“What is?”
“Well, who’d have thought we’d find the perfect way to get all the repairs done in one fell swoop. Have the place burned down and get the insurance to take care of it all.”
That was one way of looking at it.
“I’m going to hire Sonny to do the job.” She was looking at me out of the corner of her eye. “Brilliant idea, what do you think?”
“Have you heard from him?” I asked, ignoring her question. I thought it was a dreadful idea given her apparent emotional neediness as far as he was concerned.
She shook her head. “No, I haven’t but that’s not really the point. He’s the best person for the job.” Now she was nodding furiously as if trying to convince me what she was saying was the truth. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking, that we don’t want an unreliable drunk taking care of the house.” I wasn’t thinking anything of the sort but I let it pass. “What you probably don’t understand is that those men he had working with him on our repairs—they were all in AA. They’re a bunch of independent contractors in recovery, each with their own operation. I think the electrician’s called something like Higher Power. But, of course, if you don’t think it’s a good idea—”
“Mum,” I said, “it’s your house.”
It was sweet of Selma to invite my mother and me to move into her house while ours was being restored. It was so handy being right around the corner. We could run back and forth to check on the builders’ progress and pick up stuff we needed—what was left of it. When I saw the damage for myself, I nearly collapsed again. The roof had a gaping black hole in the side of it and the upper part of the house was covered with soot and there were charred holes where the windows had been. My computer had apparently been overcome with heat exhaustion and it was doubtful it would ever work again. Selma was sweet about this too. She treated me to a spiffy new laptop the day I came home from hospital.
As luck would have it, my bedroom escaped serious damage other than everything being covered in soot, so Selma’s tapes were intact. Once I was installed in Elgin Crescent we would set to work on them on the days she wasn’t up in Manchester.
I had never been farther than the ground floor of Selma’s house and the upstairs was quite an eye-opener. Selma’s bedroom and bathroom took up the whole of the first floor of the house. She had recently had them upgraded in a stark modernist decor, just a vast wrought-iron four-poster bed with two austere glass bedside tables and everything else hidden away inside built-in storage. I think I would have felt as if I were sleeping in a cage but if that’s what appealed to her, fine. But one floor up my mother was in heaven with the same space decorated in lush chintzes and a terrifying amount of scatter cushions that would take a person half an hour to remove before going to bed. And when she saw the marble bathroom, she flipped. I did too but it was at the sight of the Jacuzzi rather than the marble. There was nothing better to soothe an aching ghostwriter’s shoulders and if Sonny Cross could see his way to installing one at Blenheim Crescent then as far as I was concerned he was in like Flynn.
I was given the run of the top floor. “You’ll be able to work up there in peace and quiet,” said Selma and I ran up the final short flight of stairs, clutching my laptop in expectation. On one side of the landing I found a little bedroom under the eaves, sparsely furnished but perfect for my needs with its own bathroom. On the other side of the landing was a closed door. Presumably this was where I was meant to work.
When I opened the door, I found a monastic cell. It was a square room at the back of the house with only one window but the view from that window was spectacular. The house was so tall that from the top floor you could see clear across the bare trees of the communal gardens to the railway that ran high above Max Austin’s flat in Wesley Square. There was a glass-and-chrome table and a chair and a telephone, and over in the corner, abandoned on the floor, an old stereo system still hooked up to giant speakers standing in opposite corners of the room. I kneeled down and hit the POWER button, looking for a tape deck that would be useful for working on Selma’s book. Once I’d found it and discovered it to be empty, I did the same with the CD OPEN/CLOSE and saw there was something in there.
I pressed PLAY out of idle curiosity and the room was filled with the desperate animal wailing sound of a tenor sax. I recognized it instantly. It had marked the beginning of the nightmare journey on which I had unwittingly embarked when I first stepped into this house before Christmas. I had last heard it downstairs in Selma’s kitchen. I had danced to it, and as I stood here letting it infuse me once again with romance like a needle shooting pure heroin, I realized with a start that this barren room I had been assigned at the top of Selma’s house was where he had listened to it.
