Ghosted: A Novel

Ipulled running shorts over my legs. It was 3:09 A.M., precisely seven hours since I’d stumbled away from the football pitch. My room was pungent with sleeplessness.

Sports bra, running top. My hands shook. Adrenaline was still collecting in fizzy pools around my body, dancing over the sickening exhaustion that must lie underneath. Tommy had barred the door when I’d emerged in my running gear after getting back from the football. He’d made me a hot drink and had then ordered me off to bed. “I don’t even want to think about what happened at that football pitch,” he’d told me severely, but within five minutes he’d cracked and knocked at my door, begging me to tell him what had happened at that football pitch.

“I’m sorry,” he’d said softly, when I finished. “But well done for admitting something’s gone . . . well, a bit wrong with you. That takes courage.”

“The letters, Tommy, all those letters I sent him via Facebook. Calling his workshop, writing to his friend Alan. What was I thinking?”

“A silent phone brings out the very worst in us,” he said. “All of us.”

We sat together on my bed for a long time. Neither of us said much, but his presence calmed me sufficiently to try sleeping.

“I’m so sorry,” I’d said, before he went off to his own bed. “I’ve become a burden on you again. You shouldn’t have to spend your life rescuing me.”

Tommy had smiled. “I didn’t rescue you back then, and I’m not rescuing you now,” he’d said. “I’m here for you, Harrington—you know I am—but I’m also certain you can sort this out. You’re a survivor. One of life’s cockroaches.”

I’d just about managed a smile of my own.

Now, three hours later, I was trying again and again to knot my laces, but my hands wouldn’t coordinate. Everything was wrong.

My airport taxi was at five. I had not slept and I wouldn’t. There was plenty of time for a run, a shower, to gift wrap the little lemon tree I’d bought for Tommy and Zoe to say thank you. And I’d only go for a short jog; just enough to help me sleep on the plane.

I slid out of my bedroom door, grateful that Zoe was away. When Tommy went up to bed, that was where he stayed, but Zoe often got up very early to answer e-mails from Asia, wrapped in an elegant gray silk kimono. More than once she had caught me sneaking out for a run before the sun had risen.

Although this, I knew, glancing at my watch—3:13 A.M.—was not a run. This was a problem.

I glanced at myself in Zoe’s big mirror in the hallway, framed by wood from a tree from her late parents’ Berkshire garden. Zoe was right; I had lost weight. My arms looked stringy, and my face looked narrower, as if I’d taken out a plug and allowed some of it to drain.

I turned away, embarrassed to look at myself. Frightened, too. I had often wondered about the degree of consciousness held by the mentally ill as they began to deteriorate. How easily could they recognize a decline? How visible was the line between fact and fiction, before it disappeared completely?

Was I unwell?

I stopped in the kitchen for a quick drink of water. My leg muscles twitched impatiently. Soon, I told them. Soon.

In the kitchen doorway, I stopped dead. What? Zoe? But she was in—

“Jesus!” shouted the woman in the kitchen.

I froze. The woman was naked. Another naked stranger, little more than seven hours since I’d seen the last. Synthetic orange light from the streetlamp stippled her breasts and belly as she plunged about, trying to cover herself. A stream of expletives flew from her mouth.

I turned away, covering my eyes. And then I turned back, because a slender thread in my brain was beginning to unravel: This woman is not a stranger. “Stop looking at me,” the woman snapped, although less ferociously now, and I felt my face slacken with disbelief as I finally recognized my oldest female friend.

“Oh, my God,” I said weakly.

“Oh, my God,” Jo agreed, grabbing a Bluetooth speaker from Zoe’s work surface and holding it over her pubic hair.

“Jo?” I whispered. “No. No, no. Tell me this isn’t what it looks like.”

“It’s not what it looks like,” Jo muttered, swapping the speaker for a cookery book and then giving up completely. “I told you to stop looking at me,” she added, sinking down behind the kitchen island.

I stood, paralyzed, until an angry whisper rose up from the other side of the kitchen. “Sarah, can you please get me something to put on?” Wordlessly I walked backward into the hallway, where I got a coat off a hook. I handed it to her and slumped down on one of Zoe’s stools.

“What is happening?” I asked.

