Four
By the time Colin arrived at the flat I had drunk the bottle of Sociando-Mallet, another bottle of a Margaux, and I had just started on a third bottle, of a St Emilion. There was nothing much he could do for me that night except help me to bed. He left a note for me asking me to call on him at his consulting rooms near Belgrave Square when I awoke. I found the note when I came downstairs the next morning. There was no food in the flat, so I drank a glass of white wine and went to call on Colin.
The waiting room where Colin worked was done up like a drawing room, with stiff, uncomfortable chairs, and rows of this month’s glossy magazines laid out on a low glass table. I picked up a copy of Country Life and turned its pages without reading anything, while I waited for Colin to find a gap between his other patients’ appointments.
When I went in to see him, he was sitting behind a large partner’s desk with a thin brown folder open in front of him. He waved at me to sit down in the chair opposite.
‘Morning, old boy,’ he said. ‘How do you feel?’
Colin himself looked healthy, and much younger than the reflection of myself I had seen in the mirror that morning. ‘I’m fine,’ I assured him.
‘You were into your third bottle by the time I arrived. Do you often drink that much wine, that quickly?’
‘No,’ I said. Then, because I thought it was important to be accurate if Colin were to help me, I added, ‘I mean, yes, I do sometimes drink a few bottles, but I usually take more time to appreciate it.’
‘I see,’ said Colin, and made a note.
‘I was a bit stressed out yesterday,’ I explained.
‘Quite. I quite understand. All the same, three bottles is a lot of wine for a single person in a single day, let alone in a couple of hours.’
‘I suppose it is,’ I agreed. ‘I’ve never really thought of it like that.’
‘I’m going to take you on as a patient,’ said Colin. ‘That is, if you want me to help you.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ I replied.
‘I’m very expensive.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I’m very grateful.’ I was grateful. It would be so nice to have someone taking an interest in me, now I was on my own again.
‘There might be more expense on the way,’ Colin warned me, ‘because I think the first thing you ought to do is check yourself into The Hermitage. I’ll make all the arrangements, but you need to understand what we are trying to achieve. You need to want to do it.’
‘I’ll do anything that you suggest,’ I told him. ‘What happens at The Hermitage?’
Colin stood up and stretched, then walked around the desk and sat down again in a chair on the same side of the desk as me. ‘I’m not a specialist in the treatment of addictive behaviour, ’ he explained.
‘I’m not addictive,’ I protested. ‘That’s people who smoke dope, or use syringes. Drinking a little wine isn’t addictive.’
‘I’m afraid I think that it is,’ said Colin, ‘and if you want me to help you, you must be ready to listen to me and then take my advice. Otherwise, we will risk wasting each other’s time.’
‘Of course,’ I said. The thought that Colin might drop me before he had really begun to help me frightened me.
‘Wilberforce,’ said Colin, ‘the causes of addiction can be both familial and genetic. Often it is both. Did anyone in your family drink?’
‘I don’t know who my real parents were,’ I said. ‘My foster parents never did.’
‘It is a disease,’ Colin explained, ‘and in the end it is a disease of one’s own sense of self. Until you can understand that, and truly accept that you need help that only someone, or something external to you can change the way you are, you will never be cured.
‘The Hermitage offer special programmes for people, like you, who have got into the habit of drinking too much, or who have become addicted to drugs of one sort or another. They have a programme called the Twelve Steps, which is based on the work of Alcoholics Anonymous. They have a good record of helping people. I recommend you enter yourself into one of their programmes. It would mean going down to their place in Gloucestershire for a few weeks to give it a try.’
‘Of course; if that’s what you suggest, I’ll do it.’
‘It’s far from being cheap,’ Colin said, ‘but, if you can afford it, I can’t think of a better way to tackle this. Wilberforce, you’ve got to want to do it. Otherwise it’s a lot of money down the drain.’
‘I’ll do it,’ I told him.
The Hermitage was a large country house, set in rolling wooded countryside. When the taxi brought me down the drive, it reminded me at first glance of Hartlepool Hall; but Hartlepool Hall didn’t have modern wings, and brick-built staff houses, or a car park. I went into the hall, and it was like checking in at a country-house hotel. There were cut flowers everywhere; a smiling, elegant woman took down my details and made a print of my credit card; then a porter took my suitcase and showed me to my room.
