A writer, an opinionated spirit, and a marriage manual from 1936. Just another perfectly ordinary encounter in Kathmandu.
Kathmandu, Nepal, October 2026
Last time I was in this hotel, the restaurant was deserted.
Tonight, it’s pumping.
There’s an exhibition being held in the complex, so the courtyard is vibrant with the Kathmandu art scene.
I can’t understand the chatter, but laughter can be interpreted in any language.
The waiter and I recognise each other, and he even remembers the wine I drank last time.
A sort of homecoming after a long day’s drive from Chitwan. It’s been storming since I arrived, so I’m glad to be off the roads.
A quick scan pulls up a table of three foreigners and another of a solo male. Everyone else appears to be locals.
The solo is reading a newspaper by the candlelight.
Odd, in this digital age.
Or is it a book?
Now that would redeem him.
He has nice table manners.
That’s good enough for me.
I’ve found my next victim.
Whoops. I mean MC. Main character. Male protagonist.
I leave him to read in peace whilst I pull out my phone and start furious thumb typing. The rain drums against the large tarp overhead as I concoct a delightful tale around him.
Ooh. He drinks tea.
He just walked over to the kitchen for a top-up of his teapot.
A tea-drinking reader by candlelight with good table manners…..
What fun can I have with him?
Eventually, I head upstairs to my room. It’s perfect for writing.
This time I’m staying in a different building. When I was here a few days ago, the hotel was fairly empty. Tonight, my entire wing feels positively deserted.
There’s not a single room occupied.
Floor after floor, every room is dark.
Mine is on the top floor, right at the end.
The voices and laughter from the courtyard are far behind me.
I unlock the heavy brass padlock, slide back the bolt, and push open the intricately carved lattice doors.
On the settee in the alcove is an open book.
Strange.
I don’t remember placing it there.
A Marriage Manual.
Published in England, 1952 edition.
I pick it up and scan the contents page.
“That one is rubbish.”
The book falls out of my hands and hits the tiles with a thump.
I turn.
There’s a woman inside the main room.
At least I think there is.
She’s elegant, perhaps in her forties, perfectly composed. But there’s something about her my eyes can’t quite settle on.
Something…
Incomplete.
How the hell did she get into my room?
That bloody padlock took me five minutes to unlock.
“Who are you?”
“Solange.”
What sort of name is that?
“How did you get in here?”
She raises an eyebrow.
“That, madame, is precisely what I would like you to tell me.”
I race inside and hit the light switches.
Every single one.
The room snaps into stark clarity.
Solange is still there. Of course she is, where could she go?
In the artificial brightness she looks even more feminine. Soft skin, dark curls, delicate features; all startlingly real. And yet there’s something insubstantial about her, as though the light passes over her rather than lands on her.
I search the room for signs of a break-in, or worse, an accomplice.
Then I notice something weird.
I look at the floor.
I step slowly, and at a safe distance, to circle behind her.
“Where’s your shadow?”
“My what?”
Her accent is thick, I struggle to decipher her words.
I point to the red and gold carpet.
“Your shadow.”
Irritation flicks across her face.
“I have considerably larger problems than a shadow, Madame.”
My brain decides it needs something concrete to latch onto.
I glance at the book on the floor. A Marriage Manual has fluttered open to The Hygiene of the Sexual Relation.
“Were you reading that?”
“I would not call it reading.” She tosses her long hair with a shake of her head.
“What then?”
“Blowing.”
“What?”
“I have several…ah….perhaps best described as challenges.”
My head can’t keep up.
“Blowing is a problem?”
There’s that quick flash of irritation again.
“Of course not. It is my hands. They are rather useless.”
“What’s wrong with them, if you don’t mind me asking?”
She waves long, slender, lily-white fingers in the air. They look perfectly functional to me.
“So pretty,” Solange sighs. “But useless.”
“You keep saying that.” I take a deep breath. After all this is my room, and I need to get some control back. “Why. Are. They. Useless?”
