I emptied the bottle for her. She leaned across the table and said to me, “The bastard’s starting again. Maybe he didn’t like it the first time. Now he’s going to be happy. The girls and I, and the family life we had for years, mean nothing to him. I have to admit that we imagined for ages that one day he’d walk back in through the door he went out of.”
“The girls are growing up,” I said. “You’ll have to find new things to do.”
She looked around the restaurant helplessly. “There are no men available, you know that. I won’t go with some urine-stained git on Viagra. And the girls, they’re teenage trouble, seeing their first boyfriends, they’re on the phone even more than me. They don’t want to see me bringing some bastard his tea on a tray.”
Not having time to look at the menu, I had one glass of champagne and ordered my favourites, the potted shrimps to start, followed by the fish cakes with chips. I didn’t notice what Karen was eating, but it wasn’t much.
I mentioned Henrietta, an acquaintance of ours, who made no secret of her liking for men and sex. I said, “Think how much pleasure she has. Far more than either of us. Men are in and out of her place all night, and she’s got three daughters.”
Karen said, “Henrietta? She’s got a big house. There are still men walking around in there lost, unable to find the front door. Anyhow, the other day she was sleeping with some political fool. She woke up, went downstairs and looked at his phone. He had messages from eight other women. He was no Adonis, of course.”
“She makes sure she gets what she needs.”
“You know what she said to me the other day? She’d trade it all in for someone who just wants to be with her. Oh, Jamal, what’s wrong with an alpha female like me apart from the fact that I’m old, fat and alcoholic? Who’s going to care for me, listen to me, make love to me?”
“You’re humiliated, you poor thing.”
She was sobbing. “Was I ever like Ruby? I was never that brilliant. There were always more intelligent and beautiful women in London.”
Karen had eaten little, but we did share a dessert. I despatched a double espresso. “What about Karim?”
“I didn’t hear from him, obviously. I called him a few times. He said he was busy preparing for his appearance on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me out of Here.”
“Have you thought of getting a therapist?”
“Don’t fucking say that to me!” she said wildly, as though we were still a couple. “Can’t we go to a hotel this afternoon? I’ll do anything you want.”
I got up and kissed her. “I have to work.”
She said, “It’s okay for you, you’ve got your girl back. Ajita,” she said slowly and with some scorn. “Are you dating her again? George told me she’s installed herself at his place. She came for a few days but now just refuses to go home. He doesn’t know what to do with her. She’s making him crazy.”
“Really?”
“Is that because of your influence?” She was holding my hand tightly. “Jamal, don’t you ever think about our son?”
“Sorry?”
“The one you wanted me to get rid of.”
She wouldn’t let me extricate myself. “Karen, please,” I said.
“What age would he be today, so big and strong and handsome?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I have no idea.”
“He could be having lunch with us! The parents of a murdered child are still its parents. I am absolutely certain you would have wanted more children!”
I was late already. When I managed to get away from her, she was looking around the restaurant for another table to join. Bushy was outside with the other drivers, and we took off, the car fragrant with air freshener.
After all this, and the champagne, I wanted to nap, but hearing of Bushy’s suspicions, I said, “Okay, let me have it. What’s going on with this perceiving man?”
“Yesterday, right, I’m parked up the street waiting to pick Miriam up from lunch with you when I noticed this bloke nosin’ yer from a car. An oldish man, kinda strange looking, well built. Your manor’s full of weirdos, but when I came back he was still there. Then he followed us-I know because I took an odd route especially. He’s been having a good look at you. You wouldn’t mess with him-”
“Maybe it’s one of my patients,” I said. “Or a patient’s spouse. When people start therapy, they sometimes separate from their partners, and the therapist is blamed. I’ve had people throw bricks through my window.”
I didn’t mention the fact that for a while Josephine would stand outside the flat when I was seeing patients, convinced I was having affairs with them. I could hear her yelling: “You’re not allowed to touch them, you know! You’ll be reported and struck-if not struck off!” I did also have a psychotic therapist colleague-not a patient but someone I’d attended conferences with-who began, after the publication of my first book, to stand outside my door handing out a written statement to my patients, saying what a phoney I was.
“Maybe,” Bushy said. “A man without a stalker is a nobody. But this one could be like that song-you know the one.”
“Which one? What are you saying?”
“‘Psycho Killer.’”
He started to sing it.
I said, “Right, right. Because?”
“Because he’s not spontaneous. We should check him out-now.”
“How can I check him out?”
Bushy told me what he required me to do and then said, “It would be to yer advantage.”
“Bushy, I have to see a patient now.”
“Shrinky, I’m insisting you better do what Bushy says.”
I did what he said. He dropped me at the corner of my street, and I walked to my flat with him driving behind. My patient was waiting outside the building.
After she’d gone, I phoned Bushy. “So?”
“When you came along the street as per advised, our character hid-sliding down in the car. I think it’s a rented motor. I’ll check him out and let you know what’s what.”
“You’re going to a lot of trouble, Bushy.”
“I’m worried. Miriam ordered me to keep an eye on you.”
“I don’t want her to know about this. She’ll get in a flap and start casting spells.”
I woke at four in the morning, wondering who was out there watching me. I wondered whether Mustaq had employed someone to keep an eye on me. He was the only person who had the money, as well as the motive, to do that. But what would he hope to see? Occasionally I’d go to the window and look out, but I saw no one.
My first patient was at seven the next morning: an Old Etonian in his fifties whose relationships with women had been wretched. Haunted by the idea that he will find the one who will complete him, therefore rejecting all others as wrong. The founding myth of heterosexuality: completion, the ultimate fulfillment.
My second patient was at eight: a woman who had been phobic about drinking water since childhood, after hearing a story about a dead bird in a water tank. Reaching the stage when she was unable to drink anything she thought had contaminated water in it, her life was being gradually annulled, until it was almost impossible for her to be with others socially.
At nine I had some toast and made another pot of coffee. I rang Bushy. “How’s my stalker?”
“Boss, as I speculated, it is a rented car. I followed him all the way into Kent. I thought we were going to end up in damned Dover. He kipped in a deserted street near a park.”
“Which part of Kent?”
He named the street, and I knew it, though not well. That part of Kent was close to the city and not far from the coast, and had plenty of the sort of houses favoured by criminals and pop stars. The street he mentioned was in the area where I’d grown up. That puzzled me. Why would he go there? Then it occurred to me that the street was closer to Ajita’s than to my old house. If it was one of Mustaq’s men, why would he sleep in a car there?