I was standing in Buzz’s office.
Finding myself in the one place that had been uniquely Buzz’s, I snapped. Grief erupted from me in great heaving sobs. I think I howled for more than an hour, hugging myself and wallowing in my grief, hiding under the roof where no one could hear me. Buzz had been a monster who had performed dreadful acts of violence but knowing that did not rid me of a certainty that I would remember for the rest of my life that moment when I had known I would have sex with him. Buzz had got to me in that split second when I was standing downstairs listening to this music, and later he had aroused immense passion within me of a kind that I had never known with any other man. I could blame it on Houston Person and his saxophone. I could throw away this CD and see if all disturbing memories of Buzz were discarded with it. I could do that but I knew perfectly well that I wouldn’t. Buzz had died an agonizing, searing death but I would keep him alive by hanging on to this CD and playing it in secret.
Because for a brief period of time I was convinced that I loved him. Apart from the sex he had been a virtual stranger to me but it didn’t matter. I was mourning the loss of a loved one and I felt all the more wretched because I could not share my sadness with anyone. Repression bred confusion. I mourned him but I felt guilty doing so and thus I felt even worse.
As the days went by and nothing changed, I knew I had to talk to someone and there was only one person besides Max Austin who knew about me and Buzz.
The person I had to thank for saving my life.
My last news of Cath had been Max Austin telling me she’d gone AWOL. I thought for a minute and then rang her parents. Her father answered the phone and after a few minutes of catching up, he gave me Cath’s address and told me I’d find her mother there too. Sure enough, when I rang the bell—I didn’t call first for fear Cath would refuse to see me—her mother answered the door.
Wendy Clark had been a nurse and she always treated people as if they were her elderly patients on a geriatric ward, shouting at them as if they were deaf. So how are we this morning? Going to eat your breakfast for me like a good girl?
“My goodness, Lee! You’re JUST what we need,” she boomed. “Come in, come in. Don’t hang about out there. We don’t want you catching a chill.”
She enveloped me in a bone-crushing hug and I was reminded of how different she was from my own mother.
“Hello, Wendy. Visiting Cath, are you?” I inquired. “Is she here?”
“I’m staying here for a while,” said Wendy. “Someone’s got to keep an eye on her. You heard what happened?”
I shook my head. “She hasn’t been in touch in quite a while.”
Wendy looked at me in surprise. “You mean not even after your house—that fire—? She told me all about it. How come she didn’t call you?”
I shrugged. “So what happened to Cath?”
“She was so drunk the other night, she had a nasty fall, and she nearly lost the baby. She needs total rest for a while and she’s off work for a couple of weeks. Of course the best thing would be if she went into rehab again but she’s never listened to what I had to say about that. Maybe you could talk some sense into her. Go on through, she’s in the living room. If you could stay with her for an hour or so, it’d give me a chance to pop out to th
e shops.”
“You can’t leave her on her own?” I was shocked. And intrigued. From the sound of it, Cath’s pregnancy was now common knowledge and suddenly here was Wendy bringing Cath’s alcohol problem into the conversation as if we had both been discussing it for years. Which we most certainly had not.
“I could leave her. Of course I could but I don’t,” said Wendy, putting on her coat. “See what you can do, there’s a love.”
I half expected to find Cath in a belligerent mood but she smiled at me, patted the sofa for me to sit beside her. I took in my surroundings. This was the first time I had been to the flat she now shared with Richie and I have to say I was not impressed. It lacked the coziness I found essential in a home but then Cath had never been a nester. The room I was standing in was pretty bare and exuded the kind of soulless atmosphere that said its inhabitants probably spent more time out than in—and not just at work.
I sat down beside Cath and to my surprise she put her arms around me and drew me to her.
