Page 63 of Ghost Note

I don’t want you.

Dream on, Superstar.

Over my dead body.

But not even my false anger could force one of them out. Instead, I followed him… wondering what life would have been like if I’d have been brave enough to have done the same all those years ago, too.

Twenty-One

We’d walked through the house several times already, and while I’d granted Danny permission to pack upsomethings that would never get used again, like Florence’s collection of 1950s dresses, and her wardrobe full of barely worn but very elegant shoes—along with Albie’s wardrobe, too—I was finding it hard to let go. She hadn’t been my grandmother, but everything in this home had served a purpose in her life, and us waltzing in here and throwing those things into a box seemed tacky to me—to my heart. More importantly, to Florence’s memory.

“What about the stack of appliances she has in the pantry?” Danny asked, stretching up to a top shelf in there, making his T-shirt ride up and expose a slither of golden skin… until he landed back on his heels with a grunt. He spun around to hold out a box with a frown on his face. “What the hell is a spiraliser?”

“It turns things into thin strips. Like little spirals of aubergines and stuff.”

Danny scrunched his nose up. “Seriously? There’s a thing for that?”

“They’re actually quite popular.” I smirked, watching him as he turned the box over in his hands. “People use the veggies as an alternative to pasta.”

“The world and its issue with carbs.” He shook his head. “Wanting to eat any form of aubergine is wrong, never mind wasting minutes of your day making it curly.” He leaned closer to read something before he pulled his chin back and raised both brows. “Huh. You can spiralise apples, too.” His mouth turned down before he dropped the box onto the kitchen island where I sat. “I’ll just leave that there.”

I chuckled silently, knowing that the spiraliser wasn’t going anywhere until he’d tried it out. Danny only had to be curious about something for a minute before he gave it a go. After another stretch and reach, he lifted a box down from the very back of the top shelf, his groaning and grunting doing nothing to help me stay on the platonic side of this friendship… if friendship is what it was.

Wiping a hand over the lid of the big cardboard box, he knocked a thick layer of dust off before he glanced up at me in question.

“Do you know what that is?”

He shook his head. “Not a clue. But look at this.” He brought it over to the kitchen island, standing only a foot away when he pointed to the faded black ink on the top.

For Daniel’s Eyes Only

“That looks like something you should open on your own.”

He began to wedge the lid off, ignoring me as he dropped the lid on the counter to reveal a box filled with letters and pictures.

“What the hell?” he whispered to himself, picking up the first folded note that had his name scrawled on the back. It was no more than an A5 piece of writing paper, and Danny unfolded it easily. His eyes scanning the words before he began to read them out.

To my Daniel,

Over time, memories fade. They fade, or they change into something they never really were. I have plenty of memories of your grandfather when we first started courting. Back in those days, we wrote to one another, our thoughts and feelings permanently etched onto white paper. When Albie died, I relied on those letters he sent to see me through the hardest days. Letters and pictures. Nobody can take those away from you. No update on a phone is going to wipe those memories clean, and no technology is going to spoil the quality of them over time.

You’ve always been too busy living to stop and spend time remembering, so I decided a long time ago to do that for you. In the loft, you’ll find boxes and boxes of pictures from your childhood. In here—in this box—you’ll find the things I think will matter to you the most. Things you might have missed along the way, and things I’m certain you’ll be thankful to have one day in your future, no matter how near or how far away that may be.

Alongside your grandad and father, you have been the single most precious thing in my life.

Thank you for loving this old lady with your vibrant young heart.

If I’m not around when you conquer the world, make sure you conquer it wisely, with a good mind leading you forward, and a nice home worth returning to when you get tired from everyday battle.

Those are the things you’ll cherish more than money or fame.

All my love forever,

Grandma Florence

Danny cleared his throat, and he brought his thumb to the corner of his eye before he dropped the note down beside me and started to riffle through the box. There were so many letters folded over the same way that the first one had been, but he didn’t read any more of them out, instead, sliding them along to me to look over. Even with his permission, I didn’t read them. They were a private thought from Flo’s mind to her grandson’s, and my eyes didn’t belong there.

There were polaroid pictures, too. Memories of him growing up in this very house, sitting with his parents around the table on Christmas Day, sprinting in the garden or helping his grandad dig up the weeds. There were memories of him on the beach, his youthful smile lighting up the camera every time he was placed in front of it, and that floppy dark hair of his always in his eyes or an untameable bird’s nest he couldn’t be bothered to sort.

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