Still clutching her flowers, Sara made her way swiftly across the grass and pulled open the sliding door. She was at once stilled by the atmosphere inside that was created by hundreds of candles, single tealights, set out on the floor and on little tables around the water’s edge. Feeling that her entrance violated some almost divine, ceremonial atmosphere, she pulled the door closed behind her lest any breeze should blow them out. Hundreds of flames flickered and twisted in obedience to the gust that she had brought with her, righted themselves and burned true. It was so beautiful, so warm and quiet that Sara, as her eyes gazed at the golden light which gleamed off the water, wondered if she had been mistaken about the noise. No one was here. Just then, the dark water shivered. She followed with her eyes the darker line below its surface which, as it moved, sent a gentle wake which lapped up to the pool side. Someone was under water, swimming the entire length of the pool. The water broke when the shape reached the far end. The naked figure which emerged with its back to Sara, not quite far enough away to escape the candlelight which cast its glow along the body’s edge, flattering or perhaps just showing it as it was: male and strong. Stephen Golightly stepped over to a chair and picked up his towel. Turning and peering, he laughed with surprise and called, in a voice that boomed sonorously across the water, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have.’
‘Whu-uh? Sorry? Uh?’
‘For me?’ He gestured at the bunch of flowers which hung half wrecked and forgotten in Sara’s hand. As she stared, Stephen Golightly continued to stand smiling at
her as if entirely unaware that he was naked. Then he took his towel and began to dry his face. While his head was covered, Sara took a long, involuntarily fascinated look at his groin, whose main attraction was wobbling rather endearingly as his arms energetically pummelled his hair dry. Stephen pulled the towel away from his head and began to walk a little unsteadily towards her end of the pool. As he walked he knotted the towel, as an afterthought, round his middle.
He had stopped smiling by the time he reached one of the tables from which he picked up a bottle. Sara had not noticed it, or the glass, behind the candles. Stephen was now looking at her seriously.
‘Come on, I don’t bite,’ he said, gently. His speech was not slurred, exactly, but his tongue sounded thicker than it should be. ‘You’ve heard, obviously. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry about everything.’
Sara stood rooted, tears now beginning to pour down her face, still clutching the damn flowers. Stephen took them from her and laid them down, then led her by the hand to a pile of lounger mattresses and towels spread out on the floor. She took the glass he offered and drained it. When she had finished the vodka she covered her face in her hands, feeling rather pointless, so she asked for another. She had not eaten for hours and had only dozed on the plane, so the fabulous stuff was hitting her just where it needed to. Stephen gave her more and when she had drunk it, he refilled the glass and drank that himself.
After a silence he said, rather unnecessarily, ‘I’ve had quite a lot of this already.’
Sara nodded. She could see now that his smiles had
been rather forced. With his face now in repose he looked almost as bad as she did.
‘It’s all over,’ he said, waving an arm loosely. ‘All these lights, they’re for the aromatherapy burners. We buy in bulk. This is the whole damn lot. Go out in a blaze, I thought.’
‘It’s very pretty.’
‘There’s no one left now. I’ve cancelled new admissions. The clinic’s gone. I’m leaving—’
‘Have they found out any more about Warwick?’
Stephen shook his head. ‘They’re looking for Leech. They seem quite sure it was him. They’re interviewing people, people he knew, people from here.’ After a silence he said, ‘But they’ve let that other man go, the husband of that Japanese woman. It was in the
Chronicle
. He didn’t do it, he’s gone back to Japan.’
‘Oh no. Really? But he
did
do it. They just can’t prove it. Andrew was—Oh, God, it doesn’t matter.’
‘To be honest, I’ve had my mind on other things.’
‘Of course.’
‘Sara, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry about James. I promise we did all we could.’
‘Don’t tell me about it, I can’t bear to hear it. Not yet. It’s too late. What are you doing swimming at four o’clock in the morning, anyway?’
‘I love this place. It’s my last night. One last night, and I thought I’d spend it here. Clinic’s finished. One last night before I leave.’ Stephen smiled unhappily.
‘You sound very final about it.’
‘Well, I’m realistic.’ He poured himself another drink and sipped it. ‘The clinic’s finished. Everything happened rather quickly down at the RUH. The police came and
took medical files for the coroner, before I could, well, tidy them up. Yes, they’ll look into everything very thoroughly, I have no doubt.’
