Page 20 of You Can't Hurt Me

Nate was thrilled with your magazine profile and asked me to make contact. I worked with him on his recent book about neuroscience and we’re in the early stages of his next project, something very different which I’m excited about—his memoir. We do have a few potential names in the hat but I wondered if you’d like to come in for a chat so we can tell you a bit more about the book, ideally next week? I look forward to your reply.

Best wishes,

Priya

Something fizzes inside me like static. I feel charged, alive. He liked my interview, although reading between the lines, she’s less than underwhelmed.

I feign a poker face as Amira walks up and stands behind me. It drives me mad when she sneaks up on me to read my emails, as if they’re her property, even though I know it’s just Amira gleefully fishing for gossip. I click out of the mail but it’s too late, she’s seen the subject line and the sender.

“Priya James, eh? She did that memoir two years ago; you know the surgeon with the inoperable brain tumor we extracted for the mag?New York Timesbestseller for months.”

I make a noncommittal sound, avoiding her gaze.

“I’ve heard she’s ruthless. A friend of mine knew someone with stage one cancer who got in touch with her about a book idea, only to be told she wouldn’t consider a cancer memoir from anyone with less than stage four, for maximum sales.” I grimace, Amira laughs. “I’m not sure we’d be interested in profiling her, if that’s why she’s in touch?”

“Not exactly, no.”

Amira raises her eyebrows. “It’s nothing,” I say. “An informal chat about a book idea.”

“Is this about the memoir that Nate hopes to publish—you’re in the frame for it? See, I knew you had this all planned out.” An annoying grin spreads across her face. “Makes sense that you were so bloody nice about him in the interview. Seems like it paid off. So is anyone else in the picture or just you?”

“They’re lining up a few ghostwriters to interview, by the sounds of it.”

“Ah, the beauty parade. I’ve heard about those, where they meet you in a hotel and get to decide which one they’ll choose.”

“Beauty parade,” I repeat, trying to block out the nightmarish image of a line of us in blue satin sashes shimmying down a catwalk while Nate and Priya hold up score cards.

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up about this. Even if Nate wants you on the job, I’m sure Priya has her own favorites lined up. I’ve heard she can be quite...possessive...about her clients. Nothing gets by her.”

I can no longer contain my curiosity. “You mean there’s something more going on? They’re a thing, seeing each other?”

“It’s only a rumor, but something to bear in mind for the interview.” She scans my expression, suitably neutral for her benefit.

“Well, maybe that will be for the best, if I don’t get the job then,” I say. “I’m not even sure I’d want to get inside Dr. Reid’s head. That’s what you’d have to do as a ghostwriter, isn’t it? I really don’t think that would be a good place to go.”

She opens her mouth, another question forming on her lips, but decides better of it.

“Well, see you tonight back at the apartment,” she says cheerfully. “Have fun with your chef.”

“I will.” I smile back at her as she leaves.

I don’t tell her I ordered two books on the art of ghostwriting weeks ago and replied to Priya that I’m free all next week. In the cab I check my phone, idly search for her Instagram. A gallery of corporate profiles pop up.Priya James takes the reins as head of publishing at Grayson Inc.There’s a wide-angled shot of her across the boardroom table, poker-faced, intimidating.

I can’t help looking at her through Nate’s eyes, it’s not hard to figure out the appeal. That itch of competitiveness flares up in me again, of wanting what can never be mine. Their easy, comfortable lives and careers. It’s a heat that I try to ignore. But it’s there anyway, leaving its bitter aftertaste.

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 ofThe 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.

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