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The older Edie smiled. She looked at her younger self who was twirling, oblivious to the look of admiration that was written on his face as he watched her. She'd never known he'd looked at her like that. As if struck by a thunderbolt and as though he suddenly saw her for the first time.
"He looks smitten. A smitten kitten," the flower girl said smugly. Edie could feel herself blush like a teenager.
"Don't be silly." She wanted to nudge the little girl with her elbow and then tell her more about how this beautiful boy loved her. Or had loved her.
"He told me that this night was when he fell for me." She watched as her student self stopped twirling, looked up and saw Tom watching her. His face was neutral by then, he'd hidden the look that her older self had seen earlier behind a mask. Maybe if she'd seen his face that night things would've been different?
"You really think just seeing the smitten kitten look would've stopped everything that followed?" the ghost raised an eyebrow and looked at her dubiously.
"It might've done." Edie lied to herself.
The ghost tutted and shook her head as if Edie was a hopeless case.
Edie watched as Tom came walking towards her past self and Mel.
She hadn't thought about it in years. The way her heart had stuttered when she realised that Tom had finally noticed her. The way he’d brushed past Mel, just like he was doing now. The way Mel started to laugh, startled by his single mindedness. The way he'd grasped Edie’s hand. The way her entire world, at that moment, became focused on only him. She couldn't catch her breath. She thought she’d faint.
Older Edie felt a faint echo of that feeling rush over her.
"You really need to work on that sexy look," the little Ghost had her face scrunched up in disgust as she watched the scene.
Edie had to agree; love really must be blind because her student self resembled a goldfish. But she glowed. How she glowed.
And then the music slowed.
"This was our first dance," Edie felt dreamy, she watched as Tom grabbed her hand and drew him to her. "And this was our song."
She remembered her heart racing in double, even triple time to the music. She'd worried that her palms would be sweaty and he'd run away in disgust.
But the words of the song wound round her, heartbreak, regret and lost love. She shivered. Their story had been foretold in that song if only she'd listened to the words.
"Bit depressingly true to life don't you think?" the Ghost piped up.
Edie wondered if damnation was preferable to listening to snarky asides from a pint sized pot of ectoplasm.
"Don't even think it." The wise old eyes of the flower girl stared up at her fiercely. Edie quickly held her hand up and shook her head, backing down.
She looked back at the dance floor. Tom's hands were holding her younger self closely; she had her head tucked into his shoulder. She’d always fitted perfectly in that space, as if it had been specially made for her.
What if? She thought as she watched him bend his head.
If only, she sighed as she saw their first kiss.
Tears welled up, her heart felt as if it would break all over again. They'd lit up that dance floor with their love; it had been perfect.
She remembered the feeling of his lips on hers, burning away all the yearning she'd had for years into a perfect moment. The way her body had wanted to merge with his.
"Oi you two, get a room." The drunken groom came barrelling into them and tore them apart. “Hey, what you snogging Dick for?” Justin screeched with laughter but Tom had grabbed her and held her close.
"I get it." The older Edie could feel the tears burning on her cheeks. "I should never have broken up with Tom. You need to understand it was…"
"No, Edie," the Ghost stamped her foot. "You need to understand. This isn't about being with this boy or that man. This is about you and your choices."
"I get it, I need to make better choices. Can I go back now?" She wanted to go home and curl up in her bed and cry for her old self. Tears for the girl on the dance floor. Where had she gone?
"Not yet. You need to see one more thing."
"But I…" Edie wracked her brain for another wedding. There were so many going back over the years. From the bright primary colours of her teens, gradually fading to pastel and then grey in her memories. The fun was sucked out of them until it was all just ashes in her mouth.
The spirit grabbed her hand and with a lurching twist and turn they moved location.
A restaurant, a familiar restaurant with people dressed in the fashion of the last decade or so. She wondered absently how anyone had ever thought it had looked good.
“This was Tom’s and mine favourite restaurant,” she said confused. “This is where we celebrated our first jobs,” she spun round looking at the place. “But I don’t understand? There hasn’t been a wedding here. Or at least I’ve never been to a wedding here.”
