(1998) Denial (11 page)

I really don’t like this idea at all. She’s my mother. I want to think of her as a dignified human being, not some decomposing fucking health threat.

It’s probably politically incorrect to be dead now, anyway. You’re bound to be offending some minority group by being dead.

We live in a weird world.

Your friend.

Thomas

wednesday,23 july, 1997

The only real friend I ever had is dead. It feels as if the lights in this house have gone out for ever
.

Justin Flowering, down in the sauna, is still alive. At least, he still has vital signs, if you can call that being alive. He was whimpering earlier but he isn’t whimpering any more now. I don’t feel remorse for him the way I feel it for Tina Mackay. Am I becoming hardened?

It feels cold in this room. The cold has its own beauty, and there is such beauty in front of me. Such power. Such knowledge. Such wisdom. This machine is so smart. You have to respect computers, you really do. I do, and mine responds to this. It repays me handsomely. It gives me anything I want. And tonight it gives me a doctor in Cheltenham and one of his patients
.

The doctor’s name is Dr Shyam Sundaralingham and his patient is called Dr Terence Goel. Sundaralingham is a great name! Tamil, common in the south of India, not unknown but less common in England
.

I don’t think I mentioned before that I am a great mimic. I used to entertain Mummy for hours mimicking voices of characters in films and on television. She loved it. I hear a voice just once and that’s it, I have it. I wouldn’t mind a career as a mimic. I like that guy on television who’s so good at voices. Can’t remember his name right now. It’s late
.

Actually, I have a problem with my memory and I can’t blame it on tiredness, because it isn’t only when I’m tired. I just keep forgetting things, lists, names, events. Sometimes it feels as though whole blocks of time have been removed from inside my memory. Other times, I’m fine
.

Zippidy-do-dah
.

The thing about this electronic world is that it creates new reality. If a computer record says that we exist, then we do exist! We exist through our birth records, our banking records, our credit records, our driving records, our postal codes. Our biological bodies, these days, are merely hard copies of these electronic records. We are moving from the era of Biological Man into a new era of Digital Man
.

It is very easy to use this new technology to create new people. Almost too easy. Just a rudimentary ability to hack computers is really the only requirement. Just insert the new character into the digital records. Ensure that you fill in a little credit history, a little academic history, a little medical history, perhaps even the occasional motoring misdemeanour to add a touch of authenticity, and there you have it. A human being able to come and go as he pleases, able to operate a bank account, to have a driving licence, a passport, credit cards, a telephone
.

Anything at all
.

For instance, just a few days ago, there was no such person as this doctor, Shyam Sundaralingham of Cheltenham, or his patient, Dr Terence Goel
.

Now, at 3.30 a.m., Wednesday 23 July, Dr Terence Goel is an impressive character. A cousin of the famous British astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell, Dr Terence Goel, 38, is a member of the Scripps Research Institute, prior to which, from 1986 to 1995 he was a junior professor of astronomy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Select Presidential Advisory Committee on the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence for Ronald Reagan
.

In 1993 he had a paper published in
Nature
magazine, arguing that there was incontrovertible proof showing the existence of extra-terrestrial life
.

His last car in the US was a ’94 Infinity. He made one parking violation, in January 1995, which he paid promptly. In June 1995 he moved to Britain to take up an advisory post at the secretive government listening and monitoring installation GCHQ
.

In 1993, his wife, Leah, died in car crash when he was driving
.

Dr Terence Goel now resides in Cheltenham. In December 1995, he made a five-year deed of covenant for £600 to the
Imperial Cancer Research Foundation. He’s a pretty caring guy
.

He has joined a local chess club. He drives a Ford Mondeo 16 valve – it’s a bit of a comedown from an Infinity, but he finds it suitable for the narrow Gloucestershire roads
.

He has just applied to join Mensa and taken the home test. His IQ was 175. (I’ve been modest there, mine is higher.)

His e-mail address is
[email protected]

He has a neat website
.

