Page 16 of The Ghost of Exes Past

‘Okay, I’ll just watch myself, then.’ I roll my eyes and redirect my gaze, very pointedly, to young Jake as he does up his belt buckle.

The buckle catches the light as he threads it through the loops with ease. Tanned hands. A move done a thousand times before. I’m watching this younger version of me take for granted his body, his hands. That stupid grin, like he’s got all the time in the world. Four years left. This idiot doesn’t have a clue.

Young Belle stops and stares at him, unable to keep her eyes off his bare chest. He catches her looking and pretends to cover himself, telling her to stop perving. Belle giggles and stumbles forward as he joins her, smoothing her short floral skirt down around her thighs. I look away, focus on the nearby bees buzzing, and swallow.

Belle, next to me, sighs. ‘God, I was skinny.’ She says it like a complaint, her eyes fixed on her younger self. But she’s not really seeing. She hasn’t clocked the way he’s looking at her. Nor the way I’m looking at her beside me, now.

‘Awful hair, though, I never suited blonde. Those eyebrows were way too dark too.’ She looks on disapprovingly.

I turn towards young Belle and stare at her fondly. She looks shiny. Her skin glistens under the setting sun. She picks up a stem of lavender and tucks it behind her ear.

I really wouldn’t have changed a thing.

‘Everyone was rocking the blonde hair and dark eyebrows back then. It was a great look at the time.’ I kick the dirt around my feet.

‘Well, I know you loved it. You had such a type,’ she says. ‘All the girls you ever went for looked exactly the same.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘Why do you think I dyed my hair?’ She catches herself, mouth snapping shut, like she’s annoyed she let that slip.

‘You’re kidding,’ I say, confused.

‘Jake, look at it – fresh! No roots in sight.’

I’m not sure why I’m so surprised, given that I was doing exactly the same thing from the other direction without telling her – not the hair, obviously, but changing myself to impress her in small ways I thought she wouldn’t notice. I look at her blonde hair and think about the bracelet I started wearing at the same time, only because I knew she thought men wearing jewellery looked hot. I also wanted to text her every day; I would have, happily, all day without stopping, but I knew how that would look, so in the early days I’d force myself to wait at least twenty hours before replying, so as not to appear so eager.

‘As Oscar Wilde said, youth is wasted on the young.’ Belle sighs next to me, watching her younger self tie her hair into the kind of topknot that resembles a bird’s nest.

Younger me doesn’t care. He reaches down, holds her face in his palms and kisses her gently.

‘Shaw,’ I say.

‘What?’

‘It was Shaw. George Bernard Shaw.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m dead, Belle, not stupid.’

She pulls a face and turns back to watch them.

I watch too, for a moment. She’s changed – visibly, completely, in ways I’m still working out – and I look exactly the same. But I don’t feel the same – not really. Ten years of films will do something to a person … even a dead one. I’d clean up in the movie round of a pub quiz now, for a start. Whether that counts as growth is another matter.

‘Hey, if I’ve been a dead twenty-five-year-old for ten years, am I emotionally twenty-five or am I now thirty-five?’

Belle rolls her eyes. ‘Without a doubt, you are still emotionally twenty-five. Probs always will be,’ she adds, not missing a beat.

‘I don’t feel it, but sure. Anyway, you’re the one who threw a vase at me earlier, like a stroppy teenager.’

Belle cringes. ‘Because you bring that out in me.’

Our younger selves are wrestling now. What started as Jake untucking Belle’s skirt from her underwear ended up with Belle thinking he was winding her up, the pair of them throwing handfuls of lavender at each other, until she launches herself onto his back. He catches her legs without missing a step, her arms wrapping around his neck, kissing the back of his head as he walks, completely unbothered. A smile is plastered on his face, like this is just how they get around. They set off back towards the car – my car, I should say – laughing, his shoulders shaking underneath her.

‘Do you think we’ve got the picture now? Can we get back already?’ she says.

‘Sure, okay. Where to next?’

‘You’re the one with the guardian angel. You tell me.’

‘He wasn’t very clear … He just said to go down the journey of your love life.’