How to Seduce a Ghost Read online

  At that point they hollered and he disappeared, but first he scribbled down my phone number.

  When he called I don’t know what made me say yes to a pizza and a movie just as I don’t really know why we’re still together after all this time. I had a bunch of snotty friends at the time, cynical up-and-comers. People with whom I had nothing in common other than that we were fellow journalists, destined to go in opposite directions. I don’t know how I drifted into such a disagreeable crowd but I was too young and callow to be able to extricate myself from their midst. Unwittingly, Tommy managed to do this for me. They took one look at him and dubbed him the Radio Nerd assuming he’d be out of my life so fast they needn’t bother getting to know him. As it turned out they were wrong. I found myself spending more and more time with Tommy and losing touch with them. He began to grow on me until it got to the point where he was a more or less permanent fixture in my life. Radio Nerd he might be, but he turned out to be an expert lover. Must be something to do with twiddling all those knobs. Yet it was more than that. He was so completely my opposite that his very presence was beneficial and I began to relax for the first time in my life. And the one time we did split up for about four months—when he realized I was serious about not letting him move in with me—I discovered to my horror that I missed him dreadfully. It was as if someone had removed my television or my toaster or some other reliable and intermittently rewarding object in my life.

  Tommy was emerging from the bathroom stark naked and dripping wet from the shower when I walked in.

  “Tommy, you’re making the floor all wet . . .” I began but he waved me away. He had the phone clamped to his ear.

  “Christ, Genevieve, was it right here in this road? Are you sure? Is she dead? I never heard a thing. Good God, I’d better tell Lee, she’s just walked in. Yeah, I’ll tell her. I’ll get her to call you if she can’t make it.” He hung up and returned to the bathroom to grab his towel. He looked a lot better from behind, I noted. His bum was still in quite good shape and he’d always had sensational shoulders. His biggest problem was his budding paunch that was starting to hang over the top of his jeans in a mildly off-putting manner. He reemerged rubbing himself vigorously with the towel and shaking his head so I was showered with beads of water.

  “Lee, listen. You’ll never believe what’s happened right here in our street while we were fast asleep. Just up the road, incredible! That kids’ television woman lives here, did you know? Well, let me tell you—”

  “Tommy.”

  “No, let me finish. You never let me finish. This is really something. She’s dead. Her house burned down last night. Let’s go down and see if it’s on TV yet.”

  I explained to him I had already seen it on TV and been down the road to look at the aftermath of the fire. He looked predictably crestfallen.

  “You might have woken me up. Why did you let me miss all the fun?”

  “I’d hardly call it fun. Somebody died, Tommy.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. It’s awful.” He looked sheepish.

  “So what did Genevieve want so early in the morning?” Genevieve is my agent.

  “Well, she wanted to be the first to call you about the fire and she has a job for you. She was very mysterious. Wouldn’t say who it was who needed a ghost, she wants to surprise you. Can you go to her office at three this afternoon? She’s out and about till then so only call her back and leave a message if you can’t make it. Otherwise just show up. So, did your mother get off okay?”

  I caught the note of resentment in his voice. My mother had just been over from France where she lives. She was with me for five days and I banished Tommy from the house for the duration. It had nothing to do with them not getting on—the few times they met, they appeared to have rather liked each other. What I couldn’t stand was the thought of having the two of them in the house at the same time, getting in my way while I was trying to work.

  It’s a bit exhausting having a whirlwind for a mother. Tommy’s mother, Noreen, whom I adore, couldn’t be more different. She’s got a mind of her own and plenty of opinions to go with it but she’ll sit and listen to you for hours if she senses you’ve got a problem. My mother races through life going a mile a minute and expects everyone else to keep up. To be honest I gave up years ago. She’s always been like this. She used to have a pretty impressive career in advertising—I remember being taken to her office when I was a child and watching her boss a lot of people around—but she gave it all up when Dad retired and off they went to France, and that too was impressive. Dad was a lifelong Francophile and it had always been his dream to cross the Channel for his retirement. Instead of fighting it, my mother supported the idea from the start but it must have been a huge sacrifice for her to leave her busy London social life and bury herself in the French countryside. She can’t even count on me to live it for her and I think she takes her frustration with her current state out on me. I know my hermitlike existence is a huge disappointment to her and whenever I see her now, I revert to being a seven-year-old and stand there letting her berate me for not living the life she had lined up for me.