He looked earnestly at Sara. ‘I’m human, too. I make mistakes. Doctors do make mistakes. But I want you to know I’ve genuinely tried to help my patients. I didn’t want anyone to die. I hope people will at least give me credit for that, afterwards.’
‘After what? The inquest, you mean?’
‘No. I mean after I’m struck off. I’m leaving, of course. I have to leave. I’ll be struck off, but I have always genuinely tried to help my patients.’
Sara half sat up, indignant. ‘But why? Are you saying you were negligent? Do you mean it didn’t need to happen? They said complications following surgery, that’s all.
What—’
‘No, no. No, there’s been no negligence.’ Stephen sighed heavily, sat up and filled the glass from the near-empty vodka bottle.
‘That’s not why I’ll be struck off,’ he said, sipping and handing the glass over. She drank, waiting for him to explain while he stared across the pool.
‘Why will they, then?’ she challenged him, not understanding.
He looked at her, thinking about her usefulness. ‘I’d like to tell you. Of all the people who could have walked in here tonight, I’m glad it’s you, do you know that? It might be good to tell you. I’d like to think you understood, even if you didn’t forgive. I haven’t hurt anybody.’
‘
Why
will you be struck off?’
After a silence in which they both drank some more vodka, Stephen said, in a voice now definitely slurred, ‘I
set up the Sulis a few years after my wife died. I used all of the money she left. It was a lot, but barely enough. We struggled. The first two years I don’t know how we stayed open. I had a patient called—I shouldn’t tell you her name, but she was local, she had a title.’ He turned to her earnestly. ‘What happened was an honest mistake. This lady—she’d been to see me in town down at the surgery and I’d sent her for some tests. When the results came back they were with lots of others and it was a busy morning. I saw her to discuss her results which were not at all good. A bowel problem. Intestines.’
‘Intestine? Oh God, not Lady Wallace?’
Stephen nodded. ‘She raised the idea of spending time at the Sulis. It was her own idea. I have never, ever tried to sell my clinic to my NHS patients. It would be completely unethical. I manage to keep the two things separate because I don’t make any money from the Sulis, it’s non profit-making. I only intended to take a salary from the Sulis after I’d retired from the NHS.’
‘Don’t talk to me,’ Sara said, pouring herself another drink, ‘as if I were a bloody medical ethics tribunal.’
‘Sorry. Anyway, I didn’t bring up the idea of the Sulis to Lady Wallace because I honestly didn’t think it would help, but she was desperate, and I agreed the relaxation and diet might help her palliatively, so to speak, so in she came, the next day.’
‘And?’
‘Well, she began to get better immediately. Quite spectacularly better. I was astonished. So I went back to her notes, and I found that I’d made a mistake. I’d discussed someone else’s results with her. They’d somehow got into
her notes, clipped to her own results, which were fine. You see? She wasn’t really all that ill to begin with.’
‘What about the poor sod they did belong to? They
were
ill. What happened to them?’
‘Oh, I put that right. I said they’d been delayed, had her in to give her the news within a couple of days. She did quite well for several months. Dead now,’ he said.
‘Oh, well, that’s all right, then,’ Sara said sourly.
‘But Lady Wallace, she was very well connected, she knew everybody. I know it was wrong, but since she was getting better anyway I decided not to tell her about the mistake. I just couldn’t risk the blunder getting out. It might have finished the clinic off. I wasn’t seeking to gain anything for myself. You do see that, don’t you? I wasn’t trying to get anything out of it.’
‘Except,’ Sara said, slurring, ‘her undying gratitude. I suppose she went home and told everybody about the wonders of naturopathy. And did the clinic no harm at all.’
‘That was the general effect, yes, but I promise you I didn’t plan it that way. I just wanted the mistake covered up and as she was better there seemed no harm in keeping it from her that she wasn’t ever really ill. I’ve always played down the notion of miracle cures. But she didn’t. She told everybody. And the clinic took off. I wasn’t comfortable about it, at first.’
Sara sighed. There was something self-important in the seriousness he attached to his misdemeanour. ‘I don’t see why you’re talking about leaving. I think you should stick around and explain this yourself. Nobody suffered, not really, not even the patient who died, if you gave her the right news straight away. Here, have a drink.’
Stephen took the glass and drank. After a short silence Sara said, ‘I must go. It’s getting light now. I’m so tired.’