When was the last time she'd been here? Not since they'd broken up. At first it had been too difficult. She snorted, as she realised she had been about to say 'it had been too full of ghosts.' And then she had put all thoughts of Tom and her life with him in a box in her mind, shut it tight and carried on.
Never let the bastards see you cry.
The Ghost beckoned her to the far corner without speaking. And there in the shadows at the back, at the most intimate table was Tom. A grown-up Tom, the age he’d been when they were last together.
Blond hair ruthlessly held down and cut short to eradicate the curls he hated but she'd loved. His face was not the boy who had rubbed her back or the face of the student who'd kissed her at a wedding but the face of the man she had lived with, loved.
“But…I don’t understand” she whispered. “I’m not going to have to watch him cheat on me or anything, am I?” She recoiled at the thought.
“Never have I had a client so completely blind,” the Ghost said. “Of course he didn’t cheat on you. You were the one doing the cheating." she looked disgusted, as though Edie was failing a test.
“I never even looked at another man." Edie said. She wanted to throw something at the Spirit for saying it. "I know what cheating does to people." She shuddered as she thought back to her mother and the fact that she never smiled the same way since Dad left.
“There is more to cheating than being with another man. You cheated on him with your job, your time, your attention until there was nothing left of you for him.”
“It wasn’t like that,” she said.
“Wasn’t it?” the Ghost countered. She gestured back to Tom.
Edie looked. She didn’t remember this night. Not in this corner. Not with Tom wearing that dark suit that had been tailored to show his leanness, the lining a sedate navy. The light blue shirt made his eyes glow, or was that something else? And that was the tie she had bought for him the last Christmas. Well she hadn’t actually bought it. One of the secretaries had. But he'd loved it and that was what mattered, wasn't it?
There was a bottle of champagne chilling, unopened beside him. She saw the yellow label. They had always said they would only drink that brand for truly special occasions, she remembered. There was a little bunch of her favourite tulips in reds and oranges on the side plate of the place setting opposite him. But this had never happened. Was this some sort of fantasy? Her mind was conjuring up a scene where everything turned out right; it was taunting her with what could've been.
She watched as Tom craned his neck every time the door to the restaurant opened and someone new came in. She saw the way his eyes lit up as the door jangled and how they died a little when it wasn’t the person he expected.
For forty-five minutes she watched. And with each minute his shoulders slumped a little more. She sat at a table nearby, rubbing her chest, which ached more with each drop, with each bit of light that faded in his eyes.
“Would sir care to order?” a waiter would ask every five minutes.
“No, I’ll wait,” he assured him.
And as time went on the waiter’s attitude changed to one of pity.
Who the hell had the audacity to stand him up? Just look at him! She thought.
His phone rang and even the shock of seeing how phones had changed didn’t disturb her as much as the thought he’d been left alone.
“I hope he gives the silly cow what for,” she said, "I mean look at all the trouble he went to."
“Shug, where are you?” his face bright and eager.
Shug.
That was his name for her, short for ‘sugar’ because he said she was as sweet as it. It tugged at her heart and exploded in her brain.
She was the one he was waiting for.
“Not going to make it at all?” his face fell. No, it crumpled. His whole body seemed to curl in on itself. Like the air had been let out of him.
“No, no I understand. Your work is important and if Hilary needs you to stay, you have to. Yes, I know how much she’s done for you. I’ll see you at home. I lo…” he winced at the sound of a dropped phone, which even Edie could hear from where she sat.
“I love you.” He whispered to the dialling tone.
Edie’s vision blurred.
“Would sir like to order?” the pitiful gaze of the waiter was again on him.
“Yeah, I’ll have a double gin and tonic and take back the champagne. We won’t be needing it.”
As Tom stared dejectedly at the table his hand crept to his right hand pocket. Dipping in, he brought a small object up to the table.
A small, black velvet ring box.
No. Edie’s stomach flexed like it had taken a prize fighting punch.
