The Ghost

I can’t claim to be a proper writer.”
    I was conscious of her watching me carefully. I put on a pair of boxer shorts, pulling them up under my robe.
    “Ah,” she said dryly, “the modesty of the morning after.”
    “A bit late for that,” I said.
    I took off the dressing gown and reached for a shirt, and as the hanger rang its hollow chime, I thought that this was exactly the sort of miserable scene that the discreet nocturnal departure was invented to avoid. How typical of her not to sense what the occasion required. Now our former intimacy lay between us like a shadow. The silence lengthened, and hardened, until I could feel her resentment as an almost solid barrier. I could no more have gone across and kissed her now than I could on the day we met.
    “What are you going to do?” she said.
    “Leave.”
    “That’s not necessary as far as I’m concerned.”
    “I’m afraid it is, as far as I am.”
    I pulled on my trousers.
    “Are you going to tell Adam about this?” she said.
    “Oh, for God’s sake!” I cried. “What do you think?”
    I laid my suitcase on the bed and unzipped it.
    “Where will you go?” She looked as if she might be about to cry again. I hoped not; I couldn’t take it.
    “Back to the hotel. I can work much better there.” I started throwing in my clothes, not bothering to fold them, such was my eagerness to get away. “I’m sorry. I should never have stayed in a client’s house. It always ends—” I hesitated.
    “With you fucking the client’s wife?”
    “No, of course not. It just makes it hard to keep a professional distance. Anyway, it wasn’t entirely my idea, if you recall.”
    “That’s not very gentlemanly of you.”
    I didn’t answer. I carried on packing. Her gaze followed my every move.
    “And the things I told you last night?” she said. “What do you propose to do about them?”
    “Nothing.”
    “You can’t simply ignore them.”
    “Ruth,” I said, stopping at last, “I’m his ghostwriter, not an investigative reporter. If he wants to tell the truth about what’s been going on, I’m here to help him. If he doesn’t, fine. I’m morally neutral.”
    “It isn’t morally neutral to conceal the facts if you know something illegal has happened—that’s criminal.”
    “But I don’t know that anything illegal has happened. All I have is a phone number on the back of a photograph and gossip from some old man who may well be senile. If anyone has any evidence, it’s you. That’s the real question, actually: what are you going to do about it?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps I’ll write my own memoirs. ‘Ex–Prime Minister’s Wife Tells All.’”
    I resumed packing.
    “Well, if ever you do decide to do that, give me a call.”
    She emitted one of her trademark full-throated laughs.
    “Do you really think I need someone like you to enable me to produce a book?”
    She stood up then and undid her belt, and for an instant I thought she was about to undress, but she was only loosening it in order to wrap the robe more closely around herself. She drew the belt very tight and knotted it, and the finality of the gesture somehow restored her superiority over me. My rights of access were hereby revoked. Her resolve was so firm I felt almost wistful, and if she had held out her arms it would have been my turn to fall against her, but instead, she turned and, in the practiced manner of a prime minister’s wife, pulled the nylon cord to open the curtains.
    “I declare this day officially open,” she said. “God bless it, and all who have to get through it.”
    “Well,” I said, looking out at the scene, “that really is the morning after the night before.”
    The rain had turned to sleet and the lawn was covered with debris from the storm—small branches, twigs, a white cane chair thrown on its side. Here and there, around the edges of the door, where it was sheltered the sleet had stuck together and frozen into strips, like bits of polystyrene packaging. The only brightness in the murk was the reflection of our bedroom light. It resembled a flying saucer hovering above the dunes. I could see Ruth’s face quite clearly in the glass: watchful, brooding.
    “I’m not going to give you an interview,” she said. “I don’t want to be in his bloody book, being patronized and thanked by him, using your words.” She turned and brushed past me. At the bedroom door she paused. “He’s on his own now. I’ll get a divorce.