A Week in December (43 page)

'I'd like to.'

She barely hesitated. 'All right, then.'

They reached Cowper Road just before midnight and Gabriel said goodnight at the door.

'We never talked about your case, I'm afraid,' he said.

With her key in the lock, Jenni turned back to face him. 'Better fix another meeting,' she said.

'Maybe tomorrow evening?' said Gabriel, forgetting he was due at the Toppings'.

'Whatever,' said Jenni. Or at least that was what Gabriel thought she said, but it was hard to be certain because her lips were pressed against his as she spoke. He ran his hands down the back of her chain-store coat and pulled her towards him by the hips.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a man watching from the other side of the road. He put his lips to Jenni's ear. 'Will you get Tony to come out here a second?'

'What's the matter? Is it that man again?'

'Ssh. Just get Tony.'

While he waited, Gabriel tried not to let the other man see that he knew he was there. He stared at the closed front door, consulted his watch and stamped his feet in the cold, as though waiting for someone. Eventually, Tony put his head out.

'There's someone watching the house,' said Gabriel. 'Watching Jenni. Shall we get him? The man who was here last night.'

'You bet. Let's go.'

As they ran across the road, the man emerged from the shadows and took flight. There was enough of the 400-metre runner still left in Tony, however, and he scragged him at the corner of Dryden Avenue. Gabriel arrived a moment later and they shoved him up against a lamp post.

'What do you want?' said Tony.

'Nothing. I just--'

'What's your name?' said Gabriel.

'Jason.'

'I thought so. It's not a game. Whatever your real name is. This is not a game. Miranda, the girl you want, she doesn't exist.'

'I know.'

'She's really an old man. She's not even a girl.'

'Whatever.'

'If you come round again, I'll knock your fucking head off,' said Tony.

'Get back to reality,' said Gabriel. 'Get a fucking grip.'

'I'm sorry. I promise I won't come back.'

'You'd better fucking not,' said Tony.

'Chuck out the game,' said Gabriel. 'Just bin it. Miranda's not real.'

They let him go, and he ran off towards the station.

Tony and Gabriel walked back down Cowper Road.

'Why are you coming back?' said Tony.

'Just ... I ... Don't know really.'

'You want to kiss my sister again, don't you?'

'Maybe,' said Gabriel.

'All right, but you're not coming in, mate.'

'I don't want to come in,' said Gabriel. 'I just want to kiss your sister one more time.'

'Go on, then,' said Tony, as he let himself into the house. 'I'll send her out.'

Seven

Saturday, December 22

I

During the morning, the cold weather disappeared from the capital. By 2.30, the matinee-goers in the stalls of the Theatre Royal, Haymarket were fanning themselves with their programmes; below them, in the tunnels of the Bakerloo Line, shoppers on their way from Charing Cross were pulling at the collars of their now unnecessary overcoats. Chefs in the Chinese restaurants of Queensway were driving their sleeves across their brows to keep the sweat from falling on the carrots they were dicing for the evening service; the mosaic tiles in the Regent's Park Mosque glistened with condensation and there was steam in the windows of the last bespoke tailor in Tulse Hill. In the department stores of Oxford Street, the atomised perfume spray hung static in the ground-floor fug, as people carrying folded coats pushed their way through the crowd, leaving piles of woollen scarves and gloves unbought, emblems of Christmas past.

At ten o'clock, Roger and Amanda Malpasse left their Chilterns house and set off for London and the Toppings' party. Amanda thought she could probably do all the shopping that remained and still have time to have her hair done before they went out. She had booked lunch at one in an Italian restaurant in Fulham Road; it was near their flat in Roland Gardens and had been run by the same people for twenty years.

Roger was reluctant to leave the country on a Saturday, as his routine was one to which he'd grown attached. An early dog walk, then an hour's vigorous gardening and a game of doubles on the all-weather tennis court of a village neighbour gave him a righteous thirst that beer, gin and tonic and a half-bottle of white burgundy, in that order, exactly satisfied. In the afternoon, he liked to listen to the football commentary on the radio in the 'snug' with his feet up on the sofa, some of the many dogs snoozing by the fire and the colourful nonsense of the newspapers spread about him. At about four, he closed his eyes; at five Amanda usually came in with tea.

Amanda, on the other hand, took every opportunity to visit London. In the redbrick mansion blocks off the Brompton and the Gloucester roads, in the boutiques and museums and cafes, she could still just recapture the lightness of her youth; she walked down Brechin Place and Drayton Gardens pretending to be twenty-three again. It wasn't difficult, because nothing much had changed there, and it wasn't too depressing because she wouldn't want all that passion and fatigue again. Not really.

'Just don't drink too much, Roger,' she said, cracking a lunchtime breadstick and sipping her aperitif. 'I don't want you getting pissed and making a scene at the Toppings' tonight.'