“Because they cannot do anything,” she scowls. “Is that not the correct definition?”
She stretches one hand toward the tissue box on the coffee table. Then quickly snatches it back.
“Oh, I am not going to bother again. I am worn out from trying.”
“So how did that book get onto the settee?”
“You really are rather dim-witted, are you not?” She purses her lips. “I already said I blew it.”
I stare at her.
“You blew a book—a hard cover book with a few hundred pages —from the shelf onto the settee. And,” I pause, incredulous. “Then you blew it open.”
“With considerable difficulty, of course.”
“So you can blow things, but you can’t pick them up?”
“Apparently.”
“Can you open a door?”
I point to the heavy wooden doors.
“No.”
“So how did you get in here.”
“I did not.”
“What do you mean? You’re here.”
“I am aware of that.” Solange looks around in disgust.
“So…” I prompted.
“I am just waiting.”
“You’re waiting here, but you didn’t actually get here?”
My head hurts. I’m not sure I can handle this.
“Madame, if I knew how I came to be here, I assure you I would not still be here.”
I reach for my glass of wine, then remember I don’t have one. Needless to say, I feel disproportionally annoyed by this.
“Waiting for what?”
“My next life.”
Every sensible part of my body is telling me to get out of the room. Fast. Instead, I find myself leaning closer.
“You’re waiting to be reincarnated?”
“Of course.”
“In my hotel room?”
“Apparently.”
I’m exhausted.
How is anyone supposed to sleep with a ghost who insists she’s not a ghost, just an entity waiting to be reincarnated, and spends the night wandering around your room complaining about everything?
Bleary-eyed, I open the carved lattice doors and stumble into the corridor.
A man steps out of the room opposite.
I burst out laughing.
It’s the man from the café.
The tea-drinking, candlelight-reading man with excellent table manners whom I had privately selected as the male protagonist of my next story.
He looks confused, and not at all amused.
“Everything OK?”
I attempt to compose myself.
“Yes. Sorry. It’s just that…”
How exactly do you explain that you’ve spent the previous evening inventing an entire fictional existence for a complete stranger, only to discover he is staying directly opposite?
“Something funny?” he asks.
“Oh, you have no idea.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then.”
He heads down the stairs without looking back.
Kathmandu has an entire day’s sightseeing waiting to rescue me from a ghost with a remarkable lack of useful supernatural abilities.
Bhaktapur, the historic city of ancient temples, magnificent brick squares and centuries old Newari architecture is just the place to ground myself.
Fortunately my guide possesses all the usual human attributes – flesh, blood, a heartbeat, and a perfectly normal relationship with shadows.
By the time I return to the hotel at the end of the day, I have almost convinced myself that everything inside my room is perfectly normal.
I unlock the padlock, slide back the bolt, and glance around.
Damn.
Solange is standing by the sofa. She turns towards me. Her face is as thunderous as the storm I sheltered from at midday.
“Where have you been?”
“Sightseeing.”
“All day?”
“Yes. I’m a tourist. That’s what tourists do.”
She crosses her arms.
“You left me here.”
“Well, I couldn’t exactly take you with me.”
“Why not?”
I consider this.
Actually, why not?
“Can you leave the room?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you tried?”
“Of course.”
“And?”
“The door was closed.”
I half-heartedly attempt to hide a grin.
“You’re a ghost, Solange.”
“I am NOT a ghost.”
“Then why didn’t you open it?”
She gives me a withering look.
“Madame, we have already established that I cannot touch things.”
Fair point.
She shifts her position, although I’m beginning to suspect this is purely for dramatic effect.
“I am tired of standing.”
“But you don’t really have a body.”
She looks down. Then back at me.
“Do you think that makes it less irritating?”
I nod towards the comfortable sofa.
“Have you tried sitting?”
“Repeatedly.”
“What happens?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. I remain standing.”
I contemplate the implications of an eternity spent upright.
“Well, that’s inconvenient.”
“Inconvenient?”
She draws herself up.
