loss. Its effect was mildly cathartic.
“Spottiswoode!” she wailed again.
There was a knock at the door, hesitant, tentative.
“Pat?” came a voice. “Are you all right?”
It was Wolf.
“Why were you shouting out ‘Spottiswoode’?” asked Wolf, as he opened the door of Pat’s room.
Pat looked at him with what she hoped was a blank expression.
“Spottiswoode?” she said.
Wolf nodded, allowing a fringe of hair to fall briefly across his brow. This was soon tossed back. “I heard you out in the hall. You shouted out ‘Spottiswoode’. Twice.”
Pat clenched her teeth. Rapidly she rehearsed a number of possibilities. She could deny it, of course, and suggest that he had experienced an auditory hallucination. She was, after all, a psychiatrist’s daughter and she had heard her father talk about auditory hallucinations. He had treated a patient, she recalled, who complained that the roses in his garden recited Burns to him. That had seemed so strange to her at the time, but here she was shouting out Spottiswoode in her distress.
No, she would not resort to denial; that would only convince him that there was something odd about her, and he would be put off. That would be the worst possible outcome.
“Spottiswoode?” she said. “Did I?”
Wolf nodded again. “Yes,” he said. “Spottiswoode. Very loudly. Spottiswoode.”
52
Pat laughed, airily (she hoped). “Oh, Spottiswoode! Of course.”
Wolf smiled. “Well?”
“Well, why not?” said Pat. She looked about the room and made a gesture with her hands. “I was just thinking – here I am in Spottiswoode Street at last. You know, I’ve always wanted to live in Spottiswoode Street, and now I do. I was just so happy, I shouted out Spottiswoode, I suppose.”
Her explanation tailed off. She saw his eyes widen slightly, and with a sinking heart she realised that this meant that he did not believe her. Desperate now, she thought, I must do something to change the subject in a radical way.
She looked at her watch. “Look at the time!” she muttered.
“I’m sorry, I’m going to have to have a bath.”
She turned round and began to unbutton her top. Wolf did nothing. Turning her head slightly, she saw him staring at her, a bemused expression on his face. She stopped the unbuttoning.
“So you don’t have to have a bath after all?” said Wolf.
“No,” she said lamely. “I forgot. I don’t.”
Wolf smiled at her, his teeth white against his lips. “Oh well,”
he said. “I’d better be going. So long.”
“So long.”
He closed the door, and Pat sat down on her bed. She felt confused and raw; unhappy too. And in her unhappiness, as ever, she retrieved her mobile from her bag and pressed the button which would connect her immediately with her father.
He answered, as he always did, in the calm tones that she had always found so reassuring. He inquired where she was and asked her how she was settling in, and then there was a brief silence before she spoke again.
“Can you tell me something, Dad?” she asked. “Why do we utter words that don’t mean anything?”
Dr MacGregor laughed. “Perhaps you should ask a politician that. They’re the experts in the uttering of the meaningless.”
“No, I don’t mean that. I’m talking about when you murmur a word to yourself. A name perhaps. The name of a place.” She did not say the name of a street, of course.
53
There was a moment’s silence at the other end. Dr MacGregor realised that this was not theoretical inquiry; doctors were never asked theoretical questions. They were asked questions about things that were happening to real people, usually to the questioner.
“Why?” he asked gently. “Have you found yourself doing this?”
“Yes,” said Pat. “I suppose I have.”
“It’s nothing too worrying,” said Dr MacGregor. “It’s usually an expression of agony. Something worries you, something haunts you, and you give verbal expression to your anguish. And what you say may have nothing to do with what you feel. It may be the name of somebody you know, it may be a totally meaningless word.”
“Such as . . . such as Spottiswoode?”
“Yes. Spottiswoode would do.” Dr MacGregor paused. So that was what his daughter had uttered. Well, Spottiswoode was as good as anything. “You’re unhappy about something, aren’t you? That’s why you gave a cry of
