The Safe House (19 page)

Twenty-Five

‘It’s a bad business, these suicides.’

‘I’m coping.’

‘Bad for us, I mean.’

‘No, I don’t know what you mean.’

Geoff Marsh fingered the knot of his tie as if attempting to establish by touch alone whether it was in the centre of his neck. This meeting had been arranged a fortnight earlier to discuss some possible new sources of funding that had arisen. These we had disposed of over a cup of coffee. I had stood up to go, but he had gestured me back into my chair and started to look worried.

‘This couldn’t have come at a worse time,’ he said.

I bit back a retort and said nothing.

‘You should have told us, Sam.’

‘What should I have told you, Geoff?’

Geoff reached for a pad and looked at some jottings in a display of bureaucratic efficiency.

‘You were technically in our employment, Sam,’ he said after a pause. He gave that shrug of helplessness that I had come to know well. It was an acknowledgement of the implacability of the political and economic climate which cruelly constrained him. He continued, ‘The last thing I want to do is make anything of that, of course, but you should have told us that you were doing sensitive work that would impact on our project.’

I was going to have to work with this man for a long time, so it was difficult for me to think of what I could decently say. I took a deep breath.

‘I thought I was being a good citizen. The police asked me for help. They insisted on secrecy. I didn’t even tell my own family.’

Geoff placed his two hands delicately on the edge of his grossly oversized desk. I felt like a schoolgirl in the headmaster’s office.

‘It’s going to be in the papers,’ he said, with a frown.

‘It’s already in the bloody papers,’ I said. ‘My front lawn is like Greenham Common.’

‘Yes, yes, but so far there has been no mention of, well…’ Geoff gestured around him vaguely. ‘Us, all this, the unit.’

‘Why should they mention that?’

Geoff stood up and walked over to the window and stared out. I tried to think of a way of bringing this tiresome meeting to an end. After a couple of minutes’ silence, I couldn’t bear it any longer.

‘Geoff, if there’s nothing more, I’ve got things to do.’

Geoff turned suddenly as if he had forgotten I was in the room.

‘Sam, do you mind if I am entirely frank?’

‘Go ahead,’ I said drily. ‘Don’t spare my feelings.’

He joined his hands in a pose of statuesque gravity.

‘The whole subject of post-traumatic stress disorder is still controversial. You’ve told me that enough times. We’re creating a new centre for it here and at the same time I don’t want to tell you how many wards I’ve been closing over the past couple of months. And the Linden Report – you know, into that photogenic six-year-old girl who died in Birmingham after we’d turned her away – that’s coming out in a couple of weeks. And I’m just waiting for some bright medical correspondent to put all that together with your thing…’

‘What do you mean,
my
thing?’

Geoff’s face had become pinker and harder.

‘Since I’m looking into the abyss,’ he said, ‘maybe I’ll tell you. We chose you to superintend the largest project of my reign… my tenure, whatever you like to call it. Sir Reginald Lennox on my committee says that post-traumatic stress disorder is an excuse for weaklings and nancy boys, to use his expression. But we’ve brought in the famous Dr Samantha Laschen to fight our corner. And about a month before taking up her post, she has shown the world what she can do by treating a traumatized woman in her own home. An irresponsible journalist might point out that the result of Dr Laschen’s personal brand of treatment was that the patient fell in love with Dr Laschen’s own boyfriend, they absconded and then both committed suicide.’ Geoff paused. ‘Any such summary would, of course, be most unfair. But if such an argument were to be made, it would in truth be difficult to argue that the treatment of Fiona Mackenzie was one of your great successes.’

‘I wasn’t treating Fiona Mackenzie. She wasn’t my patient. The point was to provide her with a safe and secure – and temporary – refuge. And as a matter of fact I was against the idea myself.’

I was whining and making excuses and I despised myself for it. Geoff looked unimpressed.

‘It’s a subtle distinction,’ he said, dubiously.

‘What is all this, Geoff? If you’ve got anything to say, just say it.’

‘I’m trying to save you, Sam, and save the unit.’

‘
Save
me? What are you talking about?’

‘Sam, I’m not expressing a personal view, I’m just putting forward a few pertinent facts. If this trust becomes embroiled in a public scandal in the media, things will be awkward for everybody.’

‘I don’t want to be belligerent about this, but are you making some sort of threat? Do you want me to resign?’

‘No, absolutely not, not at present. This is your project, Sam, and you’re going to see it through, supported by us.’

‘And?’

‘Perhaps we should consider a strategy of containment.’

‘Such as?’

‘That was what I had hoped we could discuss, but it occurred to me that one possibility might be a judicious interview with the right journalist, a sort of pre-emptive strike.’

‘No, absolutely not.’

‘Sam, think about it, don’t just say no.’

