To the Moon and Back

Chapter 3




Fifteen months later

‘Look, are you sure you don’t fancy the cinema?’ It was Friday, it was five o’clock, and Paula was clearing the debris from her office desk, cramming makeup back into her oversized handbag, along with her work shoes, a half-full bottle of Fanta, and a packet of Kettle chips to keep her going on the bus home. ‘Because if you want to come along, honestly, that’d be great, we’d love to have you with us.’

Ellie was touched; it was like two balloons inviting a hedgehog along on their night out. Two newly-in-love balloons on their romantic night out, at that. It was thoughtful of Paula to make the offer but she wouldn’t dream of taking her up on it. Paula and Dan had only been seeing each other for three weeks and Paula was doing her best to pretend she wasn’t completely crazy about him, but it was obvious that she was besotted. It was yet another of the alleged ‘secrets’ she, Ellie, was supposed to be unaware of in order to spare both everyone else’s feelings and her own.

‘Thanks, but I’m fine. I want to get to B&Q and pick up the wallpaper I ordered.’ Did that sound boring? Oh well, never mind, dull but true.

Paula paused and gave her the sympathetic look she’d come to know so well. Then she said brightly, ‘Well, that’ll be nice, won’t it? When it’s done, I mean. Is this for the living room?’

Ellie nodded. There was black mold growing on the living room walls. Since scrubbing it off and painting over it hadn’t worked, covering the whole lot with wallpaper appeared to be the next logical step.

‘Well, look, if you want some help with that tomorrow, me and Dan could come over and give you a hand if you like. I mean, I’ve never done any wallpapering before, but it can’t be too hard, can it?’

Eek, Paula had enough trouble putting her lipstick on straight.

‘You’re all right, I can manage it myself.’ Grateful for the offer, Ellie slung her bag over her shoulder and gave her a hug. ‘Anyway, I won’t be doing any tomorrow. Tony’s over for a few days and he’s taking me out to lunch.’

‘He is? Oh, that’s great.’ Relieved to have been let off the hook, Paula said with enthusiasm, ‘You lucky thing!’ Then she winced and clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘God, sorry. I’m so stupid!’

It had happened dozens of times. Maybe hundreds. No matter how often Ellie told her to stop worrying about it and apologizing, Paula kept right on doing it. At work, everyone did; it was a kind of Pavlovian reaction they couldn’t control.

‘Anyway, I am lucky. We’re meeting at the Ivy.‘

‘Wow.’

‘Meeting at the Ivy, eating at McDonald’s.’

Paula’s eyes widened. ‘Really?’

So sweet, so well-meaning, so easy to tease. ‘No, not really.’ Ellie relented with a smile. ‘We’ll probably have lunch at the Ivy too.’

***

‘Bloody… bloody… bloody useless sodding stuff…’ By midnight Ellie was ready to murder the wallpaper. Hanging on to the stepladder and jabbing wildly at the top right-hand corner of the length she’d been battling to hang for the last forty minutes, she had no hands free to prevent the adjoining section from unpeeling itself and rolling down the wall.

‘Right, that’s it, I’ve had enough of you!’ Letting out a shriek she launched herself at the first bit, missed, and gave the pasted wall a slap that made her palm sting. OK, now the wallpaper had made her so mad she was turning into Basil Fawlty. Time to stop. It wasn’t her fault; she’d just been sold unhangable wallpaper or non-stick wallpaper or something. OK, let it all fall down if that’s what it wanted to do. Leave it, just step away from the carnage and get a Kit Kat out of the fridge instead.

Returning from the kitchen, Ellie turned her back on the desperate scene—it had all unpeeled itself now—and threw herself down on the sofa. She unwrapped the Kit Kat and began flicking through the TV channels. Ooh, lovely, Sleepless in Seattle, how long had it been on?

Then Jamie came into the living room and joined her on the sofa. He was wearing his old jeans and the pink shirt he’d refused to put on for his school reunion. He wore it a lot these days. Ellie loved to see him in it and she’d been right about the color; it was great on him. She knew what suited Jamie better than he did.