It was an elegant room. It was faultlessly decorated: a pale-green carpet, green floral curtains tied up with velvet cords, a large double bed with a cream bedspread, and a door into a large bathroom. A bay window looked out on to a wooded valley with a stream running down it.
I was just unpacking my clothes when there was a knock at the door. I went and opened it and saw a man, younger than myself, with hair cut very short, wearing a short-sleeved khaki shirt and blue jeans. Although it was January and there were still patches of frost in the valley where the sun had not been able to reach, the temperature inside the house was very warm.
‘Hello,’ said the young man. His eyes glinted cheerfully behind round, horn-rimmed spectacles. ‘I’m Eric.’
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’m Wilberforce.’
We shook hands. I wondered what he wanted.
He said, ‘We’re going to be spending some time together, and I just wanted to introduce myself. Have you had lunch?’
‘Not yet.’
‘There’s a canteen, but for now I’m going to suggest you and I have a light lunch together, to give ourselves time to get to know one another before you meet some of our other guests. If I call back in ten minutes, would that suit you?’
‘Very well, thanks.’
Quarter of an hour later we were sitting in a small room in one of the modern wings I had noticed. The room was sparsely furnished. There was a sideboard with a sink unit built in, a table, two chairs, and a whiteboard. A small fridge stood in one corner. On the table in the centre of the room there were two places laid, and two plates of smoked salmon and lettuce. A jug of water sat in the middle of the table.
Eric said, ‘Ah, smoked salmon! My favourite.’
We ate the food. It tasted of nothing. Eric poured me a glass of water and watched me drink it. It tasted of metal and effluent. He said, ‘You’d rather be drinking wine, I expect.’
‘No,’ I lied.
‘You see,’ began Eric and then stopped. He said, ‘What can I call you? I can’t call you Wilberforce.’
‘Everyone else does,’ I said.
Eric shook his head: ‘It sounds so formal, using your surname. We’re not formal here. We can’t be. You and I need to become really good friends. Do you mind if I call you Will instead?’
‘If you want to.’
‘Great, Will. If you’re comfortable with that, then I am. I’m going to tell you a little bit about myself. We will be working hard together, and you need to know about me, and to trust me, Will. I was an alcoholic once.’
I gazed at him. It was quite possible: at any rate, there seemed no reason to disbelieve him.
‘You’d never guess it to look at me now,’ he said with pride. I did not reply. Eric went on, ‘You know, I was drinking a bottle of whisky a day. A day! Can you believe it?’
I didn’t know what to say, but Eric wasn’t waiting for my responses. He wanted to talk about his life as an alcoholic.
‘Yes, a bottle a day. I was a wreck. I lost my job. My wife left me. But I couldn’t stop drinking. Then, one day, some friends took me to a group at our local church, which helped people like me. And they got me to take the first step.’
Eric got to his feet, picked up a marker pen and wrote on the white board: ‘Step One: We must admit we are powerless over alcohol. We must admit we cannot manage our lives.’
He sat down again, and jerked his thumb at the scrawl on the board, which I could barely read. He said, ‘That’s the first step, Will. Just now I admitted to you I was once an alcoholic. My own life started to change from the day I finally found the courage to admit it to myself. That’s our process here. We need to admit we’ve got a problem. After that, there will be more steps that we will have to take together. The first step is the biggest and most important. After that, we will take them one at a time. That’s how we live our lives here: one step at a time. But with my help, and God’s help, you’re going to find the strength to walk this road with me and at the end you will be cured, just as I am.’
‘Did your wife come back to you in the end?’ I asked.
Eric looked a little put out. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But that’s another story.’ He rose to his feet again, went across to the fridge and took out a can of Diet Coke. ‘Want some?’
I shook my head. He popped the can, upended it and took a long pull on it. A trickle of Coke ran down his chin and the side of his neck, which he wiped away with his finger. Then he put the can down beside the sink and came and sat down again.
‘So, Will, my question today is: do you think you’ve got a problem? Let’s look at some of the issues around that, shall we?’
‘I do like drinking wine,’ I admitted. ‘I mean, I can drink it, or not drink it, as I please. But I do enjoy it. I’m very interested in it.’
‘Wine is a good drink,’ said Eric, ‘in moderation. Our Lord drank wine. And how much wine do you drink, Will?’
‘I like to try different wines. I enjoy comparing the tastes. I keep notes. It’s a great interest of mine.’
‘Will, you’re not really answering my question,’ said Eric. ‘How much do you drink each day?’
