Ghosted: A Novel

Day Five: A Beech Tree, a Wellington Boot

Eddie was on the phone to Derek again. I didn’t yet know who Derek was, but I imagined he had something to do with Eddie’s work: Eddie sounded more formal talking to him than he had when a friend called yesterday. Their conversation this afternoon was brief, mostly Eddie saying, “Right,” or “Okay,” or “Sounds like a good idea.” After a few minutes he was done. He went inside to replace the phone.

I was sitting on the bench outside his barn, reading an old copy of Our Man in Havana from his shelf. It turned out that I still loved reading. I loved that a novelist on the payroll of MI6 had dreamed up a hapless vacuum-cleaner salesman, drafted into the Secret Intelligence Service so that he might better fund the extravagant lifestyle of his beautiful daughter. I loved that I could read about this man for hours and never once pause to overthink my own life. I loved that, with a book in my hand and no urgent need to be anywhere, or to be doing anything, I felt like a Sarah I’d entirely forgotten.

The hot weather had not yet broken, but it would soon—the air was still and curdled, hovering like a bird of prey before attack. My clothes hung motionless on the washing line above a thick cluster of rosebay willowherb, which didn’t move an inch. I yawned, wondered if I should go and check everything was okay at Mum and Dad’s.

I knew I wouldn’t. The second night Eddie and I had gone to bed together, it had become quite clear that we would stay here, in this suspended world, until either my parents came back from Leicester or Eddie went on holiday. I didn’t want to be apart from him even for the hour it would take to walk home and back. The universe I knew had stopped, for now, and I had no desire to bring it back.

From the edge of Eddie’s lawn, the squirrel, Steve, was watching me. “Hi, you criminal,” Eddie said as he came back out. He looked at the squirrel, mimed shooting a gun. Steve didn’t move a muscle.

Eddie sat next to me. “I like you in my clothes,” he smiled, pinging the elastic of his boxer shorts against my side. I was wearing them with a T-shirt of his, worn thin at the shoulders. It smelled of him. I yawned again and reached over to ping his own boxer shorts. I had stubbly legs. Nothing mattered. I was stupid with happiness.

“Shall we go for a walk?” he asked.

“Why not?”

We stayed on the bench for a while, kissing, pinging elastic, laughing about nothing.

•   •   •

It was a little after two by the time we set off. I was back in my own clothes, which smelled of Eddie’s washing powder and sunshine.

After a few yards following the river, Eddie left the path and started striding up the hill, into the heart of the wood. Our feet sank deep in the untouched mush of the forest floor. “There’s a thing I wanted to show you up here,” Eddie said. “A bit of a silly thing, but I like to come and check it’s still there from time to time.”

I smiled. “It can be our noteworthy activity for the day.”

We hadn’t completed many noteworthy activities since this affair had begun. We had slept a lot, made love a lot, eaten a lot, talked for hours. Not talked for hours. Read books, spotted birds, made up an extended narrative about a dog who’d nosed around Eddie’s clearing while we’d eaten Spanish tortilla on the bench one day.

In short, even though everything was happening, nothing was happening.

I squeezed his hand as we climbed up through the woods, struck again by the dazzling simplicity of everything. There was birdsong, there was the sound of our breath, and there was the sensation of sinking into the mulch. And, beyond a deep feeling of contentment, there was nothing else. No grief, no guilt, no questions.

We’d walked nearly to the top of the hill when Eddie stopped. “There,” he said, pointing up at a beech tree. “A mystery Wellington.”

It took me a while to see it, but when eventually I did, I laughed. “How did you do that?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “I just spotted it once. I have no idea how it got up there, or who was responsible. In all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen anyone in this part of the woods.”

A very long way up—probably more than sixty feet—a branch, once heading skyward, had been snapped off. A black Wellington boot had been placed over the remaining stump. Since then, a few younger limbs of pale green had grown below, but the trunk was otherwise smooth: impossible to climb.

I stared up at the welly, puzzled by its existence, delighted that Eddie thought it was something he should take me to see. I slid an arm around his middle and smiled. I could feel his breath, his heart, his T-shirt just on the brink of damp after a hot uphill climb. “A proper mystery,” I said. “I like it.”

Eddie mimed throwing a welly a few times but then gave up. It was inconceivable. “I have no idea how they managed it,” he said. “But I love that they did.”

Then he stepped round and kissed me. “Such a silly thing,” he said. “But I knew you’d like it.” His arms wrapped tight around me.

I kissed him back, harder. All I wanted to do was kiss him.

I wondered how I could possibly go back to LA when happiness of this sort was right here. Here, in the place I’d once called home.

Eventually we found ourselves in the leaves without any clothes on.

I had mulch in my hair, probably insects. But I felt only joy. Deep, radial branches of joy.