Chapter 9

9

The Temple Court Hotel in Southwark is bland, functional and anonymous—in other words, the ideal setting to interview a bunch of ghosts. I take a glass elevator to the seventeenth floor and stare out over the city. The sun casts a metallic light across the Thames, turning it into a gleaming ribbon of steel. In the reception area, a middle-aged man in green tweed and jumbo cords sits on a mustard L-shaped sofa, a copy of Nate's book—awash with Post-it notes—in his hand. I imagine there are a few of us lurking around the building with well-thumbed copies of The Pain Matrix .

A woman walks up to the reception desk and I recognize her immediately from the boardroom picture. She raises her perfectly manicured eyebrows.

"Anna?"

"Yes. Priya?"

She offers her hand, cool and dry in mine. There is the discreet sparkle of expensive jewelery: diamond studs in her ear, an opal solitaire sparkles at her throat.

"So pleased to meet you," she says, flashing me a smile. "Nate's already here." She shows me into a meeting room at the far end of the corridor. He sits at a small circular table framed by a vertiginous panorama of Blackfriars down to London Bridge. The glass windows lend a muffled quality to the room as if all the sound has been dialed down.

I sit down opposite both of them.

"Hello again, Anna," Nate says, holding my gaze for a second too long and I find myself having to turn away, focus my attention on Priya instead, who begins speaking.

"Can I start by saying how much I enjoyed your interview with Nate. He's not easy to get at but somehow you managed," she says, smiling at Nate as if this is entirely for his benefit. "And you were spot on in your observation that he fidgets like a child, that way he chews his pens. Drives me mad in our meetings." She eye rolls and Nate's dark eyebrows shoot upward in mock indignation. "Trust me, Nate, you really do."

He tips his head toward her, clearly familiar with this well-worn dynamic. I find myself fixating on their body language, the way a micro movement in one is mirrored by the other. Priya regards me intently.

"You certainly seem to specialize in opinionated, high-achieving men. Is that because you get on with them better than women, would you say?"

I laugh but she looks deadly serious.

"Well, I've interviewed a lot of famous women as well; I really don't have a preference. My editor usually decides, and I guess she thinks I get good copy from difficult alpha-male types. Maybe there's just a lot of them around."

Nate is studiously looking down at another cutting that I recognize, an interview I did two years ago with José Mourinho.

"You certainly got under that guy's skin," Priya says, tapping the close-up of Mourinho's face. "He walked out on you. But somehow you managed to talk him round. Is that a well-rehearsed habit of yours?"

I wonder if she's alluding to Nate's meltdown with me, but he doesn't look particularly self-conscious. I can't help thinking he doesn't really look as if he's here at all.

"How your interviewees react under pressure can be revealing." I stare at Nate across the table. "When someone turns away and walks out on me, I know I've broken through. I've touched a nerve and hit a deeper level. It's a promising sign."

"So would you say as a ghostwriter you'd try to push your interviewee to the limit?"

"I'm not sure either of us would benefit from that, would we? Ghostwriting Nate's memoir would be an entirely different process because, of course, he would have all the control."

"And that wouldn't bother someone like you?" Nate asks.

"Someone like me?" I echo, smiling. "I don't see why it should. I'd be paid to write your truth, the one you want to reveal, and I'd be happy with that."

Nate flashes a glance at Priya. They exchange a look, too brief to decipher and yet again I find myself feeling like a third wheel.

"So, Anna, everyone reckons they've got a story to tell. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on why Nate's would stand out in such a crowded marketplace." Her hand rests lightly on her latest raft of titles; the female MP who grew up on a council estate, the doctor who worked in war-torn Syria, the writer who spent seven years of his life locked in a cellar by his mother. If Nate is the King of Pain, Priya is the Queen of Confessional Memoir. The perfect match. She taps her pen on one of the book covers. "What makes his different, do you think?"

I'm ready for this one. The answers I rehearsed in the mirror roll through my mind.

"People want something with more substance. Nate's story has huge potential and, crucially, it's very relatable. Love, despair, grief and hopefully transformation. It's all there. Nate is in a unique position, being able to analyze all of it from a point of expertise. I'd like to explore that further." I pause for effect. "His work is a bridge between two worlds: the emotional pain of his loss and his passion to measure the immeasurable. Physical pain. And, at its heart, of course, is Eva. A love story that threads all of it together."

I've noticed the energy shift between them, the sound of her name somehow makes them stiffen. Or am I imagining it? I reach for a glass of water; the ice cubes set my teeth on edge.

Priya begins to scrutinize my application letter once again, her smooth forehead ruffling. "There's nothing at all about science here. It's all arts and culture. Would the lack of a track record in science writing present a problem for you, do you think?"

