The first thing Hazelmere noticed was that Scarlett had gone quiet.

Not ordinary quiet. Scarlett was capable of ordinary quiet, though it usually lasted no more than forty seconds before she remembered something she had to say. This was different. She was sitting at the end of the sofa with one leg tucked beneath her, her wine untouched, looking through the window at the wet street as though she had just seen someone she knew pass beneath it.

Hazelmere followed her gaze. There was nobody there.

“Who is it?”

Scarlett blinked.

“What?”

“Who are you looking at?”

“No one.”

“That was a very specific kind of no one.”

Scarlett smiled, but it didn’t quite arrive at her eyes.

“I’ve been thinking about Zachariah.”

“Ah.”

Hazelmere picked up her glass.

“That explains the face.”

“What face?”

“The face you make when you’ve accidentally remembered that man exists.”

Scarlett laughed.

“I don’t make a face.”

“You make several faces.”

“I don’t.”

“You do. There’s the normal face. There’s the face when you’ve had an idea. There’s the face when you’ve decided you’re right about something and are preparing to ruin everyone’s evening with it.”

“I don’t do that.”

“You absolutely do.”

“And what’s this face?”

Hazelmere looked at her.

“This is the Zachariah face.”

Scarlett looked back towards the window.

“I’m not even thinking about him like that.”

“That’s a lie.”

“I know.”

They both laughed. Then Scarlett became quiet again. It was raining lightly outside, the kind of rain that seemed less to fall than to inhabit the air. The streetlamps had made little amber islands on the pavement. Cars passed with a soft, wet hiss.

Scarlett watched them.

“I did something strange today.”

“Illegal?”

“No.”

“Disappointing.”

“I went to that street in Bloomsbury.”

Hazelmere’s expression changed.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You absolutely know.”

Scarlett took a sip of wine.

“I was nearby.”

“You were twenty minutes away.”

“I was nearby spiritually.”

“You’re unbearable.”

“I know.”

She smiled. Then she said, very quietly,

“He used to walk there.”

Hazelmere waited. Scarlett had the peculiar feeling that if she spoke too quickly she would destroy the thing she was trying to describe.

“I know it sounds ridiculous.”

“It probably will.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m here for you.”

Scarlett smiled.

“He used to walk down that road. I know that. I’ve seen it on a map. I’ve heard him mention the place. I know where he lived. I know which way he used to go.”

She looked down at her hands.

“And today I walked the same way.”

Hazelmere waited for the punchline. There wasn’t one.

“And?”

“And I felt him.”

The room became still. Hazelmere put her glass down.

“Okay.”

“Don’t say okay like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re about to diagnose me.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

“I was going to say that’s interesting.”

“You think I’m being mystical.”

“I think you are being Scarlett.”

That made her laugh. Hazelmere leaned back.

“Tell me.”

Scarlett breathed in.

“It wasn’t like seeing him. That’s not what I mean. It wasn’t even imagining him, exactly.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know.”

She frowned, searching.

“It was like…”

She stopped.

“Like the street had acquired a second time.”

Hazelmere’s eyebrows lifted. Scarlett saw it.

“Yes. That’s it.”

“What does that mean?”

“I was walking there now. But somewhere inside the feeling, he was walking there too.”

She gestured vaguely towards the window, frustrated by language.

“You know how a place is supposed to be one place? A road is a road. It has an address. A pavement. Buildings. Traffic. But that’s not how we experience places, is it?”

“No.”

“We experience them through everything that’s happened to us there.”

Hazelmere nodded.

“And sometimes through what happened to other people.”

“Exactly.”

Scarlett leaned forward.

“Think about it. You walk into your childhood bedroom and you’re not simply in a room. You’re fourteen again. You can almost feel the shape of the old life around you. The wallpaper is still the wallpaper, but suddenly the room has another dimension.”

“Memory.”

“Yes, but not only memory.”

She shook her head.

“That’s the part I can’t explain.”

“Try.”