Jo stood up, pulling on what turned out to be an enormous ski jacket. She merely huffed, rolling back the cuffs so her hands could poke through.

“Would you like a pair of ski pants?” I asked dazedly. “Some ski poles? A crash helmet? Jo, what is this?”

“I could ask you the same question,” she said, frowning in distaste at the coat. “Wealthy arseholes,” she added, presumably about anyone who liked to ski. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m staying here,” I said. “As you well know. I’m going for a run and then I’m going to the airport.”

“It’s quarter past three in the morning!” Jo hissed. “Nobody goes running at that time!”

“You’re naked in Tommy’s kitchen!” I hissed back. “Don’t start!”

Jo zipped up the coat. “Unbelievable,” was all she could say.

I took a deep breath. “Jo, are you sleeping with Tommy? Are my two oldest friends having an affair? We’ll deal with me shortly,” I added, before she tried to interrupt.

“I was visiting,” she said eventually. “Tommy said I could sleep on the sofa.”

“Try again,” I said. “Try again, Joanna Monk. Tommy went to bed at midnight, or so I thought. You weren’t here then. But now you are, and you’re naked, and I know how much you love your pajamas.”

“Oh, shit,” someone muttered. I looked up. Tommy was standing in the doorway, wrapped in his dressing gown. “I told you this was a bad idea,” he said to Jo.

“I needed a drink! I don’t drink from no bathroom taps, Tommy, you know that.” Her voice was combative, which meant she was panicking. “And she should have been asleep anyway, not sneaking out for a run.” She nodded her head at me.

I folded my elbows onto the kitchen island. “Right,” I said. “I want to know exactly what is going on here. And how long it’s been happening. And how this is justifiable when Tommy is in a long-term relationship.” I paused. “Well, you too, Jo, although you’ll forgive me for caring less about Shawn.”

Tommy padded across the kitchen floor and sat at the top of the island, next to neither me nor Jo.

“Well, you see . . . ,” he began, and then paused.

The pause became a silence, which hung in the air like fog. He looked at his hands. He picked at a hangnail. He lifted his hand to his mouth and nibbled at his thumb.

“I also want to know why I’m only finding out about this now,” I added.

Jo suddenly sat down. “We’re having sex,” she said. Her voice was perhaps a little louder than was necessary.

Tommy flinched, but didn’t deny it.

“And I’m not convinced you care all that much about Zoe, Sarah, but—for what it’s worth—she’s been sleeping with her client. The director of that company she represents, the one that makes them fitness watches. That’s why she went to Hong Kong. He invited her. And Tommy’s fine about it,” she added firmly. “He came round to my flat the night she told him and we had too much to drink and . . . well.”

Tommy looked at Jo, as if to say, Really? Then he shrugged and inclined his head, as if to confirm what she’d said. He was puce with embarrassment.

Another long silence.

“I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough,” I said. “What do you mean, ‘We had too much to drink and . . . well’? Getting drunk and having sex are not interdependent, you know.”

“Stop trying to catch me out with your long words,” Jo muttered.

“Oh, behave yourself.”

She sighed. “It was the night we all came here for dinner,” she said, not quite meeting my eye. “That ramen you made, Sarah. You went to bed, all upset because of Eddie, and I went home. Then Zoe broke the news to Tommy and he stormed out of the flat, but after a few minutes he realized he had nowhere to go. So he called me, rather than storm right back inside. Got an Uber.”

A smile I wasn’t used to illuminated a corner of her face. She looked at him, perhaps torn between the need to respect his privacy and to say this out loud. To confirm the affair.

I looked at Tommy. “So you got in a taxi to Bow and, I mean, were you planning to . . .” I trailed off. I couldn’t even say it.

“No,” he said quickly. “Not at all. But that doesn’t mean I regretted it,” he added, when the smile slid from Jo’s face.

“I see. So . . . is this a—a fling? Or a thing?” I asked.

There was a very long silence. Then: “Well, I love him,” Jo said. “But I can’t speak for Tommy.”

Tommy looked up sharply. “I’m sorry?”

“You heard what I said,” she snapped. She furiously zipped and unzipped one of the pockets on his ski jacket. “But that’s by the by. The reason we didn’t tell you, Sarah, is that we haven’t told anyone. Zoe’s told Tommy he can stay here as long as he needs to—until he finds somewhere to live. She’s been staying with her fancy man at night so Tommy could tell you in his own time. He thinks she’s being really generous; I think she just can’t stand looking like the bad guy.”