“I should have been in touch. I’m sorry, Lee. I’m really, really sorry. I can’t forgive myself for the fact that I could have identified Chris as the person who was setting those fires so much earlier than I did. I know I saw him set fire to that warehouse but then I would think, maybe I was too drunk to know what I was seeing. But I should have remembered him when—”
“Shh!” I said. “You did remember and you saved my life and I’m here to thank you. That’s all that matters.”
Her remorse and her unexpected gentleness caught me off guard and I found myself dissolving into tears.
“Do you need a place to stay?” she asked. “You can always come here. We’ve got room and God knows, you’d be a welcome change from Mum. The house was insured, wasn’t it? The repairs will take a while but once they’re done, you’ll have a brand-new house for free. Think about that, try to forget about what you’ve lost.”
“It’s not the house!” I said. “I don’t care about the house.”
“But now Chris is caught you should be able to relax a bit by now—it’s all over.” She patted me on the back. “You’ve nothing to worry about anymore. Why are you still so upset?”
“It’s Buzz!” I shrieked. “I can’t seem to lay him to rest.”
“You’re not still seeing him?” She looked appalled.
“He’s dead, Cath. Didn’t you hear? He died in the fire, in my house. He was trying to rescue Selma.”
Her hands dropped from my sides and she stared at me. “Richie told me a bloke died in the fire but I didn’t realize it was him.”
“He died trying to save Selma,” I repeated. “I wouldn’t speak to him again after I found out he was beating her up. He must have felt so betrayed when he found out I was giving shelter to her. He came round, Cath, and I was terrified of him but in the end he turned out to be a hero. How could he beat a woman almost to a pulp and then risk his life going into a burning building to save her? He loved her, Cath. She always said they loved each other and I never believed her but she was right. But what I’ve finally realized is that I think I loved him and it was pointless. It was dumb and stupid and I feel like a total fool. If I hadn’t got involved with Buzz, he wouldn’t have met Angel and—”
My voice was bordering on hysterical.
“Now stop this,” said Cath firmly. “Listen to me, Lee. You were not in love with him, you were in lust. You were obsessed about him and you didn’t get a chance to let this obsession play itself out.”
“But why do I feel so awful? Why am I so screwed up about his death?”
“Guilt,” said Cath simply. “He turned out to be a bad person, someone you ought to be ashamed of having been involved with. Yet you can’t deny that you were attracted to him—even after you knew what type of man he was. Oh, don’t deny it. You’ll never move on if you’re in denial.”
And then, as I sat there thinking about what she had said, she got up and reached behind the sofa for a bottle of vodka.
“Don’t say a word,” she warned me as she raised the bottle to her lips. “Join me? There’s a glass in the kitchen.”
I was on my feet, pulling the bottle away from her before she could take a swig.
“Stay out of this,” she yelled at me but I noticed she did not try to go after the bottle. Maybe she’d just been testing me. “Don’t start telling me what to do about my drinking if you want us to stay friends. I thought you’d be the one person I could count on not to judge me.”
“Well you thought wrong,” I told her, “and anyway where is it written that I can’t say boo to you.”
“You’re the one who’s screwed up her life—” she began.
“Yes,” I shouted at her, “yes, I have screwed up my life recently but not totally, not irretrievably. I made a bad mistake getting involved with Buzz but at least I am acknowledging it, I’m asking what I should do about it. You’re the one who’s in denial, Cath. You’re the one who’s fucking up her life. Get real! Do something about it before—”
I stopped. She was walking toward the sink with the vodka. As I watched she upended the bottle and poured the contents down the drain. As she turned to me, the look she gave me was heartrending.
“I’m trying,” she said with an incredibly sad look on her face. “Please understand that. I’m going to go back into rehab and I swear I’ll make it work this time but I need help. I don’t know why I’m so mean to you sometimes. I need your support, Lee, truly I do. You’ve every right to get angry with me but please—please don’t.”
And suddenly I realized that was exactly what she needed. I should be showing her gentleness and acting in an encouraging way instead of shouting at her. I opened my arms and she came to me.