‘Great job with the wallpapering.’ He grinned at her, sitting sideways with one leg hooked beneath the other and his bare foot inches from her knee.

‘I know. I’m brilliant.’ Ellie took in every detail of his face, the sparkling blue eyes, the sun-streaked blond hair, the golden tan.

‘You should turn professional. People would pay a lot of money to have their homes decorated like this. You know what this is, don’t you?’ Jamie nodded seriously, indicating the bare walls, the crumpled, fallen-down paper. ‘It’s postmodern shabby chic.’

‘If you’d bothered to give me a hand I might have had more luck,’ said Ellie.

‘Ah, but it’s so much more fun watching you try to do it yourself.’

‘You mean you’re too lazy to help.’

He smiled sadly at her. ‘Oh, sweetheart, I would if I could. You know that.’

Ellie felt the familiar prickle of heat behind her eyes. Of course she knew that. They’d worked so hard together to make this flat their own. And she wasn’t going to cry. ‘OK, that’s enough, you can go now. I’m going to watch this film.’

He turned his head, gazed at the TV screen with suspicion. As well he might. ‘Is it a slushy girlie film?’

He knew her so well. Ellie nodded. ‘Oh yes.’

Jamie held up his hands in horror; sci-fi and war movies were more his thing. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Bye, gorgeous.’

‘Bye.’

But the film wasn’t able to hold her attention tonight. After ten minutes, unable to settle into it, Ellie switched off the TV. She could get Jamie back, but she wouldn’t. It was starting to concern her, just slightly, that it wasn’t quite normal to be doing what she’d been doing for the last year. Because Jamie wasn’t here anymore. And he wasn’t a ghost either. All she did was conjure up a mental image of him in her mind, talk to him, and have him talk back as if he were real. At school, her teachers had forever been telling her that she had a vivid imagination. Well, they’d been right. And now she was putting it to good use. Because imagining that Jamie was still around, she had discovered, was actually a really comforting thing to do. Like thumb-sucking or clutching a manky old security blanket, it just made her feel… better. At least, it did while she was actually doing it. Sometimes, afterwards, it made her feel worse, bereft and alone and sadder than ever. But most of the time it was good. If Jamie could appear as a real ghost… well, obviously that would be fantastic, but so far it hadn’t happened; he hadn’t obliged in that respect and she didn’t believe in ghosts anyway. Besides, this way she could be in charge of his clothes. If she wanted Jamie to wear a dinner jacket or a tutu there wasn’t a thing he could do about it besides complain bitterly.

Ellie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand; sometimes she didn’t realize she’d been crying until the tears slid off her chin and dripped down her neck. She missed Jamie so much she sometimes wondered how she’d managed to carry on, but it had been fifteen months now, and one way or another she had. Maybe she was going a bit batty, conjuring Jamie up and having imaginary conversations with him, but it was her coping mechanism and she wasn’t ready to give it up yet.

***

Ellie always looked forward to her lunches with Jamie’s dad when he came over to England. They had each lost the most important person in their lives and their meetings could so easily have been morbid, but Tony never allowed that to happen. Obviously the grief was still there but, in public at least, it wasn’t dwelt on. Instead, they talked about Jamie, celebrating his memory and recalling happier times. They laughed a lot, ate well, generally ended up sinking a couple of bottles of the kind of wine she’d never dream of buying herself, and ended up coming away with precious snippets of information they hadn’t known before about the boy they’d both loved.

This was the best bit; it was like discovering buried treasure. Today, amid the busy, buzzy atmosphere of the Ivy, Tony had already regaled her with the story of Jamie’s sixth birthday party, when one of the young girls had demanded a kiss in return for giving him his present and Jamie, utterly horrified, had promptly handed the still-wrapped gift back.

