How to Seduce a Ghost Read online

  I was amazed. He’d got it in one. My friends never understood the kinds of problems I faced being a ghostwriter. They assumed it was all one big party hanging out with a celebrity and then going away and writing their life story, whereas there’s a whole lot more to it than that. You have to establish a relationship but there’s always a very delicate balance to that relationship. You have to both subsume your own ego and exert it because ultimately you’re the one who is the writer, the one who has to deliver the book, the one who has to shape the work. And somehow you have to make your subject subsume his or her ego without them ever knowing it and this is hard because inevitably you’re dealing with very strong personalities.

  And this is what Buzz seemed to understand.

  “I guess it’s a bit like seducing a woman,” he said.

  Now he had my attention.

  “How so?”

  “Well, a man sees a woman at a party, hears about her from his friends, and then they introduce her to him. Or he sees her picture in a magazine, bumps into her somewhere, whatever. He meets her. He wants her. She becomes his prey. Once he’s met her he has to chat her up, flatter her, pander to her ego, give her his undiluted attention until she’s putty in his hands. Once he has control, he goes to work until he’s got what he wants out of her. That sounds rather like the way you’d treat someone whose book you were writing.”

  “Then once the job’s completed he moves on to the next woman?”

  “I never said that.”

  He didn’t have to.

  “I mean, look at it this way”—now he was really warming to his theme—“even if you’re writing someone’s autobiography you’re the one asking the questions to get the story out of them, you choose which anecdotes to include, which emotions to highlight. You have control. Do you like jazz?”

  He had a disarming way of changing the subject just as I was about to open my mouth.

  “I don’t know much about it. I think so.”

  How pathetic that sounded. Tommy was a country music nut. He liked sentimental songs about women treating men bad thus enabling them to console themselves with too much alcohol. Sometimes the lyrics made me laugh out loud. Only the other day he’d been listening to a song in which the singer proclaimed “I like my women a little on the trashy side, they wear their clothes too tight and I know their hair is dyed.” I wasn’t quite sure whether this was what had made me laugh or the sight of Tommy singing along and leaping round the kitchen, shaking two artichokes as pretend maracas.

  “Listen to this,” said Buzz. “Bought it yesterday, been playing it all night. Houston Person. Amazing tenor sax.”

  The sound was rich and full and dreamy. And undeniably romantic. It was like an animal wailing across a valley to its mate. Urgent and desperate. Then repeated softly, pleading, irresistible.

  “Ron Carter on bass,” Buzz told me and suddenly I felt rather flattered. He assumed I knew who Ron Carter was. I hadn’t a clue.

  When it finished he asked me if I wanted to hear Johnny Lytle do “St. Louis Blues.” I said yes. At least I’d recognize the tune.

  “Who’s on bass?” I asked, trying to sound as if I knew what I was talking about.

  “Peter Martin Weiss. David Braham on organ.”

  “Yup.” Casual. Like I knew all along.

  Then something rather disturbing happened.

  He had his back to me. He had reached down and taken a bottle of wine out of the fridge. He turned and held it up with a corkscrew in his other hand. Want a glass?

  I nodded. He seemed to have forgotten I’d asked for a vodka and tonic. I didn’t dare say anything. I realized I was thinking something I hadn’t thought for nearly eight years.

  I was thinking that I knew with absolute certainty that I would go to bed with this man.

  Now let me get one thing straight. I don’t believe in infidelity. I’m a one-man girl. I know I’m old-fashioned in this respect but the thought of it really does make me uncomfortable—no, more than that, it makes me sad. I maintain that when someone cheats on his or her partner, they are not fundamentally happy in that relationship. Add to this the fact that I have had very few boyfriends, only two of any significance before Tommy. I’m attracted to very few men and if I’m seriously involved with someone, my eye just does not stray. But on the rare occasion when I am drawn to a man for his looks, then I’m in trouble.