'Would I ever?' said Roger.

At noon, the removal van arrived at Sophie Topping's house in North Park. They took out all the furniture from the first-floor sitting room, then brought in a series of tables long enough for thirty-four guests and set them up on the ground floor. The normal furniture would be stored overnight and returned the next day; Sophie was fairly sure it stayed in the back of the van, but so long as it came back safely didn't like to make a fuss.

It took her two hours to finalise who should sit where. She was always torn between the need to keep two people known to get on badly as far apart as possible and a mischievous desire to put them next to one another; the same applied to men and women known to have what Lance called 'the hots' for one another. One way round this dilemma was to move people halfway through the evening, so they had both a hot and cold seat; but which was the better way round? Prudence suggested that the hot seat should come first; then, at half-time, the man would move on, wrathful or aroused, and take his vigour with him ... But Sophie wasn't feeling prudent: she was feeling proud of Lance, and playful and ambitious; so she did the placings with the cold seat first - to give the evening what she hoped would be a high-temperature finish. The footballer, Borowski, had telephoned only twenty-four hours earlier to say he was bringing his girlfriend, a Russian called Olya, which had caused Sophie a panic as she searched for a last-minute man. She had plumped for someone she'd met at a literary fund-raiser for talking books: Patrick Warrender, a seemingly civilised journalist. Shortly after securing Patrick, she'd had a call from Radley Graves, the schoolmaster, saying he had flu and wouldn't be able to make it. And this time she decided to let the numbers stay odd.

In all social matters, Sophie was motivated by a desire to win the competition with the other wives and mothers of North Park. It was an all-female, all-consuming endeavour; the husbands or partners were involved, but were not themselves participants. What the competition actually consisted of was unclear: there were no rules, no definitions of success and no prizes. In Sophie's mind, however, there was a virtual league table from which people were promoted and relegated. Money, naturally, played a part. Having the clear blue water of PS10 million in cash (what the bonus-bankers called their 'nuts') squirrelled away was a sound start. Next came good looks, notably appearing younger than your age. Having brilliant or - since exam grade inflation had made it hard to discriminate between them - charming children was vital. Their number also counted in your favour: four or more showed confidence, an unruly sexual life and impressive organisational ability. Perhaps the single most valuable factor in Sophie's mythology was the appearance of your house. Again, it was more than size and value; it was to do with the degree to which visitors were impressed by its decor and atmosphere - by its veneers and surfaces. Sophie was fairly sure that while she and Lance were in no danger of relegation from the premier division, they were not exactly pushing for the top places either; a glance at the football tables on Lance's back page suggested they were a social Everton.

The objective success of Lance Topping in becoming the party's newest MP didn't count for very much. In North Park, politics was rated below banking, broking, business or even 'creative' things, such as advertising. There was also the awkwardness of ostentation, of being too obviously in the spotlight, because this made it look as though you were trying too hard. The first rule of the competition was not to be seen to be competing; the second rule, so far as Sophie had worked it out, was not to be fat. There had been a chubby woman once, but she had moved - had to move, Sophie sometimes thought. As one who enjoyed three meals a day, not eating had been the toughest North Park discipline for Sophie to master. Most of the women she knew suffered low blood pressure, hypoglycaemia, stomach cramps or gastro-enteric disorders from having no lunch, no carbohydrates - but occasional cheesecake orgies. All of them thought it worthwhile, however, as their slimness belied their age, and in their own minds they edged a place or two up the fantasy league, displacing someone who had fallen prey to 'bar mitzvah' arms, love handles or cellulite.

There were no fatties tonight, Sophie noticed, though Micky Wright, one of her singles repertory, had always been broad across the beam - ever since they'd met at school in Epping. Amanda Malpasse was like a breadstick, lucky thing. Gillian Foxley, the agent's wife, was plump and motherly, but she didn't really count because she wasn't local; ditto Brenda Dillon, who'd obviously spent too long in the House of Commons tea room. Vanessa, John Veals's wife, was irritatingly slim and good-looking. Cold, though, Sophie thought; she doubted Vanessa ever went face down into a Pizza Palace family-size American with a two-litre bucket of Toffee Double Gush ice cream.

The thought of the evening ahead made Sophie Topping feel light-headed with apprehension. She decided to spend an hour in the gym before going to the hairdresser at two o'clock: that would still give her time before the caterers arrived at four and might calm her down a little. It was going to be a memorable night; of that alone in her competitive anxiety, Sophie felt convinced.

Vanessa Veals, far from thinking about food or competition, was wondering if she would ever see her only son again. A sword of guilt was driven up through her entrails as she sat by the orange and brown curtains, flicking through the out-of-date magazines in the reception area of Wakeley. It wouldn't have taken so very much courage, would it, to have gone up to Finn's room from time to time and have a talk with him? Suppose he'd been surly, and had made it uncomfortable for her. Suppose he'd been abusive and had hurt her feelings. Discomfort, hurt feelings ... These would not have been much to put up with if it might have meant saving him from whatever psychiatric black hole had swallowed him.

