Back to work, Monday morning. Getting out of the house wasn’t too bad—I think it’s because the sun was shining. I’d managed to sleep better over the weekend, more than a few hours at a time. I made sure I ate three times a day, had some proper dinners, and it seemed to do the trick.
Even though the Monday-morning checking went well, I was still late, hurrying along the sidewalk, my breath in clouds in the frosty air. I heard someone behind me and turned with a start. It was Stuart. He looked so wonderful, so happy, so out of breath. “Hiya,” he said. “You walking to the Tube?”
“Yes,” I said. My step felt lighter already as he walked along beside me. “Listen, Stuart, I know I keep saying this every time I see you, but I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” he said. “Why?”
“You get enough of that sort of shit at work, I expect. You don’t need it when you’re off duty. And the other day, when you made me soup and I ran out on you. I’m sorry for that too. It was really rude.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, his chin buried in the collar of his jacket. I stole a look at him. “No, I’ve been thinking about that. I was pressuring you. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“But you were right. I need to do it. I’ve been thinking about it over the weekend. I’m going to go and find a GP to register with.” The words were out before I even really thought about them—where the hell did that come from? It was him, it was the fact that he was here and for some crazy reason I wanted to see him smile.
He stopped in his tracks. “Really?”
“Yes, sure.”
The look on his face made me laugh.
He kept on walking. We crossed the main street together, the noise of the traffic roaring. “Listen,” he said, “go to the Willow Road Medical Center. They’re the best around here, lots of really good clinics, they’re great, really friendly. Sanj—Dr. Malhotra—when you’ve registered, make an appointment to see him, okay? He’s a good guy. He’s nice, too.”
“All right. I will. Thanks.”
We went through the barriers at the Tube and parted company: he was going south, I was going north. I watched him walk away down the tiled corridor, a bag slung over one shoulder.
In the end I was home at a quarter to seven, held up dealing with some grievance procedure against a member of staff at the London office, which had somehow become my responsibility.
The table was all set, wine on the table, Lee in the kitchen, everything spotlessly clean. I had no idea how he did that—cook a meal without accumulating dirty dishes as he went along. He kissed me on the cheek. As well as cooking dinner, he was fresh out of the shower, his cheek damp and shaved and fragrant.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said.
“No problem,” he said. “It’s ready. Go and sit.”
This time it was spicy chicken with salad, fresh herbs, warm bread, cold sancerre.
“I called a few people,” he said, chewing. “It should be okay for Thursday. Might be cutting it a bit fine, probably best if I meet you there.”
“Oh. Okay.”
There was a pause while he drank. “You sure about this?”
“About what?”
“Me meeting your friends.”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
He shrugged, regarding me steadily. “It’s a big thing for me. Meeting people. Just so you know.”
“You don’t strike me as the sort of person who has trouble in social situations.”
“You still don’t know me very well, then.”
There was a long pause. “I’d like to know what job you do,” I said.
He stopped eating and looked at me for a long time. “You know most of it,” he said. “I work in the security industry.”
“That could mean anything,” I said. “I’m worried.”
“You don’t need to worry,” he said, his voice gentle. “Look, I just have to be careful, that’s all. It’s just better for you if you don’t know about it.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
His eyes clouded. “I could ask you the same thing.”
I gave up, then. “Look, we don’t have to go. To Maggie’s, I mean. Honestly. If you’d rather not—”
“It’s fine,” he said. “We’ll go.”
“Lee, it’s just dinner. It’s not a test.”
He chewed, then put his knife and fork down. “Dessert?”
Dessert turned out to be hothouse strawberries and muscat, which we ate and drank in bed. He didn’t say anything else about dinner at Maggie’s, or his job, and I didn’t either. I lost myself in the taste of him, in the sensation of his warm hands on my bare skin, knowing that tomorrow morning he’d be gone and I’d be back to being on my own again.
I did it. I finally did it. Tonight I got off the Tube at a different stop, a two-mile walk home, but one that took me down Willow Road. I was half hoping that the doctor’s office wouldn’t still be open at this time of the evening, but it was.
Willow Road led off one of the main routes, but it was surprisingly quiet, mews-like; the office had a small parking lot and several buildings grouped around it, including a dental office and a pharmacy. Everything was brightly lit up and the lot was full. Inside, everything was new and clean. Despite its being busy, the waiting area half-f, it all seemed calm and quiet and peaceful. In the corner was a small Christmas tree, twinkling lights and multicolored tinsel draped randomly around it.