After a moment’s thought, I smiled. This, at least, rang true.

“But she’s not the issue here. It’s Shawn.” She stopped zipping. “He’s the real problem.”

“Why? What’s he done?”

“It’s what he could do,” Tommy said, when he realized Jo was struggling. “She’s worried he’ll turn the whole custody thing into a nightmare if he finds out she’s been seeing someone else. So she’s going to split up with him, sort out custody, not mention me. Then we’ll . . . well, we’ll see what happens with us, I suppose.”

Jo’s face gave nothing away, but I saw it—even through my shock, I saw it. She really was in love with him. And she had been for a long time. She was petrified this was just a fling. A rebound. The poor woman could barely meet his eye. We’ll see what happens with us was nowhere near enough for her.

Tommy, as if sensing the same, moved round the island and sat next to her. I saw her glance down as he placed his hand carefully on her leg, and something tender began to swell in my throat.

“He’s a vindictive fucker,” Jo said quietly. Shawn was safer territory than her feelings for Tommy. “I can’t let him find out.”

“Personally, I can’t see how he’d ever get custody,” Tommy said. “He’s the worst he’s ever been—not turning up to pick Rudi up from school, he’s stoned most of the time, and he even left Rudi on his own in the flat a couple of weeks ago. Rudi nearly set fire to the place, trying to make his own tea. Jo’s dad’s got Rudi tonight.” He glanced again at Jo, but she had closed down, as she always did when she’d exposed too much of herself.

Zoe’s trendy wall clock rolled silently to 3:30 A.M.

“So that’s that,” Jo said, unable to bear the silence. She put her hands on the worktop, two raw little fists. “And I managed to bare my soul in the middle of it! Sorry,” she said, half turning toward Tommy. “I really don’t mind if it’s just sex, babe. Forget the love thing. I was just being silly. OTT, you know me.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“I should give you two some space,” I said.

“Stay,” Jo barked.

“Okay, thanks,” Tommy said simultaneously.

I hovered, halfway out of my stool.

“I’m not very good at this,” Jo said. Her face was the color of house bricks. “Shouldn’t be left to my own devices. If you go, I’ll only end up saying more stupid things.”

I sat back down, sending Tommy an apologetic smile, but he was deep in thought, his eyebrows engaged in something that far exceeded my powers of interpretation. I looked away. Ran my gaze across Zoe’s collection of cookbooks aimed at uptight women. At the picture of her and Tommy working out together in Kensington Gardens, back at the beginning of their relationship, when she couldn’t keep her hands off him.

At the end of Zoe’s road, a night bus whined up Holland Park Road. I wondered who this new man was. Where he lived. Zoe seemed impossibly wealthy to a pauper like me, but this man would blow her and her two-bedroomed flat in Holland Park out of the water. He’d be eye-wateringly rich and well connected. And—above all—right for Zoe. Right in a way Tommy never could have been, no matter how many times she forced him up the career ladder.

Eventually Tommy took a deep breath. He turned to Jo. “Look,” he said quietly. “I do love you. I do love you, Jo. I just imagined telling you in . . . well, other circumstances.”

Jo, who I suspected had stopped breathing, said nothing. Tommy traced a finger along the edge of Zoe’s kitchen island. “You’re the only person I’ve never felt self-conscious with,” he said. “The only person I can talk to about anything, always. I miss you when you leave a room. Even though you call me a ‘privileged arsehole’ too often. Even though you’re the kind of infuriating woman who makes me say these things in front of Sarah.”

Jo allowed a trace of a smile, but she still couldn’t quite look at him.

“I thought I was happy,” Tommy went on, “when I first moved in here. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t happy at all, and I haven’t been for years. Even as recently as a month ago, I was able to convince myself that this”—he looked around Zoe’s immaculate kitchen—“this was what I wanted. It’s not. What I want is to be me. In my own skin, laughing, real. I laugh until I cry with you, several times a week. I’ve never done that with Zoe.”

Jo remained silent.

“I mean, look at my career. It was never enough for her that I was a personal trainer. I’m quite certain she only subsidized my business because she wanted to tell people her partner ran a sports consultancy.”

