Portobello

'The man who came up to me out of the city and through the archway – well, I suppose it was heaven, or hell maybe if hell can be beautiful and peaceful – that man came back with me, through the tunnel, into this life. Do you understand now, Dr Cotswold? When I was conscious – well, not then, but later – he was sitting by my bed. He wasn't anyone I've ever seen in this world.' Joel seemed to consider. 'Maybe he was, though, maybe he was a sort of friend I had when I was a child but grown up, of course.'

Guessing, Ella said, 'By "sort of" do you mean an imaginary friend?'

He nodded. 'That's what I mean. But I don't know if this man is my friend grown up. It's years and years, and he looks different. If he is he's changed his name. My – well, imaginary – friend was called Jasper. This one is Mithras.'

Tugged into this dream or nightmare, whatever it was, Ella had begun to feel disorientated. Naming the creature of Joel's fantasy and the fairly obvious transit of that name from a child's idea of what a boy might be called to a man's maturer concept of a denison of heaven or hell, brought her back to practicalities.

'Joel, you don't need me at all. Surely' – she must be tactful here – 'you need someone you can tell all this to who would be sympathetic. I don't mean I'm not but I'm a doctor of medicine, I'm really not qualified to help you over this.'

'You mean a psychiatrist?'

'I meant a therapist, yes.'

'You think I'm mad?'

'No, of course not. Of course I don't think you're mad because you have – well, a very active imagination.' She took her phone directory out of her bag. 'Look, why not let me phone this woman who's an excellent psychotherapist and make an appointment for you to see her?'

'She'll think I'm mad.'

'No, she won't. She's the last person to think like that. Are you well enough to go out now if you go in a taxi?'

He said lifelessly, 'Oh, yes, I've been out. I'm supposed to go out a bit, only I can't walk far. Mithras doesn't come with me.'

'So I can phone Dr Peacock?'

'Sure. Go ahead.'

He kept his eyes fixed on her while she made her phone call. It seemed to her that it was darker in the room than it had been when first she came. Not much sun could penetrate this place but what there had been had gone, the sky clouding over. She told Joel she had made an appointment for him two days ahead in the afternoon.

'I'd like to tell you about Jasper,' he said.

'Perhaps it would be best to save that for Dr Peacock.'

'And my pa. I'd like to tell you about him and why he hates me. You will come back, won't you? Just because I'm going to this Dr Peacock doesn't mean you won't be my doctor any more?'

'Of course it doesn't, Joel. But I think you should come to me now you're better.' Anyone overhearing this would assume she was speaking to a boy of ten. 'We'll fix a time for you to come after my usual surgery hours.'

She got up and he got up. Out in the gloomy hall, he said, 'Mithras is here. He didn't come in while you were with me. He's been waiting out here, over there in the corner by that thing, the thing like a tree where you hang coats.'

Ella said calmly, 'Would you please switch on a light?'

The sudden brightness made her blink. Joel covered his eyes with one hand. 'Dr Peacock will let me know how you get on,' she said. 'And you must let me know too.' She held out her hand. 'Goodbye for now, Joel.'

'Goodbye.' He wasn't looking at her but at the corner where the coatstand was.

He opened the front door for her, still looking away. The fresh air, the hazy sunshine, passing traffic, people, brought her back from something that was more than unease. Savouring her relief, she began the walk to Chepstow Villas. She had no patients this evening and Eugene had said he would be home early. It was a pity really that she couldn't tell him about her experience of the afternoon in that dreadful flat, hearing those dreadful things. But she couldn't, any more than a priest could disclose what was told him in the confessional.

Several replies came to Uncle Gib's advertisement. Applicants were attracted by the low rent but all but one of them were repelled by the condition of the house, the bare and dirty rooms and, above all, the absence of a bathroom. The one who wasn't belonged in that class of people Uncle Gib described as beggars who couldn't be choosers. He was a young man from eastern Europe and he had a job washing dishes in a tiny café in the Portobello Road, nearly as nasty as the house in Blagrove Road. At present, he told Uncle Gib, he was sleeping on the floor of his friend's bedsitter.

To him the top flat was a palace.

'I toilet in garden,' he said, 'and wash in kitchen.'

'Scullery,' said Uncle Gib, 'and only when I'm out, mind.'

CHAPTER NINE

Eugene considered the items for sale in the health food shop unappetising, the fruit bruised and the vegetables looking as if a slug might crawl out between the leaves. As for quinoa, whatever that was, and kasha, did normal people eat those things? But Ella, who had put her flat on the market and more or less moved in with him, wanted ginger and garlic and something called fenugreek for what she planned to cook that evening and this was the only place he knew for certain he could get them. Waiting to pay for his purchases, he was surprised to see stacked packs of Chocorange among the other sugar-free sweets on the counter. It was wonderful how he could look at them so casually, so lightly, almost as if it were mints or chewing gum he was seeing. Interesting, though, that here they were on sale in a health food shop yet while he was hooked on them he had worried a bit that the chemicals in them might be harmful.

His mind went back to the time when he was running out of places where Chocorange could be found. How happy he would have been then, how overjoyed, to come upon a cache like this in such an unexpected place. But thinking about it, he realised that his favourites must also be used by diabetics and here he could see chocolate and biscuits for those who had a problem with sugar. Shop assistants in the past must have thought he was diabetic. Strange that he wouldn't have minded that at all. Was this because being an addict implied weakness of mind whereas to be diabetic meant only a pancreatic deficiency beyond one's control? It was an interesting question.

He was almost inclined to put himself to the test. Buy a packet of Chocorange and airily suck one on the way home, knowing that he wouldn't require another all the evening. But, no. Better not. Not yet. He picked up a bar of diabetic chocolate instead and said he'd have that.

'A great improvement on what they used to be, these sweets and chocolate, aren't they?' the girl behind the counter said in a friendly way.

Eugene agreed. He even said that the Chocorange were delicious, as good as the 'real thing', and he marvelled at himself for discussing his former addiction so openly. But of course what he was discussing was his mythical diabetes. The time might even come when he could talk freely about his habit, laugh ruefully about it, the way other people did about their past alcohol or drugs dependency.

It had been a lovely day and was going to be a fine warm evening. Warm enough for them to eat their dinner outside? Eating a square of diabetic chocolate, he went into the garden via the french windows, testing the air temperature. Ella would have to decide. In spite of their greater distribution of subcutaneous fat, Eugene had noticed that women seemed to feel the cold more than men. It was while he was reflecting on this anomaly that he glanced towards the side gate and saw that it wasn't bolted. Carli must have unbolted it to let the gardener in and out, and then forgotten to bolt it again. But wasn't it rather absurd to keep a gate bolted when it was already locked? His neighbours were paranoid about the security of their homes. The couple with that crosspatch cat, Bathsheba, had bars on all the ground-floor and basement windows, and no fewer than three separate locks on their front door. That sort of thing fuelled people's fear of crime and did not, in fact, discourage burglars who only looked on fortress mentality as a challenge.