‘Oh, it can vary,’ I said, ‘but I suppose three or four bottles a day.’
‘A day!’ exclaimed Eric. ‘Four bottles a day!’ He got to his feet again, and went to the sink, finishing off his can of Diet Coke. He came back and sat down again.
‘Will, I want to say something. You’ve got a big problem. But you’ve also got a big heart. It took courage to do what you have just done: to admit that you are powerless to stop drinking wine. That’s great.’ He went and wrote on the whiteboard: ‘W. drinks four bottles of wine a day.’
He returned and said, ‘That’s a lot of wine. That’s nearly fifteen hundred bottles of wine a year.’
‘I collect wine. I have quite a lot of it.’
‘Really?’ said Eric. ‘And what do you call quite a lot?’
‘I have a hundred thousand bottles in my cellars - maybe a bit more.’
Eric said, ‘Will, we’re not going to get this done if you’re going to be flippant. This is very serious stuff we’re doing here. This is about your life. This is about changing the rest of your life. So in this room we tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’
‘I am telling the truth,’ I said. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’
Eric looked at me sadly. I had disappointed him in some way. He went and wrote again on the whiteboard: ‘I have a hundred thousand bottles of wine.’
He came back and said, ‘You dream about wine, don’t you, Will? You dream about that wonderful wine cellar, where there’s always more wine, where you can always go and find another bottle.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Except that it’s not imaginary.’
‘I used to dream that I had my own off-licence,’ said Eric wistfully. ‘I dreamed I had shelves and shelves of whisky: Bell’s, Famous Grouse, J & B, and Johnny Walker Black Label. I dreamed I could go there whenever I wanted to get more whisky. It was such a dreadful feeling when I awoke, to find that the whisky wasn’t there after all. I used to curl up in a ball on my bed, and cry like a baby.’
‘Yes, that must have been very hard for you,’ I said with sympathy. ‘But I’m very lucky: I really do have a lot of wine,’ I said. It seemed important that Eric should understand this point. ‘I drink a lot of wine. I’ve told you that. But that’s because it’s my hobby. I inherited some wine from a friend. He built up a fantastic collection. As far as I know, it is one of the largest collections of Bordeaux in private hands in this country.’
Eric smiled. ‘OK, Will, you have a hundred thousand bottles of wine. You probably have a million bottles of wine, in your wonderful, secret cellar. OK. But do you own the wine, or does it own you?’
The afternoon continued in this vein. Eric drank more Diet Coke. I longed for a glass of wine, but I knew I had to go without for a while. After an hour or two of conversation with Eric, which was becoming tedious, I decided it would be better, for Eric’s sake and mine, if I pretended that the undercroft did not exist.
Eric was very pleased with me when I admitted that point to him. He said, ‘I’m so proud of you, Will, for owning up to that. It’s like you’re telling me you understand the need for truth. If you can be honest with me, you can be honest with yourself. You’re close to taking the first step.’
I ate alone in my room that night. Eric said it was too soon for me to meet the other guests, but tomorrow I could join in a group discussion. When I had finished eating the tasteless food, I went and lay on my bed and thought about Catherine. Would she have approved of me being here? I thought she would have been very proud of me. For some reason a memory came into my mind of Catherine and me sitting together at a metal table on the pavement outside a bar, somewhere near our hotel in the Faubourg St Honoré, on our last visit to Paris together. It was a sunny day, warm for late October, and we were both drinking white wine.
Catherine said, ‘I hope we can always have happy times together like this, Wilberforce.’
‘What could stop us?’ I said.
‘Because sometimes I worry about you drinking too much. It’s not that I mind you drinking a bit. You’ve earned the right to enjoy yourself, God knows, and I’d be the last person to get in the way of that. But I do worry sometimes. It makes you look ill. You look so much nicer, when you aren’t drinking.’
‘You mustn’t worry,’ I said, ‘I’ll be all right. And you look very good to me at all times.’
‘Darling,’ she said, smiling. Then she added, ‘I only mean, if it’s between the wine and me, I hope you’ll choose me.’
I raised my glass to her, and she raised hers in reply and I said, ‘I’ve already chosen you.’
I remember how we sat smiling at each other in the autumn sunshine, while we finished our wine together.
Then, as I lay on my bed and remembered how she looked that day, and the sound of her voice, at long last the tears came. I mourned for Catherine for the first time since her death. I couldn’t remember what had happened, or why she had been taken from me; but I understood at last the full reality of my loss. She had been taken from me, and now I had to sort out my life. I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a long while, before finally making the effort to undress and get inside the bed. Before I went to sleep, I said, ‘I choose you, Catherine. Not the wine.’