“Madame, I have been left in limbo waiting for a new body, and apparently denied the elementary pleasure of sitting in a chair while I wait. I would describe it as considerably more than inconvenient.”
For once, I have no immediate response.
Solange points at the book lying open on the coffee table.
“I have been reading about The Biology of Marriage.”
“And?”
“There are several things I should like to try.”
“Solange, not only are you dead, you can’t even sit down.”
“I am aware of my limitations.” She pouts. “I’m preparing for my next life.”
“By reading a Marriage Manual first written in 1936?” A smirk creeps across my face. “Last night you said the book was rubbish.”
“I’ve changed…”
The lights go out. The power has failed.
It’s so black I can’t find my phone. I knock something off the table as I grope in the dark.
“Madame.” Her voice is shrill with excitement.
“Yes, Solange.”
“I think it’s finally happening.”
“What?”
“My reincarnation.”
Somewhere outside the building, a deep mechanical rumbling begins.
“This is so exciting,” she squeals. “Oh, I can feel it!”
A generator kicks in. The lights return.
Solange is still standing beside the sofa.
She looks around. Then down at herself.
“OH, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!”
It’s impossible to sleep.
Solange is as irritable as a duchess who’s discovered that the revolution is back on.
She spends the night trying to blow items around the room.
Pfffff!
Every time I doze off, short, furious explosions of air wake me, each more indignant than the last.
Pfffft!
Pleading does nothing.
PFFFFFT!
I give up trying.
“Tell me about your past life?”
“That man next door. The one you laughed at like a demented person. You made a mess of that. I doubt he will show an interest now.”
She gives a delicate little sniff, as though the very air I breathe has become socially unacceptable.
“He’s rather good looking. Perhaps I should change rooms. Exchange you for him.”
I’m not worried about losing out to a ghost, but I feel an unexpected stab of rejection.
“Can he even see you?” I retort.
Her gaze travels from my face to my feet under the blankets, pausing at various points to register disappointment.
“No one has ever seen me.”
She draws herself up to her full height—which is of no great significance—her expression suggesting the violation of several centuries worth of social etiquette.
“Except you.”
Bizarrely, I feel rather special.
“How long have you….ah…been deceased?”
“It is impossible to say. Time has become rather strange.”
“Where have you been…ah…hanging out?”
“Hotel rooms, like this. All around the world.”
She presses a hand to her chest.
“Every time I find myself somewhere new, I think, this is it. This place will be my new life.”
She points to the book, A Marriage Manual.
“This has given me an idea. I am not going to keep waiting anymore.”
She adjusts her posture with exaggerated elegance, shoulders back, neck elongated.
“I am going to use you.”
“Me?” I gasp, as I imagine a ghost with very insignificant supernatural powers attempting to take over my body.
“Oh, do not be so dull.”
She points at my laptop.
“That thing you bang away at. In my last hotel, London if I recollect rightly, I heard this silly young thing going on and on about dating sites.”
She turns to present her profile, one hip cocked in a pose of magnificent self-importance.
“I want you to find me a dating site for souls awaiting reincarnation. They must exist. After all, the living have websites for absolutely everything. Why cannot we?”
“You want to date another ghost?”
Her lips curl into a thin, unfriendly smile.
“Of course not. I want you to search for souls awaiting rebirth. I aim to get it right next life. No more wasting time with men who are not perfect.”
“But you don’t even know when or where, or even what gender you’ll be reborn.”
“I shall return as a beautiful woman, naturally. I see no reason to lower my standards simply because I have died.”
She folds her arms.
“And make sure you search specially for pre-reincarnated persons. I will not tolerate being labelled a ghost.”
I’m not telling Solange!
I decide that straight away. As soon as I walk into the café and see him.
Her look of disgust would be impossible to bear.
Solange and I had spent the afternoon arguing. When I couldn’t find a dating site for pre-reincarnated spirits, or even ghosts, she demanded I create one.
It ended badly.
Solange had huffed and puffed over my shoulder as I’d returned to my writing.
