Ghosted: A Novel

Dear Eddie,

I’ve thought long and hard about writing this letter. How can I possibly reach out—yet again—now you’ve made such a conspicuous show of being alive but unwilling to communicate? How can I be so desperate, so unwilling to heed your silence?

But last night I found myself thinking about the day we walked up to see that welly. What a silly, lovely thing it was to do; how we stared up at it and laughed. And I thought, I’m not ready to give up on him. On us. Not quite yet.

So this is it: my last-ditch attempt to find out what happened. To work out how I could have got it so wrong.

Do you remember our last night together, Eddie? Outside in the grass, before we hauled your enormous tent outside and then spent the next few hours trying to put it up? Do you remember that, before we both collapsed with exhaustion in the damned thing, I was meant to tell you my life story?

I’m going to start it now, from the beginning. Or at least the edited highlights. I figured that maybe it would remind you why you liked me. Because whatever else you might have managed to hide from me, the liking-me bit wasn’t made up. Of that much I’m certain.

So. I am Sarah Evelyn Harrington. Born Gloucester Royal at 4:13 p.m. on February 18, 1980. Mum taught maths at a grammar in Cheltenham, and Dad was a sound engineer. He did a lot of touring with bands, until he started to miss us too much. After that he did all sorts of soundy things locally. He still does. Can’t stop himself.

They bought a wreck of a cottage in the valley below Frampton Mansell, about a year before I was born, and they’ve lived there ever since. It’s about fifteen minutes’ walk along the footpath from your barn. You probably know it. Dad and his friend reopened that old path the summer he and Mum moved in. Two men, two chain saws, several beers.

Being in that valley with you made the place feel very different. Reminded me of a Me I’d forgotten. And as I said to you on our first morning, there is a good reason for that.

Tommy, my best friend, was born a couple of months after me to the “slightly fraught” (Dad’s words) couple in the house at the end of our track. He and I became best friends and we played every day until that strange, sad moment in adolescence where playing just isn’t the thing anymore. But until then, we forded streams, stuffed ourselves on blackberries, and made tunnels through blankets of cow parsley.

When I was five, Mum had another baby—Hannah—and after a few years Hannah joined in our adventures. She was utterly fearless, my sister—far braver than Tommy and I, in spite of being several years our junior. Her best friend, a little girl called Alex, was quite literally in awe of her.

It’s only now, as an adult, that I realize quite how much I loved my sister. How I was in awe of her, too.

Tommy spent a lot of time at our house because his mum was—as he put it—“crazy.” I’m not sure, in hindsight, that was fair, although she was certainly preoccupied on a very deep level with very surface things. She moved their family to LA when I was fifteen and I was heartbroken. Without Tommy I had no idea who I was anymore. Who were my friends? What group did I belong to? I knew only that I had to latch on to someone fast, before I wheeled off the school social scene and became a confirmed loner.

So I latched on to two girls, Mandy and Claire, with whom I’d always been friendly—if not exactly friends—only now it was more intense. Intense and exposing. Girls can be so cruel when they’re young.

Two years later I was on the phone to Tommy at five in the morning, begging him to let me come and stay. But I’ll get to that later.

I’m going to leave it there. I don’t want to just vomit my entire life story all over you, because you may not want to hear it. And even if you do, I don’t want it to sound like I think I’m the only person on earth with a past.

I miss you, Eddie. I didn’t think it was possible to miss someone you’d known for only seven days, but I do. So much I can’t seem to think straight anymore.

Sarah