Frazer Melville breathes gently beside me. Thunder and wind outside. I fall asleep briefly and reawaken to catch the end of an arts programme. Everyone’s speaking in the same reasonable tone. There’s a discussion about new trends in Bollywood, with clips from classic and contemporary Indian movies. There is nothing on the three o’clock news: relieved, I am just drifting back to sleep with a sports quiz on in the background, when there’s a news flash.
I hoist myself up in bed. I try to do it gently, but my movement disturbs Frazer Melville, who sits up, his yawn as wide as a silent shout. And then listens. I turn up the volume and we take in the news like two parallel shock-absorbers. All through the five-minute broadcast, I feel oddly calm and in control. Something inside me refuses to shift. Perhaps I am in denial. I can still smell the chocolate on my skin.
When the news ends, Frazer Melville says, eloquently, ‘Oh no. Oh Christ. Oh fuck.’ Like him, I want to start up a litany of swearing, an anti-prayer. Or fall asleep again, pretend it’s a dream, start life again in the morning, properly, normally, and for real. But when you fall asleep a sceptic and wake to news that makes you a believer, the experience is as fundamental as having your whole skeleton replaced. You can’t ignore it. I feed a match to the lamp by the bed, a Moroccan cage of metal that sends angular shafts of candlelight flickering around the room. Outside, the storm has died away and the rain has become sporadic, undecided whether to stay or go.
‘Whoever we told, they’d never have believed us,’ I murmur. We have been lying here for some time. It is the only thought to cling to, under the circumstances. If I am being the rational one, what is Frazer Melville up to? His breathing is over-controlled. Perhaps he is fighting something. Tears? A heart attack? Men do that. They die in women’s beds from sex or shock. Or both.
‘Remember — we had this discussion yesterday,’ I say, raising myself clumsily on one elbow to make eye contact with him and assess his mood. ‘We had it several times. It was light-hearted, maybe. But we had it. We agreed that if we rang the Turkish embassy and told them they needed to evacuate a city of fifteen million people by the twenty-second of this month because a kid in a maximum security hospital had a vision—’
I can’t continue. My sudden burst of conviction, if that’s what it was, has evaporated as quickly as it arrived. I sink back down on the pillow. Frazer Melville doesn’t speak.
At half past three there’s an update. Reports about the extent of the damage are confused, but the quake, whose epicentre is in the Sea of Marmara, just outside the city, measured 7.7 on the Richter scale. It struck at fourteen minutes to one local time, and triggered a mini tsunami that swept south of the conurbation. First estimates say that about forty per cent of the city is affected. At least ten thousand buildings have been destroyed, among them the famous Blue Mosque. Skyscrapers and homes and office blocks and schools have collapsed. I imagine toy building blocks, and a pall of cement dust. It’s not yet dawn, so there’s almost zero visibility, and a high risk of aftershocks. First estimates say tens of thousands will be dead or injured and trapped. How many doctors, over the next few days, will be asking those saved from the wreckage whether they’re aware of any sensation below the waist? Or the neck?
I feel nothing. Then, just as I am beginning to wonder why I am not reacting, the top half of my body starts to sweat, and then shake. Tonight it is a nightmare. But soon it will officially be day. And real.
Frazer Melville and I have not been acquainted long enough to fathom each other’s behaviour in a crisis so when he turns his back on me, I do not take it personally. He needs space to think. But I wonder nonetheless what is going through his mind. Does he resent me for wanting to pick his brains at the charity event at the hotel, for dragging him into this? Do I resent him for not knowing what to do now, for not comforting me with the reassurance that it’s a coincidence, just like the hurricane? Together, we are alone. We cannot help each other, any more than we can help the people of Istanbul. Clumsily, I roll away from him and do battle with my thoughts.
At five he gets up silently and makes us both coffee. We barely speak. We drink it in bed, with the TV news on. Most of Istanbul is razed to the ground. At least three oil tankers have sunk. The Bosphorus is mayhem. Onshore, women wail amid the rubble, men storm about with spades. A baby screams hysterically, without seeming to draw breath. A thick eiderdown of dust covers the devastated city. Fires have broken out because of gas leaks. The images are beyond terrible. We watch, transfixed. Frazer Melville barely blinks.
