Page 59 of The Ghost of Exes Past

I watch as thirty-one-year-old Belle cradles a glass of red wine. Her thumb traces the stem up and down as she peers at her reflection in its deep burgundy liquid, her phone face down next to her on the table. She’s dressed well, sitting straight, mousy hair plaited behind her back, but it’s all a performance.

It’s like catching myself in the mirror at a bad angle.

The bar this evening is heaving – mainly Christmas parties, people donning festive grins and kissing under the mistletoe – but she hadn’t noticed any of it. I was too in my own head. I’d got there hours earlier, because there was nothing else to do, and I was lucky to get a table only because of that. Watching her is jarring. It’s like everyone around her is moving at double speed while she sits there in slow motion. The music gets cranked a smidge louder. Someone in a Santa suit yells, ‘Ho ho ho.’

Now, looking out of the frosted glass of the windows, I make out the shadows of smokers outside, pint glasses in hand. It smells like a mix of mulled wine, dry tinsel, and wet dog – and even standing here, among a crowd, I feel the loneliness radiating off her – because I remember exactly how it felt.

At the table to my right, someone’s abandoned a Secret Santa gift. It’s a frying pan in the shape of a penis so you could make rude fried eggs, half in its bag, gift tag swinging. The evening, like its owner, moved on without it.

Behind me I feel a presence. A warmth, as Jake step closer, his shoulder against mine. It helps, for a moment, but with it, there’s also something else. A pull in my chest that makes me fidget. I shuffle on the spot, lean my weight onto the other leg, and scan the room again. His being by my side throughout all of this is comforting but it’s also becoming increasingly frustrating. We never had closure on our relationship. We broke up and then he died. And I’ve carried that guilt with me for years.

He doesn’t say anything, but neither do I. That’s always been the problem with Jake and me. Too much unsaid, and then there was suddenly no time left to say any of it. I shake the thought off. Now isn’t the time.

Young Belle sits consumed by and consuming her drink. She isn’t constantly looking at her phone. She’s not scanning the crowd, looking for people she recognises, or looking to the door, ready to wave every time it opens. I’d taken to visiting pubs and bars by myself, purely as a way to get out of my tiny flat. I hadn’t seen my friends in months. It’s not that they’d given up on me, but rather they just assumed I wouldn’t come, so they stopped asking, and I felt like too much time had passed to get in touch again. Oh, hey, remember me? Your friend, Belle. Sorry about disappearing off the face of the earth. I was just being emotionally gaslit, and now I’m too fucked up to act normal …

I didn’t want to beg for their forgiveness. Apologise for being a bad friend, for missing birthdays, for turning down every invite for fear of them seeing my bruises. Plus, Sebastian wouldn’t let me go. And how could I explain that? That the once bright, friendly Belle was under his control and had willingly let it happen. I didn’t want to see the disappointment on their faces. Didn’t want to make excuses for the behaviour of a man I thought I loved, so I just stopped responding to their messages at all.

The first time I’d arranged to see the girls, I’d worked myself up so much that I was shaking by the time I got to the pub. Our old local. I walked around outside for fifteen minutes before building up the courage to go in. I lasted ten minutes. Made an excuse about a bad stomach – which was partly true, due to my general anxiety – and left.

Afterwards, I wasn’t able to pick myself up like I’d expected. I beat myself up about that on top of everything else. Which in turn made it harder to get myself back on track. All this made the old Belle feel like a dream. I felt like an empty shell. I couldn’t remember what had made me happy, what I’d enjoyed doing with my spare time, or what my favourite food had been. I was changed.

But I was good at my job. Proof of survival.

A figure approaches young Belle’s table. Hovers for a moment, not in hesitation, but rather observation. Joe appeared fine. That was my word to describe him – just fine. Nothing particularly wrong, but nothing really right. He dressed well. He wore a good coat. He also seemed like the type who wouldn’t crumble under pressure at being given the wine list by a presumptuous sommelier, but under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have given him a second glance.

Young Belle takes a sip of wine as Joe pulls up a seat. I’m thankful I can’t see his face from where I’m standing; his back is to me. But I can see my reaction to him joining. Belle swallows her mouthful, moves her phone slightly closer to her, then places her glass back on the table. She doesn’t smile, but instead just raises a brow, leans back in her chair, and tilts her head to one side, quizzically. It strikes me now how she’s prioritising safety for her phone over herself.

‘Couldn’t help but notice you’ve been sitting here for a while, and no one has joined you. I was hoping I would get the honour,’ he says, with a West London accent, confident and measured.

He always took his time with sentences, drew them out, and paused disconcertingly before answering a question. A few times I almost repeated myself, thinking he hadn’t heard or was ignoring me, but he was just mulling it over, untroubled by how long he left you waiting.

‘Knock yourself out,’ young me replies. I notice how my shoulders drop slightly, how I immediately loosen in his presence.

‘I’m Joe. And if I’m not being too forward, I wanted to say that you look very beautiful tonight.’

Jake, next to me, shuffles. I watch as young Belle swirls her wine around in the glass. She smirks but there’s no brightness in her eyes.

‘How do you know that’s not every night, Joe?’

‘Fair. And your name?’

‘Belle,’ said matter-of-factly. Almost resigned to the fact that this is happening now.

‘Beautiful Belle,’ he says, leaning forward, head in his palm. Belle mirrors him, leans closer. It didn’t take much for me to let him in. How quickly I relaxed into his company, without making him earn it.

‘I know how it looks,’ I say now to Jake.

I can tell he’s struggling with this, both in the way he’s looking everywhere but at Joe, and he’s no longer by my side – he’s a step behind me. Is it me he’s avoiding? Seeing me like this – desperate, pathetic. Drinking alone on a Friday night, so close to Christmas. I wouldn’t judge him if he was. I think the same.

‘Work was the only place I excelled. Outside of that, I’d moved to a new part of London, didn’t know anyone, and felt really isolated.’

‘I can see that,’ Jake says slowly, as Joe rises from the chair and Belle swigs back the last of her wine. He moves, almost glides, behind her chair and lifts up her coat. The gentleman. She smiles her thanks, but doesn’t put it on, just folds it over her arm as they leave together.

‘Eight million people in this city and I’d never felt lonelier.’

Jake says nothing. The irony isn’t lost on me, telling him I was lonely while we’re watching past me go home with a man I barely knew. It’s the most depressing version of problem solving, but there’s a particular kind of loneliness that makes you do stuff like that. Crave any sort of attention, no matter how dark, just to fill a void. A void, I now know, that no man was ever going to fill.

‘Belle, come here.’ I turn to my right, and Jake’s there, so close I can smell him. How is it possible that he smells exactly the same? The same detergent on his clothes, the same hint of lavender on his skin.