  I always used to know ahead of time. I’d meet someone and I’d know and I was always right. Even if it turned out to be just a one-night stand and I felt like a slut afterward. It was a chemistry thing, nothing to do with how I felt about the guy. I just knew if something was going to happen and it always did.

  Amazingly enough, this was the first time I’d known since I met Tommy. After all, I’d had that same weird certainty all those years ago when I’d sat down to drink a cup of BBC tea with him. Given that he was pasty-faced, exhausted, and exuding virtually zero sex appeal, it was something of a miracle that I latched on to him at all. But I’d picked up on something and I’d been right. In bed, even on the rare occasions we still got it together, Tommy and I were dynamite. Of course, since I’d been with him, I’d met countless men whom I’d recognized as good looking and attractive but I’d never come across one where I’d known.

  I knew about Buzz. This guy was a cinch and there’d be nothing I could do about it.

  He held out his arms.

  “Wanna dance?”

  His sweatshirt had been washed in some sweet-smelling fabric conditioner. It was all I could do not to bury my nose in his chest as he rocked me back and forth in front of the Miele Novotronic washing machine, the one I’d looked at last week in John Lewis and reluctantly decided I couldn’t afford.

  He wasn’t taking a blind bit of notice of me. He seemed to be completely lost in the music even to the point of ignoring the phone when it rang suddenly, its shrill sound competing vainly with Johnny Lytle et al.

  The machine picked up and a rather vulnerable American voice played into the room as the track came to an end.

  “Buzz? Are you there? Pick up, will you? Can you get a car to meet me at the airport? I’ll be on the seven o’clock from Manchester. Town car will be fine.” A woman. Sounding very tired.

  “I can never get her to understand we don’t call them town cars over here. Oh well, back to work.”

  “That was Selma Walker?”

  “The one and only.”

  “So when am I going to be able to meet her?”

  He looked at me, puzzled. “You want to meet Selma?”

  “Well, when we start working on the book, I’m going to be spending a lot of time with her. My subjects usually want to check me out first even if it’s only a formality.”

  “Oh, Selma won’t have time to do the interviews herself. Her filming schedule’s crazy. I just told you she’s away all week and at the weekends she’ll just want to relax.”

  “But how am I going to get her story?”

  “Through me, of course.” He smiled. “Why do you think I arranged for you to come here today?”

  “You’re going to give me her story?” I was flabbergasted.

  “Sure. I can tell you everything you need to know about her.”

  It was totally irregular. It wasn’t how I normally worked and whatever happened there would come a time when I would have to sit down with Selma herself.

  But something told me now was not the time to push it.

  “So what’s your number?” he asked me. “I’ll give you a call, set up another meeting.”

  I found my handbag and gave him one of my cards.

  “Oh, you’re local?” he said.

  “Right around the corner.”

  “In that case I’ll walk you home.”

  He touched my arm briefly, shepherding me out the door and I felt as if I’d been wired for electricity. To cover my confusion I made a reference to Astrid McKenzie’s fire, expecting him to pick up the thread and tell me about her. After all, hadn’t Genevie
ve said she’d seen Astrid look at him in the Ivy as if she knew him?

  He didn’t answer me, just kept walking along Elgin Crescent.

  “The word is she was murdered,” I said, pepping up my stride to keep up with him.

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said.

  “What was she like? She lived almost next door to me but I never met her.”

  “How would I know?”

  “But I thought—”

  “Well you thought wrong,” he cut in abruptly.

  I didn’t dare ask him if that meant he didn’t know her or that I’d got it wrong about her being murdered.

  “Listen,” he said, half turning toward me, “there’s something I ought to tell you about Selma.”

  “You want to warn me about her, don’t you?” I asked him as we turned the corner into Ladbroke Grove. It was getting cold. Winter was setting in and the afternoons now imposed a five o’clock curfew on anyone who didn’t want to be out after dark. “It often happens. I’m used to it. I’m always being told such and such a person’s a nightmare, I won’t get anything out of them, or they’ll call me day and night, do I know what I’ve let myself in for. Didn’t you say something like that yourself earlier on?”

