CHAPTER FOUR
Thirteen days until Christmas
The Ghosts by Gaslight tour meets outside the Nell of Old Drury pub, a compact building of two-toned brick and dark wood that reminds me of an old trolley car.
It’s decked in a bit of greenery here, fairy lights there, and a radiant warmth that’s more about vibe than temperature.
Whenever anyone comes or goes through the front door, warm air gusts out into the chilly night, smelling of wood polish and nearly two centuries of spilled beer.
I glance at my phone for the fourth time in five minutes. It’s nearly seven, and no Jake.
We’re a small group of six—two parents and their elementary-aged son, and a young couple who can’t seem to keep their hands or their mouths off each other.
The tour guide is an academic-looking sort with a bald head as glossy-white as a dumpling, and a luxuriant silver mustache that quivers as he talks.
“Welcome to Covent Garden’s premier paranormal tour. My name is Dr Burgess Selby, award-winning author and London’s foremost authority on ghosts, spirits, manifestations, poltergeists, specters, phantoms, hauntings—”
Behind me there’s a scuff of shoes on pavement. The ambient warmth of a strong body. Spicy-sweet cologne that smells like sunlit citrus. I don’t need to turn around to know it’s Jake.
At my ear, he murmurs, “Someone call the thesaurus police.”
His breath tickles my neck, spilling goosebumps down my arms. “Thought you’d ghosted me,” I whisper back.
Jake chuckles. “Nice one.” He shuffles forward to stand beside me, close enough that the outer part of his arm is pressed into mine.
I don’t move away. Neither does he. I glance at him sideways.
He’s changed out of what he was wearing this morning.
Now he’s in a pair of dark straight-leg jeans and a black turtleneck sweater under a high-collared caramel corduroy jacket.
Me? I’m wearing a black wool peacoat I’ve had since college. My houndstooth mock-neck is pretty, but it’s a hand-me-down from Maddie. I think I got my jeans on clearance at Macy’s. Anyone looking at us can probably clock it instantly— I’m Levi’s; he’s Louis Vuitton.
“Tonight,” Selby continues, handing out plastic candles with screw-in nightlight bulbs at the ends, “we’ll embark upon a journey through dark courtyards and gaslit lanes, where I’ll show you the West End’s most unsettling paranormal hotspots.
Guests using mobile phones during the tour will be asked to leave without a refund … ”
The bulb in my candle winks on and off every time I move. I whisper to Jake, “This isn’t what I imagined when I read ‘candlelight tour.’”
The little boy in front of us whacks his against the heel of his palm. “Mine’s rubbish.’
“Here, lad. Take mine.” Jake taps the kid on the shoulder and gives up his candle, tipping his head towards me. “I’ll share hers.”
Dr Selby starts to hand out paper cups to everyone, filling each with something pungently alcoholic from an ancient-looking insulated flask.
“What’s this?” A sip of the wine makes me cough. It’s awful. “And is this even legal?”
“Meant to be mulled wine. I think? And yes, it’s legal. You’re in London now, love.”
Selby tells us about Nell Gwyn, lover of Charles II and the namesake of the pub.
He half-heartedly points to one of the windows and says, “Look, the window there.” By the time we all glance in that direction, he’s turned to walk away.
“You must pay closer attention if you’re to see behind the veil. ”
The group scurries after him like children on a school field trip. “I get it now. He’s trying to get us drunk so we don’t realize how bad this is going to be.”
At the Theatre Royal across the street, Selby tells us of its ghosts.
An incontinent pantomime dame (Jake explains British pantomime to me in a whisper that gives me full-body goosebumps), a beheaded clown (because a ghost clown with an intact head isn’t terrifying enough, I guess), and, apparently, a man who murdered a fellow actor during a fight over a wig.
“Hardly seems fair for the murderer to get to haunt the place instead of the victim,” Jake says, just loud enough for me to hear. I pinch my lips tight to keep from laughing.
“… and finally, we have the Man in Grey,” Selby says.
“Spotted in a tricorn hat and grey cloak, he paces the Grand Circle before vanishing. During renovations in the nineteenth century, a skeleton with a knife in its ribs was found in the wall where the Man in Grey disappears. Imagine being bricked up for nearly two centuries—”
I turn my back to the group so Selby doesn’t see me giggling.
Jake still faces forward, but he cuts his eyes over at me. “Are you laughing about that poor man’s demise?”
“No, I’m so sorry—” I pull the collar of my coat over my mouth.
