Ghosts

It’s Nina Dean’s 32nd birthday. She plays “The Edge of Heaven” by Wham!, a birthday tradition since it was the number-one song the year she was born. Nina resolves to spend the day doing all her favorite activities. After checking her phone and seeing birthday messages from her parents, her best friend, Katherine, and Meera, she goes to swim in the Ladies Pond. Her swim is cut short by rain, and she returns to her flat in Archway. Though the flat is small and outdated, Nina is proud to be a first-time homeowner in London. Nina, once a schoolteacher, is now a full-time author and food writer, and her first book, Taste, a food memoir, was a huge success. Nina followed it with a recipe book called The Tiny Kitchen and she is preparing to begin book three. Nina dresses to meet friends for drinks to celebrate. She considers how she spends less time on her appearance now that she is older and mourns how much time she wasted grooming herself to please others or fulfill the rules of stereotypical feminine beauty like clean-shaven legs or wearing a lot of makeup.