The Ghost

light.”
    “Light? I’d say gossamer .” She sighed. “Right. Follow me.”
    My suitcase was one of those ubiquitous pull-alongs, with an extendable handle and small wheels. It made an industrious hum on the stone floor as I trailed after her down the passage and around to the back of the house.
    “I tried to call you several times last night,” she said without turning round, “but you didn’t answer.”
    Here it comes, I thought.
    “I forgot to charge my mobile.”
    “Oh? What about the phone in your room? I tried that as well.”
    “I went out.”
    “Until midnight?”
    I winced behind her back. “What did you want to tell me?”
    “This.”
    She stopped outside a door, opened it, and stood aside to let me go in. The room was in darkness, but the heavy curtains didn’t quite meet in the middle, and there was just enough light for me to make out the shape of a double bed. It smelled of stale clothes and old ladies’ soap. She crossed the floor and briskly pulled back the curtains.
    “You’ll be sleeping in here from now on.”
    It was a plain room, with sliding glass doors that opened directly onto the lawn. Apart from the bed, there was a desk with a gooseneck lamp, an armchair covered in something beige and thickly woven, and a wall-length closet with mirrored doors. I could also see into a white-tiled en suite bathroom. It was neat and functional, and dismal.
    I tried to make a joke of it. “So this is where you put the granny, is it?”
    “No, this is where we put Mike McAra.”
    She slid back one of the doors to the closet, revealing a few jackets and shirts on hangers. “I’m afraid we haven’t had a chance to clear it yet, and his mother’s in a home for the elderly so she doesn’t have the space to store it. But as you say yourself, you travel light. And besides, it will only be for a few days, now that publication has been brought forward.”
    I’ve never been particularly superstitious, but I do believe that certain places have an atmosphere, and from the moment I stepped into that room, I didn’t like it. The thought of touching McAra’s clothes filled me with something close to panic.
    “I always make it a rule not to sleep in a client’s house,” I said, attempting to keep my voice light and offhand. “I often find, at the end of a working day, it’s vital to get away.”
    “But now you can have constant access to the manuscript. Isn’t that what you want?” She gave me her smile, and for once there was genuine merriment in it. She had me exactly where she wanted me, literally and figuratively. “Besides, you can’t keep running the media gauntlet. Sooner or later they’ll discover who you are, and then they’ll start pestering you with questions. That would be horrid for you. This way you can work in peace.”
    “Isn’t there another room I could use?”
    “There are only six bedrooms in the main house. Adam and Ruth have one each. I have one. The girls share. The duty policemen have the use of one for the overnight shift. And the guest block is entirely taken over by Special Branch. Don’t be squeamish: the sheets have been changed.” She consulted her elegant gold watch. “Look, Sidney Kroll will be arriving any minute. We’re due to get the ICC announcement in less than thirty minutes. Why don’t you settle in here and then come up and join us. Whatever’s decided will affect you. You’re practically one of us now.”
    “I am?”
    “Of course. You drafted the statement yesterday. That makes you an accomplice.”
    After she’d gone, I didn’t unpack. I couldn’t face it. Instead I sat gingerly on the end of the bed and stared out of the window at the wind-blasted lawn, the low scrub, and the immense sky. A small blaze of brilliant white light was traveling quickly across the gray expanse, swelling as it came closer. A helicopter. It passed low overhead, shaking the heavy glass doors, and then, a minute or two later, reappeared, hovering a mile away, just above the horizon, like a sinister and portentous comet. It was a sign of how serious things had become, I thought, if some hard-pressed news manager on a trimmed budget was willing to hire a chopper in the hope of catching a fleeting shot of the former British prime minister. I pictured Kate, smugly watching the live coverage in her office in London, and was seized by a fantastic desire to run out and start twirling, like Julie Andrews at the start of The Sound of Music : Yes, darling, it’s