“I’m the worst kind of friend you could possibly have,” I whispered as I held her. “I am judgmental and I know it’s wrong but it’s because I’m so worried about you. You’ve never talked to me about your problem. I just don’t know how to behave about it. You’re going to have to help me.”
“It’s a deal,” she said. “I never told you because I knew you’d come down hard on me. I was scared I’d lose you.”
“You won’t,” I assured her. “God knows, if we’ve come this far it looks as if we’re stuck with each other. I’m going to be a lamb from now on, I’ll do anything you ask except give you alcohol.”
“Anything?” she said.
I nodded.
“So would you be the baby’s godmother? Richie and I would be thrilled.”
“There’s nothing I’d like more,” I told her.
“And there’s something else.” She looked at me.
“Yes?”
“We’ve already asked Tommy to be godfather and he’s said yes.”
What? She’d gone behind my back and contacted Tommy—before she’d asked me—and he hadn’t said a word—and—
But even as I found myself getting worked up, I began to smile. I had to let go of the old resentment. I had to start thinking about how both Tommy and Cath were going to be in my life again.
“What I want to know is how on earth I can wait another six months until the baby’s born,” I said. “It’s going to be so exciting for all of us.”
“Well, how do you think I feel?” she said. “I’m going to need you to give me as much time as you can spare.”
But as it turned out I didn’t have that much time on my hands—which was just as well since I was distracted from thinking about the fire and Buzz and Fred and all the drama of the past six weeks. Selma and I set to work in short bursts of time snatched when she wasn’t in Manchester and I found myself wondering what kind of story she would have delivered if Buzz had not died. One thing was certain: It would not have packed nearly as strong an emotional punch. But while Selma’s message was tragic it was also emphatic. While my pain resurfaced during those sessions when she hammered home how much she and Buzz had loved each other, I managed to keep a check on my emotions in her presence.
Selma was a strange one.
We would never become close beyond a professional relationship and she told her story to me in a detached, almost clinical way. She described how when he began to beat her up, she made every excuse under the sun to stay with him. She had told herself that if she stood by him he would change. She whispered how unbearably tender their lovemaking was in the aftermath of violence, so much so that she was always given false hope—and reading these passages, the reader could not fail to support her decision to stay. She confessed that in the beginning she often thought she might be the one who was to blame. She told of the extraordinary lengths to which she went to keep her suffering a secret because she felt so ashamed. And bit by bit she allowed her despair to filter through in the book as the cyclical pattern of violence emerged, until finally she knew she had to leave him.
I think I was more proud of the work I did on Selma’s book than of anything I had done in the past. The thing that impressed me most was that Selma never lost sight of the fact that she was writing a book for those less fortunate than herself. She acknowledged she had money and that she was lucky in a way that many others were not. But right from the very beginning of the book she advocated flight. Do not give him a second chance, was her advice despite the fact that she had stayed for so long. No matter how much you love him, you have to leave him the instant he shows any violence. Exhort him to seek help but do not stay with him. The message was reiterated throughout the book right up to the moment where Selma herself ran away to seek shelter at my house.
Of course Buzz’s attempt to save her life in the final chapter was the ultimate contrition phase, a gesture more dramatic than their sweetest reunion, and his subsequent death made her story all the more heartbreaking. But even in the midst of her grief, Selma still maintained that she would not have gone back to him.
We did our homework. We dazzled the reader with horrifying statistics of domestic violence throughout the world; we gave advice on what to do once you’d left; we provided checklists on how to spot a potential abuser early on. But ultimately what we delivered was a killer story with a message from a household name whose face appeared in thirteen million living rooms three times a week. Genevieve declared she would have no trouble in “selling the shit out it,” which I found to be an unexpected expression from the person Buzz had described as a “vision of loveliness in pale pink and lilac” at that unforgettable first meeting with him.
How to Seduce a Ghost Page 36