  It always made me sad the way she failed to get the point of me but I accepted it. I appreciated her need for an active social life and all the conventional trappings that went with it. I wanted her to have all the things that made her happy but at the same time I knew it was a waste of time expecting her to reciprocate. That’s what upset me. She loved her daughter, Lee, some abstract person I barely recognized, but I never felt she loved me. How could she? She’d never taken the trouble to find out what made me tick.

  As usual her visit caught me on the hop. She never gives me any warning, just turns up, lets herself in, and proceeds to give me hell the entire time she’s here. Of course she’s entirely justified. My parents and I have a deal. When they retired to France a few years ago, they said I could live in the house on condition that I took care of its upkeep. I said, Wow! Thanks, yes please, no problem. Living rent free in a four-story Georgian house in the middle of Notting Hill Gate is probably the best deal anyone’s likely to get even if it’s no longer a particularly fashionable part of London—but I’m this close to blowing it. I’ve let the house fall to wrack and ruin and pretty soon there is going to be the most almighty showdown. Every time I pick up the phone to call the plumber, the carpenter, or the window cleaner I start thinking about the noise and the disruption to my precious solitude and I hang up. Men on ladders are my particular aversion. They always leave them propped against the window so someone can hop up them, climb in, and murder me while I’m asleep. Or while I’m awake, come to think of it.

  I know I’m unbelievably spoiled to have such a big house all to myself. I tell myself that over and over again and at least once a week I get into bed and swear just before I fall asleep that I’m going to get everything taken care of first thing in the morning.

  Never happens.

  I’m still not quite clear of the real purpose of my mother’s visit, if indeed she had anything else in mind other than terrorizing me. She charged about the house brandishing a list and flapping it in my face.

  “The pressure in the shower on the top floor, it’s nonexistent, Lee. They must be able to do something. What did they say?”

  I kept quiet, always the best thing to do. Most of her questions were rhetorical anyway.

  “The gutters are full of leaves, you absolutely must get them cleared. The windowsills are falling apart inside and out, I mean they are literally crumbling. And I thought we agreed you’d get the floors in the living room sanded.”

  We agreed no such thing. I wasn’t going to put up with the noise and the smell of that awful sanding machine in a million years.

  “And there’s no bath plug in the guest bathroom. There never is. I bought six last time I was over. What do you do, throw them out the window when you get out of the tub?”

  I was rather intrigued. Losing six bath plugs was something of an achievement. I opened my mouth to say
Tommy was the only person to use the guest bathroom and then shut it again. I didn’t want her demanding to see Tommy.

  “At least you got the dishwasher repaired.” I kept quiet there too. There’d never been anything wrong with the dishwasher so there was no way I could have had it repaired. “But the water in the sink doesn’t run away. It must be blocked. What have you done with the plunger?”

  I looked at her. I don’t think I’d recognize a plunger if you whacked me over the head with it.

  But of course all these things were nothing compared with the big problem: The Damp. I had riffled through the Yellow Pages a few times looking for ads that included the words “damp course” and that was as far as it went. But I had the drop on her here. I had taken the precaution of locking the door to the basement and hiding the key. If you opened the door the smell of the damp festering below smacked you full in the face. But I was on safe ground for the simple reason that I couldn’t for the life of me remember where I had put the key. No one was going to have access to the basement unless they bashed the door down.

  When it became clear that the only item remaining on her list was the damp, I took the drastic step of diverting her attention by inquiring what she and my father were planning to do for Christmas.

  “You and Tommy are coming to stay with us in France. New Year’s too if you want.”