  “Did I? No, what you ought to know is that she didn’t know you were coming round today. I thought I’d see you first, find out if you were suitable.”

  “And am I?”

  “Totally,” he said and then added almost under his breath, “at least as far as I’m concerned.”

  We were standing outside my house. I’d stopped, ready to go in. I was annoyed that he hadn’t been entirely straight with me and I knew I ought to tell him so, thank him for walking me home, then let myself in my front door and close it firmly behind me.

  Instead I allowed him to kiss me for several minutes in full view of my extremely nosy neighbor, Mrs. O’Malley. And I was still standing there in a daze for quite some time long after he’d pulled away and disappeared around the corner to sort out Selma Walker’s ride home from the airport.

  CHAPTER 5

  I CALLED GENEVIEVE AND REPORTED THE GIST OF MY meeting with Buzz.

  “We’re sort of back to square one,” I told her. “He never even told Selma he was going to meet with me. He says I don’t need to see her at all and that he can tell me everything I need to know.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Genevieve sounded annoyed. She does not like to be thwarted in any way. “Leave it with me. I’ll sort it out, don’t you worry.”

  Of course I didn’t say a word to Genevieve about what had happened between Buzz and me on my doorstep. Truth to tell, I was so confused I wouldn’t have known what to say anyway. I was still trying to work out in my own mind why I had allowed him to kiss me and I was reluctantly coming to a rather worrying conclusion. One thing I know I need in a relationship is attention (read: affection). I didn’t get much from my parents when I was growing up and I have a kind of simplistic psychological theory that tells me I seek in my lovers what I didn’t get as a child.

  Up until fairly recently I had been smothered in attention from Tommy, but lately I had sensed his withdrawal no matter how much he told me he loved me. I fully acknowledge that it is partly—if not mainly—my fault because I prevaricate so much about the question of our living together and this only adds to my confusion. Why am I like this? Why don’t I welcome him with open arms? What is stopping me from embracing the intimacy that other people seem to accept wholeheartedly?

  Only the other day Tommy shouted at me, “It’s like I can’t tell you enough times, Lee. You never seem to believe me.” And when he said that I felt so lonely because it was true. I didn’t truly, really, absolutely believe it when he said he loved me. I didn’t truly, really, absolutely feel it and there were times when I wondered if I ever would. And yet I knew it was because I’d created a barrier around me. I knew that slowly but surely I’d been pushing him away and having done that I’d laid myself open to being seduced by someone else in my eternal quest for affection.

  If I told Genevieve I wanted out of the job she’d want to know the reason why and I didn’t feel like giving her the answer. I needed the work, I told myself firmly. Whatever happened with Buzz would happen. Or not. If Tommy and I made up soon then my kiss with Buzz would just be a momentary lapse. I’d deal with it. Tell Buzz I’d had too much to drink and finesse my way out of any further advances.

  I went on-line to check out Selma’s Web site, something I should have done before I went for the meeting, and found it to be strangely lacking in information. All I learned was that she was American and that she’d worked in the odd daytime soap opera over there that wouldn’t mean much to people in England—As the World Turns, All My Children, Days of Our Lives. It was her role in Fraternity that had made her famous in the UK but beyond that she didn’t seem to have done any interviews about her personal life and that was odd. It looked like she was going to turn out to be one of those people you think you know but actually you know nothing.

  That intrigued me. She was a big name. But it was beginning to look as if anything I put in her autobiography would be news. I could be on to something here. When Genevieve called back to say she’d tried to reach Selma in Manchester without success, I urged her to keep trying.

  “See what you can do, Genny. Please. You’ve got the address. Write a letter. Give her my credits. Do a real number on me. You never know, she might make the effort to find the time.”

