Page 17 of The Ghost of Exes Past

‘Right.’ Belle twizzles the engagement ring on her finger, lips pursed. It’s very big and very shiny and silver. I always thought she was more of a gold girl.

‘Journey implies two different points. A to B. The start and end. So to tick the right boxes, maybe it’s safest we do the start and end of each relationship?’ She shrugs.

Thank fuck this was a tour of her relationships and not mine. They’d almost all start with, ‘Hello, you’re sexy, wanna fuck?’ and end with, ‘Have a great life.’ She was truly the exception that proves the rule. Christ, I was such a twat.

‘God, this is gonna be torture,’ Belle cringes.

‘Not as torturous as eternal soul destruction!’

‘I know, I know. This feels very particularly unfair, the timing of it all.’

‘Let’s get it over with, then … To the end?’

‘To the end.’

We reach out and hold hands, her palms warming mine.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Belle

It’s 2016 and we’re in my childhood bedroom. I was twenty-five, twenty minutes away from something I’ve spent ten years not thinking about. I know exactly where we are before I’ve even looked up – it’s the smell of it: toasty radiator warmth and something synthetic sprayed from a bottle shaped like a stiletto. I don’t look at Jake beside me. I look at the room instead.

Fairy lights half-peeling from the walls, stuck up with dusty Sellotape and Blu-Tack, inspired by the backdrops of my favourite beauty vloggers at the time. The bedsheets are those white floral IKEA ones that everyone and their mum had, and a pair of muted green cushion covers have been thrown onto the floor.

On the old dresser beneath the windowsill sits an acrylic tray of lipsticks, pens, pound coins, and false-lash strips. The mirror beside my wardrobe is cluttered – photobooth photos from a trip to London with Jake, a Polaroid from a friend’s birthday party, a gig ticket to see Lucy Rose play the Tunbridge Wells Forum the year prior, a birthday present from Jake. A lone cactus bows on the window ledge. A dog barks outside. I look at Jake now. He’s looking at the gig ticket.

My younger self sits on her squeaky bed, back up against the wooden headboard, frantically scribbling in her journal that’s balanced against her thighs, stopping only to bite her lip, tap her nails on the pen, and look up towards the door. She knows what’s coming. I can see it in the press of her lips, the way her wing-lined eyes have smudged in the corners, and I remember exactly what she felt. The dread of it.

Still, she’s made an effort with her outfit, wearing her favourite skintight Topshop Joni jeans – the faded black ones with rips on the knees (she has them in every colour) – and a navy polka-dot off-the-shoulder top, tucked into the high waistband. A tiny love heart tattoo is visible on the side of her foot – a drunken dare with Jake outside a neon-lit parlour in Soho. She went first to prove she wasn’t scared, but then immediately regretted it. She used to fill it in with glitter liner on nights out, telling people she had a glitter tattoo, that yes, that’s a thing now – but tonight it’s bare.

My younger self looks up from her journal as the doorbell rings. Jake and I look with her, all three of us frozen for a moment, listening to the familiar weight of his footsteps on the stairs. He had such a rhythm to it, two steps at a time, heavy, the weight of him.

‘Christ, this is brutal. Whose idea was this again?’ I say, going for jokey, which I suspect isn’t fooling anyone, least of all the dead man standing next to me.

‘Yours,’ Jake replies bluntly. This ghost has no empathy.

‘And who brought me here?’ I retort.

‘Do you need me to state it again? Gabe sent me. You agreed. If you back out, your soul is wiped for eternity,’ he says, antsy.

‘I can hardly watch.’ I put my hands over my eyes, leaving just a slit open to see as the doorknob turns.

The Belle on the bed shuffles, closes her diary, composes herself. She’s self-soothing, I can tell now that I’m watching from the outside – the pulled arm hairs, the jittering leg, the nail biting. She’s trying to regulate her emotions, cycling through every nervous habit she knows, and none of it is working. If anything, it’s a sure giveaway, each fidget announcing exactly what she’s trying to hide. She’s panicking.

I spent a long time in therapy learning to name what was happening in my body instead of just picking myself apart through it. Deep breathing. Grounding. Focusing on what I can see, smell, touch. It has helped, genuinely. I’m better than I was. I’m still not sure if better actually means calmer, but either way, I’ve become a pro at composing myself over the last decade.

Young Jake walks in. The lemon and lavender scent of his signature aftershave arrives first. He looks a little dishevelled, not quite as polished as usual. He wears a black long-sleeved top tucked into similar skintight jeans. He closes the door and sits on the end of the bed – no kiss, hug, or warmth. He knows what’s coming.

‘You wanted to talk.’ He sighs.

‘Jake, I …’ Belle stares at the bed, picking her thumb. The radiator clicks on in the background. ‘You know the other night, our chat …’

‘Yeah.’

‘The thing is … Do you want a cup of tea? I can go get you a—’

‘I didn’t come for tea.’