“Can I help you?” the receptionist said as I got close to the desk. She actually smiled at me. I hadn’t been expecting that. She was young, petite, with a shiny bob of red hair.
“I was wondering if I could register as a patient,” I said.
“Of course,” she answered. “Hold on a moment, I’ll just get you the forms.”
I looked around at the waiting room. There was a corner set aside for children, with a bookshelf, and a big crate full of wooden toys. Three toddlers were steadily and purposefully removing everything from the box. An old man in a huge coat was asleep in the corner, his head resting back against the wall, mouth open to reveal a single tooth.
“Is he all right?” I said, when she came back.
“George? Oh, yeah, he’s fine. I’ll wake him up in a bit. He comes in here for a kip sometimes when it’s cold outside. Don’t worry, he’s not been waiting hours for an appointment or anything.”
She handed me a big brown envelope. “It’s not all forms. There’s a load of leaflets in there about all the clinics we run. Do you need to make an appointment now?”
“Oh. Should I?”
“Not if you’re okay. Often people only get around to registering when they’ve got something that they need to see the doctor for.”
I thought about it and wondered whether I would actually make it back here for an appointment unless I booked it now. “I think I do—need an appointment, I mean. Is it possible to see Dr. Malhotra?”
“Let’s see. Would you prefer to come after work?”
“Yes, if that’s possible.”
“Thursday at a quarter to seven? Would that do?”
“Yes, that would be fine. Thank you.”
“What name is it?”
“Cathy Bailey. Cathy with a C.”
She wrote out a card for me. “If you can bring the forms back before your appointment that would be great. If not, you can bring them with you on Thursday.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I could fill them in now, couldn’t I?”
I sat in the waiting room with a pen and the envelope on my knee as a makeshift support and filled it in. It was hard going. I didn’t want to think about my medical history, never mind write about it. But at least here, in this place, I could do it without falling apart. I sat next to George while he snored, and wrote about depression and anxiety and panic attacks.
I finished the forms and handed them back to the receptionist, made my way out into the dark street and headed back up to the noise and traffic. I fished in my pocket for my phone and sent a text.
S, I did it. Got appt for Thurs. C
A few minutes later, as I jumped on a bus that just happened to be going in the right direction, I heard the beep of a reply.
That’s great news. Fancy a brew? ;) S x
For some stupid, crazy, bizarre reason, the text wink and the “x” meant that I only had to check the front door once when I got in. Just once. I couldn’t remember how long since it had been just once. I stood there when I’d finished, waiting for Mrs. Mackenzie to come out, wondering how it was that I’d done it right first time. How was such a thing possible? I reached out to touch the door, faltering, when I heard the door to Flat 1 behind me.
“Cathy? Is that you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Mackenzie. How are you?”
“Fine, dear, you all right too? Cold out there, is it?”
“Yes, you’d better get back inside, you’re letting all your heat out.”
She went back in—to
EastEnders
, by the sounds of it—and the door shut again. I looked at the front door, at the locks, and I turned and went upstairs to start the checks.
Stuart took a while to open the door when I finally got up the stairs, and there he was, left arm in one of those slings made out of fetching pink sponge.
“What happened?” I asked, shutting the door behind me.
“Ah, I got kicked in the shoulder. It popped out. Bloody painful.”
He stood in the kitchen while I made the tea and he watched me. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “How are you doing?”
“Me? I’m fine. Really. Don’t you want to sit down?”
“Nah. I’ve been sitting down all day, it’s driving me mad.”
“So who kicked you in the shoulder, some sort of ninja?”
He laughed. “No, it was a patient. It was my fault—he got a bit distressed while I was asking some questions in an assessment. I got booted before I could get to the panic button. It’s happened before. I got a kick in the nuts once—now that
was
painful.”
“I kind of assumed you just sat with people and listened to them talking about their childhood.”
“I do that too, in clinics. But I spend a lot of the time on the short-stay crisis ward. In between all that I’m doing research, paperwork. Hence the long hours.”
I put a mug of tea on the counter next to him and made a start on the small mountain of dishes that had accumulated in the sink.
“I was just getting around to that,” he said.
“You were going to do it one-handed?”
He watched me and sipped his tea. “Amazing the things you can do one-handed if you put your mind to it,” he said. “So you’re going to see Sanj?”