  “Will do,” said Genevieve. “Now, I’ve got a bit of news for you.” She lowered her voice as if she imagined there were people listening in on our conversation. “I’ve found out a thing or two since we last spoke. Astrid McKenzie wasn’t the saint she appeared to be. She liked being beaten up.”

  “Oh yes?” This bore out what Chris had hinted at.

  “My friend Toby worked with her on children’s TV couple of years ago. He said she kept her life pretty much to herself but he was screwing a makeup artist on the show and she said Astrid McKenzie came into work sometimes with some pretty nasty bruises that took a fair amount of covering up.”

  “That could mean someone was hitting her, Genevieve. It doesn’t mean she liked it.”

  “Whatever. It means she had a bit of nastiness going on in her private life. Think about it. It never made the press, did it?”

  She was right.

  “So you’ll let me know when you’ve made contact with Selma Walker and set up a time for me to meet her?”

  “Sure thing. Sit by the phone like a good girl.”

  I had no intention of doing any such thing. In fact I willed myself to forget all about Selma Walker and everyone concerned with her.

  And while I was at it, I’d try to stop thinking about Astrid McKenzie.

  Except that she haunted me. Her face stared up at me from every newspaper vendor’s stand. They’d chosen a particularly ethereal photo of her where her fine blond hair seemed to be lit from behind and floated around her like a halo. To my horror, she began to exert a strange morbid power over me from beyond the grave, or the morgue or wherever they’d taken her toasted corpse. A power that prompted me to actually buy the papers that carried her picture and leave them lying around my bedroom like some kind of shrine. It was a mistake. The press had portrayed her as being too good to be true to the extent that you were turned right off. The inside photo spreads included soft-focus pictures of her in meadows surrounded by children holding flowers and she looked as if she were modeling for a fabric conditioner commercial. Quotes attributed to her always had her extolling the virtues of other people, and saying how lucky she was to be working with such a wonderful crew on children’s television, how she adored children and hoped to start a family of her own one day. I finally stopped buying the papers when I came across a picture of her that was so pious it made me want to vomit. It showed her standing outside a church, holding the hand of a little girl who was gazing up at her adoringly. “Astrid and Baby Jesus are my two favorite people in the whole wide
world” read the caption.

  And yet if Genevieve was to be believed, when the cameras weren’t on her, this apparent blessing to society went looking for trouble. Each time I went past what was left of her little mews house, I shuddered at what must have gone on within its walls and even when I had locked myself inside my own home, I still didn’t feel safe. I needed the comforting bulk of Tommy beside me. This standoff was lasting an unusually long time. I resisted the temptation to call Noreen for an update. Of course I could always pick up the phone and call him but each time I thought of that, I remembered Buzz. What had I been thinking of? It was so unlike me. I never acted on impulse like that. Okay, so he had kissed me but I hadn’t exactly fought him off.

  I had enjoyed kissing Buzz. It was as simple as that. And if I called Tommy I’d have to deal with it. Well, I’d deal with it if and when he called me.

  But he didn’t and neither did Buzz and I always had to come back to Noreen’s suggestion that I get a lodger.

  I actually had the idea of renting out the summerhouse in the middle of the night. I’d barely been asleep ten minutes when I was awakened by the sound of dustbin lids clattering to the ground outside. I lay rigid for about twenty seconds and then forced myself to get up and pad barefoot into the bathroom where I could open a tiny window and peep down into the alley.

  There was someone down there. I couldn’t make out who it was but the light from the street lamps in Blenheim Crescent threw a shadow onto the wall of the alley. The shadow was moving back and forth and I could hear footsteps below me.

  I ran back to my bedroom and dialed 999.

  “There’s a man trying to break into my house and he’s going to set fire to it.” This was completely unfounded but the woman on the other end of the line merely took down my name and address and said someone would be with me right away. “Just stay on the line till they get there,” she added.

  When the doorbell rang about five minutes later, I left the phone off the hook and ran downstairs to open it. A man in a brown leather jacket charged past me and up the stairs, flashing some ID at me as he went. I padded up after him in my nightie.