I nodded intently. I should have put up thicker curtains a couple of years ago, when Beck and I first moved in together. But I’d never seen the flat as anything more than a temporary arrangement, a halfway house on the road to better things. Changing the curtains would have meant conceding that we were there for the long haul. Even now, I wasn’t sure I felt ready to do this.
‘You know,’ Professor Caborn was saying, ‘one of my colleagues, one of my real colleagues’ – he gave a small chuckle, which I supposed was a good thing; it meant he was coming to terms with the rather unorthodox way in which I’d engineered our meeting – ‘he once did some research into the effect of light cues on sleeping patterns. Basically, it involved isolating a couple of dozen volunteers for an extended period. They were kept in a completely sealed environment: no clocks, no daylight, no external clues whatsoever regarding the passage of time. His aim was to see if he could force them to adapt to an alternative sleeping-waking cycle, one based on an eighteen-hour day. They were given six hours of total darkness and twelve hours of bright light on a continual loop. It made a certain amount of sense as most people spend about one-third of their time asleep.’
Professor Caborn seemed to drift off for a few moments, lost in thought. In the end, I had to prompt him. ‘So, what happened? Did it work?’
‘Oh, no, of course not. It was a total disaster. The twenty-four-hour clock is hardwired – that point was strongly reaffirmed. Within a week over half the subjects were experiencing hallucinations. Three of them developed full-blown psychosis. It all got rather messy towards the end. Of course, this was back in the 1970s. It was the era of the Stanford Prison Experiment and the like. Health and safety was an alien concept. Still, on the eighth day my colleague decided enough was enough and pulled the plug.’ Professor Caborn sighed heavily, then seemed to snap to, remembering where he was. ‘The point, as I’m sure you’ll see, is that you can’t take too many liberties with sleep. Not without suffering consequences.’
‘Hmm.’ Interesting as this sideline was, I’d decided it was time to move our conversation forward. ‘Professor Caborn. Let me tell you how I came to stumble on your work. It’s related to the insomnia in a slightly tangential way. My sleeping problems started about a month ago, when I found my neighbour’s body . . .’
So, for the fourth time in as many weeks, I found myself giving a full account of that evening in Simon’s flat. Professor Caborn didn’t say a word. He just listened with his forehead creased, taking an occasional sip of coffee as I talked and talked. I was now very adept at telling the story. In truth, it felt like I was telling someone else’s story, in the same way that Professor Caborn could recount the details of his colleague’s sleep experiment. There was a certain amount of tension and drama woven through the narrative, but I still felt curiously insulated from the events I was recollecting.
By the time I’d finished, Professor Caborn’s lips were pursed in concentration. ‘Let me check if I have this correct,’ he said after a few moments. ‘You found your neighbour dead. It was a strange but otherwise not very emotional experience. That night you couldn’t sleep. You happened upon some of my work, and now you’re in Oxford because . . . Actually, I’m still not entirely clear on this point. You’re here because . . . you’re trying to make some sense of this?’
I thought about this for a couple of seconds. The connection between Simon’s death and my being in Oxford seemed perfectly obvious in my head, but this didn’t mean it was easy to explain to someone else. ‘I’m not sure I’m trying to make sense – not exactly. It’s more that I found your ideas interesting and felt compelled to follow them up. You see, this isn’t really my field. I’m not a scientist.’ I jangled my turquoise bracelets, as if providing the necessary evidence to corroborate this claim. ‘Usually, I write about books, poetry, the odd bit of light cultural analysis. So this is a departure for me. I suppose I’m trying to examine this odd experience of mine as something that could only happen in a modern, urban context. I mean, for most of human history we must have lived in tight little communities. If your neighbour died – if anyone died – if you found yourself in the presence of a body, it would mean something. It would have some kind of emotional resonance. But what I experienced instead was this, this . . . I don’t know what. There’s probably not even a name for it.’
‘Cognitive dissonance?’ Professor Caborn suggested. ‘Are you familiar with the term?’
‘No, but I understand what the words mean. They seem rather apt.’
‘Hmm.’ Professor Caborn tapped his teaspoon against the rim of his empty coffee cup, then said, ‘Cognitive dissonance is the term psychologists use to describe a state of conflicting thoughts or emotions.’
‘Like ambivalence?’
‘No, it’s stronger than ambivalence. It’s more like trying to hold two mutually exclusive beliefs or feelings about the world. So in your case, for example, you hold a deep-rooted belief that life has, or should have, a certain value. But then you’re confronted with a situation that seems to contradict this. The result is a conflict of two opposing ideas. Cognitive dissonance. And this is likely to be felt more keenly if you usually think of yourself as a very moral or sensitive person.’
‘Hmm . . . I’m not sure I’d go that far.’
‘Or just a generally good person?’
‘Yes, perhaps. More good than bad.’ Today, at least, this seemed a plausible conjecture. ‘Cognitive dissonance.’ I tried the words aloud to hear how they sounded. ‘Would you say that’s a . . . normal response to finding your neighbour’s corpse?’
Professor Caborn considered this for some time. ‘No, probably not. I mean, in a sense, cognitive dissonance is always an abnormal response – from a subjective standpoint. I shouldn’t worry too much about it, though. Concentrate on trying to get a good night’s sleep.’
I stared at my finished espresso. This seemed like good advice.
11
DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON
The journey back from Oxford was pleasant and uneventful. Plenty of coffee, plenty of leg room, no meat men to spoil things. Reviewing everything Professor Caborn had told me, I still didn’t know, specifically, what my article was going to be about, but this didn’t worry me in the slightest. When I closed my eyes, I could see a hundred possibilities sparkling like diamonds in a mine. It was just a case of selecting a handful and fashioning them into a necklace of astonishing brilliance. I smiled at this image and resolved not to think about work until the evening. Instead, with my eyes still tightly shut, I turned to the window and felt the warmth of the afternoon sun flickering through the trees and hedgerows, a series of golden flashes as bright and bewitching as sheet lightning.
At Paddington, I called Dr Barbara from the first-class lounge, having decided I needed to catch her while things were still fresh in my mind. Voicemail, inevitably. It was office hours and she’d be with a client. But a message would do just as well.
‘Dr Barbara. It’s Abby. Have you heard of cognitive dissonance? I expect you have. I’ve just met an evolutionary psychologist who was telling me about it. He says it’s rare but I think I experience it at least two or three times a week. We shall talk about it at our next appointment – which I’m very much looking forward to. Cheerio.’
I thought Dr Barbara would be pleased; it was such a neatly worded and interesting message. And it was so nice to be able to call her and not be in the middle of a crisis.
This whole day had been an unqualified triumph from the start, and it was not yet four o’clock! As I left the lounge, I resolved that from now on I would only ever travel first class. Anything less seemed such a waste.