He flipped the lid and there nestled on white satin was the most perfect ring she had ever seen. Small and discreet, not expensive or showy but it wouldn’t have mattered because it would’ve have come from Tom and that was enough.
“No,” she mouthed.
“What was so important that you forgot it was your anniversary of your first kiss? What was so urgent that you couldn't make time for him? What blinded you to your life that you didn’t know that Tom was going to propose?” The Ghost was implacable. Each question fell on Edie like physical blows.
“But we were busy, the Agnew divorce was complex and it was all hands to the pump. It was that work that got me the promotion. Hilary, Ms Satis, she told me I had to focus. That work would never let me down, that it wouldn’t cheat on you. And he knew I wanted to do well. Always be the best you can be, he knew that. But he never said. If he’d said…” she faded out.
“If he’d said that would you have come?” the Ghost asked.
Would she? Would she have wanted to be married so young? She wasn’t sure. Maybe a few years before she would have but then… then she was clawing her way up the ladder and getting married would have gotten in the way.
“We could have had a long engagement?” she said hopefully.
“Edie, you cheated on him. And you cheated on yourself. And you still are."
And with a twirl of flowers and pink glitter the Ghost, Tom, the perfect ring and Luigi’s restaurant vanished.
Edie was alone at last in her cold and empty bed.
Chapter 7 (#u8bd58e47-96b6-5dac-b5db-dc2174be9bbf)
Sunlight streaked in the window and struck Edie in the eye. It had drawn its bow and unleashed it right on target.
She groaned. She felt like she’d drunk a crate of wine and then gone five rounds with Mike Tyson. What had happened?
The scent of jasmine, sweet pea and roses was still in the air.
The Ghost.
Edie sat bolt upright in bed.
A Ghost had visited her, just as Jessica had promised. This was actually happening. She started to shake. People like her didn’t get haunted. In much the same way people like her didn’t turn into vampires or go to séances. It just wasn’t done.
There was no logical reason she could come up with to explain it, though. Even if someone had managed to invent some sort of very high-end interactive experience it couldn’t explain what happened. There were things that were shown to her last night that no one else could have known.
She was going mad.
She stopped shaking.
Yes, she was going mad. That was much easier to deal with than hauntings. Obviously she was overworked and needed a good rest or something. Or some pills. Maybe an extended stay at a health farm. Odd that being mad made her feel better. As if she'd regained some control.
She swung her feet out of the bed.
They were grass stained and muddy.
She began to shake again. She looked closer; a pink heart-shaped piece of confetti was stuck to the little toe of her right foot.
Mad. Crazy. Certifiable. Chased by the little men in white coats loop de loo. If only that was the explanation.
“Oh my God!” she screamed catching sight of the alarm clock.
It couldn’t be ten o’clock?
She had to be at Mel’s in an hour and it was a good twenty minutes between here and there, even on a Saturday.
Confetti forgotten, the Ghost relegated to the back of her mind. Edie scrambled from her bed and ran into the bathroom.
An hour, later she pulled up outside Mel’s in Clapham South. She’d made it. She winced as she looked in the rear view mirror as she reversed into an available parking space. She had made it but her grooming hadn’t. Her dark hair, which had been damp and unstyled when she got in the car, was now windswept and curling into ringlets here and there. Her nose was shiny as she hadn’t had time to put on any make-up and she struggled to remember what she had stuffed, willy nilly, into the overnight bag for the weekend. She was sure she had forgotten something.
“Edie!” Mel screeched as she came to the door of the flat.
The terrace of houses, now mostly divided into two flats, was the same as pretty much everywhere in this part of South London. Built sometime in the late nineteenth century as family homes for commuters they now were family homes again, just cut up to a much smaller scale. Mel and Barry had the ground floor of a corner house, giving them a garden that came into its own in the summer.
“Edie! Come in! Come in!” Mel called, oblivious to her neighbours and their Saturday morning comfort.
Edie grimaced. Typically, Mel had demanded she was here on time and yet again she was running late herself.
