The Ghost

Park, raising his hat to passersby, with just a solitary detective walking ten feet behind him.
    I was still thinking about it when Big Ben finished chiming the hour. I peered left and right again, but there was still no sign of Amelia, which surprised me, as I had her down as the punctual type. But then I felt a touch on my sleeve and turned to find her standing behind me. She had emerged from the sunless canyon of Downing Street in her dark blue suit, carrying a briefcase. She looked older, faded, and just for an instant I glimpsed her future: a tiny flat, a smart address, a cat. We exchanged polite hellos.
    “Well,” she said, “here we are.”
    “Here we are.” We stood awkwardly, a few feet apart. “I didn’t realize you were back working in Number Ten,” I said.
    “I was only on attachment to Adam. The king is dead,” she said, and suddenly her voice cracked. I put my arms around her and patted her back, as if she were a child who had fallen over. I felt the wetness of her cheek against mine. When she pulled back, she opened her briefcase and took out a handkerchief. “Sorry,” she said. She blew her nose and stamped her high-heeled foot in self-reproach. “I keep thinking I’m over it, and then I realize I’m not. You look terrible,” she added. “In fact, you look—”
    “Like a ghost?” I said. “Thanks. I’ve heard it before.”
    She checked herself in the mirror of her powder compact and carried out some swift repairs. She was apprehensive, I realized. She needed someone to accompany her; even I would do.
    “Right,” she said, shutting it with a click. “Let’s go.”
    We walked up Whitehall, through the crowds of spring tourists.
    “So, were you invited in the end?” she asked.
    “No, I wasn’t. Actually, I’m rather surprised that you were.”
    “Oh, that’s not so odd,” she said, with an attempt at carelessness. “She’s won, hasn’t she? She’s the national icon. The grieving widow. Our very own Jackie Kennedy. She won’t mind having me around. I’m hardly a threat, just a trophy in the victory parade.” We crossed the road. “Charles the First stepped out of that window to be executed,” she said, pointing. “You’d have thought someone would have realized the association, wouldn’t you?”
    “Poor staff work,” I said. “It wouldn’t have happened when you were in charge.”
    I knew it was a mistake to have come the moment we stepped inside. Amelia had to open her briefcase for the security men. My keys set off the metal detector and I had to be searched. It’s come to something, I thought, standing with my hands up, having my groin felt, when you can’t even go to a drinks party without being frisked. In the great open space of the Banqueting House, we were confronted by a roar of conversation and a wall of turned backs. I’d made it a rule never to attend the launch parties of my own books, and now I remembered why. A ghostwriter is about as welcome as the groom’s unacknowledged love child at a society wedding. I didn’t know a soul.
    Deftly, I seized a couple of flutes of champagne from a passing waiter and presented one to Amelia.
    “I can’t see Ruth,” I said.
    “She’ll be in the thick of it, I expect. Your health,” she said.
    We clicked glasses. Champagne: even more pointless than white wine, in my opinion. But there didn’t seem to be anything else.
    “It’s Ruth, actually, who is the one element missing from your book, if I had to make a criticism.”
    “I know,” I said. “I wanted to put in more about her, but she wouldn’t have it.”
    “Well, it’s a pity.” Drink seemed to embolden the normally cautious Mrs. Bly. Or perhaps it was just that we had a bond now. After all, we were survivors—survivors of the Langs. At any rate, she leaned in close to me, giving me a familiar lungful of her scent. “I adored Adam, and I think he had similar feelings for me. But I wasn’t under any illusions: he’d never have left her. He told me that during that last drive to the airport. They were a complete team. He knew perfectly well he’d have been nothing without her. He made that absolutely clear to me. He owed her. She was the one who really understood power. She was the one who originally had the contacts in the party. In fact, she was the one who was supposed to go into parliament, did you know that? Not him at all. That isn’t in your book.”
    “I didn’t know.”
    “Adam told me about it once. It isn’t widely