How to Seduce a Ghost Read online

  I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea but one look at the mound of washing up left in the sink, the jars of jam, Branston, and Marmite standing around with their lids off, the upturned packet of cornflakes, changed my mind.

  I went back to the hall to retrieve the Aiwa tape recorder before I forgot why I’d come. Suddenly I felt depressed by the sight of Tommy’s lonely bachelor existence. This was not the home of someone who was happy living on his own. But would he be happier if I gave him the boot and set him free to find a suitably chirpy and gregarious girlfriend?

  Suddenly I couldn’t wait to get out of there fast enough but first I needed to pee. I was washing my hands in the bathroom and staring at myself in the mirror of the medicine cabinet, not that I could see much, it was so filthy. I looked tired. I really did need a rest. The last thing I needed was to plunge into another exhausting ghosting job when I would have to give someone else my full attention for as long as it took and receive virtually nothing in return. In fairness, sometimes the person’s life fascinated me and sometimes I really liked them. But much of the time it was a case of leave your own ego at home and be prepared to boost someone else’s for the duration.

  I’ve been told I look Italian. Or Latin, at any rate. My natural expression is rather a mournful one and my nose is long and fine. But my mouth is very wide and they say I have a great smile.

  My cheekbones are high and my bone structure gives my face what people call a Madonna look and they’re not talking about the singer. But the best thing about my face is my eyes. I know they’re beautiful. Huge and almond shaped, dark, sometimes almost grapelike in their color in a certain light. Soulful.

  I was admiring my eyes and on the verge of cheering myself up when on instinct I reached out and opened the door of the medicine cabinet, as you do. I don’t know what I was looking for. I didn’t need anything.

  Tommy is a terrible hypochondriac so I wasn’t surprised to see endless packets of Panadol Xtra, cough syrup, Olbas Pastilles, and a whole shelf of weird-looking homeopathic remedies. Another craze begun and dropped. I was about to close the door when I saw something that definitely didn’t belong there.

  A bottle of mist pot cit. Potassium citrate.

  I knew what that was for. I’d had recourse to it myself when I’d been suffering the agonies of cystitis.

  Men didn’t get cystitis, did they? I scanned the medicine cabinet for any other sign of a female presence. Nothing. I tiptoed gingerly through the debris of discarded clothes in his bedroom looking for something pink and frilly. Again nothing. So what was Tommy doing with a bottle of mist pot cit in his medicine cabinet?

  I was still pondering the answer to that question when I arrived back home to find a policeman standing on next-door’s doorstep, talking to my neighbor, Mrs. O’Malley. When he saw me going into my house, he abandoned Mrs. O’Malley and rushed over, yelling “Just a minute. Miss. Please.”

  I waited at the top of the steps while he puffed his way up to me.

  “You’re Vanessa Bartholomew?”

  “No, I’m not,” I told him, “that’s my mother. She and my father live in France now. I’m Nathalie Bartholomew. Their daughter,” I added when he consulted his notebook.

  “Did you know Astrid McKenzie?” he asked me.

  “Of course. Everyone did.”

  “Were you friends?”

  “Oh, no, I never really talked to her.”

  He looked understandably confused. “You just said . . .”

  “I meant I knew who she was. On the TV. With the kids. Was it arson?”

  He didn’t answer that. “Where were you on the night of the fire?”

  “I was right here in this house, upstairs, fast asleep in my bed. Was her death suspicious?”

  He didn’t answer that either.

  “Were you . . .” Whatever he’d been about to say, he decided to rephrase it. “Was there anyone else in the house?”

  “Yes, my boyfriend, Tommy Kennedy. He was in bed with me. So you think it might have been murder?”

  The way he hesitated—only for a fraction of a second but it was enough—told me I’d scored a bull’s-eye.

  “I never said . . .”

  “What do you think happened? How did she die?”

  “Smoke inhalation.” And before I could tackle him further, he said, “We’re going to need to contact Mr. Kennedy. Did you or he hear anything, see anything?”

  “No, not a thing. In fact I’m amazed I slept through it all. As for Tommy, you’ll have to ask him.” I scribbled down Tommy’s number and gave it to him.

  “Did you notice anyone going in and out of her house in the days prior to the fire? Anyone hanging around outside in the last week or so?”

  I shook my head. “So how did the fire start? Did someone set it deliberately? Have you got any suspects lined up?”

  “I’m sure you’ll hear the outcome of our investigations in due course.”

  “Murder investigations?” I couldn’t resist it.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Bartholomew.” He knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere with me and he’d had enough. Once inside the house, I peeped through the blinds in the bay window of my kitchen to see him return to Mrs. O’Malley. Good luck to him. She was a sour old puss and her son Kevin picked his nose whenever he saw me.