‘No.’

‘Think about it.’

‘No. And I’ve got to go now, Geoff. I’ve got doctors to talk to. Lest we forget that the point of this project is to provide a medical service.’

Geoff walked with me across his vast office to the door.

‘I envy you, Sam.’

‘That’s hard to believe.’

‘People come to you with their symptoms and you help them and that’s it. I argue with doctors and then I argue with politicians and then I argue with bureaucrats and then I argue with doctors again.’

I turned back to the office and looked at the Mexican tapestry, the sofa, the desk that was about the size of Ayers Rock, the panoramic view across fens and marshes or whatever it was that lay between Stamford and the sea.

‘There are some compensations,’ I said.

We shook hands.

‘I need to be able to look my board in the face without too much embarrassment. Please don’t do anything to embarrass me. And if you do, tell me first.’

When I arrived home, it took me fifteen minutes to play through the messages on my answering machine. I lost count of the different newspapers whose representatives left their numbers and of the different euphemisms they employed, the offers of deals, sympathy, consultation fees. Buried among them were messages from my mother, baffled by the tirade of beeps caused by the preceding messages, and Michael Daley, and Linda, who was going to be late today, and from Rupert Baird, who asked if we could have a word about Finn’s effects.

Her effects. The idea irritated me and then made me feel so sad. What was to be done with her few things? Presumably they now had no significance as part of an investigation. They weren’t evidence of anything except two wasted lives and a landscape of emotional damage. Our possessions were supposed to drift down from one generation to the next, but I couldn’t even think of anyone to give Finn’s pitiful few things to. I wondered what would happen to her untouched inheritance.

Even so, if there was nothing to do, at least I would do it straight away. I took a cardboard box from the kitchen and ran up the stairs to the room from which I had deliberately excluded myself, Finn’s room. Even now there was a feeling of transgression as I pushed the door open and stepped inside. It was pathetically bare, as if it had been unoccupied for months. For the first time I realized that Finn had accumulated none of the burrs and barnacles that stick to most of us as we pass through life. Apart from some paperbacks piled on a shelf, there was not a single personal object in view, not even a pencil. The bed was carefully made, the rug straight, the surfaces were all bare. There was a musty smell and I hastily pushed the window open. There was nothing in the wardrobe but a rattle of metal clothes hangers. I looked at the books: some thrillers,
Bleak House, The Woman in White
, poetry by Anne Sexton, a battered guide to South America. I took that and tossed it out of the door on to the landing. I felt like escaping to South America. Escaping anywhere. The rest of the books I put in the box, and as I did so a white envelope fell from the pages of one of them on to the floor.

I picked it up and was about to put it in the box too when I saw what was written on it and stopped. In large childish capital letters it said: MY WILL. Finn, so scared, so preoccupied with death, had written a will.

I had a sudden tremulous conviction that she had impulsively left everything to me and that this would be a further public disaster. I slowly turned the envelope over. It wasn’t sealed. The flap had simply been tucked inside without being stuck down, the way one does with greetings cards. I knew that what I was doing was wrong, possibly illegal, but I opened it and unfolded the paper inside. It was a blue form, headed ‘Make Your Own Will’ at the top, and it had been filled out very simply. Under the box marked ‘Will of’ there was written: Fiona Mackenzie, 3 Wilkinson Crescent, Stamford, Essex. In the box marked ‘I appoint as my executor’ there was written: Michael Daley, 14 Alice Road, Cumberton, Essex. In the box marked ‘I leave everything I own to’ there was written: Michael Daley, 14 Alice Road, Cumberton, Essex. It was signed and dated Monday 4 March 1996. She ticked that she wished to be cremated.

At the bottom were two boxes marked ‘Signed by the person making this will in our presence, in whose presence we then signed’. In these, in different hands, were written: Linda Parris, 22 Lam Road, Lymne. Sally Cole, 3b Primrose Villas, Lymne.

Finn had gone completely mad. Finn had gone mad and then my fucking child-minder and my fucking cleaner had joined in a mad conspiracy under my own roof. My head was spinning and I had to sit on the bed for a moment. And what conspiracy, anyway? A conspiracy to leave your wealth in a mad way after your death? Old ladies left millions to their cats; why shouldn’t Finn leave everything to Michael Daley? But as I thought of his ineffectual role in all of this as Finn’s doctor, as Mrs Ferrer’s doctor, I became angry. Who knew about this will? The idea of the wealth of the Mackenzie family being handed over to Michael Daley suddenly seemed unbearable. Why shouldn’t I destroy the will, so that some sort of justice could be done? Anyway, if the person who was the executor also got all the money, it could hardly be legal, so it might as well be destroyed anyway. As I pondered this I saw there was another slip of paper in the envelope. It was hardly larger than a business card. On it was Finn’s unmistakable handwriting: ‘There is another copy of this will in the possession of the executor, Michael Daley. Signed, Fiona Mackenzie.’ I gave a shiver and felt as if Finn had come into the room and caught me rummaging through her things. I blushed until I felt my cheeks sting.

