‘Did Finn get on with her parents?’
He gave a shrug.
‘Were they close? Did they argue? Help me out here, Michael, I’m living with this girl.’
He took a deep drag from his cigarette and gave a gesture of helplessness.
‘I think they were close enough.’
‘Michael, there must have been problems. She was hospitalized because of depression and anorexia. You were her doctor.’
‘Yes, I was,’ he said, looking away from me over at the indistinct sea. ‘She was a teenager, it’s a messy time for most of us, so…’ He gave a shrug and didn’t finish his sentence.
‘Was it difficult for you being a friend of her parents?’
Daley turned to face me with his tired dark eyes.
‘It’s been very difficult for me being a friend of Leo and Liz. Did the police tell you what they did to them?’
‘A bit. I’m sorry.’
We got into the car and drove off. The countryside seemed grey, scrubby, indistinct. I knew it was my own mood. I had been to a funeral and felt no grief. I had just been uselessly thinking. I looked out of the window. Reed city.
‘I’m not right for Finn,’ I said. ‘And I wasn’t particularly proud of myself today.’
Michael looked round.
‘Why and why?’
‘I think Finn was telling me something in wanting me to go to the funeral of her parents and all I did was snoop around and try to find out about what she was like.’
Michael seemed surprised.
‘Why did you do that?’ he asked.
‘I can’t see a patient in a vacuum. I want a context.’
‘What did you learn?’
‘Nothing, except what I already knew: that our knowledge even of our close friends and relations is strangely vague. “Nice.” I learned that Finn is nice.’
He put his hand on my arm, took it away to change gear, put it back on my arm.
‘You should have told me. If you want, I’ll introduce you to some people who knew the family well.’
‘That would be good, Michael.’
He turned and gave me a mischievous smile.
‘I’ll be your ticket into rural society, Sam.’
‘They won’t have me, Michael. I’m lower middle class.’
He laughed.
‘I’m sure they’ll make an exception in your case.’
Twelve
‘She thinks I’m a layabout. Why should I be polite to her?’
‘You are a layabout. Just don’t be completely rude. Or go for a long walk and don’t be here at all.’
Danny put his hands around my waist as I stood at the sink, and bit my shoulder.
‘I’m hungry and I like to be here.’
‘I’m washing the dishes,’ I said crossly. Danny was getting on my nerves today, just as he’d got on my nerves yesterday. Although, after we had returned from the funeral and talked at length to Finn about it, and Michael Daley had stayed for a drink – Danny glowering at him as if he and I had spent the day in a double bed together, not at a funeral, and Michael oddly nervy with Danny – and Elsie had been put to bed, we’d had a passionate reunion, the next two days had not gone well. He’d hung around in his normal kind of way, getting up late, eating huge breakfasts while Sally cleaned around him, going to bed in the small hours of the morning and leaning into me with beery breath, and this had irritated me. He’d not put himself out for Finn, although he hadn’t actually been rude, and this had irritated me too. He’d left his dishes unwashed in the sink, his clothes unwashed in the corner of my room, he’d almost picked my fridge clean without replacing anything, and then I was irritated by my own prissiness. Didn’t I want Danny to be Danny? ‘Can’t you lay the table or something?’ I complained.
‘Lay the table? Let her get her own fork out of the drawer. She’s not going to be here for at least fifteen minutes. Why don’t we just go upstairs?’ Now his hands were under my shirt.
I pushed his roving hands away with my soapy ones.
‘Elsie and Finn are next door.’
‘Half-way through the puzzle.’
‘She’s quite nice to have around, isn’t she?’
Danny let me go and sat down heavily at the kitchen table. ‘Is she?’ he said.
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Oh Christ,’ he ran his hand through his hair. ‘I don’t want to talk about your patient.’
I took five forks from the plastic basket by the sink and clattered them on to the table in front of him.
‘Quiche is in the fridge. Warm it up. Ice-cream in the freezer. I think you’re jealous of her.’
‘And why would I be jealous?’ Now Danny’s arms were folded across his chest and he was glaring at me.
‘Because I like her and Elsie likes her and you don’t feel quite so much like the king of the castle when you deign to visit us in the country – that’s why.’
‘And do you know what I think, Sam? I think you’ve stopped separating work from home. You’re in trouble here. And have a think about this while you’re at it: first of all I have to compete with a dead man for your love, and then with an invalid child. How can I ever win?’
There was a loud knock on the front door. For once I was glad Roberta had arrived early.
I am sometimes unkind to Roberta because I am scared of the mixed and contradicting emotions I have always had for her. I don’t want to know if she is unhappy. When we were girls, Roberta was designated the pretty one and I was the clever one. She never had a chance. She wore the pink dresses and had the row of dolls along the shelf in her bedroom; I wore trousers (even though, to my disgust, they had heel straps and no pockets) and read books by torchlight under my covers. She painted her manicured nails with pearly varnish (I bit mine), wore pretty blouses and plucked her eyebrows. When her breasts started to develop she and mum made a special trip to Stacey’s department store to buy pretty little bras with matching knickers. When she got her periods, a sense of glamour and mystery surrounded the sanitary towels and blood stains. She was an insecure little girl, who went into womanhood bravely and fearfully, as if it were her terrible vocation.
When I was working seventy-two-hour weekend shifts as a junior doctor at the Sussex by the river, she was a mother and living in Chigwell, and while I became thin and haggard and middle-aged, she became rounder, wearier, middle-aged. Her husband called her Bobsie and once told me that my sister made the best scones in Essex. But then, what did she think when she looked across at me? Did she see a successful doctor or a scraggy unmarried mother with a vulgar on-off boyfriend and vulgar red hair, who couldn’t even cook quiche when her sister came to lunch?
‘And how are you enjoying staying with Sam, Fiona?’
‘It’s nice.’
Finn had hardly touched her food. Once an anorexic always an anorexic they say, like alcoholics and smokers. She had sat with an anxious half-smile on her face as Danny had slouched and made flirtatious remarks and I had scowled and Bobbie had made bright remarks about how we could all see more of each other.
‘Do you like country life or do you prefer the town?’ Bobbie, in her social anxiety, sounded as if she were talking to a six-year-old.
