Laying the Ghost Read Free

have prepaid online, triumphantly saving several pounds, via the right website. A long, long time ago he’d found Nell’s scattiness amusing. Over the past year he had simply found it annoying, clucking and sighing at every small evidence of inefficiency. ‘How can you draw so meticulously,’ he’d said once after she’d left a casserole in the oven for seven flavour-draining hours while she worked on a last-minute alteration to a double spread for
Pond Life
(third in an educational series, sales rivalling Dan Brown’s in thirty countries), ‘and yet be so bloody disorganized?’ He was probably right, she now thought as she peered through the blue-grey half-light in the remote hope that her car would get out of its line and come to greet her.
    ‘You are sure you left it in Zone X, aren’t you?’ Mimi asked her.
    ‘Definitely,’ Nell told her as she settled her handbag on her shoulder, bumped her case heavily up the pavement edge and wondered if she’d ever be so well travelled that she’d master the art of manoeuvring wheeled luggage. Why was it that some things which were meant to make life easier just created their own difficulties? The bag wobbled and tottered like a drunk companion as she hauled it carefully through many rows of parked cars, trying not to set off alarms or scratch paintwork.
    Alex used to deal with the more unwieldy holiday baggage, enjoying any opportunity to pace around looking strong and blokey. Getting the knack of putting together a tiny capsule wardrobe was going to be essential for any future trips Nell might be lucky enough to have. She could possibly never travel again without clothes that would cram into a manageable shoulder bag. That would completely rule out a ski trip, for a start, which actually was not a bad thing, in her opinion. Alex was the sporty one. Not having even to pretend to join in with that was one to put on the list (as recommended for compilation in
After He’s Gone
) of post-divorce pluses.
    ‘So
where
then?’ Mimi squinted through the shadowy dawn at the cars, as if theirs might have grown a tail to wag at them in welcome.
    ‘Oh come on Mimi,
you
were supposed to be the one who remembered which row,’ Nell reminded her. ‘It was the
one thing
I asked you to do. Please don’t tell me you’ve completely forgotten.’ She wanted to get home. She wanted to listen to early-morning political bickering on Radio 4 and be soothed by
Thought for the Day
. She wanted to sit at her kitchen table and open a stack of terrifying bills while eating toast and thick gooey honey. Then she wanted to decide what to wear to the Mitchells’ twentieth-wedding-anniversary party that night, while wondering if going to bed early with a messy three-pack of Cadbury’s Flakes and an undemanding novel might be a wiser option than facing the neighbours’ collective curiosity and making a defiant, jet-lagged start on this new, single, reality.
    ‘You were the one driving, Mum. Why don’t
you
remember where the car is?’
    ‘Oh great – the daughter quits! What a surprise!’
    Mimi ignored her and stared up at the sky, dreamily and unconcernedly watching a Virgin 777 approach at what looked like a dangerously slow speed for its size.
    ‘Why don’t
I
remember? Because, Mimi,
I
was the one remembering little things like passports and booking references and whether that scrappy bit of computer printout was really going to be enough to get us checked in because I’m old enough to be more comfortable with proper in-your-hand tickets, and then there was whether I’d got the credit card I’d actually used for the reservation, or had I thrown it away because it had expired, oh and the BA club card and all that stuff! And what did you have to remember? It was which zone, which row and to get some factor 25 in duty-free. Nothing else! God!’
    Shivering inside creased and inexplicably damp cashmere, Nell pointed her key at the cars in front of her and pressed the remote lock, hoping