  This wasn’t quite what I’d asked. Nor was it what I wanted to do for Christmas. And there was something else. I’d had my father on the phone a couple of weeks ago and I had distinctly heard him say he would be in London for Christmas and was looking forward to seeing me then.

  “Dad said—” I began.

  “I don’t care what your father said. I want you to come to France.”

  “But—”

  “Lee, please, PLEASE, just this once. Come to France, bring Tommy, let’s make it a nice family Christmas.”

  I could have sworn there was a slight catch in her voice, as if she were about to break down, but this was so unlike my mother that I dismissed it. But she was suddenly looking so forlorn for some reason that I said “I’ll speak to Tommy,” knowing I would do no such thing.

  She perked up immediately. “We’ll have such fun. Now while I’m here I’m going to call people to come and deal with all these repairs.”

  “I’ll do it.” I held out my hand for the list. If I didn’t take charge there would be nonstop banging throughout the house for the next seven days.

  “Well, I know how it interferes with your work,” she said, handing it over. I was amazed. She was never usually so considerate about my writing. “So making the calls is the least I can do, but if you’re sure?” She looked doubtful. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking, Lee, maybe I should get a lodger in the guest bedroom and leave him or her in charge of the upkeep of the house—for a lower rent, of course. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about it all.”

  This was one conversation I did not want to get into. I was leaning over the counter and I had my back to her. I picked up a pen and pretended to be writing something, acting like I hadn’t heard her. Then I took her list and Scotch-taped it to the front of the fridge.

  “There,” I said, “now I can’t possibly miss it. So let me take you out for dinner, Mum. How long did you say you were staying?”

  When she finally left, her list had increased right down to the bottom of the page. She’d added to it every day in her tiny handwriting that looked as if a bird had dipped its claw in ink and scratched away at the paper. It reminded me of the indecipherable scrawl on a doctor’s prescription. That was as good an excuse as any. Sorry, Mum. Couldn’t take care of anything. Couldn’t read your writing.

  “So how was she?” Tommy had finished drying himself and was on his hands and knees searching for his socks under the bed. “By the way the pressure in your shower’s a disaster. You ought to do something about it.”

  “Tommy,” I said, fishing one of his socks out from halfway down the bed, “you want it fixed, you do something about it.”

  I stomped out of the bedroom and up to my office where I tried to ignore the sound of the Dixie Chicks coming from the radio in the kitchen five minutes later. Why Tommy always had to have everything going full blast was beyond me. And of course when I heard the front door slam behind me as he rushed out, late for work as usual, I had to stomp all the way down to the kitchen to turn the radio off, something it would never occur to him to do.

  By the time I left for my meeting with Genevieve later that day, the Evening Standard, which appeared at noon, had the story.

  ASTRID MCKENZIE DIES IN BLAZE

  Suspicious Fire at TV Presenter’s Notting Hill House

  Suspicious fire. I read the whole story. They were very careful, it was all supposition, bets were hedged all over the place, no concrete statements that could get them into trouble, but the message was pretty clear. Check in with them later. They might have an arson story to print.

  I stopped by Chris’s stall in the market. I pay him a visit three or four times a week to pick up my fruit and veg. He’s part of my marketing routine. I shop at the same places until they close down and I am forced to go elsewhere. I’ve lived in the Blenheim Crescent house for as long as I can remember and my mother sometimes used to send me along the road to pick up a last minute lettuce or some parsnips or something. In those days you wouldn’t think twice about sending a little girl out on her own on an errand. The stall had been in Chris’s family going back two generations and there’d be a welcome from his mother once I arrived. I’m such a creature of habit that I continued going to the same stall even after she retired. Besides, it wasn’t as if I didn’t know Chris. He was about five years younger than me, and as he was growing up, he’d be there behind the stall on Saturdays, helping his mum. I remember him as a cocky little boy. There didn’t appear to be a father anywhere in the picture and I never learned the reason why although it didn’t seem to bother Chris. He could shout louder than anyone else in the market even when he was a young lad.

