She brewed a pot of coffee and switched on her laptop. In dispassionate, formal prose, she filled fifteen pages with information on Tim’s history and mental state, the results from her assessments, and her opinion regarding his fitness for release. With each word and every paragraph, she tried to confer her professional opinion in a clear and concise manner, with just enough supposition to leave room for interpretation.
Before typing the final line, she paused a moment before plunging on.
In my professional judgement, Timothy Warren Stern, Jnr, is not a danger to himself or to others. Having completed the full complement of assessments required by the State of New York, and having met with and interviewed the patient on several occasions over the course of eight weeks, to the best of my knowledge, he is fit for release into the community, where he will reside in the home of his father, Timothy Warren Stern, Snr, at 160 White Valley Road, Matlock, Vermont.
When she hit Print, it was two in the morning. At the bottom of the last page, she scrawled her signature with a blue biro, initialled the other pages and sealed the report in an envelope. Resting her head on her arms, she closed her eyes. It was done.
First thing in the morning she would send it by express courier to the review board. The 30th June court date, when the petition for release would be decided by a judge in Albany, was the final hurdle. After that, if all went well, Tim Stern would walk out of Greenlake Psychiatric Facility, a free man.
29
Manhattan, New York
May, Present Day
Saturday night, and Casa Habana was buzzing. A woman in an ivory silk blouse smiled at Ray, as he chatted with the maître d’ in rapid Spanish, while slipping a folded bill into the man’s hand. Erin tried to avoid the crush by standing against a wall, until a dark-eyed woman in a swishy red dress and gold hoop earrings whisked them upstairs to a table by the window. A bottle of Rioja appeared, followed by a platter of green and black olives, rounds of goat’s cheese and crisply toasted bread.
Ray poured out the wine and raised his glass. ‘Salud. Qué vivas durante todos los días de tu vida.’ May you live every day of your life.
‘Gracias, igualmente.’ Thanks, same to you.
‘You speak Spanish?’ His eyes lit up.
She smiled over the rim of her glass. ‘Un poco.’ Was this flirting? If so, she was out of practice. Her last time out with a man must have been, what, two years ago? Not since Sebastian, a moody Dane with a penchant for secrets, disappeared from her life in a puff of smoke. On a rainy Friday in March, she’d arrived home to their shared flat to find his things gone and a note on the table. Sorry. Take care, S. It had taken months for the sting of his brush-off to fade. After that, she’d sworn off men.
Light-hearted dinner conversation was not her strong suit, so she let Ray do the talking. At the moment, he was singing the praises of the chef, a personal friend of his, before segueing into an animated description of a recent fundraiser his non-profit had organised in support of immigrant engagement.
‘Education and job training, mainly,’ he said when she asked him what his organisation did. ‘Family outreach, integration, community support.’ He gestured at the room. ‘Half the people who work here have come through one of our programmes.’
Having sent her report to the review board at Greenlake, Erin was more than ready to put Timothy Stern’s case to rest. But some things still troubled her. A heap of unanswered questions that kept her up at night.
She hadn’t expected to see Ray again, and was surprised he’d responded at all to her rather curt text, Something’s bugging me, re: Tim. Shall we meet for dinner? But here they were, awash with food and wine, candlelight flickering between them. There was no sign he’d overheard her say her real name and title, that time in his flat, and he seemed to be having a good time.
A uniformed waiter, elegant as a toreador, set more food on the table. Grilled prawns, red snapper, spicy black beans and saffron rice. As she sucked the juice from a prawn, Erin plotted how to steer the conversation to Tim without spoiling the mood. But Ray seemed to have forgotten the pretext for their dinner. Their talk ranged from books and films to food and travel. His eyes shone as he regaled her with tales of Galicia, the beguiling, but little-known, province in the north-west of Spain. Windswept beaches. Old men with craggy faces, herding their goats into the mountains. The bustling markets with their sun-warm tomatoes, fresh cheeses, oranges, and cured hams, piled high on trestle tables.
It occurred to her that he might have assumed her text was a ruse for asking him out. Charming though he was, she wasn’t ready for a relationship. So rather than confess her own experience of living and travelling in Spain, she kept mum. Talking about herself might lead to the locked door of her past she had no intention of opening.
He popped a glistening prawn in his mouth. ‘So, what’s the verdict on the food?’
‘Perfect.’ She wiped her buttery fingers on a napkin and rehearsed the words in her head. So, about Tim…
‘Best kept secret on the West Side.’ As he leaned forward to refill her glass, the candle flame shone in his eyes. ‘Though there was a time, soon after I moved here, that I couldn’t stand the sight of seafood. Can you imagine? Here I was, surrounded by a mob of Manhattanites clamouring for lobster airlifted from Maine, and I couldn’t even look at it, much less eat it.’ He grinned. ‘Too many summers shucking clams and gutting fish.’
He piled more
