Chapter 28

28

I take the subway into town, weave my way toward a small Italian bar in Covent Garden where Priya has asked to meet me. Film stills of Italian film stars and opera singers fill the whitewashed walls. She tells me she has another appointment in forty minutes and doesn't remove her coat or scarf. We perch stiffly on stools at the counter. Clearly, she is dreading this as much as I am. She glances down to check her watch, thinking I don't notice.

"A little something to celebrate?" She eyes up the bar menu.

"Celebrate?"

"You've finished, Anna. Come on, you deserve it."

"Not for me. Water's fine."

"Good for you." Her eyes slip over me, trying to work out what's changed. "You're looking...well. Your skin or maybe your hair? You've had something done, haven't you?"

"It's called exercise, and no booze. Not working on the memoir probably helps." I let out a small hollow laugh. Something has changed in her too, as if she's lit from within and I think I can guess why. Everything's worked out well for her. I'm off the scene and Brand Nate is about to launch in New York.

She tells me her plans for the memoir in America, a gleam of febrile excitement in her eyes. "They're mad for anything to do with the brain, look at David Eagleman. Just mention neurotransmitters and synapses and watch it rocket up the New York Times bestseller lists."

"He's off soon?"

"There already." She smiles but her lips stay sealed. "Starting at Columbia next week. He's flying here for the launch and after that he'll live mainly in the US, until he ties up the house sale in a few weeks."

"Ah, the house sale."

She nods.

"He was in two minds about whether he could get a good price for it, given what had happened there. I told him to get on with it. It's a great market and maybe, weirdly," she says, failing to suppress a smile, "it's even a USP."

"Eva's death a USP. That's a classy way of looking at it."

She ignores my barb, carries on regardless, keen to keep up the chatter before she can dump me for good. "Anyway, a French banker saw it and instantly fell in love. She bid way over the asking price in the end."

"How brilliant for both of you. I guess he got everything he wanted."

She considers me for a moment. "Wanted is a strange way to frame it. He's moving on from a terrible personal tragedy. What he really wanted was Eva to still be around, to have a wife and kids, a shot at family life. That was his dream."

"Really?" I say, keeping my voice steady and recalling Nate's words—he had wanted to be a father. He was ready.

My fingers interlace under the table, my nails cut into my palms, and I feel increasingly unsettled as my mind jumps a step further.

If Nate really wanted to be a father himself so badly, how furious would he have been to discover that Eva's baby wasn't his? That she didn't want to keep it? The very narrative he said he wanted to protect himself from—what if it was simply the truth?

"Look, I know how hard it's been for you. I think even an experienced ghostwriter would have struggled with some of the...personal challenges that you've faced while you were writing it."

"Personal challenges?" My face prickles with heat. What the hell had he been telling her?

"We don't need to say anything more, Anna." She holds up one of her manicured hands, gives a brief dainty shake of her head. "Rest assured Nate didn't go into detail but I completely understand. I was at that fundraiser. Anyway, it's not my business. Are you sure you don't want a glass of something?"

I shake my head, firmly. Inside I'm screaming, questions roar in my brain. "No, please tell me. What does he mean by personal challenges?"

"Well, he's really worried about you. Your family situation. He didn't give me too much detail but he mentioned a brother?" She makes a face. As much as Priya adores publishing the sordid details of people's lives, she is clearly repelled by any proximity to the real thing. "He says the book threw up some painful issues and it got in the way of you two, and he really hopes you can work them out now the book is finished."

"You must be so pleased how it's all worked out," I say, unable to resist, my tone suitably stony.

"Seriously, Anna, I didn't want this meeting to be difficult."

"Well, I should go anyway," I say. It's important I remain neutral, I'm pretty sure that every word of what we say will be relayed back to him. "It's been a pleasure."

"You know lots of ghostwriters go through this. They can feel disillusioned, rejected. It's a thing, Anna. You carry them around in your mind for weeks like a method actor. Then it's just you again. It'll pass. Give it a month or two and you'll be proud of your work."

"How could I write something I was proud of when there were so many secrets, so many no-go areas?" I say, anger bubbling to the surface. "All such a compromise."

"Well, it was your job to get past that. I was paying you to get to the bottom of it, that's what we discussed when you came to my office?" Her gentle tone enrages me.

"Or were you paying me to keep quiet? Perhaps you didn't want all of it out there in print? I mean, what I can't work out," I say, "is why he wanted to hire me in the first place. Surely it would have been easier if you'd both worked on it from the start, not bothered to involve someone like me?"

"Anna, he didn't want you to be his ghostwriter and tried to convince me not to take you on. It was me that made the decision." Priya's eyes glitter dangerously. "I knew it made sense, you were an unknown, not worried about the money."

"Malleable, eager to please?"

"Something like that."

"But given these...circumstances...with your family, Nate is keen to get you off the project. The truth is, he's asked for some editorial changes and he wants me to finish it."

I think about that Google doc, watching my text disappear. He must have told her to meet me to get me off the final rewrite, wrest it under their control. The truth of it hits hard. He doesn't want me because he fears what I know, and this alone points to his guilt. I'm struck with a deep regret that I hadn't been able to finish Eva's journal entries. What if Kath was right, what if there was incriminating information about Nate's behavior the day she died?

"Don't look like that. You got too involved. Remember, when you're a ghostwriter, you're only ever the midwife, never the mother," she says, standing up to leave, a lightness in her step now it's all over. "There is one more thing I need to tell you," she says. "It's about the book launch. I probably should have said this earlier but—"

"You don't want me to be there?"

"It's not me actually, it's—"

"Sure, of course. I get the message."

"Nate asked me to ask you. I think after everything that's happened it's for the best, don't you?" She watches me steadily. "We're both counting on you."

"Count away," I say, childishly defiant. "You can rely on me." Her features tighten, two tiny indents form between her perfect eyebrows. "For your own sake, Anna, you should stay away."