“What’s funny?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
“Tell me,” Jake laughs. He nudges his hip into mine.
“You didn’t hear what he said? Bricked up for nearly two centuries?”
Selby boosts up on his toes to glare at us over the rest of our group. “If you insist on mucking about, I shall have to ask you to leave.”
Lips pinched tight, Jake and I cut our eyes at each other like scolded schoolkids. When the group starts moving again, I whisper to him, “Google it.” I typically wait until I’ve known someone for at least a week before I teach them new slang for erections.
Our next stop is the Covent Garden Underground station, where the ghost of a famous actor named William Terriss was regularly seen on the platforms, despite meeting his end nearly ten years before the station was built.
“… countless reports of an apparition in a three-piece suit and a formal felt hat …”
Jake tilts towards me to whisper, “Sounds like he was dying to haunt the place.”
My laugh is loud and abrupt, echoing down the tunnel. Selby pauses to make aggressive eye contact with me before he drones on, “… a strange chill that overcomes them in this very spot …”
“It’s bloody winter, mate,” Jake mutters.
I bite my lips together and close my eyes. He’s trying to make me laugh. It feels good. I can’t remember the last time I got to be silly with someone. And there’s something different about laughing with someone you’re attracted to.
Selby’s words echo off the concrete walls. “… Terriss frequented a bakery that once stood near the station …”
When I lean close to Jake, the outer curve of my breast presses against his arm. Maybe I’m doing it on purpose? “Relatable,” I mutter. “If I become a ghost with unfinished business, it will be because of all the pastries I didn’t get to eat.”
Jake laughs through his nose.
“… but Terriss must have found what he was looking for, because his last documented appearance here in the station was in 1972.”
Jake glances down at me with an eyebrow raised. “Perhaps he finally got smart and started taking a black cab.”
I roll my eyes and step past him to follow the group out of the station. My knuckles brush against Jake’s as I do, and it makes me wish there weren’t barriers of gloves between us.
Selby makes at least three more stops with the group, but I linger so far behind with Jake, I can’t hear most of it.
As we walk, Jake has his hands tucked into the pockets of his coat and I’ve got mine crossed over my belly, but we brush and bump into each other like two ships docked in a harbor.
Calvin usually walked slightly in front of me, tugging me along by the hand.
Like he was a minder instead of a partner.
Jake, though? He walks with me, and the fleeting contact feels like an invitation rather than a request or a claim.
There’s no reason for us to walk this close, but I feel like I’m caught in his gravity.
Jake glances down at me as we head towards our final stop. “You’ve got compoface.”
“Huh?”
“You don’t know what compoface is?” When I shake my head, he continues.
“Right. Compoface happens when a newspaper runs a story about someone’s grievance.
Like,” he waves his hands in a flourish like he’s reading a headline, “American tourist haunted by the lack of favorable refund policy finds Covent Garden ghost tour to be a grave disappointment.”
I nod. “I see what you did there.”
“And then there would be a photo of you below the headline, looking petty and cross, clutching your little battery-operated candle like a consolation prize.”
I’ve always thought I have a pretty good poker face.
It’s surprising to be read so accurately by someone I’ve spent so little time with, even though he can’t know my sour expression is about Calvin, not the tour.
Young woman spends two years in relationship with emotionally and ethically bankrupt dickhead, now investing in herself instead.
Jake ducks his head a bit, bending at the waist to catch my eye as we walk. There’s a little wrinkle of concern between his brows. “Really, though—are you all right?”
I give him a quick smile. “Yes, yes. It’s nothing. Jet lag, I think.”
We turn onto Cecil Court, an intimate, distinctly Dickensian street with gas-powered lanterns. Overhead, faux chandeliers sparkle, suspended between the buildings. Dim golden light spills from shop windows and galleries to reflect on the damp pavement outside.
“We conclude our tour in one of the West End’s most famous passageways.
” Now Selby is like a horse spotting its stable after a long ride, walking fast towards the bookshop where the tour concludes.
“Dating back to the 1700s, this is now what we call Bookseller’s Row.
Who knows what manner of ghosts from the last three centuries walk beside us at this very moment. ”
Jake mutters, “Thought we were meant to learn about them from you, mate.”
I breathe a quiet laugh through my nose.
Inside the bookshop, it smells like aged leather and paper, and a smoky trace of incense. Herbs, resin, spice. I think if I bought a book from here, the pages inside would be permanently perfumed with it.