Page 78 of The Ghost of Exes Past

He turns his rings, or what I think are rings, around his enormous fingers, slowly. This is the most I’ve ever heard Gabe speak. I can tell by the way he is slow with his words that he’s either trying not to give too much away, or he’s trying not to tear up.

‘I didn’t realise that loving someone means letting them become whoever they’re going to be and getting to be there for all of it.’ He pauses. The rings stop turning.

I go quiet thinking back to what happened with Belle. Her bedroom. Younger me, my feet planted on the floor, my eyes narrowed. She was saying her truths but I didn’t listen because I’d already decided how the conversation was going to go. I hadn’t clocked at the time that I could grow with her, that there was space for me too.

‘I think we are more similar than you think, Jake.’

‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘I’m getting that. So what happened?’

‘I died. Messier than you, mind. Georgian England wasn’t an easy time. But still, I got my own psychopomp – Percy. She told me the same things you were told: put right what you did wrong. And I … Dot was … I should have made it right.’

‘You didn’t?’

‘I found him. That wasn’t the problem.’ Gabe’s voice drops. ‘I followed him everywhere. You could say haunted him, even. I watched him grieve me, pick himself back up, then build a life without me in it. I was there when he fell in love again. I was there when he slept. I was there on the nights he was alone and thinking about me, because the look on his face …’ Gabe talks to the moon outside the window, then to his hands, then to the floor.

‘I was right there, for years. And every single day I told myself, tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’ll do it. I’ll find a way to show him I’m sorry. But tomorrow came and I’d just watch him instead. Watching was easy, much easier than admitting what I’d done.’ He coughs, loud and husky. ‘I’d follow him around, telling myself I was looking out for him, protecting him, when really, I was doing the same thing I did when I was alive. I was keeping him close but on my terms. Even in death, I couldn’t stop controlling.’ He shakes his head, uncrosses his legs. The floor groans.

‘So you failed?’

Gabe looks at his hands again and out the window, at the sea suspended mid-wave.

‘I didn’t get a chance, Jake. He died before my time was up. And he was good, a good man. He lived and loved generously and had nothing to put right. There was no in-between for him. I was standing right there and watched him go and then there was nobody left for me to say sorry to. No door to knock on. I’ve been here 300 years. Not because I was punished. Because I ran out of time.’

He sniffles – such a weak noise for a man this hard – as his voice cracks. ‘I loved him till death.’

I look at Belle without meaning to. Just a glance behind me to the duvet I’d pulled up to her shoulder. Her brow still furrowed, frozen.

Carrying that guilt for 300 years. There’s nothing for me to say, and the right response is probably silence, but I’ve never been good at silence.

‘Christ. And here I was, thinking I had a rough decade,’ I joke. Gabe tilts his head. ‘I’m sorry, mate. I really am.’

‘S’all in the past now,’ he says, straightening on the stool, rolling his neck.

Just like that, he’s back to Gabe again. Gruff, enormous … slightly inconvenient. ‘How did you leave it, then, with Belle?’

I rub my face with both hands. He’s been more honest with me in the last five minutes than the entire decade prior, and now it’s my turn.

‘The only way it could be left.’ I reach out with my toes and bury them in the fabric of Belle’s dress on the floor. ‘I saw it all. Everything she’s been through, from her point of view. But I also lied about why I was here, because it felt easier. I was scared to lose her again. And I got jealous and then scared again and we fought. I cried by some goths in the abbey. Then it hit me. Why was I hiding how I felt? Why was it so hard for me to say? So I ran back here as fast as my legs would carry me and I begged her to forgive me. She took my face in her palms … And later she asked me to find a way for us to be together. I said no. I want her to live.’

‘Right,’ Gabe says, nodding.

I look at him then, my face creased. ‘So now what?’

‘That’s it. Your mission is complete.’

‘And?’ My eyes widen, waiting for more.

‘And?’ he replies grumpily.

‘And … Did I do okay?’ I lean forward.

Gabe chuckles, shakes his head. ‘You did well.’

‘So what does that mean? Where do I go?’

Gabe rolls his eyes, like I’m a toddler asking, ‘Are we there yet?’ for the hundredth time.

‘That depends.’ Gabe leans back on the stool. ‘I carry souls between worlds, Jake. That’s what I do, what I told you a psychopomp does. Some souls go forward to the afterlife. Some …’ He pauses, scratches his chin, the noise of it loud in the silence. ‘Some aren’t finished with the living world.’