  I found a message from Tommy’s mother on my answering machine. I made myself a cup of coffee and settled down for a nice chat on the phone. I knew why she’d called. She always did when she sensed there was some kind of friction between us—beyond the ongoing problem of me not wanting to settle down with him. She was with Tommy on that one, the sooner we got married the better, as far as she was concerned.

  “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him,” she told me not long after Tommy and I began seeing each other.

  “That’s nice to hear, Noreen, but I don’t really understand why,” I said.

  “That’s because you don’t know what he was like before he met you. He’s a changed lad ever since you came into his life. He never had a woman who lasted more than a month. I was like some unpaid therapist, the amount of time I spent mopping up their tears. He treated them appallingly, chased them, seduced them, and then lost interest. Lord knows what he was searching for but it looks like he found it when he met you.”

  I found it hard to reconcile this image of Tommy the Wild One with the hopeless character who acted like he was ready for a pipe-and-slippers-by-the-fire existence. But Noreen Kennedy was no fool. We respected one another and the knowledge that she thought Tommy and I were right for each other had always made an impression on me.

  But I was wrong about why she was calling me.

  “I heard what happened,” she said as soon as she came on the line, “that fire down the road. Sounds dreadful! Do they think it was set deliberately?”

  “Looks that way. Tommy and I slept through the whole thing.”

  “I doubt you’d have heard anything above Tommy’s snoring. But I expect you’re glad to have him with you. Not nice to think of someone out there burning down houses.”

  I didn’t say anything. Noreen knew how to press my buttons. She was probably well aware Tommy had spent the last week at his flat.

  “Give him a call, love,” she went on, confirming my suspicions. “It’s just his stupid male pride that’s stopping him picking up the phone. He wants to. I know he does. In fact, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to call him myself, tell him to get in touch with you.”

  I grinned at the phone. “Thanks, Noreen. I’m pretty scared being all alone in the house.”

  “I thought you liked being on your own.”

  “Well, that’s right, I do. Normally I don’t need anyone at all but it’s like you said—there’s probably an arsonist at large and who knows where he’s going to strike next.”

  “Strike next. That’s a good one. You know what you need, Lee? I was just thinking about this the other day.”

  “What’s that?
”

  “You need a lodger to keep you company in that great big house. There must be somewhere you could put a person where they wouldn’t disturb you when you were working, and then you’d know you weren’t alone.”

  Right now that sounded like a very good idea, and I was grateful to Noreen for not suggesting that Tommy move in permanently, which is what I know she wanted.

  “Would you like me to come over and be with you tonight, love?”

  “No, Noreen, please, I’m fine.” What a sweetheart she was. Just the thought of her being prepared to navigate the buses all the way from Islington in the rain was heartwarming but I couldn’t ask it of her.

  “Well call someone and get them over. You never talk about your girlfriends, Lee. There must be someone who could be with you tonight.”

  We chatted on for another twenty minutes or so and as we did I began to feel one of those tension headaches creeping up the back of my neck. I knew exactly when it started: the minute she said You never talk about your girlfriends.

  She was right. I never talked about my girlfriends because that would remind me of Cath, the one friend I wanted to see more than anyone—and couldn’t.

  I have to admit I’ve been a bit stupid when it comes to girlfriends. Just because I live alone and like it doesn’t mean I don’t need people to turn to every now and then. Lord knows now is one of those times, but I made the mistake of putting all my girly eggs in one basket and for years I relied on one person as my sole confidante. Cathleen Clark grew up down the road from me in Notting Hill. Her parents ran a little café up near Westbourne Park Road and they lived above it in a pokey little flat. It was a far cry from the four-story house that was—and still is—my home on Blenheim Crescent but that didn’t seem to bother us. We were best friends from the age of twelve until we fell out in a totally unexpected and distressing way several years ago. Just thinking about it increased the pain in my head considerably.

  Cath had headaches. In fact they were more than that, they were migraines. She had to take to her bed and I would go over and prepare ice packs to lay on her forehead. She used to protest that I made too much fuss but I made her try everything. I persuaded her to give up one food after another that was supposed to be high in tyramine or tyrosine or whatever it’s called. Cheese, chicken liver, chocolate, citrus fruits, and red wine went out the window but nothing helped. Sometimes I just sat by her bed and held her hand. I tried to work out what it was that caused the migraines. Unlike me, she was always so capable. She never seemed to worry about anything, she just took care of it. But there must have been inner demons tormenting her that I didn’t know about. The fact that she never exhibited any sign of stress while she fretted away under the surface, wasn’t that the sort of thing that caused migraines? Not showing who you really were.