She put down the plastic cup of tea on the table and gazed through the window, where some of the patients were walking aimlessly over the bare lawns. She had never been to a psychiatric hospital before and had the unreasonable idea that the patients were kept in pyjamas. What could be the point of that, though, unless they were in bed all day, like physically sick people? Perhaps to make them conspicuous if they escaped.

Vanessa checked herself. 'Escaped'? What sort of word was that to use of an institution that suddenly contained her son? She knew nothing of this world, she was gradually having to admit; she had even been slightly surprised that such places still existed, vaguely believing they had all been closed down by the government. When people heard that Finn was in Glendale Psychiatric, she would be blamed. It showed either some here ditary weakness, unstable ancestry, or was a damning verdict on her motherhood; it was a public shame as well as a private devastation.

'Mrs Veals? I'm Dr Leftrook. Sorry to keep you waiting. Would you like to come this way?'

Dr Leftrook was a woman in her sixties with wiry grey hair; she reminded Vanessa of the old type of severe schoolteacher, possibly lesbian, with a hint of the arty in her John Lennon glasses and ecological sandals.

'Can I see Finn?' said Vanessa, taking the indicated chair.

Dr Leftrook sat on the other side of a desk. 'Yes, I don't see why not. But I expect you'd like to know what the problem is first.'

'Thank you.' Vanessa felt rebuked.

'Your son has something we are seeing increasingly often with young people. It's a disturbance caused by drugs - usually by genetically modified cannabis or "skunk". He's had a psychotic episode.'

'What does that mean?' Vanessa felt her mouth go dry. It sounded terrible.

'Psychosis is the name we give to the serious illnesses, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. It entails a more or less complete severance with reality.'

'My God.'

'What we don't know yet with your son is whether this will be a one-off episode, from which he should make a complete recovery, or whether it will be more serious and long-lasting.'

'When will we know?'

'Over the next ten days or two weeks we'll get a good idea. I'm sorry I can't be more positive at the moment. We know that schizophrenia has a strong genetic component, but we also know that other factors can be involved. A very large number of schizophrenics are heavy cannabis users in their teens, but the profession is divided as to whether there is a causal link. It may well be that people with the schizophrenic make-up are just more likely to indulge in drugs and alcohol. They already feel less attached to reality, they're naturally careless of their health. In fact, that's the majority medical belief at the moment.'

'And what do you think?'

'I would like to know if there are instances of serious mental illness in your family or your husband's.'

'None that I know of. But my husband's family only goes back three generations. Before that I don't know.'

'Well, that's helpful,' said Dr Leftrook.'That's a good sign. You may also hear people talk of something called "cannabis psychosis". I'd ignore that if I were you. It's not an established condition. But heavy use of the drug by teenagers is definitely very dangerous because their neuro-development is undergoing its final, infinitely subtle changes. It's like plunging a large spanner into those delicate works.'

Vanessa put her head in her hands and began to cry.

Dr Leftrook said nothing, for which Vanessa was grateful. Eventually, having taken a tissue from her bag and recomposed herself, she said, 'You'd better tell me what's the worst thing that can happen.'

'The worst is that your son has a schizophrenic inheritance and that his drug abuse has provided the catalyst to activate that inheritance. We can manage schizophrenic symptoms with modern drugs, but we can't cure the disease.'

'Ever?'

'No. But some patients can live a reasonable life.'

'That doesn't sound good.'

'No.'

'And what's the next worst?'

'That your son remains ill with psychotic symptoms which, while not strictly schizophrenic, are so similar as to make little difference. But if there's no genetic inheritance he may well recover completely.'

'After how long?'

'A year, perhaps. Two years.'

'And what's the best outcome?'

'The best hope is that your son has suffered a one-off psychotic episode and that with the right treatment and support from us and from his family, he will resume a full and healthy life within a matter of weeks.'

'And which do you think is most likely?'

Dr Leftrook paused and looked out of the window; Vanessa felt Finn's life hanging on the thread of her silence. 'I think,' the doctor said at last, 'that he'll be all right. I think we'll have him out of here and back to you within six weeks. But that's not a promise and it's not a prediction. It's my best guess.'

'But why has no one ever warned us of all this? Why have you people never--'

'Some of us have tried,' said Dr Leftrook. 'But I think it's a case of the profession being a little too scientific, almost too precise. Until a causal link is established, it's only correct to assume it's absent and that the coincidence of high use with psychosis is exactly that, a coincidence, and so--'

'But for God's sake,' said Vanessa. 'Just some clear warnings, just some bloody common sense would have helped, wouldn't it? Surely when you've seen all that you've seen and all the stuff you've told me.'