I carefully replaced both pieces of paper in the envelope and placed it into the cardboard box. Then I spoke aloud, even though I was alone.

‘What a bloody mess.’

Twenty-Six

I don’t believe in God, I don’t think that I ever have, although I have a dim and suspiciously hackneyed memory of kneeling by my bed like Christopher Robin and rattling off Our-Father-who-art-in-heaven-hallowed-be-thy-name. And I do recall being terrified when very young of that prayer that goes: ‘If I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take.’ I would lie in my knee-length nightie with the frills round the wrists and the shell-white buttons closed up to the demure neckline, blinking worriedly in the darkness, Bobbie’s breath rising and falling from the bed across the room, and try to keep off the great wall of sleep. And I have always hated the idea of the capricious deity who answers some people’s calls for help and not others’.

But when I woke in the grey light of the March morning, on the narrow hem of a bed almost entirely occupied by an out-flung Elsie, I found myself to my shame muttering, ‘Please God, dear God, let it not be true.’ Morning, though, is harsh. Not as bad as night, of course, when time is like a great river spilling over its banks, losing all onrushing momentum, lying in shallow stagnant pools. My patients often talk to me about night terrors. And they talk too about the terror of waking up from dreams into an undeceived day.

I lay for a few minutes until the first panic had subsided and my breathing grew steady. Elsie shifted abruptly beside me, yanked the duvet cover off me and wrapped herself in it like some hibernating creature. Only the top of her head showed. I stroked it, and it too disappeared. Outside I could hear the sounds of the day: a dog barking, cock crowing, cars changing gear at the sharp corner. The journalists had gone from my door, the newspapers were no longer full of the story, the phone did not ring every few minutes with solicitous or curious inquiry. This was my life.

So I jumped out of bed and, quietly so as not to wake Elsie, got dressed in a short woollen dress, some ribbed tights and a pair of ankle boots, methodically threading the laces into little eyelets and noticing while I did so that my hands were no longer shaking. I looped dangly earrings into my lobes and brushed my hair. I wasn’t going anywhere, but I knew if I shuffled round in leggings that had lost their stretch I’d add to my despondency. Thelma had once said to me that feelings often follow behaviour, rather than the other way round: behave with courage and you give yourself courage; behave with generosity and you start to lose your mean-spirited envy. So now I was going to face the world as if it didn’t make me sick with panic, and maybe my nausea would begin to fade.

I fed Anatoly, drank a scalding cup of coffee and made a shopping list before Elsie woke and staggered into the kitchen. She had a bowl of Honey Nut Loops, which I finished for her, and then a bowl of muesli, picking out the raisins with her spoon and handing the soggy beige remainder to me.

‘I want a stick insect in a jar,’ she said.

‘All right.’ I could cope with cleaning out a stick insect’s home.

She looked at me in surprise. Maybe she’d started too low, a grave negotiating mistake.

‘I want a hamster.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘I
want
a hamster.’

‘The trouble with pets,’ I said, ‘is that they need cleaning out and feeding, and after the first few days you’ll get bored, and guess who’ll do it. And pets die.’ I regretted the words as soon as I spoke them, but Elsie didn’t blink.

‘I want
two
hamsters, so if one dies, I’ll still have the other.’

‘Elsie…’

‘Or one dog.’

Letters abruptly slapped through the letter-box and on to the tiled floor.

‘I’ll get them.’

Elsie slid from the table and retrieved a pile of envelopes, more than usual. The brown for bills I put to one side. The slim white ones, with my name formally typed and the stamp franked in the corner, I peered at suspiciously and put to the other side. They were almost certainly from newspapers or TV programmes. The handwritten ones I opened and quickly glanced at: ‘Darling Sam, if there’s anything we can do…’; ‘I was so surprised when I read…’; ‘Dear Sam, I know we’ve lost touch recently, but when I heard about…’

And there was one envelope I didn’t know what to do with. It was addressed to Daniel Rees in neat blue-Biro capitals. I supposed I’d better send it on to his parents. I held up the envelope to the light, stared at it as if it held the key to a mystery. The gummed seal of the envelope was detached in one corner. I slid my finger under the flap and opened it a bit further. Then all the way.

Dear Mr Rees,

Thank you for your inquiries this morning concerning weekend breaks in Italy. This is to confirm that you have booked two nights, half board, in Rome, for the weekend of May 18/19. We will send you your flight details and tickets shortly. Can you confirm the names of the passengers are Mr D. Rees and Dr S. Laschen?

