Ghosts

by Dolly Alderton

  * * *

  —

  Lola finally called me back the day before The Tiny Kitchen’s book launch, asking if she could take me out for a drink before the party. I wore a backless cream silk blouse and black trousers. She wore a skin-tight flared jumpsuit in fuchsia satin, with a high frilly neck and huge puffed sleeves voluminous enough to rival Henry VIII’s, and a high, padded headband in matching pink, which looked like it had been swiped from Anne Boleyn. Large dangling pearl drops hung from her ears. I stood up as she walked in the bar.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “Tudors Go Dating. A brand-new historical re-enactment reality show for those looking for love, tonight at ten on E4.”

  “I’m more dressed up for your book launch than you are,” she said as she pulled me in for a hug. “Do you want me to change? Shall I go buy a plain black dress quickly?”

  “Lola, you’re always more dressed up than anyone, anywhere,” I said, breathing in her overwhelming perfume as we hugged. “And that’s why we love you.” We sat down and the waiter came over.

  “Dry Vodka Martini with an olive for her,” she said. “And a Moscow Mule for me, please.”

  “Coming up,” he replied.

  “Who’s going to be there tonight? Mum? Dad? Katherine? Joe?”

  “None of them,” I said. “It’s going to be low-key.”

  “Oh no, why?” she said, visibly distressed. Lola was a woman who referred to her “birthday month” and its accompanying multiple ceremonies every year with no irony.

  “Katherine can’t leave the baby, Joe’s away for work and…” I hesitated. “And I told Mum and Dad there wasn’t a book launch.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Dad’s often quite confused at the moment and I didn’t want him to say strange things and for people to pity him. So I just pretended there wasn’t a party for this one. Do you think I’m a terrible person?”

  “No, the opposite,” she said. “I’ll be your mummy tonight. And your daddy. And your husband. And your ex-boyfriend.”

  “Four kinks in one. You’re multitalented, my girl.” She laughed. “Now. Where have you been?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’s been happening? I haven’t seen you since Joe’s wedding.”

  “Oh, nothing, really, just had some new stuff I’ve had to focus on.”

  “What new stuff?”

  “I’ll tell you another time!”

  “Tell me now!”

  “No, it’s your night!”

  “Lola.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’ve met someone.”

  “What! When?”

  “A couple of days after Joe and Lucy’s wedding.”

  “Where?”

  “An event that my company produced. He was performing at it.”

  “Musician?”

  “Magician.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Jethro.”

  “How old?”

  “Thirty-six.”

  I was struggling to put together sentences—the day had finally come. I knew it would. Someone had realized how loveable Lola was. “Can I see a picture?” Lola took her phone out of her bag and showed me her background screen. It was their faces pressed together, their hair wet with rain, their cheeks flushed with adoration and vitality, their eyes bright from cold air and morning orgasms. His face was sharp and Hollywood handsome, softened and anglicized with a blanket of freckles. His nose was narrow and reptilian. His red hair was cut and styled in a way that suggested an East London barber with a large Instagram following.

  “Lola, he’s gorgeous. Where are you?”

  “At my mum and dad’s. We went last weekend.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I know.”

  “Did they like him?”

  “Loved him.”

  The waiter brought our drinks to the table and I grabbed the Martini from his hand before he had a chance to put it down.

  “So. Sorry, I’m just trying to get my head round this.”

  “I know.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I was working at this event—big brand dinner and a DJ thing—counting the hours until it was over, when he came up and asked if he could do a magic trick on me. Which, as you know—”

  “You love magic, yes.”

  “Exactly.”

  I sensed that now was not the time for me to put forward my case for magic being a thing that only prudes loved.

  “So, he blows me away with this card trick—you’re not going to believe it, Nina, the card I picked was in my handbag which was on my arm. He was standing a metre away from me! How did it get there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And then he was like, can I take you out for a drink after this. And I told him I wouldn’t be finishing until one a.m., and he said he’d wait. So he waited—waited for three hours—can you believe that? Just sat in the green room with a book. Then at one, we went to this twenty-four-hour restaurant and drank loads of Sancerre and ate eggs Benedict. Guess what time we finished?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Seven a.m. We just couldn’t stop talking. Honestly, Nina, it was like something out of a Fellini film.” Since when did Lola watch Fellini films? Or drink Sancerre? “And then we kissed on the bench outside and I went straight into the office!”

  “You must have been exhausted,” I managed to muster.

  “I felt so awake. So alive! Then he rang my office at lunchtime and asked for my home address.”

  “That’s…full on.”

  “And when I came back to my flat that night, he was there on the doorstep with the ingredients for lasagne and a bouquet of lily of the valley because lasagne—”

  “Is your favourite meal.”

  “And lily of the valley—”

  “Are your favourite flowers.”

  “Not even in season,” she said with pride to rival a recently qualified Greek doctor’s mother. “Paid extra for a same-day delivery service from the Netherlands.”