Terence Goel is the kind of guy I could become really good friends with. I am confident he will serve me well. But first, I must make absolutely sure that he is the right man for me. I’m going to submit him to the most important test
.

I’m going to flip a coin
.

‘Georgia On My Mind’ was playing on the Volvo’s radio as Michael drove up the rhododendron-lined drive of the Sheen Park Hospital. He mouthed the words and turned it up loud.

It was coming up to eight thirty. The song was still playing when he pulled into the car park and he kept the ignition on, listening to it, not wanting it to end, shutting his window in case his colleagues wondered if he had finally flipped.

And he was wondering whether Amanda had got his email. He was thinking hard about whether he should have sent it.

It had been an impulse. That was how he had felt. And still felt. He was missing her. Badly.

And Georgia was on his mind. In his heart, his soul, the beat of the song was the beat of his heart. The slow, husky voice of Ray Charles was making his heart ache.

It was a fine morning. Amanda had played this song, it had been on a CD some time during the hours they had sat talking. He hadn’t heard it in maybe twenty years and now he was hearing it twice within a few hours. Some kind of omen?

He didn’t believe in omens, but he didn’t disbelieve in them either. It was just that if there was a God, Michael thought He had better things to do than fart around arranging crows into strange patterns in the sky, or sending black cats scurrying across roads in front of people to spook them, or fixing ladybirds to land on people’s bare arms so they’d think they were going to win the lottery. Or maybe that was what God got his kicks doing. Just farting around,
messing with people. He had taken Katy away and now maybe He was going to give Michael Amanda instead. Or maybe He wasn’t.

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport
.

He entered the front of the building and immediately got jumped on by one of his colleagues, Paul Straddley, who had a patient suffering from a fear of vomiting. He wanted Michael’s advice.

‘He has anxiety or a real vomit phobia?’ Michael asked, barely making any attempt to conceal his irritation. All he wanted right now was to get to his office, to see whether Amanda had replied to his e-mail and have some strong coffee.

Paul Straddley was a neurotic little man with a permanently anxious face and ragged hair. Dressed today in a brown polyester suit that was too short in the sleeves and legs, he looked more like a 1950s back-room boffin than an eminent psychiatrist with an impressive list of publications to his name.

‘He’s frightened to eat – he’s afraid that food might get stuck in his gullet. Everything has to be liquidised and even then he doesn’t trust it, he has to check and recheck it. He’s losing weight and I’m very concerned about him.’ Straddley looked at Michael with desperation. The man was wonky himself, Michael had always thought, probably more fucked up than most of his patients. But so were a lot of psychiatrists.

He probably was too.

We’re all barking. These poor sods come and see us, pay us a hundred pounds an hour because they think we have the answers. We stick a few pills down their throats and let them keep talking until they come up with the answers themselves. Or get bored.

Or, he thought, with a sudden sharp twist of guilt,
kill themselves
.

Michael began to sidestep around him. ‘Can we talk about this later, Paul?’

Straddley did a clumsy shuffle so that he was blocking
Michael’s path once more. ‘Um, how much later exactly, Michael?’

‘I don’t know. I have a busy day and I’m late for my ward round.’

‘Can you do lunch? The canteen?’

Michael nodded reluctantly, although he’d been hoping to pick up a sandwich and sit quietly by the river.

Straddley released him. Michael walked across the hall and up the grand balustraded staircase. The entrance hall was a huge space, filling most of the ground floor, with columns and a high, elaborately stuccoed ceiling; it had a grandiose air that seemed aloof to the imitation wood of the reception counter and the metal and plastic chairs arranged in the waiting area.

He took a quick walk round his in-patients, checking their charts and medications and asking how they were, then collected his list of appointments from Thelma.

At ten to nine his multi-disciplinary team of two nurses, a junior doctor, a psychologist and a social worker were crammed into his office for their twice-weekly review of his patients and departed shortly after nine ten.

His first patient hadn’t arrived yet. Good.