“It’s as though places collect relationships.”

Hazelmere was quiet. Scarlett continued.

“Not literally. I’m not saying the pavement stores Zachariah in some little supernatural hard drive.”

“Thank God.” Hazelmere laughed.

“‘We regret to inform residents that this pavement contains traces of one extremely attractive man.’”

Scarlett laughed too.

“Exactly.”

She wiped at the corner of her eye.

“But honestly…”

The smile faded.

“I think places become dense with meaning.”

Hazelmere watched her. Scarlett was staring at the floor now.

“There’s a whole thing about how memory isn’t just in your head. Context helps create it. Your body recognises things. The shape of a room. The distance between two places. The light. The smell. The way you turn a corner.”

She touched her chest.

“And your body gets there before your thoughts do.”

Hazelmere said softly, “So you think the street remembered him.”

Scarlett looked up.

“No.”

A pause.

“I think I remembered him through the street.”

That was different.

Hazelmere could see it in her face. Scarlett wasn’t trying to make the feeling supernatural anymore. She was trying to make it intelligible without making it smaller.

“I think,” Scarlett said, “that when you love somebody, they become part of the geography inside you.”

Hazelmere smiled faintly.

“That is annoyingly beautiful.”

“I know.”

“And very you.”

“I know.”

Scarlett looked back towards the window.

“He was there.”

“On the street?”

“Yes.”

“Obviously.”

“No. I mean…”

She struggled again.

“He was there in the way that I was there.”

Hazelmere said nothing. Scarlett’s voice softened.

“That’s the strange thing about loving someone. You start wanting to know the world through the places they’ve occupied.”

She laughed under her breath.

“You want to know which corner they stood on. What they could see from the window. Which cinema they passed. Whether they walked quickly when they were late. Whether they slowed down when they were thinking.”

She swallowed.

“You start reconstructing them from geography.”

Hazelmere looked at her for a long moment.

“And was he there?”

Scarlett smiled.

“God.”

“What?”

“He was everywhere.”

Hazelmere gave her a look.

“Careful.”

“No, listen.”

Scarlett’s eyes were shining now, but she was smiling.

“He was in every stupid little thing.”

She began counting on her fingers.

“A doorway. A wall. The reflection of a window. The corner of a building. A stupid café. A train station.”

Then she laughed.

“And suddenly I was thinking, he has stood here.”

Hazelmere smiled.

“That’s it?”

“No.”

Scarlett looked down.

“He has stood here and I have stood here.”

The words came out almost inaudibly.

“And that did something to me.”

Hazelmere’s expression softened.

“What?”

Scarlett looked at her.

“It made time feel less finished.”

There it was. The thing beneath everything else. The reason her voice had changed. Hazelmere knew that look. It was the look Scarlett got when she had found something beautiful and was furious with it for being beautiful because beauty could make grief sharper.

“Because for one second,” Scarlett said, “I wasn’t only missing him.”

She looked towards the dark window.

“I was beside him.”

Neither of them spoke.

“He was walking there years ago,” Scarlett said. “And I was walking there now. But in my head those two moments touched.”

She closed her eyes.

“Do you know what that feels like?”

Hazelmere shook her head.

“It feels like time isn’t actually moving forward.”

Scarlett opened her eyes.

“It feels like everything is still happening somewhere.”

A small silence.

“His footsteps are still happening.”

Her voice broke slightly.

“He is still turning that corner.”

She smiled through it.

“He’s still walking past that window.”

A tear escaped before she could stop it.

“And I’m walking after him.”

Hazelmere reached for her hand. Scarlett let her take it.

Then Hazelmere said, “You realise this is exactly how you become haunted.”

Scarlett laughed.

“You’ll start going to random streets hoping to find him.”

“I already considered it.”

“I knew it.”

“There’s something else.”

“What?”

“It’s not only real people.”

Hazelmere raised an eyebrow.

“What now?”

“Movies.”

“Of course.”

