“These emotions of yours,” Isabel went on, “have taken their toll. They have to. They’ve been translated into physical symptoms. That’s old hat. It happens all the time. It’s nothing to do with any notion of cellular memory. It’s nothing to do with that at all.”
2 4 8
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“But the face? Why should the face be that of his father?
“The father of the heart,” mused Isabel. “That would be a good title for a book or a poem, wouldn’t it? Or, perhaps,
Ian pressed her. “But why?”
They were sitting at one of the tables in Cat’s delicatessen during this conversation. Isabel looked away, to the other side of the shop, where Eddie was handing a baguette to a customer.
He was sharing a joke with the customer and laughing. He’s come a long way, thought Isabel. She turned back to face Ian.
“There are three possibilities,” she said. “One is that there really is some sort of cellular memory, and frankly I just don’t know about that. I’ve tried to keep an open mind, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more difficult it becomes to pin much on it. I’ve looked at some of the literature on memory, and the general view is that there just isn’t any convincing evidence for it—what there is seems anecdotal at best. I’m not New Age enough to believe in things for which there’s no verifiable evidence.” She thought for a moment. Was this too extreme? Some qualification might be necessary. “At least when it comes to matters of how the human body works. And memory is a bodily matter, isn’t it? So where does that leave us?
“The next possibility is sheer coincidence. And that, I think, is a more likely possibility than one might at first think. Our lives are littered with coincidences of one sort or another.”
“And the third?” asked Ian.
“The third is an entirely rational one,” said Isabel. “Some time, somewhere, after you had your operation, you saw something which pointed to the fact that the donor, your benefactor, was a young man called Gavin Macleod. Then, perhaps at the F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
2 4 9
same time, you saw a photograph of Gavin’s father. You may not even have been aware that your mind was reaching these conclusions.”
“Unlikely,” said Ian. “Very unlikely.”
Isabel raised an eyebrow. “But isn’t the whole thing completely unlikely? Isn’t it unlikely that you would have had these symptoms . . . these visions? Yet that is all very real to you, isn’t it?
And if something that unlikely can happen, then why shouldn’t there be further levels of unlikelihood?” She paused, assessing the effect of her remarks on him. He was looking down at his feet, almost in embarrassment. “What have you got to lose, Ian?”
For several minutes he said nothing, and then he had agreed, with the result that now they were making their way out to West Linton, with Isabel at the wheel of her old green Swedish car.
She rarely drove this car, which smelled of old, cracked leather and which, in spite of being largely neglected, never once in all its years had refused to start. I shall keep this car until I die, she had decided, a decision which had made her feel bound to the car in a curious way, as life partners are bound to each other.
Ian was silent, tense beside her. As they negotiated their way out of the Edinburgh traffic, he stared out of the window, balefully, thought Isabel, like a man on his way to punishment, a prisoner en route to a new, remoter jail. And even as they passed Carlops, and the evening sky to the west opened up with shafts of light, he did not respond beyond a murmur to Isabel’s remarks about the countryside. She left him to his mood and his silence, but just before they reached West Linton itself, he pointed to a house some distance off the road, a large stone house with windows facing a stretch of moor. The last rays of the sun had caught the roof of this house, picking it out in gold.
2 5 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“I stayed there,” he said casually. “I spent three weeks there when I was recuperating. It belongs to friends of ours. They invited us to come and stay.”
Isabel glanced at the house and then back at Ian.
“You stayed in that house?”
“Yes. Jack and Sheila Scott. They’re friends from university days. Do you know them?”
She steered the car over to a small patch of grass at the side of the road and drew to a halt.
Ian frowned. “Is there something wrong?”
Isabel turned off the engine. “I wish you’d told me, Ian,”
she said.
He looked puzzled. “About Jack and Sheila’s house? Why should I have told you about that?”
“Because it provides the answer,” she said. She felt angry with him, and there was an edge to her voice. “Did you go into the village itself ?”
“From time to time,” he said. “I used to go and browse through the bookshop. You know it?”
Isabel nodded impatiently. “Yes, I know it. But tell me, Ian, would you have seen people while you were there?”
“People? Of course I saw people.”
She hesitated for a moment. They were near, so near to the solution. But she did not know whether she dared