  “So then what happened?”

  “He came in and made lasagne. And that was a month ago and basically he never left.”

  “You’re living together?”

  “Well. Not officially. He’s got his own flat. And he’s travelling a fair bit with his job. He’s the Magician in Residence for a chain of private members’ clubs around the world. Oh, Nina, he’s so talented. I know you don’t really like magic—I’ve already warned him, I said: my best friend doesn’t really like magic!—but I’m desperate for you to come to one of his shows.” She put her phone on the table and presented me with his Instagram page. JETHROTHEMAGICMAN was his handle, Model/Magic Maker/Dream Weaver was his tag line, 33,000 followers. “Some of the stuff I think you’d like is the more stunty bits, like just really amazing physical strength work.” She clicked on a video of him juggling loaded guns in a black studio while dramatic violin music played over the top. “Look, look at this bit,” she said excitedly, her finger pressing on the screen. He pulled the triggers of the guns as he caught them in each hand. “Isn’t that amazing?”

  “Amazing.”

  “So anyway. That’s it. That’s where I’ve been.”

  “That’s a lot of very exciting information,” I said. “Magician. Jethro. Living together for a month.”

  “I know, and if this was the other way around I would be sceptical. But you just have to trust me when I say that this is the real deal. I know my instincts are right.”

  “I don’t doubt that at all. You seem so happy.”

  “I am,” she said. “It was all worth it. All those dates. All those hours staring at WhatsApp. That man who claimed to be allergic to my vagina acidity. I would do it a hun
dred times again if I knew it all ended with Jethro. It’s like I’ve woken up and everything is technicolour.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll stop now.”

  “No, don’t stop,” I said. “This is everything you deserve. I can’t wait to meet him.”

  “Thank you, Nina,” she said. “And I know this is coming for you too. I promise—it’s on its way.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, taking another gulp of my Martini. “I don’t know if I want a flowers-sent-from-the-Netherlands-wake-up-in-technicolour love again. Think once was enough. Don’t know if I have it in me.”

  “Yes you do,” she said. “Just not right now.”

  * * *

  —

  The launch was in a bookshop in Soho. It took place during a strict two-hour window and there was a conservative amount of red wine, white wine and beer, provided by my publisher. There were under thirty guests—a mix of people who worked for my agency and publisher and some journalists. I signed books, I circulated with Vivien’s strict instructions—telling journalists about the story behind The Tiny Kitchen and making my desperate availability for potential events clear to the bookshop manager. Vivien made a short but characteristically charming speech about The Tiny Kitchen and why its subject matter was timely. I stood up to say just two sentences: thank you to Vivien for making this book happen; and thank you everyone for coming.

  Taste’s book launch had been a different night. I’d organized a whole floor in a fancy bar for free in exchange for doing a series of speaking events. Lola had used her events expertise to help me engineer a party on a small budget. All my friends and family were there, as were all my colleagues and bosses from years of teaching. I made a long speech, name-checking everyone who I’d worked with at the publisher, thanking my friends, family, my old colleagues who had always been so supportive of my moonlighting as a food writer while I was teaching. Mum was there, with trusty Gloria in tow, both of them wearing beaded “serapes”—a word to describe a type of unnecessary evening shawl I’d never heard outside of Pinner. Dad was there, circulating the room all night with a glass in his hand and his best questions and anecdotes in his pocket.

  I stood outside to smoke a cigarette as the bookshop closed so I could say goodbye to everyone as they left. Vivien gave me a particularly long hug goodbye, perhaps because she’d noticed that I was without my mum or dad, and told me how much she was enjoying the new chapters I’d sent her. Everyone had trickled out within ten minutes. It was eight thirty and the sky was still light enough to frame the outline of Soho’s roofs and chimneys. Spring had flung its door wide open. Summer soon. Long days, long nights, light at all hours, illuminating everything. Nowhere to hide.

  “Right, where are we going next?” Lola asked, the last one out of the shop with a bag full of signed copies of The Tiny Kitchen and two self-help books called The Power of Maybe and I Came, I Saw, I Ordered the Cookie.

  “Home,” I said.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Honestly, you don’t have to.”

  “You’ve just published your second book!” she said. “I’m buying champagne from the corner shop.”

  “You really are the best husband.” I linked my arm in hers as we walked to the tube.

  “And I’m staying at yours tonight. I know you don’t like sharing beds and I know you don’t need me to stay. But I’d like to.” I didn’t protest—I knew this was Lola’s way of delivering me a clear message in a partially concealed way: I may have left you as the last single woman we know, but you’re not alone. I am still here.