‘No, wait. I’m going to tell you the rest. That wasn’t the end of it. The reputation I got after that—it was hard to let it go. So I did it again. Only with a few patients of my own, of course, not with referrals. I couldn’t risk another GP’s interference. I would just sometimes paint a rather worse picture of the condition and its prognosis, you see. If it involved hospital tests from outside the practice I would just rewrite them, do a similar letter with different results. I even did pretty good logos you know, you can on a PC. Or I’d show the patient someone else’s X-rays—I’ve got dozens now. And a spell at the Sulis would produce an amazing benefit, then, you see? It kept the clinic’s reputation up and my patients were so grateful when they got so much better. I felt good, too. I really was helping them.’
‘You were deceiving them!’
‘But I made them feel
better
!’
There was another silence. Sara said suddenly, ‘Joyce. Joyce’s X-ray—that was a fake, wasn’t it?’
‘How did you know that?’
Stephen’s stricken face and the farcical story seemed suddenly, through the vodka, bitterly funny. She snorted, ‘Because, Doctor, she’s only bloody well got
one
kidney. And you showed her, and me, an X-ray with two.’ She sniggered at the tawdry, idiotic deception.
‘You have to admit, though, she was getting better.’
‘You sound almost proud of yourself.’
‘I’m not, not after what’s happened. But I was trying to keep the place going, for Ivan, too. He needs the stability. You do understand, don’t you?’
‘You haven’t told anyone else this?’
Stephen shook his head. ‘Nobody knows, but they will. They’ll soon find out.’
There was another pause. ‘What about Alex Cooper?’
‘Who? Oh,
Alex Cooper
. I thought you were talking about a patient. Oh, Alex was a strange girl. I’ve no idea what made Alex tick.’
‘Really? She had a crush on you, didn’t she? Is that why she left?’
Stephen cleared his throat. ‘She got very silly one night, and after that she said she couldn’t stay. I certainly didn’t encourage her, by the way. I was her employer. And it was extremely annoying, her leaving so suddenly.’ He smiled wanly at Sara. ‘Not my type anyway. Too thin, too young. Boring girl.’
Sara allowed herself to feel indirectly flattered by this. ‘When she left, I suppose she couldn’t say why, could she? If that was the real reason, you rejecting her, she couldn’t say so.’
‘I suppose not. She just left. Why are you interested anyway?’
Sara shrugged. It didn’t much matter to her now. James was dead and she was dead drunk. They drank in silence. The candles’ reflection burned on the pool’s shining water, and the plants hung graceful in the golden light. What matter if paradise be false, if it be paradise?
Stephen said, ‘The water’s lovely. Why don’t you go in?’
Sara could not really think why not after seven or eight vodkas, but managed to say that she had no swimsuit before she realised how very Alex Coopery it sounded. He was a doctor, for God’s sake, he’d seen bodies before and anyway, had he not just told her that he had other, more
serious things on his mind? He was looking at her now with a look of slight, amused disappointment.
‘You go on up to the shallow end,’ he said, ‘and get yourself into the water, and I’ll stay here and promise not to look. All right?’
Of course he was not interested in her, not sexually. She’d observed as much when he was drying his hair. And no wonder, she thought, since she was showing herself to be more of a provincial prude than a free-spirited water goddess, but she got up and walked down the length of the pool to the steps at the far end. Stephen was lying on the mattress staring up at the roof where the candles reflected their watery light. She stripped off to her knickers and then calculated that she would feel much less ridiculous with them off than on, so got rid of them too.
The water folded over her like cold silk and she murmured, dipping her face and head as she swam while the water pulled out her hair and dragged it like black fronds down her back. She knew she must be drunk, but how could this amazing feeling, as if her body were being stroked by cool water for the first time ever, have anything to do with the muddy flattening of sensation that usually came with alcohol? It was not simply that the feeling of the water seemed new, her whole body felt new as well, like a rather nice present she had just been given, a body capable of any number of delicious sensations that she had hitherto only heard about. She glanced up. Stephen was still lying on his back, possibly even asleep. She turned on to her back and floated, raising one arm, then the other, letting them flop heavily back into the water like oars, watching the drops of water flick off her hands and splash back to the surface. With a kick she turned again and slipped
under, slithering along close to the bottom of the pool, listening to the silence.