Despite her continual tantrums, the story was going well. The tea-drinking, newspaper-reading guy from the café has developed into a great fictional character: a New Zealander riding a Royal Enfield motorbike through Asia, having a ton of spine-tingling adventures.
Who just happens to be staying in the room opposite mine while in Kathmandu.
Except now he isn’t.
Because he’s back in the café, drinking tea, reading a newspaper by candlelight, with his impeccable table manners.
And he’s not the same man I laughed at in the corridor outside my room.
Just someone who looks remarkably like him.
In my defence, exhausted from a sleepless night, I’d jumped to a rather ridiculous conclusion because of a few physical similarities.
If I’m honest, I admit to feeling like I’m losing my tenuous grip on reality.
I’ve invented a character based on a real person. I’ve even given him a name—Miles.
Then confused him with someone else.
Now the guy (the real one, not the pretend one) has reappeared.
It’s one thing to invent a character. It’s quite another when he starts turning up for subsequent chapters on his own volition.
Solange isn’t supposed to exist. But she does.
And now, she’s not even the strangest thing happening in Kathmandu.
I return to my room determined to say nothing about the man in the café.
Solange is standing beside the sofa, looking unusually pleased with herself.
This is worrying.
“Madame. I have made a discovery.”
“Oh, good. Have you worked out how to sit down?”
She ignores me.
“I believe someone has stolen my reincarnation.”
I put my bag down.
“Come again?”
“My next life. Someone else has taken it.”
I stare at her.
“Solange, how can someone steal a life that hasn’t happened yet?”
“Precisely what I intend to find out.”
She lifts her chin.
“I have been waiting an extraordinarily long time. Other people are being born every minute. Millions of them. And yet here I am.”
“Perhaps there’s a queue.”
“A queue?” Her eyes widen. “Madame, do I look like a woman who waits in queues?”
I consider pointing out that she’s been doing exactly that for an unknown number of years.
Wisely, I don’t.
“I believe there has been a mistake,” she announces. “An administrative error. Or worse, fraud.”
“Reincarnation fraud?”
“Identity theft.”
I sink onto the sofa.
Solange watches me with undisguised resentment.
“Must you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Sit.”
I stand up again.
“Better?”
“Not particularly.”
She moves around the room, looking thoroughly aggrieved.
“Somewhere in the world, a woman is living the life intended for me. She has my beauty, my intelligence, and quite possibly my husband.”
“Your husband?”
“A wealthy one, naturally.”
“Of course.”
“And she is probably making a complete mess of it.”
I rub my forehead.
“Solange, you don’t even know whether you’re going to be reincarnated as a woman.”
She stops.
“Madame. I refuse to discuss that possibility.”
“Or when.”
“Enough.”
“Or where.”
She turns away, presenting me with her most aristocratic profile.
I wait.
She turns back.
“I want you to investigate.”
“Investigate what?”
“Women who have been born recently under suspicious circumstances.”
My mouth drops open. Fortunately, there are no flies.
“All of them?” I groan at the stupidity of my response, because obviously the first question should have related to the definition of suspicious.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Start with the beautiful ones.”
“And how exactly do you propose we identify your missing husband?”
She points at A Marriage Manual.
“I have been studying the requirements for a suitable partner. He must be handsome, wealthy, intelligent, attentive and, above all, devoted.” She flutters her hands in the air, tracing the outline of a well-built man. “Needless to say, of remarkable physique.”
I grunted.
“Solange, there are approximately four billion women in the world.”
“Then you had better get started.”
She points at my laptop.
I don’t move.
“Madame.”
“No.”
“Please.”
That stops me.
It’s the first time I’ve heard Solange use the word.
For a fleeting moment, beneath all the vanity and impossible demands, I wonder what it must be like to wait without knowing what you’re waiting for. To watch the world carry on without you. To be invisible to everyone.
Except one person.
Then she ruins it.
“And do not waste time investigating ugly women. I cannot possibly be one of them.”
