for a very, very long time. It’s been her best medication. That nod toward the phone, that reluctant blessing, is a gesture I must not underestimate.

The winter countryside flashes by, lank and dripping. I try to imagine Hannah coming face-to-face with her sister, after so many years of Mum whispering bile into her ear. And I picture Sarah, terrified and hopeful in equal measure. Desperate to say the right thing. To win Hannah back.

No wonder she hasn’t told anyone who the father is. It’d be like throwing a hand grenade in among this recovering family.

3:51 P.M. “Please let Hannah not have a nanny,” I mutter, as I reach the outskirts of Bisley. “Let Hannah or her husband answer the door.”

I’m driving too fast, and to my surprise, I don’t care. The last few months of stoicism, of Doing the Right Thing, have now been stripped back to the lunacy, the blind masochism they always were. I have known for less than fifteen minutes that Sarah’s been carrying my child and already I have completely forgotten everything I’d been telling myself to keep myself away from her. All that matters is seeing her.

A baby. Sarah has been carrying my baby.

•   •   •

I recognize Hannah’s husband as soon as he opens the door, from the night when I smashed my fist on the pub table. “Smelly!” he yells, as a black Labrador crashes past him and into me, a mangy comfort blanket in its mouth. The dog jumps up on me, its tail helicoptering with joy.

“Smelly!” he shouts. “Stop it!”

He grabs the dog’s collar and does his best to hold it off.

“Smelly?” I say. It’s the closest I’ve been to laughing in several hours.

“We made the mistake of letting the children name him.” The man smiles apologetically. “Can I help?”

Smelly lunges at me again and I stroke him with one hand while trying to explain the impossible to a complete stranger.

“Sorry, yes. My name’s Eddie Wallace. I’ve known Hannah for years. She—”

“Oh, right,” the man says. “Yes, I know who you are. You’re the older brother of Hannah’s childhood friend—” He breaks off awkwardly, although whether it’s because he’s forgotten Alex’s name or doesn’t want to bring up my dead sister, I can’t tell.

“Alex,” I supply, because I haven’t time for awkward pauses.

He nods. Deeper in the house, there is a loud thump and the sound of children screaming. He looks nervously over his shoulder but is reassured when one of them starts yelling something about preparing to die by the sword.

He turns back to me and I feel quite insane with desperation. I need information, now.

Smelly sniffs my crotch.

“So, this might sound strange, but . . . I believe that Hannah’s sister might have just had a baby, or is just about to have one. I mean, I suppose she could even be having it right now . . .”

The man smiles. “Indeed! Hannah’s at the hospital with her now. Poor Sarah’s been in labor two days. Are you a friend of hers?” Then he pauses as he tries to square the fact that I’m Eddie Wallace with the idea that I might be a friend of Sarah’s. Confusion becomes alarm as he realizes he might have told me something I’m not entitled to know.

For a moment I can’t speak, so I just stand there, stroking Smelly. The dog smiles at me, and despite myself, I smile at the dog. Then I level with Hannah’s husband. I don’t have time to make up some excuse he’ll never buy. “Not a friend, exactly . . . more, the father of her child.”

Silence.

The man merely stares at me. “I’m sorry?”

“I had no idea, until about thirty minutes ago . . .” The man frowns. It is inconceivable to him that I could be the father of Sarah’s baby. I swallow. “It’s a long story, but I wouldn’t have come to your door if I wasn’t certain it’s mine.”

Silence.

“Look—I’m just a decent bloke who’s found out he’s a father, or nearly a father, and I’m not going to force myself on Sarah or anything, but I . . .” I trail off, because, to my horror, my voice is beginning to crack. “I just want to be there for her. If I can.”

“Right,” the man says eventually.

Smelly sits by my feet, staring up at me. I can tell I’m a disappointment.

“Without meaning to pile undue pressure on you, I’m going out of my mind, wanting to just get there, and help if I can, or send her my love, or . . . I don’t know. So I wondered if you could tell me if she’s giving birth in Stroud or in Gloucester. Or somewhere else.”

The man folds his arms. “I’m going to have to run this past Hannah,” he says at last. “I hope you understand.”

Of course I understand. I want, also, to punch him.

I take a deep breath and nod. “I get it. Although if it helps, Hannah’s phone’s switched off. I tried it earlier.”

The man nods. “Yes, that’s most likely.” But he persists with calling her anyway, moving off down the corridor so I won’t be able to hear him when he says, “You won’t believe this . . .”

A few moments later he’s back. “No answer,” he says. He jigs the phone up and down in his hand, uncertain as to what to do. He gets it, as a father—I can see he wants to help me. But this is no ordinary situation.

I begin to panic. He might not tell me.

“I could just turn up at Stroud, or Gloucester, I suppose . . . But would you be willing to tell me how the labor’s going, at least?” I ask. I’ll take anything, at this stage. Any crumb he’s willing to throw from the table. Smelly sighs, leaning his big square head on my thigh.

He pauses. “All I know is that it’s been going on two days. And that they’ve taken her out of the midwife unit and transferred her to the consultant-led bit.”

“What does that mean?”

“When it happened to us with Elsa, it meant things weren’t going brilliantly,” he admits. “But it could be anything—she probably just got tired and wanted some decent pain relief. I wouldn’t worry too much.”

“Please tell me where Sarah is.” My voice is too loud, but I think I probably just sound desperate rather than threatening or mad. “Please. I’m a normal guy. Not a psychopath. I just want to be there.”

He sighs, defeated. “Okay . . . Okay. They’re at Gloucester Royal. I think the maternity complex is called the Women’s Center. But be warned, they won’t let you through the door unless Sarah tells them to. I’ll text Hannah and let her know. I shouldn’t do this, really, but . . . well, if I were in your shoes and all that.”

I slump, my hand reaching instinctively for Smelly’s shiny black head. It’s a reassuring block, warm and—yes—probably smelly. “Thank you,” I say quietly. “Thank you so much.”

“Dad?” A child’s voice from above. Behind the man, I see a head appearing, upside down, from upstairs. Auburn hair trails down toward us. “Who’s that man?”

“Good luck,” he says, ignoring his daughter. Sarah’s niece, Elsa, whom she thought she’d never meet. He leans forward and shakes my hand. “I’m Hamish.”

“Eddie,” I say, even though I’ve probably already told him. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

And then I’m off.