Ghostwritten. Isabel Wolff

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СКАЧАТЬ with white agapanthus and pink nerines, the tables gleaming with silver and china. We found our names, standing behind our chairs while the vicar said Grace.

      Rick and I had been placed with Honor, and with Amy and Sean, whom I’d known at college but hadn’t seen for years, and an old schoolfriend of Jon’s, Al. I was glad that Nina had put him next to Honor; she’d been single for a while now, and he was very attractive. Also on our table was Nina’s godfather, Vincent Tregear. I vaguely remembered him from her twenty-first birthday. A near neighbour named Carolyn Browne introduced herself. I steeled myself for the effort of making small talk with people I don’t know; unlike Honor, I’m not good at it, and in my present frame of mind it would be harder than usual.

      I heard Carolyn explain to Rick that she was a solicitor, recently retired. ‘I’m so busy though,’ she confessed, laughing. ‘I’m a governor of a local school, I play golf and bridge; I travel. I was dreading retirement, but it’s really fine.’ She smiled at Rick. ‘Not that you’re anywhere near that stage. So, what do you do?’

      He unfurled his napkin. ‘I’m a teacher – at a primary school in Islington.’

      ‘He’s the deputy head,’ I volunteered, proudly.

      Carolyn smiled at me. ‘And what about you, erm …?’

      ‘Jenni.’ I turned my place card towards her.

      ‘Jenni,’ she echoed. ‘And you’re …’ She nodded at Rick.

      ‘Yes, I’m Rick’s …’ The word ‘girlfriend’ made us seem like teenagers; ‘partner’ made us sound as though we were in business, not in love. ‘Other half,’ I concluded, though I disliked this too: it seemed to suggest, ominously, that we’d been sliced apart.

      ‘And what do you do?’ Carolyn asked me.

      My heart sank – I hate talking about myself. ‘I’m a writer.’

      ‘A writer?’ Her face had lit up. ‘Do you write novels?’

      ‘No,’ I replied. ‘It’s all non-fiction. But you won’t have heard of me.’

      ‘I read a lot, so maybe I will. What’s your name? Jenni …’ Carolyn peered at my place card. ‘Clark.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Jenni Clark …’

      ‘I don’t write under that name.’

      ‘So is it Jennifer Clark?’

      ‘No – what I mean is, I don’t write under any name.’ I was about to explain why, when Honor said, ‘Jenni’s a ghost.’

      ‘A ghost?’ Carolyn looked puzzled.

      ‘She ghosts things.’ Honor unfurled her napkin. ‘Strange to think that it can be a verb, isn’t it? I ghost, you ghost, he ghosts,’ she added gaily.

      I rolled my eyes at Honor, then turned to Carolyn. ‘I’m a ghostwriter.’

      ‘Oh, I see. So you write books for people who can’t write.’

      ‘Or they can,’ I said, ‘but don’t have the time, or lack the confidence, or they don’t know how to shape the material.’

      ‘So it’s actors and pop stars, I suppose? Footballers? TV presenters?’

      I shook my head. ‘I don’t do the celebrity stuff – I used to, but not any more.’

      ‘Which is a shame,’ Honor interjected, ‘as you’d make far more money.’

      ‘True.’ I rested my fork. ‘But I didn’t enjoy it.’

      ‘Why not?’ asked Al, who was on my left.

      ‘It was too frustrating,’ I answered, ‘having to battle with my subjects’ egos, or finding that they didn’t turn up for the interviews; or that they’d give me some brilliant material then the next day tell me that I wasn’t to use it. So these days I only do the projects that interest me.’

      Honor, who has a butterfly mind, was now discussing ghosts of the other kind. ‘I’m sure they exist,’ she said to Vincent Tregear. ‘Twenty years ago I was staying with my cousins in France; it was a warm, still day, just like today, and we were exploring this abandoned house. It was a ruin, so we could see right up to the roof … And we both heard footsteps, right above us, on the non-existent floorboards.’ She gave an extravagant shudder. ‘I’ve never forgotten it.’

      ‘I believe in ghosts,’ Carolyn remarked. ‘I live on my own, in an old house, and at times I’ve been aware of this … presence.’

      Amy nodded enthusiastically. ‘I’ve sometimes felt a sudden chill.’ She turned to Sean. ‘Do you remember, darling, last summer? When we were in Wales?’

      ‘I do,’ he answered. ‘Though I believe it was because you were pregnant.’

      ‘No: pregnancy made me feel hot, not cold.’

      ‘A few years ago,’ said Al, ‘I was asleep in my flat, alone, when I suddenly woke up, convinced that someone was sitting on my bed.’

      I shivered at the idea. ‘And you weren’t dreaming?’

      He shook his head. ‘I was wide awake. I can still remember the weight of it, pressing down on the mattress. Yet there was no one there.’

      ‘How terrifying,’ I murmured.

      ‘It was.’ He poured me some water then filled his own glass. ‘Has anything like that ever happened to you?’

      ‘It hasn’t, I’m glad to say. But I don’t dismiss other people’s experiences.’

      ‘I’ve always been sceptical about these things,’ Sean observed. ‘I believe that if people are sufficiently on edge they can see things that aren’t really there. Like Macbeth seeing the ghost of Banquo.’

      ‘Shake not thy gory locks at me!’ intoned Honor, then giggled. ‘And Macbeth certainly is on edge by then, isn’t he, having murdered – what – four people?’ Then she went off on some new conversational tangent about why it was considered unlucky for actors to say ‘Macbeth’ inside a theatre. ‘People think it’s because of the evil in the story,’ she prattled away as a waiter took her plate. ‘But it’s actually because if a play wasn’t selling well, the actors would have to quickly rehearse Macbeth as that’s always popular, so doing Macbeth became associated with ill luck. Now … what are we having next?’ She picked up a gold-tasselled menu. ‘Sea bass – yum. Did you know that sea bass are hermaphrodites? The males become females at six months.’

      Al, clearly uninterested in the gender-switching tendencies of our main course, turned to me. ‘So what sort of books do you write?’

      ‘A real mix,’ I answered. ‘Psychology, health and popular culture; I’ve done a diet book, and a couple of gardening books …’

      I thought of my titles, more than twenty of them, lined up on the shelf in my study.

      ‘So you must learn a huge amount about all these things,’ СКАЧАТЬ