Yours sincerely,

Miss Sarah Kelly

Globe Travel

I folded the letter up and slid it back into its envelope. Rome with Danny. Hand in hand in T-shirts and in love. Under the starched sheets in a hotel bedroom, with a fan stirring the baked air. Pasta and red wine and huge and antique ruins. Cool churches and fountains. I’d never been to Rome.

‘Who’s the letter from, Mummy?’

‘Oh, nobody.’

Why had he changed his mind so abruptly? What had I done, or not done, that he could forgo Rome with me for death in a burnt-out car with a fucked-up girl? I pulled out the letter again. ‘Thank you for your inquiries this morning…’ It was dated 8 March 1996. That was the day that it happened, the day he went off with Finn. Pain gathered, ready to spring, above my eyes.

‘Will we be late for school again, Mummy?’

‘What? No! No of course we won’t be late for school, we’ll be
early.
Come on.’

‘I just signed where she told me to.’

‘But
Sally
, how could you not look? It was her will, and she was a distressed young girl.’

‘Sorry.’ Sally went on scrubbing the oven. That was it.

‘I wanted to speak to you about it, Linda, before Elsie comes back.’

‘She said it was nothing.’ Linda’s eyes filled with tears. ‘A formality.’

‘Didn’t you read it?’

She just shrugged and shook her head. Why hadn’t they been nosy like me?

Michael’s house was not large, but it was lovely in a cool and modish kind of way. The downstairs floor was entirely open-plan and the French windows in the uncluttered kitchen opened out on to a paved courtyard in which stood a small conical fountain. I looked around: well-stocked bookshelves, vivid rugs on austere floors, tortured black-and-white drawings writhing on serene white walls, pot plants that looked green and fleshy, full wine racks, photographs of boats and cliffs and not a single person in them. How could a GP afford such style? Well, at least he was living up to the status he would soon acquire. We sat at a long refectory table and drank real coffee out of mugs with delicate handles.

‘You were lucky to catch me. I’m on call,’ he said. Then he reached over and took my hand in both of his. I noticed his nails were long and clean.

‘Are you all right, Sam?’

As if I were a patient. I pulled away.

‘Does that mean you aren’t?’ he asked. ‘Look, this is a horrible business, horrible for you, horrible for me too. We should try and help each other through it.’

‘I’ve read Finn’s will.’

He raised an eyebrow.

‘Did she show it to you?’ I shook my head and he sighed. ‘So is that what this is about?’

‘Michael, do you
know
what’s in her will? You’ve got a copy.’

He sighed.

‘I know I’m the executor, whatever that means. She asked me.’

‘Do you mean you’ve got no idea?’

He looked at his watch.

‘Has she left everything to you?’ he asked with a smile.

‘No. She’s left everything to you.’

The expression on his face froze. He stood up and walked to the French window with his back to me.

‘Well?’ I demanded.

He looked round.

‘To me?’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Why should she do that?’

‘But it’s not on, right?’

Michael’s face took on a quizzical expression.

‘I don’t know what to say. It’s all so…’

‘So unethical,’ I said. ‘Dubious.’

‘What?’ Michael looked up as if he had only just heard. ‘Why would she do that? What was she up to?’

‘Are you going to accept it?’

‘What? It’s all so sudden.’

There was a sudden beeping sound and he put his hand in his jacket pocket.

‘Sorry, I’ve got to rush,’ he said. ‘I’m stunned, Sam.’ Then he smiled. ‘Saturday.’ I looked puzzled. ‘Sailing, remember? Might be good for us. Get things in perspective. And we should have a proper talk.’

I’d forgotten about that arrangement: sailing was all I needed.

‘It’ll do me good,’ I said hollowly.

I held Elsie like a precious jewel; I was scared that I would break her with the might of my love. I felt so strong, so alive, so euphoric with grief and rage. My blood was coursing around my body, my heart was beating loudly; I felt clean and supple and untired.

‘Did Danny,’ I asked carefully, casually, ‘ever say anything to you about Finn?’

She shrugged.

‘What about Finn?’ I stroked Elsie’s silky hair and wondered what secrets were locked inside her neat skull. ‘Did she say anything about Danny?’

‘Nope.’ She shifted in my lap. ‘Danny used to
ask
me about Finn.’

‘Oh.’

Elsie looked at me with curious wide eyes.

‘And Danny said that you’re the best mummy in the world.’

‘Did he?’

‘
Are
you?

After Elsie was asleep. I prowled around the house, pulling curtains aside, forcing myself under beds, reaching into corners. At the end of it I had on the kitchen table in front of me a battered menagerie of six tiny paper animals, three little birds, two sort of dogs, something baffling. I looked at them and they looked back at me.