‘Such as?’
‘Such as … well, supposing he really did die by accident? Suppose it was circumstance that killed him: nothing more, nothing less. Wouldn’t that be more frightening to face up to than your little conspiracy theory? Or supposing it was suicide. He’d seen things that nobody else had seen, after all — incredibly beautiful things, by the sound of it. Perhaps he never really came back to reality, and this was the culmination of something irrational, some madness which had been burning away inside him—well out of the reach of you and your politics. I don’t suppose you’d like the sound of that much, either.’
‘Well, if you’re determined to get sentimental about it …’
Fiona shrugged. ‘Maybe I am sentimental. But there are dangers in being too dogmatic, you know. Seeing everything in black and white.’ I couldn’t think of an answer to this, and concentrated instead on impaling a trio of spongy peas on the end of my fork. Her next question took me by surprise. ‘When are you going to tell me why you fell out with your mother in that Chinese restaurant?’
I looked up and said: ‘That’s a rather abrupt change of subject.’
‘It’s not a change of subject at all.’
‘I’m not with you,’ I muttered, returning to my food.
‘You’ve been promising to tell me for months. You even want to tell me: it’s obvious.’ Since no response was forthcoming, she continued to think aloud. ‘What could she have said, to hurt you so badly? So badly that it split you in two. The half that refuses to forgive her because it insists on seeing things in black and white, and the other half — the one you’ve been trying to smother ever since it happened.’ I said nothing; just pushed a piece of turkey around my plate, soaking it in thick, oily gravy. ‘Do you even know where she is this afternoon? What she’ll be doing?’
‘She’ll be sitting at home, I expect.’
‘By herself?’
‘Probably.’ I gave up and pushed the plate aside. ‘Look, there can’t be any going back. It was my father who held us together, anyway. Once he died, then … that was that.’
‘But you still saw each other after he died. That’s not why it happened.’
I did want to tell her, that’s the strange thing. I desperately wanted to tell her. But it was going to have to be torn out of me, one piece at a time, and the process was only just beginning. I didn’t mean to be unhelpfuclass="underline" I didn’t mean to sound wilfully enigmatic. That was just how it came out.
I said: ‘People can die more than once.’
Fiona stared at me. She said: ‘Why don’t we just skip the pudding and leave?’
It was an argument, of sorts, even if neither of us could be quite sure how it had happened. We left the pub in silence and spoke only a few words on the way back to the car. Driving home, not wanting to waste the last half hour of daylight, I suggested a quick walk on the South Downs. We walked arm in arm, having silently buried our differences, whatever they were, through a landscape which might have been attractive on a sunny day but now, what with the cold and the encroaching dusk, felt bare and forbidding. Fiona seemed very tired.
I was amazed, in fact, that she’d managed to last this long, and it was no surprise to see her nodding off as we resumed our journey. I looked at her reposeful face and was reminded of the intimacy I’d felt, the sense of privilege, the night that I’d sneaked up to Joan’s room and watched her for a few minutes as she slept. But this was deceptive, because looking at Fiona was not like looking into the past: quite the opposite. For with every snatched glance (I was trying to keep my eyes on the road) I felt that I was being offered a glimpse of something new and unthinkable, something that I had been needlessly denying myself, now, for many years: a future.
We stopped off only once more, at a service station where I went to buy myself some Smarties and a Yorkie bar. By the time I got back to the car she was fast asleep.
And yet, only six days later—
Can this be true?
And yet, only six days later
I’m not sure I can go through with this.
4
The day after Boxing Day, my Christmas parcel of books arrived from the Peacock Press. There was a note from Mrs Tonks, apologizing for having sent them later than usual. I couldn’t motivate myself to look at them or even take the wrapping off. In the afternoon I went over to Findlay’s flat to see the papers he had stolen. They didn’t really tell me anything new. Instead of feeling intrigued, or baffled, or worried by Tabitha’s letter and the concrete evidence it provided that she had once written to the publishers and implored them to procure my services when I didn’t even know of her existence, I was able to register barely a flicker of interest. The Winshaws and their ruthless, fantastic, power-hungry lives had never seemed so distant. As for the envelope which presumably contained the incriminating photographs of Alice, I didn’t even open it.
Fiona was everything now.
The next day she had her rescheduled appointment at the clinic, and this time I was determined to accompany her. For some reason, she’d been feeling quite a lot worse since her day out by the seaside. I thought it would have done her some good. But her cough had returned, more insistent than before, and she complained of feeling short of breath: climbing the stairs to her flat the previous evening, she had had to rest on three of the four landings.
The appointment was at eleven-thirty. We waited ages for a bus and were a few minutes late arriving at the hospital, a black-bricked Victorian monstrosity more conducive, I would have thought, to the punishment of long-term offenders than the treatment of the sick. It didn’t matter, anyway: it was well past twelve when Fiona got called into the consulting room. I waited outside, struggling to sustain a vestige of optimism in the face of these relentlessly dispiriting surroundings: the queasy, pale yellow décor, the malfunctioning coffee machine, which had already robbed us of 6op, the erratic heating system (one enormous cast iron radiator was on full-blast, the other not at all; and every so often the pipes would gurgle and splutter and shake visibly against the walls, dislodging crumbs of plaster). I could only stand it for about five minutes, and was about to go out for a walk when Fiona returned, looking flushed and agitated.
‘Out already?’ I said. ‘That was quick.’
‘They can’t find my notes,’ she said, walking straight past me and heading for the exit.
I hurried after her.
‘What?’
We were outside again. It was bitterly cold.
‘What do you mean, exactly?’
‘I mean that they can’t find the notes to my case. They looked for them this morning and they weren’t there. Some secretary’s probably got them. Lost in the system, basically. They blamed it on the holiday.’
‘So where does that leave you?’
‘I’ve got another appointment for next week.’
Tides of righteous frustration welled up inside me.
‘Fiona, they can’t keep doing this to you. You’re ill, for God’s sake. You can’t let your health be tampered with by a bunch of idiots. We’re not going to stand for it.’
This was just empty bravado, and we both knew it.
‘Shut up, Michael.’ She coughed furiously for about thirty seconds, doubled up against the hospital wall, and then straightened herself. ‘Come on. We’re going home.’
It was New Year’s Eve.
The original plan had been to go back to the Mandarin. I’d phoned them at lunchtime and with a little persuasion had managed to secure a table for two; but by early in the evening it was obvious that Fiona wasn’t well enough to go out, so I promised to cook her dinner instead. There was a large continental grocer’s open on the King’s Road: I bought some fish and cheese and pasta and tinned prawns, in the hope of improvising a seafood lasagne. I got some wine and some candles. I was determined to make an occasion of it. I looked in on Fiona at about seven o’clock and she was sitting up in bed, a bit pale and breathless. Her temperature was high. She wasn’t very hungry, but she liked the sound of this meal. The idea seemed to amuse her.