Portobello

into Raddington Road.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Believing that her visit to Joel Roseman would cancel the appointment she had made to see him at twelve noon, after her morning surgery, Ella was preparing to leave. She had a fitting for her wedding dress at 1.30 and she hoped to have lunch with Eugene first.

Clare, the receptionist, put her head round the door: 'Mr Roseman is here, Ella.'

Ella sighed. Her instinct was to say she couldn't see him but of course she must. She sat down again behind her desk.

He was once more wearing sunglasses. 'I walked,' he said. 'I walked all the way. And in broad daylight. Aren't you proud of me?'

Those were the words a mother might be gratified to hear from her small son. She smiled. 'It's a long way, Joel. You mustn't overdo it, you know.'

'It's very bright today. The light hurts my eyes.'

She stopped herself saying the obvious. If he sat and lay all day in the dark, what did he expect? 'Still, it seems you're feeling better. I've been in touch with the care agency. They can find someone for you. She'll come in the early evening and stay overnight. Get your breakfast for you if that's what you'd like.'

'I don't like,' he said.

She lifted her head and looked at him for the first time for a long while, looked properly. She saw how long his hair had grown since he returned home. It hung down on his jacket collar, unwashed, unkempt. He looked as if he had stopped washing altogether and stopped changing his clothes. 'Joel, you shouldn't be alone. You need someone to look after you. Not a carer, more than that. Will you let me speak to your mother? Explain to her how much you need looking after?'

'She hates coming. She's afraid of Mithras.'

'What do you mean?'

'People are afraid of mad people and she thinks I'm mad. Maybe I am. I'd be better if Mithras would go away. I can't sleep any more. Not at night I can't. Will you give me sleeping pills?'

I'll give you the sort you can't overdose on, she thought but didn't say aloud, and took out her prescription pad. 'I'd still like to speak to your mother.'

'Pa might answer.'

'That doesn't matter. I'll talk to him.'

Joel shook his head, not to deny what she said, but apparently in doubt that she knew what she was talking about. 'You want the phone number?'

'Please.'

She wrote it down, she passed him the prescription. 'That's enough for one week. I shall speak to your parents. Meanwhile, you must tell Miss Crane everything you've told me. Tell her on Friday and you should tell her I've recommended a carer.'

He stared at her, pushed one hand through his greasy hair. 'I don't want a carer. I said. I want you.'

'Well, you've got me. I'm your doctor.'

'I want you to come and live in my flat.'

She flinched, recoiling back into her chair. It was disconcerting, not being able to see his eyes.

Perhaps he read her thoughts for he took off his glasses and sat there blinking at her. 'I'm not talking about sex. I don't do sex.' He twisted the glasses in his fingers and looked down. 'If you don't like my place, Pa would buy us a house. There's lots of money. We could live anywhere you like.'

She was silent, feeling despair combined with a terrible desire to laugh, a desire she suppressed. She said in a cool quiet voice, 'That's not possible, Joel.' She held out her left hand, showing him the diamond on the third finger. 'I'm engaged, you know that. I'm getting married in October.'

'Engagements can be broken.'

'Not mine.' Amusement was turning to anger. She controlled it, spoke in a brisk voice. 'Now, you'd better go home in a taxi. You shouldn't walk any more. I'll speak to your mother or your father, and I'll talk to Miss Crane too.'

It wasn't her job but she called the taxi company Eugene sometimes used. It would be there in ten minutes. She was longing to escape. As it was, she had no time to do more than meet Eugene and tell him – well, that she couldn't meet him for lunch. Joel could very well wait for his taxi in reception but bringing herself to tell him so was too much for her. They sat in silence while she went through a stack of papers on her desk, papers she had been through before. Just when she thought she ought to say something to him, he said, 'I saw a newspaper this morning. I don't often see a newspaper. There was a bit in it about how they've found how to breed schizophrenic mice.'

'Really?'

'If they have delusions, these mice, what do you think they hear? Strange squeaks telling them to do bad things? Telling them to kill other mice? What about hallucinations? Do you think they see sabre-toothed cats, big as tigers?'

He began to laugh. She thought she had never heard him laugh before. The receptionist put her head round the door and said Mr Roseman's cab had come.

Eugene had lost the argument and lost it with good grace. It's too early to go to Sri Lanka in August, Dorinda told him. You go to India and neighbouring countries in January. Surely he remembered when the tsunami was. Why did he think all those holidaymakers were in south-east Asia in midwinter? So Eugene gave in and they fixed on Lake Como.

It was two months away. He had more or less resigned himself to the impossibility of giving up his habit in those seven or eight weeks. Like a smoker, like an alcoholic, he had cut down. This was achieved, as cutting down usually is, by making sure that he carried none of his fix about with him, kept none at the gallery – it too had once contained caches in secret drawers – avoiding streets where purveyors of Chocorange had their premises and responded to his craving by having a glass of water. But he had never passed a whole day without a suger-free sweet and he still kept eight packs in their plastic bag behind the Forster novels in his bookshelves, and three more in a drawer in the spare bathroom cabinet. These were not to be touched, certainly not ever to be looked at or checked on. They were his emergency supplies for use if, for instance, he broke his leg and was housebound or got the flu. It was a measure of how Chocorange was driving him mad that he thought seriously of such eventualities as a smoker might lay in four or five packs of cigarettes and a drinker his bottles of vodka. But how much more dignified than his were their addictions!

They were recognised and in their way accepted. Alcoholism might be something to be a bit ashamed of but people with a forty-a-day habit regularly talked to journalists about their indulgence and, with a laugh, conceded they 'must give up one day'. He imagined being interviewed as a gallery owner about to hold an exhibition of a promising young artist's work (as indeed he was to do next month) and saying in answer to the (no doubt impertinent) questions about his private life that he was fiftyone years old, lived in Notting Hill, was about to marry a beautiful and charming general practitioner… and was hopelessly addicted to a particular flavour sugar-free sweet. He couldn't pass a day without sucking the sweets. The whole thing was impossible. It was beyond measure ridiculous. To coin a doubly appropriate phrase he would never use, it sucked.

Of course he would never say such a thing to a journalist or anyone else. As with the secret alcoholic and his covert drink pushed to the back of the fridge shelf when his wife walked in, his gin which looked like water when no ice or lemon was added, he could never allow anyone else to know. If he encountered Elizabeth Cherry in the street or saw George Sharpe over the garden wall, the Chocorange he was sucking was surreptitiously slipped into the tissue he kept in his pocket solely for that purpose. And even that prudent move distressed him. It was such a waste. He still had to decide how to handle his addiction while on his honeymoon. Total denial was impossible. You were supposed to enjoy your honeymoon. But he and Ella would be away for two weeks and the idea of being deprived of his fix for a whole fortnight didn't bear thinking of. He hated the idea of those Customs people, or whoever it was X-rayed and searched one's checked baggage, finding eight chocolate-brown-and-orange packs, say,