‘Christ.’
‘Before that, a long time before London, we were roommates at university. Way back in the eighties. It’s a long story. But I never wanted to see him again after I graduated. No one who knew him did. He was . . . let’s just say he was difficult.’
‘Arsehole?’
‘I thought so. But there was more to it, to him.’
‘Was he dangerous?’
‘When drunk and roused he might have been. But never towards me.’ Ewan had physically restrained Seb once, after he took mushrooms. That was the only time Ewan had ever touched him, but he’d been strong.
‘He put a value on me, our friendship. He didn’t have anyone else.’
Becky had almost looked over her shoulder. ‘He’s down here?’
‘I don’t really know.’
‘If you’re seeing him then he must be.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Seb and Becky were as close as occasional lovers can be, which was not that close for this kind of admission, but he had no one else with whom he could confess. A fact that had made him sad. This was also how he felt when ill and alone.
‘He’s there and then . . . he’s not there. He’s appearing and kind of moving, or vanishing. He’s been calling my name too. Not out loud. I can hear him inside my head.’
Becky had now been unable to disguise what looked like deal-breaker discomfort. ‘Get yourself checked out, like straight away. How long has this been happening?’
‘Nearly two weeks.’
‘Two weeks! And you haven’t been to a hospital?’
‘No, because I’m not convinced . . .’
And if memory is stimulated by a scent from one’s past, and Seb had read his Proust, then what engulfed their table inspired a vivid sense of Ewan in 1988 – the long face, the forehead and cheekbones oily and red from intoxication, the morbid and haunted look that came into his eyes as if another personality inhabited him when drunk. And if the devil also appears when you speak his name, then Ewan Alexander might have been sitting at the next table.
Seb could actually smell him. No mistaking it. Layers of sweat saturating a leather jacket rarely removed in any weather. Sebaceous and harsh, but piny with fresh alcohol over stale booze, wafting from his clothes and from the furniture he’d sat upon, lingering in the rooms he’d passed through.
‘You smell that?’ Seb’s voice was no louder than a whisper.
‘You’re freaking me out. Where, Seb, where is he?’
‘There,’ he’d said in a voice so tight it hissed. He’d pointed at the windows facing the docks.
And behind that miserable statement of a man, the masts of the boats had wavered like the banners of a dishevelled army. No longer a vague apparition at a distance, Ewan had practically been in the same room. Becky’s voice had faded as the volume of the world was turned down.
When Seb had looked right at Ewan, who was near pressed against the window, the chink and clatter of tableware and the murmur of the other diners had retreated. Music failed inside his ears. It was as if Ewan had come that close to take the glare off the glass, to peer into the interior of the restaurant. He’d known Seb was inside, but not at which table.
When Ewan’s murky eyes had found him, and in such attractive company, the bearded face had stiffened and those black eyes narrowed with a hateful intensity. Loathing mixed with a sharp, sudden pain, that Seb remembered seeing in his old friend’s eyes many years ago, when that face had been much younger, and when Ewan had discovered that Julie and Seb were an item. Ewan had seen the beginning of the end then. Seb’s relationship had crippled him with jealousy. Thirty years later Ewan had not forgotten the slight.
The end of the spell had made Seb dizzy enough to grip the table with both hands. The noise and tumult of the world refilled the room and Seb’s ears.
‘Where?’ Becky had said. ‘Where? Where are you looking? The windows? Which one?’
The state of that form and the length of it – how could she have missed it? A hoary face and the bedraggled hair, as if Ewan had climbed out of the harbour, grimacing with teeth better suited to a face from prehistory.
She had seen nothing. Seb knew she was only trying to make him feel better when she claimed that she may not have looked at the right window. But she must have done. There were only two panes of glass behind her chair and she’d looked right at them. Ewan had been standing in plain view.
He’d then vanished behind a passing waitress.
Stunned, and unable to unthaw his mind, Seb had remained still with shock.