  I admired Cath. She was a teacher at a local elementary school. At least she did something worthwhile instead of ghosting silly celebrities’ autobiographies. I liked the fact that we came from totally different backgrounds. My parents elected to send me to a state school rather than indulge in the private education they could easily afford and Cath and I were in the same class.

  I remember the first time Cath came to our house, the one I live in now, because it was the first time I realized my mother had a ghastly pseudoliberal streak in her that would embarrass me from that day on. My mother worked very hard to cultivate my less privileged friends in a way that did not seem genuine. She spent a long time quizzing Cath about her parents’ café and saying she must go there some time, and then she asked her if she knew “Lee’s little black friend” that I’d brought home for tea the day before. Cath stared at her in amazement but my mother appeared to have no clue as to how patronizing it sounded. There was a kind of desperation for her to be accepted by these kids and their parents that enabled her to disregard their obvious discomfort in her presence. Eventually I decided she was too much of a liability and I stopped taking friends home altogether.

  Except Cath. Somehow, after that first awkward encounter, Cath seemed to know how to handle her. She also understood me, and how uncomfortable my mother made me feel. Better still, she tried to help me understand myself.

  “You haven’t the first clue about yourself, Lee, that’s your trouble. You let people get the wrong idea about you. You’re so private and you have to be careful there. People mistake it for hostility if you don’t tell them anything about yourself.”

  She was always telling me what was wrong with me, and trying to help me see what I could do about it. I never presumed to give her advice although I often wondered about her migraines and whether they might be caused by some defect she refused to admit. But I didn’t call her on it. Maybe I should have because the day was fast approaching when I would wonder if I really knew Cath at all.

  If she pointed out my flaws, she also spent a considerable amount of time telling me good things about myself as if she sensed that my confidence needed boosting. “You’re a good listener,” she told me once. “I really feel I can talk to you. I know where I am with you and that means a lot to me. You’re so reliable and all it does is get you hurt and disillusioned.”

  “What on earth do you mean?” There were times when I didn’t recognize myself as the person she was describing.

  “You just need to learn to take yourself more seriously,” was one of her favorites. “Of course, you’re pretty hopeless about people. You’re so unbelievably impressionable. Look at all those worthless creeps you run around with. They’re exploiting you, can’t you see it?” She was referring to the crowd I hung out with just before meeting Tommy, the ones who never got the point of him, or her for that matter.

  Needless to say she approved of Tommy and he of her. But it was because of Tommy that I lost touch with her.

  It happened after he proposed to me. He’d stayed the night and I came downstairs the next morning to find he’d rearranged the magnetic alphabet on my fridge door to read:

  WILL YOU MARRY ME?

  I pushed all the letters to one side, knocking some of them onto the floor in the process and left the words:

  NO THANKS. NOT RIGHT NOW.

  I didn’t mean to hurt him. That was the last thing I would ever want to do. I thought he was just having a laugh but it turned out he was deadly serious and I felt terrible. I would never have left him such a flippant magnetic reply if I’d thought he meant it.

  He brought it up that night at dinner and I stopped eating when I realized what he was saying.

  “We’ve known each other for five years. I was thinking the other day that I cannot imagine my life without you. I cannot even remember what it was like before I met you. You’re a neurotic, difficult, unpredictable person, Lee, but you’re always interesting.”

  We were out of wine. My glass was empty. I picked up his and finished it off while I searched for the right words to tell him yet again that I just wasn’t ready. I hated it when he brought up the subject of marriage. I loved him. I wanted to make him happy. I just didn’t think marrying him would do that.

  He went on before I could say anything. “I just can’t bear to think of you struggling through life without me. You’d worry yourself sick if I wasn’t there to sort everything out for you.”

  This was so sweet I think I might even have given in and said yes if Cath hadn’t rung the doorbell and marched into the kitchen. What nobody seemed to realize was that every now and then I felt such a wave of affection for him that I came very close to asking him to move in. Often it was the very fact that people felt they had to point out what an idiot I was that made me withdraw once more into my shell.

  “You’re being a silly stubborn mule,” was Cath’s opening gambit and it dawned on me that he had invited her round to fight his corner.

  “Hello, Cath, and very nice to see you too. Didn’t know you were coming over tonight. I hope you’ve brought a bottle. We’re right out of wine by the looks of things.”

  “Tommy asked me to come round and talk some sen
se into you.”

  “About what?” I looked at Tommy.

  “You know what,” he mumbled into his chest.

  “We care about you, Lee.” Cath sounded uncharacteristically pompous. She stood up and moved to perch on the end of the kitchen table right in front of me. What was she trying to do? Hold me prisoner? “That’s why we’re here.”

  “I’m touched,” I said.

  “Don’t be like that!” she said. “I’m totally serious. You can’t go on like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Living this kind of half life. Half with Tommy, half without him. It’s not fair.”