I burst out laughing.
Solange folds her arms and delivers a long, disgusted sigh.
“Madame, you are quite the most unhelpful living person I have ever encountered.”
“I’m the only living person who’s ever encountered you.”
She considers this.
“Then I have been exceptionally unfortunate.”
Solange spends the entire night radiating indignation so fiercely I can feel her sulking through the darkness.
As the room lightens with the dawn, a hissing wakes me.
I stumble out of bed to see Solange pressed up against the door, blowing angry puffs through the lattice.
“What on earth are you doing?”
She ignores me.
Furious, resentful whistling echoes into the landing outside.
The door from the opposite room opens.
“Come away from there,” I mutter.
PPPPFFFTTT
The man who isn’t Miles, or even the man from the cafe, glances towards my door.
I peer over Solange’s bent head to get a better look through a tiny triangular gap.
Umm…not bad…at all.
Solange squeals when he walks over.
“Hush,” I say, forgetting that if no one else can see her, they probably can’t hear her either.
He knocks.
Solange pivots like an excited schoolgirl.
I jump to the side. Did he see me snooping?
He knocks again.
Solange gestures at the handle, muttering crossly.
I glance down. I’m still in my pyjamas.
Solange sends an aggrieved harrumph. Air blasts upwards to the poor man’s face.
Her ability to blow is certainly improving.
He rubs his cheek, perplexed.
Solange laughs, puffs out her cheeks, ready for another shot.
I hastily undo the bolt.
He notices my sleepwear, shuffles his feet slightly.
“Ah, sorry to disturb.” He glances into my room. “Just checking if you’re alright. There’s been some…strange noises.”
An embarrassed flush spreads vaguely across his face.
“These rooms,” he continues. “They’re lovely, but not very private.”
“All good,” I say. “Perhaps I was just having a nightmare.”
I send Solange a withering look.
She gives an exaggerated snort.
He glances past my shoulder.
“Was that…?”
“The plumbing,” I say quickly. “Old buildings are like that.”
Solange curls her lips in a most inelegant snarl.
I smother a laugh, pleased at my new-found ability to ruffle her.
“Ah.” He smiles. “I heard someone talking. Thought you were by yourself. Another solo traveller.”
“Oh, I talk to myself sometimes.”
“Quite a conversation you were having.”
Solange leans towards his face.
“PFFFFFT!”
His hair lifts slightly.
He blinks, startled.
“Is there a fan running?”
“Temperamental air-conditioning.”
Solange is beside herself with delight. She puckers her lips again.
“Solange!” I hiss.
He raises his eyebrows.
“Sorry?”
“Nothing. Just… something I remembered.”
Solange gives another triumphant little puff.
I grip the door handle.
“Well, thank you for checking. Very kind of you.”
He smiles uncertainly.
“No problem. Enjoy your day.”
As I close the door, Solange sends one final PFFFFT through the narrowing gap.
She looks positively radiant.
“Madame,” she announces. “I believe he likes me.”
“Of course he does, Solange. Who could possibly resist? All that hot air.”
She chooses to ignore the sarcasm.
I’ve had quite enough excitement for so early in the morning.
I get ready for the day, and head out for some final sightseeing. A cable car ride above the Kathmandu Valley sounds infinitely more appealing than investigating reincarnation fraud or pre-reincarnation dating sites.
Solange is still looking rather pleased with herself when I leave.
It’s late afternoon when I return.
“Solange, I’m back.”
Silence.
I slip my shoes off.
“Still sulking?”
No answer.
I glance towards the sofa, then the window. The bedroom. The alcove.
Nothing.
“Solange?”
I walk slowly through the suite, checking every corner, although I know perfectly well she has nowhere to hide.
The lattice doors are closed. A Marriage Manual lies exactly where we’d left it.
I sit on the sofa.
Nobody objects.
For the first time since arriving in Kathmandu, the room is completely silent.
And I find myself wishing, quite desperately, for one more indignant little PFFFFT.