“I walked past somewhere they’d filmed something once.”

“And?”

“And I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That scene.”

Scarlett’s eyes brightened.

“You know that feeling when you’ve seen a place a hundred times without ever physically being there?”

“Yes.”

“Then you physically go there and your body recognises it.”

She shivered.

“It was like walking into a memory that wasn’t mine.”

Hazelmere considered this.

“That is actually quite interesting.”

“I know.”

“Your brain had already built a version of the place from the film.”

“Exactly.”

“And then reality matched it.”

“Exactly.”

“So maybe you’re not feeling the film. You’re feeling the collision between the remembered place and the real one.”

Scarlett stared at her.

“That.”

“What?”

“That is exactly what I mean.”

Hazelmere smiled.

“You’re welcome.”

Scarlett leaned back.

“So maybe that’s what happens with Zachariah.”

“Maybe.”

“The actual street and the remembered Zachariah collide.”

“Yes.”

“And for a second my body doesn’t distinguish between the person I know and the person who occupied that place before me.”

“Perhaps.”

Scarlett was quiet. Then, with sudden mischief in her eyes, she said,

“And unfortunately my body is extremely enthusiastic about the distinction being blurred.”

Hazelmere burst out laughing.

“There she is.”

“I’ve been very serious.”

“For nearly ten minutes.”

“It was exhausting.”

Scarlett covered her face.

“He has a presence.”

“Scarlett.”

“He does.”

“I’m sure he does.”

“No, you don’t understand.”

She lowered her hands.

“Sometimes I don’t even need him to be there. I can feel the idea of him somewhere and it’s enough.”

Hazelmere’s smile softened.

“I know.”

Scarlett looked towards the window again.

A pause.

“It’s wanting his experience.”

Hazelmere understood. Scarlett went on.

“I want to know what he saw.”

“What he thought.”

“What he was thinking when he walked there.”

“Whether he was happy.”

“Whether he was lonely.”

“Whether he ever stopped and looked at the same thing I looked at.”

Her voice became smaller.

“Whether, somewhere in all those ordinary days, he was thinking about me.”

Hazelmere squeezed her hand.

“And that’s the heartbreaking part, isn’t it?”

Scarlett nodded.

“Yes.”

She looked down at their hands.

“Because the street can’t answer.”

Outside, a car passed. The wet pavement caught the light and held it for a second. Scarlett watched.

“That’s what I mean by energy,” she said.

Hazelmere waited.

“I don’t mean some measurable substance left behind by his body.”

She smiled.

“I mean the fact that a human being can alter the emotional shape of a place simply by having lived through it.”

She looked at Hazelmere.

“His footsteps aren’t there.”

“But the possibility of him is.”

Hazelmere nodded.

“And because I love him, my body knows how to find that possibility.”

The rain thickened against the glass. Scarlett leaned her head against her friend’s shoulder.

“Maybe that’s what love does.”

“What?”

“It makes ghosts out of ordinary things.”

“That’s beautiful.”

“It’s horrible.”

“Both.”

“Yes.”

They stayed there. Two women in a warm room while the city carried on outside, indifferent and enormous. Somewhere beyond the glass, thousands of people were walking home. Each of them leaving nothing behind that could be photographed. Nothing supernatural. Nothing that could be weighed. And yet every one of them was changing the city simply by moving through it.

A glance at a shop window. A hand on a railing. A kiss beneath a doorway. A person waiting for someone who never came. A person walking home after being kissed. A person thinking about the person they loved. A person trying not to.

The city held all of it without remembering in any human sense.

But human beings remembered. And perhaps that was enough to make a place feel haunted. Scarlett closed her eyes.

“I think I like knowing he was there.”

“I know.”

“Even though it hurts.”

“I know.”

“Because for a little while, when I walk where he walked…”

She smiled.

“I’m not following him.”

Hazelmere waited.

Scarlett opened her eyes.

“I’m meeting him.”

And that, finally, was the thing she had been trying to say.