‘The Mandarin? Nine o’clock?’
‘I look forward to it.’
‘Fine: well, we could either get a taxi from here, say ten minutes beforehand, or actually it’s not very far to walk, and then we could maybe stop on the way …’
I realized that I was talking to a closed door, and went back to my flat.
Now Fiona was spreading plum sauce over a pancake with the back of her spoon, and filling it with thin strips of duck and cucumber. Her fingers worked neatly.
‘So, Michael, what are these revelations about yourself that you’ve been bursting to tell me? I’m agog.’
I smiled. I had been nervous all day, thinking how peculiar it would be to share a meal with someone again, but now I was beginning to feel quietly euphoric. ‘There are no revelations,’ I said.
‘So last night – that was just a subtle way of getting to see me in my dressing-gown, was it?’
‘It was just an impulse, that’s all. It had only just occurred to me how strange my behaviour must seem. You know – the way I keep myself to myself, how I barely answer you sometimes, all the time I spend watching things on the television: you must wonder what on earth’s going on.’
‘Not really,’ said Fiona, biting into her folded pancake. ‘You’re hiding from the world because it frightens you. I frighten you. You’ve probably never learned to form real relationships with people. Did you think I wouldn’t be able to see that?’
Wrongfooted, I tried to bite into my pancake, but I hadn’t folded it properly and the contents spilled out just as I was about to put it into my mouth.
‘You have to work at these things, that’s the point,’ said Fiona. ‘If it’s depression we’re talking about then let me tell you, I’ve been there. But, you know … Take that bike ride I went on the other week. Agony, it was. Complete bloody agony. But at least I met some people, went for a drink afterwards, got a couple of dinner invitations out of it. It may not sound like very much, but after a while you realize … there’s nothing worse than being on your own. Nothing.’ She sat back and wiped her fingers on her napkin. ‘Well, it’s just a thought. Perhaps we shouldn’t get heavy this early in the evening.’
I wiped my fingers too. Huge amounts of plum sauce seemed to come off and smudge the napkin with great brown patches.
‘You made a good choice here,’ said Fiona, glancing around the restaurant. It had a comfortable atmosphere, somehow intimate and convivial at the same time. ‘Have you been here before?’
‘No, no. I just read about it somewhere.’
But this, of course, was a lie, since we were in the very place where my mother and I had had the last, explosive argument from which our relationship was yet to recover. I had vowed never to come back here, fearing that someone on the staff might recognize me and make some embarrassing reference – for we had created quite a scene at the time – but now, finding myself both calmed and exhilarated by Fiona’s company, this anxiety seemed preposterous. It was after all one of the most popular restaurants in the area, and when I thought of all the thousands of customers who must have come and gone during the last two or three years … Really, I was flattering myself to suppose that anybody might have found the incident at all memorable.
A waiter came to clear our plates. ‘Good evening, sir,’ he said with a slight bow. ‘How nice that you come back again after all this time. Your mother is well?’
I sat speechless for a while after he had gone, unable to meet Fiona’s eyes which were laughing even as her mouth remained politely quizzical. Then I admitted: ‘Well, yes, I did come here with my mother once. We had a terrible row and … well, it’s not something I really wanted to talk about.’
‘I thought that was the whole point of this evening,’ she said. ‘To tell me things.’
‘Yes, it is. And I will. It’s just that there are certain things, certain areas …’ This was coming out badly, and it was clear that if I was to regain her confidence, a major gesture was called for. ‘Come on, you can ask me anything. Anything at all. Ask me a question.’
‘All right then: when did you get divorced?’
I put my wineglass down in mid-sip, spilling some on the table. ‘How did you know about that?’
‘It was on the cover of that book you showed me.’
And yes, it was true: I’d wasted no time in trying to impress Fiona by showing her a copy of my first novel, the dustjacket of which did indeed contain this little nugget of personal information. (Which had been Patrick’s idea: he said that it made me sound more interesting.)
‘That would have been in 1974, believe it or not,’ I said. I could hardly believe it myself.
Fiona raised her eyebrows. ‘What was her name?’
‘Verity. We met at school.’
‘You must have married very young.’
‘We were both nineteen. Neither of us had been out with anyone before. We didn’t know what we were doing, really.’
‘Are you bitter about it?’
‘I suppose not. I just look on it as my misspent youth: genuinely misspent – not taking drugs and sleeping with lots of different people, which would probably have been good fun, but this … perverse drive towards conformity.’
‘I’ve never liked the name Verity,’ said Fiona decisively. ‘I knew someone called Verity at college. She was prissy. Set a great value on telling the truth but I don’t think she ever told it to herself. If you see what I mean.’
‘You think names are important, then?’
‘Some names. Some people grow to resemble their names, like owners and their dogs. They can’t help it.’
‘I came across a curious one today. Findlay. Findlay Onyx.’
I had to pronounce the two halves quite distinctly before Fiona could be sure what I was saying. Then I explained to her how the name had come to my attention.
Earlier in the day I’d gone out to the newspaper library in Colindale to chase up further reports concerning the death at Winshaw Towers on the night of Mortimer’s fiftieth birthday. You may remember that the local newspaper had promised to keep its readers informed of every development. I had naïvely expected from this that there would be a series of stories dealing with the subsequent investigation in some detail. But, needless to say, I had reckoned without the fact that the Winshaws happened to own the newspaper in question, and that Lawrence Winshaw was Grand Master of the lodge which also numbered several representatives of the constabulary among its most influential members. Such an investigation had either not been reported, or, more likely, had never been undertaken at all. There was only one item of interest, a brief sequel to the report which I had already seen, and that was more cryptic than enlightening. It said that no further information had come to light, but that police were anxious to interview a private detective who was known to operate in the area – the aforementioned Mr Onyx. It seemed that someone answering to the description of the dead man (who had still not been identified) had been seen dining with the detective at a restaurant in Scarborough on the evening of the burglary attempt; furthermore, according to a local solicitor who had been acting as proxy for Tabitha Winshaw, Mr Onyx was known to have visited her at the Hatchjaw-Bassett Institute on at least three separate occasions earlier in the month, presumably on business. For good measure the report added that he was also wanted for questioning on three counts of gross indecency under Section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act (1956). After that, there was no further mention of the mysterious incident. The lead item in the next edition concerned an unprecedentedly large aubergine which had been grown by a local gardener.
‘So, that would appear to be that,’ I said, as we were served with a plate of steaming king prawns, heavy with ginger and garlic. ‘This guy was nearly sixty, it said, so there’s not much chance of him still being around. Which means the trail has more or less gone cold.’
‘Becoming quite the little detective yourself, aren’t you?’ said Fiona, spooning out a modest portion. ‘Is there any point to all this, though? I mean, does it really matter what happened thirty years ago?’