Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
LAUREL
To say my encounter with Dr Swinging-Dick left me bruised would be like saying a patient was bruised after a collision on the motorway at eighty miles per hour.
It wasn’t like I’d really been expecting him to be able or willing to give me a definitive answer.
It wasn’t like I’d hoped he would say, ‘Nigel Graham? I remember carrying out that surgery like it was yesterday!’ or anything like that.
But I’d hoped for something – any sort of clue that would give me another avenue to explore.
And I’d left with nothing. Worse than nothing.
His suggestion that we talk over dinner hadn’t been threatening or even particularly offensive – I’d dealt with far worse before.
But my reaction to it had startled me – the idea that he, a senior colleague, could exercise some sort of droit du seigneur over me was bad enough, but what had really disgusted me was the sight of that gold wedding ring gleaming on his finger.
Gray had worn a wedding ring too. I’d seen it the very first moment we met, when he extended his hand to help me up from the pavement outside his house.
The fact of him having a wife and a family had always been just that – a fact.
Something about him I’d found out at the beginning and simply accepted.
It had meant that we couldn’t see each other as much as we’d have liked to.
It had meant that the future of our relationship had been uncertain at best. It had meant a weight of guilt that I’d internalised and become accustomed to so quickly I ceased to notice it.
It was my guilt, my shame, my problem to deal with. But what about Gray’s? I’d heard Mel’s warning – He’s not a good man – but I hadn’t really listened. I’d been too invested to care what my friend thought of him – and besides, she’d never met him; she didn’t know him like I did.
But if Dr Swinging-Dick was sleazy and a cheater, had Gray really been any better?
For all I knew, I wasn’t the first woman he’d had an affair with.
There could have been other women, younger women, colleagues, women he was in a position of power over, who he’d slept with and betrayed his wife with.
I didn’t want to see him that way. I’d always managed not to see him that way, because he was Gray – he was different and special and he loved me. But was it – was he – really so very different after all?
If I looked at the bald facts, it was extremely hard to see how.
Stopping at a traffic light, a crowd of my fellow hi-vis-clad commuters surrounding me, and a wall of buses, cars and lorries behind me, I made an abrupt decision.
Instead of carrying on straight as I’d intended, I edged through the forest of bikes to the left-hand side of the junction, wobbling and apologising.
I turned off the main road, rode round three sides of a square and rejoined it at the junction I’d previously passed, this time heading south and then east, instead of north.
Navigating easily from memory, I rode back past the hospital, on through Islington and the City, until I reached Damask Square.
It was a warm September evening, and still light even though it was gone eight o’clock.
As I chained my bike to the railings surrounding the garden square, I noticed roses still blooming in the beds inside.
The surrounding houses and flats had their lights on, but many of the curtains and blinds were not yet drawn – although those in number eight were, I saw with relief.
I noticed a glow coming from inside number five, as if a light had been switched on at the back of the house while the front room remained in darkness.
You’re welcome to come and knock on my door, Orla had told me, when I’d said goodbye to her after settling Anna in bed. That had been the day of Gray’s funeral – almost three months ago. I hadn’t taken her up on her offer, but now here I was – drawn back to the square.
My legs feeling wobbly with fatigue, I approached the door and knocked. A few seconds later, I heard the quick tap of approaching footsteps. A brighter light illuminated the fanlight above the door, which opened after a moment.
Orla stood there, a look of polite enquiry on her face, wearing yoga trousers and a crop top, a cashmere jumper slung over her shoulders. I caught myself wondering how old she was – surely in her sixties, yet she dressed and moved like a much younger woman.
A smile broke out on her face when she saw me, the lines it revealed confirming my guess at her age.
‘Laurel. I hoped you’d come, and here you are. Come in.’
Suddenly conscious of my dishevelled appearance and the sweat I could feel trickling down my back under my luminous pink cycling jacket, I said, ‘If you’re sure it’s not a bad time?’
‘Of course not. The cats and I were making dinner, and I was going to open a bottle of wine. Would you like to join me?’
I realised then how hungry I was. ‘That sounds lovely. If you’re sure?’
She didn’t answer, but stepped aside with a welcoming gesture, and I followed her through the house to the kitchen at the back.
The glass doors to the garden were open.
In the fading light I could see a profusion of flowers, both wild and tended, and the smell of wet foliage drifted in.
Two cats, one tortoiseshell and one tabby, came hurrying to meet us with eager mews.
On the kitchen table were a white jug of roses, a frosted bottle of wine and a loaf of bread, still fragrant and steaming on the metal sheet it had been baked on.
‘Stop complaining, you two,’ she scolded the cats, scooping food into two bowls. ‘What will Laurel think of your manners? There you are then.’
Orla put the bowls on the floor and the cats buried their faces in them, crunching noisily. She pulled the cork out of the wine and poured two glasses, and I sat down on one of the wooden chairs.
‘Now,’ she said. ‘You must tell me how you’ve been.’
I took a breath and a sip of wine. ‘Okay. But also not okay.’
She nodded, turning to the kitchen sink and beginning to wash some lettuce. ‘Grief is like that.’
There was something about the tranquillity of that kitchen, something about Orla herself, that made it easy for me to talk.
I found myself telling her how I’d become consumed with the need to know about the recipient of Gray’s kidney transplant, how it had led me to my encounter with John Smith earlier that evening and the doubts that had arisen in my mind about Gray himself as a result.