‘He was never that wild about social kissing.’ Ellie grinned, the tale triggering a memory of her own. ‘The first time he met the girls from work, one of them gave him a kiss on the cheek at the end of the evening, and you should have seen the look on his face. You’d think she’d licked him.’ She demonstrated Jamie’s reaction at the time, the way he’d grimaced and shrunk back. Then she spluttered with laughter, realizing that the waiter attempting to top up their wine glasses thought she was pulling a face and leaning away from him.

‘Speaking of which, anything happening in that direction?’

It wasn’t the first time Tony had broached the subject. He raised his eyebrows, nodding meaningfully to indicate that he was talking about her. Specifically, had she kissed or been kissed by another man yet? ‘No, no. Nothing.’ Ellie shook her head. ‘It’ll happen.’ His smile was reassuring. ‘Sooner or later.’ Later, then. She wasn’t remotely ready for anything like that. Just the thought of it made her feel sick. Apart from anything else, what if Jamie was watching her from somewhere, like through celestial CCTV? What if he didn’t approve?

Ellie dipped a tiger prawn in hollandaise. Not believing in ghosts was one thing, but heaven was another matter. You could never rule out the possibility that they were up there, looking down. Aloud she said, ‘I know. But not yet.’

Timing was Tony’s forte. Effortlessly changing the subject, he took an appreciative sip of white wine—the bottle had cost eighty-five pounds!—and said, ‘How’s the flat? Did those noisy neighbors of yours move out?’

‘Oh yes. Two weeks ago, thank God.’ She smiled and didn’t elaborate; he didn’t need to know that the replacements were shaping up to be a hundred times worse. The last family had played Eminem pretty loudly, quite often. The new lot made them look like rank amateurs. In the last fortnight there had been half a dozen major fights, the police had been round most nights, and the family’s dogs barked nonstop. Worst of all, Eminem had been replaced by Celine Dion and Josh Groban.

Given the choice, Ellie would have welcomed Eminem back with open arms. But never mind that, seeing as she was highly unlikely to be given the choice. Before Tony could start asking questions about the new neighbors she said, ‘Oh, I didn’t tell you, I’m redecorating the living room!’ See? He wasn’t the only one capable of changing the subject. She launched into telling him about last night’s disastrous battle with the wallpaper, turning it into a funny story and leaving out the bit where Jamie had turned up, because that was her guilty secret. Lots of people, following a bereavement, talked to the loved one they’d lost. She knew that, had been told many times that it was a completely normal thing to do. What was less normal, it appeared, was having the dead person talk back.

***

Zack McLaren had arranged this lunch meeting with the director of an IT company he might soon be doing lucrative business with. Normally he was able to concentrate on the subject in hand with no difficulty, but today was proving to be different. Earlier, as he’d been standing outside the restaurant taking a phone call, a girl in a pink coat had caught his eye as she headed down the street towards him. Her hair was long and dark, her eyes light brown, her cheeks rosy, and the effect she’d had on him was extraordinary; he couldn’t stop looking at her. Whoever she was, he wanted to know more. Heavens, what a weird feeling; he’d never experienced anything like this before.

As she passed him, Zack caught a waft of her perfume, something fresh and herby, unfamiliar but instantly leaving an impression. He turned, watching the back view of her glossy hair, fitted pink coat, and long legs in black tights. Incredible legs, actually. His heart, unbelievably, was thudding in his chest. What was happening to him? Then, realizing where the incredible legs were taking her, the thudding turned into a gallop; she was heading into the Ivy…

Hurriedly ending his call, Zack followed her inside. Just in time to see her being warmly greeted by someone he did recognize.

Now, an hour and a half later, he was still struggling to pay attention to what his lunch companion was saying. Across the room sat the girl in the pink coat, now minus her pink coat and wearing a thin wool dress the color of Parma violets. She wasn’t the most stunningly beautiful girl he’d ever seen but she was making him feel as if she was. If she’d been having lunch with a female friend, he would have approached her, introduced himself, said something or other—God only knows what, he’d never done anything like that before in his life—and found out who she was. He would have given her his card, asked her to call him, no, asked if he could call her, found out if she would like to have dinner with him sometime soon, hopefully very soon…

Except she wasn’t with a girlfriend, was she? That would be too much to hope for. Instead, she was having a lovely, entertaining lunch with the actor Tony Weston. They were chatting together, laughing a lot, clearly well acquainted, and enjoying each other’s company.