On one comfortingly diminished plane of logic, I am thinking:
We will go our separate ways. We are not a couple. We are two distinct and very different people on the verge of an abyss we could never have imagined. There’s no rule-book on how to behave in these circumstances. Frazer Melville leaves the house before me. Feeling foolish but defiant, I go online and donate a thousand pounds to Merlin, a small but apparently highly effective disaster relief charity which my father became involved with when he retired. But although the indirect supply of tents and doctors and pharmaceuticals to Turkey’s victims makes me feel better, it’s brief. Within minutes of logging off, the guilt has swamped me again.
At nine I leave for work as usual. Because I don’t know what else to do.
The heat has become so ferocious that venturing outside is an ordeal, something one must gear up to, armed with drinking water, sunglasses, cream, headgear. Items that were once optional accessories are now survival kit. Out on the street, the sky bears down like a low ceiling that will collapse at any moment under the pressure of the sun. It’s too hot for the gloves I normally use for the chair, so on the way to the car, my hands slip on the wheels. By the time I get to Oxsmith, I’m ready to smash something, which is ironic, given that my morning is taken up by two sessions of anger management, in which I must try to pass on advice and wisdom that I am catastrophically failing to heed myself. While I have seventeen teenagers all breathing in rhythm, and envisioning serene landscapes, positive energy, and blah blah, I am frantically plotting my next move. Which is a trip in the lift to my boss’s office, because saying nothing about Bethany’s prediction is no longer an option. I know Sheldon-Gray is going to take this badly, and already I am despising him for it.
No sweaty stuff today, no rowing machines, no towel-rubbing, no ungk and gah. Dr Sheldon-Gray is fully dressed, in a pink shirt and pink-and-grey tie. The smooth skin around his clipped goatee looks freshly exfoliated and moisturised. This level of care indicates he has meetings lined up. Real meetings, with real people.
I do not count. I realise I have drunk too much coffee. I’m jittery with caffeine.
‘So who’s the latest problem?’ demands my boss as soon as I appear in his line of vision. Since asking for Joy McConey’s notes and leaving the charity event early, I have fallen out of favour. I am now officially an annoyance. ‘I’ll take a bet on it being our little auto-asphyxiating Tourette’s friend, whats is name.’ He drums his fingers on the polished walnut of his desk.
‘No. In fact, I wanted to talk about the Istanbul earthquake.’
‘Terrible tragedy. Appalling. Yes. Hassan Ehmet has family nearby. He’s taking time off. No flights going there at the moment, but he’s managed to get one to Athens that’s leaving around now — drove up to Gatwick first thing, called me from there.’ Dr Ehmet, with his little ‘heh’ and his bad haircut and his PhD thesis waiting at the printer’s at Oxford University Press: how will he cope in the midst of a catastrophe on this scale? ‘He plans to drive across,’ Sheldon-Gray is saying. ‘Frankly, I doubt we’ll get him back. Turkey’s going to need all the trauma counsellors it can get. So we’ll be stretched here again, I’m afraid. What’s new, eh? Anyway, you wanted to say?’
‘Bethany Krall.’ His face tightens and clouds over. But before he can protest, I get straight to the point. When I explain that Bethany Krall apparently made an accurate prediction about the quake — as lightly as I can, which is not very, because I am actually scared and angry, and can’t be bothered to hide it — he starts rocking in his chair. When I mention Hurricane Stella — another ‘prediction’ — Sheldon-Gray twitches his head like a cow shaking off flies. I realise that he respects me some sixty per cent less for having raised the matter. Feels a forty per cent increase in contempt, even. I can’t blame him. Most of me feels the same. When I offer to explain in more detail, he declines in a way that brooks no argument. For a psychiatrist used to hiding his emotions, he is unusually transparent. Elaborately adjusting his cuffs, he takes a deep breath.
‘Gabrielle, I am shocked and disappointed and — yes, I’ll say it —