“Yes. They’re nice in there, aren’t they? There was an old guy in the waiting room, fast asleep. They were just letting him sleep. I thought that was good.”
“Not George, was it?”
“Yes.”
“I could come with you on Thursday, if you like,” he said.
I looked at him, just a quick look up from his socked feet up to the jeans and dark green sweater that matched his eyes, to his poor tired face.
“No, thanks.”
After the dishes I microwaved some beef chili he’d made and frozen last week, and we sat on the sofa and ate. He told me about the two years he’d spent traveling in between his degree and his doctorate. He went into his bedroom and fished out a flash drive that he said held several hundred pictures, if I ever fancied a look at them. He said he’d always meant to get them put into albums but had never gotten around to it. Talking about traveling got him onto the topic of this crazy comedy show that he’d seen in Australia, and from there the DVD filmed at the Sydney Opera House came out, and as I laughed with him I realized that I was starting to relax. I was warm and tired and I was actually starting to relax.
When Lee was working, he was away for days at a time. Some days he phoned me constantly, texting me in between, asking how I was, wishing he was with me, asking what I was doing. Some days he clearly couldn’t use the phone at all and I was all alone.
Wednesday evening, heading home from work in the dark. I hadn’t heard from him since Saturday. I stopped at the supermarket and bought some groceries for dinner. I was going to make a chicken casserole, keep some for tomorrow.
Sunday and Monday I’d spent most of the day checking my phone just in case he’d called. Tuesday I only checked it a few times. Today I’d hardly checked at all. I wondered if he was all right. As I browsed through the fruit and vegetables I found myself thinking back to how long he’d been away. What was the longest time he’d been away from me, since we met? A few days, a week, but usually no more than a day or two would go past without some contact. I’d sent him a text on Monday evening but I hadn’t had a reply. I tried to call and the phone was switched off. This in itself wasn’t unusual; when he was working he often turned the phone off, or found himself somewhere where he couldn’t charge it up.
It felt strange, being without him. Despite how stifled I felt sometimes when he was with me, he made me feel safe at the same time. Now I was back to being alone, I felt exposed, insecure, vulnerable. In the supermarket I couldn’t help feeling that there was someone watching me.
By the time I’d gotten home, dumped the groceries in the kitchen and turned some of the lights on, I felt better. There was a missed call on the home phone; the number was withheld. I wondered if it was Lee trying to call, but he would have tried my cell first. I made dinner and sang to myself, looking forward to a soak in the bath with a book. When it was all ready I grabbed silverware from the drawer in the kitchen and sat on the sofa to eat.
If anything happened to Lee while he was at work, would I ever find out? Would I ever get to hear about it? He’d made it clear that none of the people he worked with knew anything about me. It was “better that way—safer.” What if he was hurt? What if he got into another fight, a bad one, and he ended up stabbed, or shot? Would I even know?
I washed the dishes in the sink and dried them, still thinking about him, where he might be, what he might be doing. I put the knife and fork away in the drawer and something looked odd. The knives and forks had been reversed in the drawer. I’d shoved the clean ones back in, and they were in the wrong place—one fork nestled in with the knives, one knife in with the forks.
They hadn’t been like that this morning. Or had they? I forced myself to remember making the toast. Where had I gotten the knife from? It must have been in the right place then or else I’d have been trying to spread my toast with a fork.
I grabbed handfuls of silverware and returned them to their usual places.
I couldn’t understand what had happened. I went upstairs to run the bath and as soon as I turned on the bathroom light I saw it—the laundry basket had been moved from the left side of the sink to the right side.
I moved it back.
Someone had been in here.
I went from room to room, looking for changes, looking for things that were different. It took me an hour to go through everything and when I’d finished I still wasn’t convinced that I’d done it properly. Was I going mad? Surely I couldn’t forget something like moving furniture around, or rearranging my silverware drawer? And why would I even do something like that? The laundry basket didn’t even fit on the right side of the sink—there wasn’t enough room between it and the bath, it stuck out.
The question in my mind was not so much who had been in here—there were no signs that anyone had broken in, therefore whoever it was had a key, which meant it had to have been Lee. The question was more—why? Why would he come in here and just start moving things around?
I kept looking, in case somewhere there was a note explaining it, that maybe had fluttered down out of sight when he’d shut the front door behind him. There was no note.