Before he had even taken off his jacket, he sat down at his computer and logged on. Twenty-eight new e-mails, mostly from other psychiatrists and psychologists with whom he shared ideas and problems. Another confirmed details of timing for a paper he was to present at a conference in Venice in September. And there was one from his brother Bob, in Seattle, the usual chatty stuff about his wife (Lori) and kids (Bobby Junior and Brittany) and had he seen Mum and Dad recently?

There was no e-mail from Amanda Capstick.

But that was OK, it was early, he’d sent it to her office. No need to fret.

Yet.

There was no e-mail from Amanda at ten o’clock. Nor after lunch. Nor by five o’clock in the afternoon.

It had been stupid to send his.

Amanda was a tough, sensible young woman. She wasn’t going to be won over by cheap, soppy sentiments, they would just be a turn-off.

His last patient of the day was due at five fifteen. Quarter of an hour’s grace. He made a couple of notes in the file of the patient who had just left, then replaced it in the cabinet.

‘Georgia On My Mind’ was still playing over in his head. It wouldn’t quit. ‘
Amanda
On My Mind’.

The sweet smell of freshly mown grass was in the air. He yawned, swivelled his chair around to face his desk, then slouched forward, rested his head on his arms and closed his eyes. He let his mind sink back to last night – or earlier this morning.

She had looked stunning. A long, shiny, leopard-print jacket, silky black T-shirt, short black skirt, loose gold bracelet on her wrist. Her face was even lovelier than he had remembered and he tried to picture it again now but, oddly, could not assemble an entire clear image in his mind.

He could see her blue eyes sparkling with laughter. Her teeth white, even, but large, which made her mouth seem sensual, predatory, and he longed to kiss it. Her slender arms, the tiny crow’s feet around her eyes when she smiled, the flick of her head to toss back her hair, her scent. Calvin Klein. He’d seen the bottle in the bathroom.

How had her body language been?

She hadn’t thrown herself at him, that was for sure. But neither had she done anything distancing. She’d been neutral; kept to her space. Yet she had watched him constantly, and that was a positive sign. Her smiles had been warm and her laughter genuine and open.

But he felt he had learned little about her, at least about her love life, which was where he had been trying to pry. There was some relationship that she was uncomfortable about. And it seemed to make her uneasy when he tried to get her to talk about it.

His intercom buzzed. His next appointment was in the waiting room. A new patient.

Hastily, Michael opened the new file he had prepared, and looked at the referral letter from the man’s doctor, a GP Michael had never heard of. Dr Shyam Sundaralingham, who practised in Cheltenham, but that wasn’t unusual: there were countless doctors he didn’t know.

Dr Sundaralingham diagnosed that his patient was suffering from clinical depression and had specifically requested that Michael see him. That wasn’t unusual: a lot of people heard him on the radio or read his articles, and asked for him specifically. He would give them an initial interview, but then, to keep his workload from spilling over, he kept only those patients who particularly interested him, and normally referred the others to psychotherapists for their long-term treatment.

This new patient was thirty-eight.

His name was Dr Terence Goel.

‘OK, Amanda, I think this would be helpful. I want you to describe Michael Tennent to me.’

Amanda was in the turquoise room of her therapist, and now in the airy quiet of this space, shaded by the Venetian blinds from the late-afternoon sunlight, she felt calm for the first time that day. She leaned back in the comfortable wicker armchair, closed her eyes, compiled her thoughts.

‘He – I – uh – he reminds me – a sort of – composite. Let me think of an actor, sort of outdoors but intellectual, if you know what I mean. Kind of Harrison Ford in
Indiana Jones
or, maybe, Jeff Goldblum – he has that sort of quiet authority that Goldblum has.’

Maxine Bentham, in her usual position squatting on the floor against the sofa, nodded. ‘He was in
The Fly
. And in the Jurassic Park movies.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘OK, Amanda, let’s think about these roles. In
The Fly
he plays a crazed scientist who evolves into a human fly. In
The Lost World
he plays a scientist who has to deal with the monsters. Do you see any significance in this?’