Which meant any form of approach wasn’t likely to be appreciated. Instead, he was stuck over here, too far away to eavesdrop on their conversation or hear what her voice sounded like, while the company director sitting opposite him droned on about financial forecasts and—

‘So what do you think about that, then?’

Shit. Typical. Zack snapped his attention back to the reason he’d come along to the Ivy today. Well, the original reason.

‘I think it’s… interesting.’ He nodded thoughtfully.

‘And what’s the verdict? Do we have a deal?’

This was ridiculous; he was a professional. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before.

‘Ian, I can’t come to a decision today.’ Chiefly because he hadn’t the faintest idea what Ian had been saying for the last hour. ‘I need to go over the figures again, have a word with a couple of other people. But I’ll get back to you by Monday afternoon, and that’s a promise.’

Ian sat back, took a swallow of water, and shot him a suspicious look. ‘Everything OK? You seem a bit… distant today.’

What would Ian say if he were to tell him, if he suddenly leaned across the table and said, ‘The thing is, there’s a girl over there, a complete stranger, but just looking at her is making me feel like I’ve never felt before in my life’?

How would bluff, ruddy-faced Ian react to that?

Except it was a rhetorical question because they were two businessmen, here to discuss business, and he wouldn’t dream of saying any such thing.

‘I’m fine. Just a touch of jet lag.’ He flashed a brief, reassuring smile at Ian. Apart from anything else, there was such a thing as street cred to consider. He didn’t want to become a complete laughingstock.

***

By the time they left the restaurant it was three thirty. Out on West Street, Tony flagged down a taxi and Ellie gave him a hug.

‘Thanks so much for lunch. It’s lovely to see you again.’

‘I know.’ He opened the cab door and said, ‘Hop in. I’ll drop you home.’

‘But it’s out of your way.’ Ellie shook her head. ‘Honestly, I’m fine. I can get the tube.’

‘It’s raining. Let me give you a lift.’ Amused, Tony said, ‘It’s OK, I can afford it.’ Indicating that she should climb in ahead of him, he added, ‘Please?’

OK, he was right about the rain. It was starting to come down more heavily now too. Relaxed by the wine, she gave in gracefully and climbed—slightly less gracefully—into the cab. It wasn’t until they were on their way to Hammersmith that Tony said, ‘Besides,I want to see this wallpapering disaster of yours.’

‘Oh no, you can’t come in!’ The words burst out before she could stop them. She’d already planned for the taxi to halt at the end of her road. Each time she and Tony had met up over the past fifteen months, it had been in restaurants; that was just the way it had happened. He hadn’t visited the flat for almost two years. Her skin prickling with embarrassment, Ellie knew he’d be shocked by the state of it now.

‘That’s not very friendly,’ Tony observed mildly.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean it like that.’ She shook her head, ashamed. ‘It’s just… you know, messy.’

He smiled. ‘You mean there’s washing-up in the sink?’

‘It’s worse than that.’ Ellie felt her cheeks flush. ‘The whole place is, oh God, it’s all just a bit… yuck. I’d really rather you didn’t come in.’

But Tony Weston hadn’t got where he was today by giving up easily. He patted her hand and said, ‘I’m not going to judge you, sweetheart. What am I, some kind of monster? I just want to have a look at this troublesome wallpaper of yours.’

‘Please don’t. I messed it up, that’s all.’

‘When I first left drama school and couldn’t get any acting work, I used to help out a friend who was a painter and decorator,’ said Tony.

‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’

He smiled. ‘I’m full of surprises.’

‘Hmm.’ Ellie sank back against the seat. So was her flat.