  “Seen this?” I flapped the Standard in his face.

  “Doesn’t surprise me. I didn’t want to mention it earlier but what the hell? Word on the market is she fancied a bit of rough. Got herself beaten up pretty bad once or twice. Someone probably had it in for her.”

  “You mean . . . ?” I didn’t like the sound of this.

  “Sure as eggs is eggs. I’ll bet you two pounds of Golden Delicious she was murdered.”

  CHAPTER 2

  I’D LEFT IT TOO LATE TO TAKE A BUS—MY TRANSPORT OF choice—to Genevieve’s so I was forced to travel by underground. Needless to say, I have a horror of descending to the underground. If I know that a lift shaft is particularly deep—Russell Square springs to mind, unless they’ve renovated it since I was last there—I always take the stairs but then I get a panic attack halfway down and can’t go any farther. There’s no lift at Notting Hill Gate but by the time I’d stepped off the escalator to board the Central Line, I was quaking. What I’d have done in the Blitz, I can’t imagine.

  To make matters worse, by now I had worked myself up into a real state about Astrid. Had someone really set fire to her on purpose? Were they working their way along Blenheim Crescent? Would it be my turn tonight? It was just so dreadful to think that she had died in agony, probably screaming out for help and no one had heard her.

  My cell phone rang and I jumped a mile.

  “Hello,” I whispered. I don’t really know why I even have a cell phone given I hardly go out the house. And I hate the way everyone glares at you when you have a conversation in a public place.

  “So what else did you find out?” It sounded as if Tommy was eating the cheese and pickle sandwiches I’d made for him. He had a habit of stuffing them whole into his mouth and chewing while he was talking.

  “About what?”

  “Her. Astrid thingy. How she got fried alive.”

  “Oh, don’t be so disgusting!” I yelled and of course all the other passengers looked up and glar
ed at me.

  “Sorry. Don’t get upset. Please don’t get upset.” Tommy’s voice softened. He’s good at apologizing, I’ll give him that.

  “I’m not upset”—total lie—“it just freaks me out what happened to her, Tommy, and we didn’t hear a thing.”

  “I expect I was snoring too loud.”

  “I expect you were.” I managed a laugh. “See you tonight?”

  “You mean that?” He couldn’t believe his luck. We rarely saw each other two nights running these days but I knew I didn’t want to be alone in the house.

  “Give me a call when you finish work,” I told him, blew him a kiss, and switched off the phone before he could get back to Astrid. I forced myself to put her out of my mind. I’d make myself ill if I carried on fretting.

  I wondered who it could be that had got Genevieve so excited. I ghost for women mostly and for some reason they always seem to be in the arts or entertainment world. I’ve never done a politician or a captain of industry. But I draw the line at sleazy madams or silly supermodels. I have my standards. Actually, scrub all of the above. I do whatever Genevieve can get for me to keep the wolf from the door and she’s wise enough to team me up with people with whom she thinks I might have some affinity. Of course her dream is for me to land someone like a royal butler. Now and again she hints that I might want to find myself a job like this. I wonder if she knows what a recluse I am? Maybe she imagines I go to dinner parties every night where the hostesses employ the fallout from Kensington Palace. She probably dreams about me handing them my coat and saying Come and tell me your story when you’ve served the coffee, don’t leave out a thing, and, trust me, we’ll have a book in six weeks.

  I like what I do. Writing someone’s autobiography with them means you are going to write something nice about them. I used to be a profile writer for magazines, and I wasn’t comfortable with the way I had to get people to hang themselves. I’d go into their homes and smile and charm them and worm out of them all their little secrets and hang-ups and then expose them in print because that’s what my editor said made a good story. But I always felt bad, even if I hadn’t much liked the person I’d been sent to interview. I am well aware that I am more judgmental than most people but I try to keep my thoughts to myself. I never got much of a kick out of putting people down in public.