Excerpt from Ghost Girl, Banana by Wiz Wharton, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Couldn't you have told me this on the phone? You made it sound really urgent."

"Well, no ... it has to look plausible." She paused as though realizing something. "I don't expect you to come. I know you despise these things."

"Why not get one of your lackeys to do it?"

She straightened the pens on her desk, lining their lids up like little soldiers. "I can't trust them. Not like you. They'll only blab to Ed."

Something unreadable crossed her expression. Had something happened between them? I made a useless mime toward her belly. Still as flat as the Fens. "Everything all right ... down there?"

"Thank you, everything's great."

"Has Ed been going to the scans with you?"

"God, no! He just wants to know if it's all fine."

"And is it?"

"Yes, it's fine ..." She blinked at me. "I mean it. Everything's fine."

"Sounds like it's fine," I said.

We played these games, Maya and me. When we were younger, I struggled to read her but the years had worn down her armor and revealed her emotional leakage: the subtle grind of her jaw; the indisputable flicker at the corner of her eye that she liked to attribute to aging but which I suspected was a different kind of badge. One that, until now at least, had always had my name on it.

I couldn't leave without one last try. "So, there's nothing else you wanted to tell me?"

"No. Like what?" she said.

"Nothing ... through the post this morning?"

The vein in her neck jutted out. "You're not in trouble again, are you, Lily?"

I feigned a bark of outraged laughter. "No! Why would I be?" I said, and in that moment it was important I convince her, a strange reversal that had started that last year. She'd seemed relieved at first when Dad died—having one less person to care for—but sometimes she'd get this look in her eyes and I couldn't be sure anymore which of us was protecting the other. "I sent you a card, that's all," I said. "Mumma Maya, the Abba singing nun. It'll come tomorrow, most likely."


Walking back to the station, I tried to analyze things more rationally. Maya's reaction meant one of two things: either she'd yet to receive a letter or someone had singled me out, which made no sense. What we'd been through, we'd been through together.


The vicious overnight storm had wreaked havoc with the roads around Clapham and all across the Common lay the fractured corpses of oaks and sycamores, all their years of hard work felled in a single night of furious devastation. I wasn't in the mood for Dr. Fenton. By that stage, I'd been seeing professionals on and off for six years, ever since the debacle at university. If you were to plot my progress on a graph it would resemble an errant sound wave, lilting as a Chopin nocturne with a schizoid Liszt phrase somewhere in the middle.

The waiting room toilet was engaged when I got there. I checked my watch as I hovered outside, listening for the sound of the flush and the asthmatic wheeze of the dryer before at last a man stepped out. He couldn't have been more than thirty but there was something unraveled about him: the finger of grime on his collar, the mismatched socks, like a detour from the vanity of youth. Is that how I looked to others? Even at twenty-five, was I pushing the boundaries of appearing ironic?

"Sorry," he said. "Hello." We tried to maneuver ourselves unsuccessfully.

"I'm late—if I could just—"

"Seeing Dr. Fenton?" he said. "It's okay. We've only just finished."

Fenton appeared at his office door. "Ah, Scott, I've caught you," he said. "The number for that group I was telling you about."

He didn't look like a Scott. During their furtive exchange of paper I sensed the man glance at me again, but not being in the mood to satisfy his curiosity, I kept my eyes on the floor and waited to be let into the room.

Excerpted from Ghost Girl, Banana by Wiz Wharton. Copyright © 2023 by Wiz Wharton. Excerpted by permission of HarperVia. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.