‘No.’
‘Miss Laschen…’
‘Dr Laschen.’
‘Sorry. Dr Laschen, I do assure you that I understand your reluctance, but this would be a very temporary arrangement. She needs to be in a safe place, anonymous and protected, with someone who understands her position, just for a short time.’
Detective Inspector Baird gave a reassuring smile. He was so big that as he walked into my living room, ducking his head under the door-frame, leaning against the mantelpiece, he made the house seem frail, as if it were built of canvas flats like a stage set.
‘I have a daughter and a time-consuming job and…’
‘Dr Scott tells me your job at Stamford General is months away.’
I shot a venomous glance at Thelma, who was sitting unconcernedly bang in the middle of the sofa, stroking Anatoly with great deliberation and apparently not listening to anything that was being said. She looked up.
‘Have you got anything to eat with this cup of tea apart from stale custard creams?’ she asked.
‘It’s not practical,’ I said.
Detective Inspector Baird gulped tea. Thelma lifted her glasses away from the bridge of her nose, and I could see the deep red groove they’d made there. She rubbed her eyes. Neither of them said anything.
‘I’ve only just moved here. I wanted a few months off.’ My voice, too high with indignation, filled the quiet room. Shut up, I told myself; just keep your mouth closed. Why didn’t Danny and Elsie come home? ‘This time is important for me. I’m sorry about the girl but…’
‘Yes,’ said Thelma. ‘She needs help.’ She popped a whole custard cream into her mouth and chomped vigorously.
‘I was about to say that I’m sorry about her; however, I don’t think that it’s…’ The sentence trailed away and I couldn’t remember how I was going to end it. ‘How long did you say?’
‘I didn’t. And you must make your own mind up.’
‘Yeah yeah. Detective Inspector Baird, how long?’
‘It would not be more than six weeks, probably much less.’
I stayed silent and thought furiously.
‘If I were to consider it, how would I know I wasn’t putting my daughter at risk? If I decide to have her.’
‘It would be discreet,’ Baird said. ‘Completely. Nobody would know she was here. How would they? It’s just a precaution.’
‘Thelma?’
She peered up at me, a troll come in from the cold. ‘You’re in the right area of expertise, you live near by. You were the obvious choice.’
‘If she came,’ I said feebly, ‘when would she arrive?’
His brow wrinkled as if he were recalling the departure time of a commuter train.
‘Oh,’ he said casually. ‘We thought tomorrow morning would be an appropriate time. Say, nine-thirty.’
‘Appropriate? Make it eleven-thirty.’
‘Good, and that means that her doctor will be able to accompany her,’ said Baird. ‘So that’s all settled.’
Thelma took my hand as she left.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, but she wasn’t.
‘I’ll be gone before she arrives.’
‘Danny, you don’t need to go; I just think it would be a bad idea to be round when…’
‘Don’t talk shit, Sam. When you were deciding about this girl, did I come into the equation?’ He stared at me. ‘I didn’t, did I? You could at least have
I could have said that he was right and I was sorry, except I knew I wasn’t going to go back on my agreement to take the girl. I could have pleaded. I could have become angry in response. Instead I tried to reconcile our differences in the old familiar way. I put my arms around him, I pushed back his hair and stroked his stubbly cheek and kissed the corner of his furious mouth and started to undo the button on his shirt. But Danny pushed me away angrily.
‘Fuck me and I’ll forget, eh?’
He pulled on his shoes and picked up the jacket which he’d slung over a chair.
‘Are you going?’
‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’ He paused in the doorway. ‘Bye Sam, see you. Maybe.’
Eight
The most tiresome thing about having a guest – or in this case a pseudo-guest – coming to call is the apparent tradition that you are meant to clear up for them. Fiona Mackenzie was due mid morning. This gave me a couple of hours after taking Elsie to school to dither around the house. I had to be tactical about this. Clearing up the house in any meaningful sense was obviously impractical. Establishing order was an even more forlorn hope which needed to be explored in detail with Sally. But Sally was very slow and she had a complicated emotional life and any conversation with her got lost in its labyrinths. For the moment I had time to push a few things out of the way so that doors could be entered, hallways walked along, chairs sat on.
The surface of the kitchen table was almost invisible, but it only took the transfer of Elsie’s bowl and cup into the sink, the stowing of her cereal packets into a cupboard, the disposal of a few days’ worth of opened envelopes in the bin, and almost half of it was available for use once more. I pushed the window above the kitchen sink slightly up and opened the door to the garden. The house would at least smell a bit cleaner. I wandered up and down looking for anything else that I could tidy up. One of the radiators was leaking rusty liquid on to the floor so I put a cup under it. I looked into the lavatory and thought about cleaning it. I needed bleach or one of those liquids with nozzles designed for squirting under the rim. I made do with flushing it. That was enough for one day.
Looking from a first-floor window, I could see sunlight streaking the lawn and I could hear a bird singing in a twittery sort of way. Things like this were presumably among the benefits of living in this godforsaken bit of countryside. One was supposed to find bird-song beautiful. Was it a skylark? A nightingale? Or did they only sing at night? A robin? A pigeon? Except that I knew that pigeons cooed instead of singing. I was running out of birds. I ought to get a book about bird-song. Or a CD or something.
This was all wrong. I was curious, but most of all I was irritated at having committed myself to an arrangement which was out of my control. I felt bad about Danny; worse than bad – uneasy. I knew I ought to ring and admit I was wrong, but I kept putting it off. I find it hard to be in the wrong. I made myself some instant coffee and compiled a cross list inside my head: it was a distraction for me; a waste of my time; it was an unprofessional way to deal with a person who needed help; it might even be dangerous; it would do no good for Elsie; I didn’t like the idea of somebody else in my space; and I didn’t like the idea of indistinct, open-ended commitments. I felt exploited and sulky. I retrieved one of the old envelopes from the bin and made a real list.
As eleven-thirty approached, I hovered near the window which looked out at the approach to the house. Another morning entirely wasted. I tried to tell myself that I should be savouring these entirely useless bits of filler time. After years without a spare moment I was wandering around from room to room without even being able to form a coherent impulse. Finally I heard a car pulling up near the front door. I looked out of the window, keeping myself far enough back so that I would be invisible to anybody looking up at the house. It was an entirely anonymous four-door thing, wedge-shaped like a supermarket cheddar. There were no blue lights or orange lines. Three of the doors opened at once. Baird and another man in a suit got out of the front seats. From the rear door stepped a man in a long charcoal-grey overcoat. He straightened up with obvious relief, for he was tall. He looked around briefly, and I glimpsed a swing of lank dark-blond hair, a thin and aquiline face. He bent down and looked
