anguish. It’s a perfectly normal response, you know. Lots of people do it. They don’t admit it, but they do it. People don’t admit things, you see, Pat.”
“They don’t?”
“No, they don’t. And that’s very sad, isn’t it? We’re all weak, human creatures, with all those foibles and troubles which make us human, and we all – or most of us – feel that we have to be strong and brave and in command of ourselves. But we can’t be.
The people with the strong, brave exteriors are just as weak and vulnerable as the rest of us. And of course they never admit to their childish practices, their moments of weakness or absurdity, and then the rest of us think that’s how it should be. But it isn’t, Pat. It isn’t.
“And here is another thing, Pat. When you find yourself doing something like this – something which appears to have no meaning – remember that it might just be plain old superstitious behaviour. A lot of the things we do are superstitious. And although we don’t know it, we do them because we think that our actions will protect us from things getting even worse.”
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Pat was intrigued. For the time being, she had forgotten about her misery and about Spottiswoode and its attendant embarrassments. It was so like her father to understand so completely.
And it was so like him, too, to make it that much easier.
“Of course,” went on Dr MacGregor, “this will all be about a boy, won’t it?”
She drew in her breath. He always knew; he always knew.
“Yes, it is.”
“In that case,” he said, “your options are very clear, you know.
You find out whether it’s going to work out, or you forget him.
If he’s unattainable, or not interested in you, then you simply have to forget him. Forget he exists. Tell yourself that he’s really nothing to you.”
Their conversation continued for a few minutes after that.
Then Pat went to the window and looked out. Wolf is nothing to me, she said to herself. Wolf is nothing to me.
She heard a noise outside the closed door, and she spun round.
The thought occurred to her that she had said – actually articulated the words Wolf is nothing to me – rather than merely thinking them. She could not be sure. And if that was Wolf outside, then he would have heard her.
But it was not Wolf. It was Tessie.
Irene had taken Stuart to task for suggesting in front of Bertie that they should report the theft of their car without mentioning their suspicions that the car was already a stolen car, passed on by the Glasgow businessman, Lard O’Connor. Her squeamish-ness, though, did not preclude her from reporting the matter herself; she had been shocked by the idea that Bertie might hear of the planned concealment rather than that Stuart should propose such a thing in the first place.
“It’s not really a deception,” she said to Stuart, once Bertie was out of earshot. “All we are doing is reporting the theft of
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a car which has a certain number plate. It makes no difference that the car in question is not the original vehicle which had that number. That’s all there is to it.”
Stuart was not sure that it was so simple. In his view, the difference between their positions was that while Irene was happy to employ half-truths, he was happy to achieve the same end by simple misstatement. The end result was the same – as far as he could see. But he felt disinclined to argue the point with Irene, who inevitably won any such debate between them. So he agreed with her that she should make the report to the police, and should do so at the Gayfield Square Police Station, which was only ten minutes’ walk from Scotland Street, at the very eastern edge of the New Town.
Bertie was very keen to accompany his mother. He had never been in a police station, he pointed out, and this was the only chance he would have.
“Anyway, I can help you, Mummy,” he said. “I can provide corroboration of what you say.”
Irene glanced at her son. She was aware that Bertie had a wide vocabulary, but she had not heard him refer to “corroboration” before. It was very interesting; one day she would have to attempt to measure the extent of his vocabulary. She had seen a kit which enabled one to do just that: one asked the meaning of certain words and then extrapolated from the results.
Extrapolation, she thought. Would Bertie know what extrapolation meant?
She decided to indulge Bertie. “Very well, Bertie,” she said.
“You can come to the police station with me. I don’t think that there’s much to be seen there, quite frankly. Police stations are rather boring places, I understand.”
Bertie looked puzzled. “Then why do people like to read about them, if they’re so boring?”
Irene laughed. “I suppose that’s because the people who write about them – people like that Ian Rankin – have no idea what a real police station is like!”
“So they just make it up?” asked Bertie. “Does Mr Rankin just make everything up?”
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