While I talked, Orla made salad, sliced bread and arranged butter and cheese on plates. We finished our wine, and she refilled our glasses. Then she joined me at the table.
‘I knew Gray for a long time,’ she said. ‘But it also felt like I barely knew him at all. There were so many parts of him that were closed off – that I don’t think he ever opened up about, even to Anna.’
‘Did he ever speak to you about his friend – Joel, the transplant recipient?’
‘Only very briefly. Enough for me to form the impression that they’d been close, but weren’t any longer. Not that there’d been a rift, more that Gray had moved on. Or moved away – not just literally but emotionally, as if he needed to put distance between himself and whatever Joel represented.’
‘But you don’t know what that was – or why?’
She shook her head. I spread butter on a piece of warm bread, the nutty fragrance rising from it as the butter melted and soaked into the crumb.
‘There may have been something,’ she said, her head tilted to one side as if she was trying to dislodge a buried memory. ‘Something he said to me once – or didn’t say. It was connected to music, I think.’
‘Gray hated classical music.’
She smiled. ‘That and bananas. It’ll come to me, Laurel, and when it does I’ll let you know.’
After that, we talked about other things. Mostly, I just sat, basking in the comfort of that house as if I was a cat myself, until I started yawning hugely and realised that it was time for me to go home.
I was unchaining my bike from the railings when I heard voices approaching, one soothing, almost wheedling, the other raised in shrill anger. The voices themselves were familiar but the tones were so foreign it took me a moment to realise who they were – Anna and Lulu.
‘I’m not being unreasonable,’ Anna was saying. ‘Come on, darling. You know what you did was—’
‘Literally the crime of the century, according to you,’ Lulu snapped back. ‘Because you never stayed too long at a friend’s place and you never lost track of time and you never ran out of charge on your… Oh wait, you didn’t even have mobile phones then. Which is why you just don’t get it.’
‘Lulu, come on. I was sixteen once. Okay, I didn’t have a mobile. But I had friends and parents and rules I did my best to break. And boyfriends. And if I—’
‘God, why do you have to make everything about sex? For fuck’s sake, Mum. That’s just gross.’
‘I’m not making everything about sex. And don’t swear at me.’
‘What else am I supposed to do when you’re trying to ruin my life?’ Lulu’s voice was trembling now, at the pitch of emotion where anger was about to give way to tears. ‘I hate you. I wish Dad was here.’
I heard the sound of running feet and she appeared round the corner, her hair flying and her face already streaked with tears.
When she saw me she looked startled, then embarrassed, then muttered, ‘Hi, Laurel,’ before slotting her key into the door, bursting in and slamming it behind her.
There was no way to escape before Anna saw me. My stomach dropped – I’d been caught on her home turf, and I’d overheard her fighting with her daughter.
Anna approached number eight more slowly, almost wearily. She was looking down at the ground, and for a second I considered ignoring her and hoping she wouldn’t spot me after all. But that was cowardly and pathetic.
I stepped away from the railing, wheeling my bike like a barrier between us. ‘Good evening.’
‘Laurel.’ She didn’t look pleased to see me, but she didn’t look furious, either. ‘Sorry. We’ve been out.’
‘I…’ I wasn’t sure what would be worse: her believing I’d come to see her or her knowing I’d been to visit Orla. ‘That’s okay. I was just about to head home. I had a drink with Orla.’
Anna grimaced. ‘Always such a tonic. I might drop in on her myself. I take it you overheard that pleasant little chat with my daughter.’
I thought about denying it, but there was no point. ‘Some of it.’
‘Well.’ She looked at me coldly. ‘I’m glad I could give that bit of insight into our family life.’
I blushed. I knew what she must be thinking – that I would be feeling smug and vindicated at this evidence that Gray’s family wasn’t perfect. That I’d witnessed Anna scolding her daughter and might imagine her scolding Gray too.
Desperate to convince her that I didn’t see things that way at all, I said, ‘My niece is that age. They’d try the patience of a saint.’
Reluctantly, Anna cracked a tired smile. ‘Tell me about it. Sweetness and light one minute, spitting hellcats the next. I keep telling myself she’s growing out of it, and then something like this happens.’
‘I can imagine.’ She must have been shaken by the row, I thought, to be unbending like this to me, of all people. I kept my voice neutral. ‘It must be a difficult time for all of you.’
Abruptly, Anna seemed to remember who she was talking to, and her familiar prickliness returned. ‘Yes. We’ll be all right. We’ll get through it… as a family.’
It was a clear keep-off message. I swung my leg over my saddle and was about to pedal away when I heard myself saying, ‘I could drop her a message, if you like. Take her out for a coffee. She’s got my number, from before the hospital open day.’
Something stopped me adding that Lulu hadn’t turned up to it – from the gist of their conversation, I suspected that Anna might not know that, and I didn’t want to inflame things between them even more.
‘What? You want to have some sort of cosy chat with my daughter? Exchange reminiscences about her father? Is that it?’
‘Anna!’ I understood her wariness, but the idea that I might reveal the nature of my relationship with Gray to his daughter shocked me. ‘No! Of course not. Not that.’
‘All right,’ Anna agreed reluctantly. Then she stiffened further and added, ‘It’s not like I can stop you. Or her.’
‘Okay.’ I ignored her coldness. ‘I’ll do that. Take care, Anna. Have a good evening.’
I pushed down on the pedal and rode away towards home, leaving Damask Square and its inhabitants behind me – for the time being at least.