Jo picked at her coat, until Tommy leaned over and stopped her.

“Listen to me.”

“Listening,” Jo said gruffly.

After a moment Tommy laughed. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation with Harrington in the room. This is . . . No offense, Harrington, but this is awful.”

“No offense taken. And for what it’s worth, I think it’s lovely. If not a bit strange.”

Jo hadn’t yet relaxed. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “It’s scary for me. I’ve . . . I’ve got more to lose than you.”

Tommy picked up one of her hands. “No, you haven’t. I . . . Oh, for God’s sake, will you look at me, you madwoman?”

Reluctantly, she looked.

“I’m here, Jo. In this. With you.”

The adrenaline had wound down. Suddenly I was sitting in a room with my two oldest friends who were telling each other they were in love with each other, and suddenly it made perfect sense. I thought back to those months we all had together in California and wondered why I’d never thought about it before. Those two spent hours together, they went on trips, they surfed, they mixed hideous cocktails in Tommy’s parents’ garage. Perhaps I hadn’t seen it because I’d been too deeply buried by grief and guilt. Or perhaps it was simply because I couldn’t think of a less likely match than these two people. But love didn’t work like that, as I’d come to realize. Here they were, sneaking around: clumsy, helpless, vulnerable. In love and unable to do anything other than be together, in spite of the risks.

“Well,” I said slowly. I smiled, and my smile turned into a yawn. “This is going to take a while. But I’m happy.”

Jo stared down at Tommy’s hand, folded tightly around her own. “That’s what I want, too,” she said. “To be happy. That’s all I care about these days.”

My heart cramped. Jo never spoke like this.

I wasn’t anywhere near warm enough, sitting in just my running shorts and vest, but in that second I wanted this moment to go on and on. I loved these two people. Loved that they loved each other in ways I’d never know. Loved that they’d been so desperate to see each other they’d smuggled Jo in here after I’d gone to bed.

“I’m going to have to go and finish my packing,” I said. “I wish I could stay.”

“Okay.” Tommy yawned as I pushed back my stool. “Although . . . Sarah. I have to ask. Do we need to worry about you?”

“I . . .” My voice trailed off. “I have kind of scared myself a bit lately.”

“Us too,” Jo said. “You’ve been pretty weird, babe.”

“I assume you know about the football?”

She nodded.

I raked my hands through my hair. “When I walked into that changing room, I had a horrible moment of realization. It was like I was finally back in my own skin. And I was scared.”

Jo said, “Maybe you should go and talk to one of them therapists.”

Ferapists. I smiled. “Maybe. There’s no shortage of them in LA.”

Tommy’s eyebrows softened. “You’ve never done anything unbalanced like this before,” he said. “Remember that.”

“But maybe that’s because I didn’t own a mobile phone when I met Reuben. Maybe it’s because the Internet barely existed back then.”

“No—you’re not crazy, Sarah. If even half what you’ve told us is true, Eddie should have called you.”

I walked round the kitchen island and hugged them both. My friends, the lovers. “Thank you, my dear Tommy, my dear Jo. Thank you for not deserting me.”

“You’re my closest friend,” Tommy said. “Aside from Jo,” he added quickly.

•   •   •

They were still there when I reappeared forty minutes later with my suitcase. Eating toast made of sliced white bread, the sort Zoe would never tolerate. They looked like they’d been together for years.

I parked my suitcase by the door. “Right, then.”

Tommy stood up. “Hey, look, Harrington. One last thing before you go. I . . . well, I have to say, I’m still suspicious about Eddie.”

“Oh, you and me both, Tommy. You and me both.”

He paused. “I just . . . It just seems like an enormous coincidence that you met him in that place, at that time.”

A bird tried its first woolly song in the tree outside Zoe’s flat.

“What do you mean? Do you know something I don’t?”

“Of course not! I just mean, think about what you were doing the day you met him. Marking the anniversary of the accident, walking along Broad Ride. I think you need to ask yourself why Eddie was there, too. On that day, of all days.” His eyebrows had taken on a life of their own. “Has he got something to hide?”

“Of course he . . . No. No, Tommy.”

I gave the idea a minute or two of my time and then dismissed it entirely. There was no way. No way on earth.