  A bottle of corner-shop champagne and half a bottle of back-of-the-freezer toffee vodka later, I was hearing about all of Jethro’s favourite cookbooks. Lola had a bad case of mentionitis—when thoughts of a lover are so pervasive, they find their way into every topic (“Jethro has the grey version of your bath mat!” she said at one point, like she’d discovered we shared a grandmother). A diagnosis of chronic mentionitis—that another human has bought a permanent property on a road that goes right through the middle of your soul—means that you are truly, irreversibly, horrifically in love.

  We were both leaning out of my living-room window to smoke a cigarette when the front door opened. Angelo shuffled out in a dressing gown and a pair of slippers. His long hair was tied into a feeble plait, as thin as a ragged friendship bracelet belonging to a teenage girl. In each hand, he held a bulging black bin bag. He opened the green recycling bin and shoved both bags in.

  “YOU FUCKER,” I shouted. “They won’t collect any of our rubbish if you do that! Take it out!” He didn’t even answer me with a middle finger—a new habit he’d adopted. I got nothing as he inhaled deeply on his fag and lugubriously shuffled back into the house.

  “Alma saw a rat climbing out of our bin last week because his rubbish had been sitting in it with the lid propped open for so long.”

  “Do you think he’s getting worse?” Lola asked.

  “He’s caring even less,” I said. “It’s like, I can’t find any consequences for him. Nothing bothers him. He doesn’t care who he upsets or how he embarrasses himself. It’s so difficult to manage—I never even taught teenage boys this bad.”

  “I don’t know how you’re staying sane.”

  “I don’t think I am.”

  “I think you are.”

  “I don’t think I am, Lola,” I said. I put out my cigarette and took a swig of toffee vodka from the bottle, which felt like hot syrup as it slipped down my throat. I stood up to go to the kitchen and beckoned her. She followed.

  I climbed on a chair and opened the cupboard above the cooker.

  “Look,” I said. Lola stood on her tiptoes. “I’ve started taking his packages. I pretend to the delivery man that he lives here.”

  “Why?”

  “To make him go mad, like he’s made me go mad.”

  “You’re a genius. An unhinged, evil genius.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Yes. How many have you got so far?”

  “Three.”

  “Aren’t you worried he’s going to find out?”

  “I don’t think he will. The tracking will say that it was delivered. I haven’t had to sign for any yet. He will go insane, trying to prove to the delivery company that the packages aren’t at his flat.”

  “Hours on the phone to customer services,” Lola said, smiling.

  “Hours and hours and hours. And imagine the conversation.”

  “It’s been delivered, sir.”

  “No, it hasn’t.”

  “Yes, it has.”

  “Well why isn’t it here?”

  “It is there, sir, we have proof it’s been delivered,” Lola said, her volume increasing with excitement.

  “Shh!” I said through laughter. “He might be listening. He stood silently outside my door once, the creep.”

  “Let’s open them,” she said, with sudden verve.

  “No, we can’t.”

  “Oh, come on! Don’t you want to know what’s in them?”

  “No, it will be something boring. He has no life. He only leaves his flat to go to his job and I’ve only seen him with a friend once. It will be new Hoover bags.”

  “I’m doing it,” she said. “Pass them down.”

  We sat cross-legged on the floor with two pairs of scissors and cut open the taped-up boxes. The first, the heaviest, contained two large metal hooks.

  “What are they for?” Lola asked. “S&M props?”

  “No, no way he’s that fun,” I said, picking one up and examining it. “I have no idea.” I unwrapped another package that contained a large, heavy plastic case of white powder. I held the label up close to my face. “Potassium nitrate,” I read, examining a hazardous symbol. “Warning: powerful oxidizer. Keep away from flames.”


  “That’s very weird,” she said, opening the third package. “What’s this?” She unwrapped a long object covered in bubble wrap. Something bright silver glinted as it caught the kitchen overhead light. She revealed a large thin blade, around fifteen inches long, with a slightly curved tip and a dark wooden handle that looked like the base of a pistol.

  “Oh my God.”

  “What the fuck is he going to do with a machete?” Lola asked. I held the handle and brought it close to my face to examine. “Nina?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  Lola unwrapped another knife, this one with a longer, thicker blade. She placed it on the floor. On the handle was a small carving. “I think this is Japanese. That means he’s in a Yakuza gang,” she said. “I watched a documentary about it years ago. It’s Japanese organized crime—they have slicked-back hair and they cut off their own fingers. You have to report him.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I’ve stolen his things.”

  “He can’t buy machetes.”

  “I think he can, I think it’s legal to buy them. I think you just can’t carry them.”

  “Where would he have bought them online?”

  “I don’t know. One of those online black-market places.”

  “Clearly he’s planning to kill someone. Or at least cause some proper harm.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Yes we do—the disconnected, strange behaviour. The poison, the knives, the fact he never leaves the building. He’s preparing for it. It’s literally the plot of Taxi Driver.”

  “Put them back in the package,” I said, passing her the knives. “I don’t want to look at them. I’m going to throw them out.”