Page 67 of The Ghost of Exes Past

I look at the perfectly set tables, spaced evenly around the room we’re standing in. The white tablecloths look like they’ve been ironed. There’s a bar next to us too, laden with fancy-looking bottles, backlit so their contents look like liquid amber. If it wasn’t for all of that, I’d have thought we were in a gallery or something, judging by the two huge art pieces hung on the wall, all abstract, monochrome paint splats. Not my cup of tea, that. I prefer something more classic from that guy with one ear instead.

It’s cold in here, though, I can sense that with my ghostly sixth sense. No warmth, no character. It’s all showy. I can’t imagine what the food is like. Talking of food, the fanciest meal I ever had was at my local Toby Carvery when I got the Big Plate with everything.

‘Let me guess … There’s fooey grooey on the menu?’ I say.

She laughs, tossing her hair away from her face. ‘It’s foie gras, Jake, and no, that’s gross. Timothy is boujee, I’ll admit, but not into animal torture.’

‘Frogs’ legs?’

‘Nope. But there’s a really great monkfish dish topped with ants.’

‘ANTS?’ I shout. The girl who once squealed because an ant crawled up her arm at a picnic now eats them, apparently.

‘What? They add a bit of crunch!’

I shiver comedically, and she laughs into the back of her hand, so I fully commit. The shivers, the gasping face, the whole thing, except she’s already moved on, thumb pressing a petal loose from the rose display on the bar, and I’ve completely forgotten what my face is supposed to be doing.

I hear it then.

Moans … Coming from the kitchen?

Goosebumps make their way down my arms, and something in me catches. My feet don’t move. I tell them to and they don’t. My body has decided to leave and it physically can’t. I force my eyes away from the double doors and focus on the way someone has folded a napkin into a neat triangle, cutlery placed inside it like a pocket.

I’d recognise her impatient, breathless moans anywhere.

I realise this is a strange thing to know about a person you haven’t touched in ten years. And it is an even stranger thing to feel in your chest. I put my hands in my pockets and immediately pull them out again. Then they impulsively reach towards my ears, as if to cover them, but I’m very aware of Belle standing next to me and how pathetic this must look, so I stuff them in my pockets again.

My mouth feels dry and dusty, so I clear my throat. ‘I thought you said there wasn’t any passion with Timothy?’

She shuffles on the spot, looks up at the light fixture, a twisty, garish metal thing.

‘I said it wasn’t all that, not that there was no passion.’

My mind goes blank. I’m trying to understand this, trying to make it make sense in my brain, and I can’t think of anything. My thoughts just keep landing on that stupid light fitting and what a pain it would have been to install it on that ceiling.

I thought I got it. I thought I knew what he was to her: an easy path to the life she thinks would make her happy. She’d so flatly said that Timothy was practical. Useful. Of an age. Like she was reading from some teen magazine ‘Is he the man for me?’ checklist of a perfect husband. I’d actually felt a tiny bit sorry for him. I thought she didn’t love this man, not really, not in the way she loved me. Not in the way it actually counts. I thought I had her mapped out.

I thought I knew this new Belle.

I don’t, at all, I realise, as I swallow the lump forming in my throat. I was so stupid to think I knew her. I’ve never been so wrong about anything.

Laughter comes from the kitchen now, a clink of glasses. My feet are still stuck to the floor.

Through two double doors at the back, Belle appears, wine glass in hand, followed by Timothy, who is holding the door wide for her. This is the Belle I’ve grown to know tonight. The tailored blazer, the heels, the gold at her neck. The Belle who prefers heels instead of trainers, who has ditched the eyeliner and bleach somewhere along the way, favouring less is more instead. The Belle who isn’t trying anymore, who just is. And the fucking glow … The way her cheeks are flushed, her reddish hair ever so slightly dishevelled on top.

And Timothy, waltzing in like fucking James Bond, a grin stapled on his face, which I can tell he’s trying to stifle. I’ve done that before, too.

Why is this getting to me so much? I know she’s marrying him, for fuck’s sake, I know how this story plays out.

But she’d dampened it for me. She’d played down their connection.

It’s the way his arm moves from the door to the small of her back. How he guides her to the table for two. How she laughs and doesn’t look away from him when she does it. How at ease she looks. She’s not pretending here. This is her. She’s gesturing with her hands, laughing into her wine, reaching out to wipe a smudge of her lipstick from his lips. Just like that, without even thinking about it. My jaw tightens. That’s not something you do with someone you’re still figuring out or getting to know. That’s something you do when you’ve stopped performing and start just being.

Timothy pulls out a chair for Belle and that thing in my chest tightens, and I’m trying to work out if it’s him that I’m jealous of – his success, his money, the fact that he can keep her – or the fact that she’s built something actually real with someone else.

He sits, head tilted to the side, watching Belle talk with a sure smirk because he feels secure enough in himself to let her be exactly who she is and not feel threatened by it – by her ambition, determination, beauty. He sits there and loves her for it.

When she told me she wanted to leave, I felt threatened – like it was a personal attack – because I was too scared to let her go and trust she’d still want me at the end of it. So I got drunk and said the worst things I could think of about her to anyone who’d listen.