‘Yes?’
‘I’m in the way, aren’t I?’
‘Everything in my life has always been in the way of everything else. But I’ve decided that you are one of the nice things and that’s all that matters.’
‘Don’t feel you have to be nice, Sam. I’m stopping you writing your book, for a start.’
‘I was doing a good enough job of not writing it before you arrived.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘Oh, you know, trauma, what I do, all that stuff.’
‘No, really, what’s it about?’
I narrowed my eyes in mock disbelief. I summoned the waitress and ordered two more coffees.
‘All right, Finn, you asked for it. The basis for the book is the status of post-traumatic stress as an illness. There is always a question of whether a pathology, I mean, a particular illness, actually exists before it has been identified and given a Latin name. Bobbie, of all people, once asked me a good question. She asked if Stone Age men suffered from traumatic stress after fighting a dinosaur. First I explained to her that there were no dinosaurs during the Stone Age, but her question stayed with me. We know that Neanderthals suffered bone fractures, but after terrible events did they have bad dreams, did they have triggered responses, did they show avoidance?’
‘Well, did they?’
‘God knows. What I’m planning to do is to give a brief history of the condition, in which it was largely described by false analogies with recognizable physical traumas, and then I’ll analyse the amazing inconsistencies of diagnosis and treatment in the subject in Britain at the moment.’
‘Are you going to study
‘No. And now let’s spend some money.’
?
We spent a delirious couple of hours drifting up and down the paved pedestrianized concourse in Goldswan Green’s shopping district. I tried on an absurd little pillbox hat with a veil, which would have gone perfectly with a black dress, black stockings and plain black shoes, none of which I possessed. But I bought a navy-blue velvet waistcoat and thought about some ear-rings until I realized that the point of the expedition was to kit out Finn rather than me and turned my attention to her. We found a large basics store and equipped her from the inside out: socks, knickers, bras, tee-shirts, two pairs of jeans – one black, one blue. My own tendency would have been to rush around and grab almost at random, and I was impressed by Finn’s gravity and exactitude. There was nothing frivolous or light-hearted about her choices. She selected clothes with the precision of a person setting off to climb a mountain, in which every surplus ounce would be a liability.
As we drifted around the shop I noticed that another woman was eyeing us. I wondered if it was because we were buying so much and then forgot about her until I heard a voice behind me.
‘It’s Sam, isn’t it?’
I turned with a sinking feeling of non-recognition. The woman was familiar, but I could see that I wasn’t going to be able to place her quickly enough.
‘Hello…’
‘It’s Lucy, Lucy Myers.’
‘Hello…’
‘From Bart’s.’
Now I knew who she was. Christian Society. Glasses, which she no longer wore. Went into paediatrics.
‘Lucy, how are you? Sorry, I didn’t recognize you at once, it must be your glasses. Lack of.’
‘And I wasn’t really sure it was you, Sam, because of your hair. It looks really… really…’ Lucy looked for the right word. ‘Brave,’ she said desperately. ‘I mean, interesting. But I know all about you. You’ve come to Stamford General.’
‘That’s right. Is that where you’re based?’
‘Yes, for years. I grew up there.’
‘Oh.’
There was a pause. Lucy looked expectantly at Finn.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘This is Fiona. Jones. We’re working together.’
They nodded at each other. I didn’t want to prolong this.
‘Look, Sam, it’s great to see you. When you’re in the hospital we must, you know…’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I must get on with my shopping.’
‘Yes.’
Lucy turned away.
‘You weren’t very nice to her,’ Finn whispered to me as we inspected some cardigans.
‘She wasn’t a friend, we were just in the same year. The last thing I want is to get thrown together as soul mates out here in the middle of nowhere.’
Finn giggled.
‘And I only like seeing people by appointment,’ I added. ‘Here.’ I brandished a grey cardigan at her. ‘I order you to buy this.’
‘Buy it for yourself.’
‘If you say so.’
I lay in bed with my eyes open in the dark. The day after tomorrow was Valentine’s Day. Would Danny come with a red rose and a sarcastic smile, a cross word and a kind look? Would he ever come again, or had I lost him, carelessly, without really meaning to, just because I hadn’t been looking his way? I’d write to him tomorrow, I promised myself, I’d make things all right again, and on this resolution I fell asleep.
Fifteen
On Wednesday, when I had shuffled down the cold stairs wrapped in Danny’s dressing gown, which he’d forgotten to take in his hurry to be gone, a letter lay on the doormat. But it was too early for the postman to have been and the ‘SAM’ that was written in blue Biro on the envelope showed this was Elsie’s handiwork, not Danny’s. After I’d turned up the thermostat and put on the kettle, I slipped a finger under its sealed flap. She had stuck a pink tissue-paper heart on to white card. Inside the card was written, in tilted letters that belonged to Elsie but which had clearly been spelt out by Finn, ‘Happy Valentine’s Day. We love you.’
The ‘we’ had bothered me, although it touched me too. In a moment of weakness, I had let Elsie stay at home with another of her not very serious colds, and we’d sat, me three of us, at the kitchen table, eating Rice Krispies and toast. Nothing had come from Danny – no card, no phone call, no sign that he was thinking of me. I wished that I had never sent him yesterday’s rather raw letter. Well, who cared about Valentine’s Day, anyway? I did.
We’d drifted around in the morning, pottering. For a while, Finn looked through the bundle of letters that Angeloglou had brought over the previous day – letters that friends had written to her and left with the police for delivery. They made quite a thick parcel, which she propped rather secretively against her knees. I watched her very carefully to see if she became agitated, but she seemed strangely unaffected. It was almost as if she had no interest in them. After a bit, she pushed them all together again, and took them up to her room. She never mentioned them to me and I never saw her looking at them again.
Finn had become fascinated with the subject of trauma, with herself, perhaps, and I told her about its beginnings, about railway spine and shell-shock, how the First World War doctors thought it was caused by the impact of the artillery. I was amused by Finn’s interest and just a little concerned whether such an absorption in her