"Actually, I see it as a distinct advantage. Part of my job would be to transform Nate's complex ideas into prose that everyone can understand," I say, warming to my theme. "Disarming candor is what makes these books bestsellers. The alpha brain surgeon who feels sick with anxiety before an operation, or the country's top forensic pathologist, terrified that he can never be totally certain about an unnatural cause of death. That's what I'd want to tap into. You need to let the reader in, make them feel that they're mainlining Nate's feelings, downloading his darkest fears."

"Excellent," says Priya, glancing over at Nate.

"And do you have any questions for us?" he asks neutrally.

"I do have one actually. Why, really, do you both want to publish this memoir? Nate is clearly a very private person, understandably so. Why expose him in this way?"

That strange energy again in the room. Nate opens his mouth but Priya steps in.

"Well, I'm not sure he wanted to initially. But then we—I mean he—could see it made sense, for Eva and for his career."

"I do think the book could help other people as long as it has the right science behind it," says Nate.

For an instant, I can't help picturing Nate in Eva's garden studio, standing over her body, an image so piercing I try to push it from my mind. I want to believe more than anything that his motives are genuine. But isn't it quite convenient that he's so keen to tell the world about his love for Eva, his devastating grief, just as there's another inquest in the pipeline?

Priya, I'm sure, couldn't care less, too busy thinking about the royalties and another "narrative nonfiction" bulldozing its way into the bestseller lists.

I think about my old friend, Karl Bauer, a retired ghostwriter I chatted to on the phone yesterday, hoping to glean some insights before my interview. He told me a ghostwriter needs to know the real reason someone wants to expose their story to the world, in the same way a barrister needs to know exactly how guilty their client is to defend their corner. They have to tell you everything, said Bauer, no subject can be off-limits. "There will always be something you can't name. The elephant in the room. Work out what that is as soon as possible and confront it. Otherwise, it taints everything else."

I look up at Priya then.

"I just wondered, if I did end up on the project, I'd want to know nothing would be off-limits. How would Nate feel about that?"

"Legally, if you did get the job," Priya says, "Nate and I would want you to sign a nondisclosure agreement, so whatever he does tell you about Eva is completely confidential. You couldn't go spilling to any of your newspaper contacts."

"Eva isn't a taboo subject," chips in Nate. "It can still be difficult talking about her, but I'm sure with the right person, the right approach, that could change. All I really want this book to be is my way of immortalizing her, so I know I won't forget her. Anyway, are we nearly done here?" He starts shuffling his notes together, suddenly self-conscious.

Priya swerves in. "Just one more question, Anna, before we wrap up."

"Sure."

"You've built up a distinctive style, a regular interview slot with your name on it. Why would you want to give that up to be...invisible? There'll be no glory, no mention of you at all. Experienced ghostwriters don't do it to seek the limelight. All your work would be in Nate's name."

Her chin tilts up. It's clear that she doesn't want me anywhere near Nate or the book.

"Actually, no, that's not the case. It's frankly a relief to lose my name for a few months," I say with conviction. "I feel strongly that Eva was an amazing woman and her life fascinates me. It helps that I enjoy the cut and thrust of the creative process, and I get the impression Nate does too."

They nod, talk to me a bit more about timings and deadlines, while my mind drifts. I think of that house, the boundless possibility. How stunning it all was, Eva's history right there. The voice I could craft for her, the storyline she deserves, so different to the lies that were written.

I agreed with Kath's concerns in that respect, how unfair it is that a woman in the public eye who dares to live a full and complex life, messy, honest and unfiltered, will be punished for it. Naively, perhaps, I'd like to challenge that.

"Well, that went well," I say, dryly, as Nate walks me back to the lift. I know I probably shouldn't let on how I feel about the interview, but I can't help it.

"Don't read too much into Priya." He holds back a rare smile.

"Well, I can understand if she wants someone with more experience in ghostwriting. When do you think she'll decide?"

"She?" He frowns. "Why would you think it's all down to her?"

"Er, she's the publisher?"

He shrugs. "Don't assume anything," he says. As I step into the lift, it crosses my mind that this is the second time in a fortnight I've left Nate feeling more perplexed by his behavior than when I started.

Crossing the foyer on my way out, I spot another man, almost indistinguishable from the earlier one, in a pink button-down shirt and olive chinos. He reclines, his legs straight but crossed at the ankles, flicking through The Pain Matrix . He looks up, assessing me, trying to work out if I'm the competition.

Unexpectedly I am high, reeling, this high-voltage surge of...what exactly? Confidence, arrogance even. Nate's world is familiar to me after all, a twisted world of smoke and mirrors where nothing is ever as it seems. No one else could navigate it but me.