The next morning Eric came to take me down to breakfast. All meals were served in a smart self-service canteen. A dozen other tables were occupied by people either sitting alone or in groups of two or three. There was not much conversation. Eric and I collected some coffee and toast, and went and sat together.
‘Great bunch of guys here,’ said Eric. ‘There’s Dave, who’s a methadone addict - really nice guy: he’s a florist. Pete, who’s sitting with him, is coming off a whisky habit. I can relate to Pete, ha ha.’
I could see nothing out of the ordinary about either Dave or Pete: two quiet, middle-aged men having a cup of coffee together.
Eric looked around him. ‘That girl over there - she’s Wilhelmina from Utrecht.’ I looked across and saw a tall, pale girl with spectacles, and long, straight red hair, sitting alone at a table. ‘She got drunk the other day on two glasses of white-wine spritzer, and checked herself in here. I don’t know what we can do for her. She’s rather weird. That large man at the service counter - that’s Mick. Everybody here calls him ‘‘Big Mick’’. He’s a tax accountant from the City, with a telephone-number salary, he tells me. He also has a drugs-and-violence problem: he’s a crack addict. But he’s a very, very sweet man so long as he’s not high. He has his own special plastic cutlery. We don’t like him around knives. But don’t worry about him: he’s more likely to damage himself than anyone else.’
Big Mick was about six foot three and eighteen stone, balding and heavily muscled. He wore a blue tracksuit and was helping himself to a generous cooked breakfast. I decided I would avoid Big Mick.
After breakfast there was a group meeting in a large conference room. Eric and another caseworker called Angela managed the session. The rest of us sat in a semicircle of chairs around the table where Eric and Angela sat. Angela spoke first. She said, ‘It’s important at these sessions that we listen as well as talk. You must tell the truth about yourself if you can, and be prepared to listen to others tell you the truth about yourself. Eric will facilitate our session this morning.’
Eric stood up, a tin of Diet Coke in one hand, and said, ‘People, I’d like to introduce you to Will here. Will’s going to tell us why he’s here in just a moment, and then I’m hoping some of you will share your own experiences with him. I want Will to know that he’s not alone. I want him to hear how all of you have struggled, and stumbled, but have taken one step and then the next on the road to recovery. Are you happy to talk to us about yourself, Will?’
I nodded, and everyone looked at me expectantly. There was a silence.
‘Oh, I see,’ I said. ‘You want me to say something now?’ Angela said, ‘Yes please, Will. We truly want to share your problems with you, and work with you to achieve the right outcomes.’
‘Amen!’ said Big Mick.
I said, ‘Oh, well, there’s not a lot to say really. I drink wine. I love wine, in fact I collect wine. I’m very interested in it.’
I stopped and Eric looked at me, and then prompted me by saying, ‘But one day . . . ?’
‘Oh, yes, and then for various reasons I decided I ought to come here because I was probably drinking a bit more than I should be.’
‘Will was on four bottles of wine a day before he came here,’ said Eric, with dramatic emphasis on the word ‘four’.
‘The Lord protect you!’ said Big Mick.
‘Thanks very much,’ I said. ‘Anyway, one day my wife was killed in a car crash so I thought I’d better get a grip on my life and I went to see a friend; he’s a doctor, a very nice chap called Colin whom I was at university with, and anyway Colin said he thought I might be drinking too much, and so I said well, what can I do about it? and he said—’
‘Slow down, slow down, Will,’ said Angela.
‘How awful,’ said Wilhelmina. ‘Your poor wife was killed.’ She started to weep silently and took out a large handkerchief and blew her nose.
‘Was you driving?’ asked Dave.
‘No, my wife was driving; it was an accident.’ I felt exhausted, talking about myself in front of all these complete strangers.
Big Mick said, ‘I smoked crack and I was possessed by demons and beat my partner, so that she left me. But then the Lord spoke to me and told me to check myself in here and now I am cured. Praise the Lord!’
‘Well, very nearly cured, Mick,’ said Angela.
Wilhelmina had finished weeping and now she, too, had something to say. ‘I was overcome by drinking some wine and I was at a party and I kissed a man and we went away and he did, oh, such things to me, and because of the wine I let him. Now I am a poor sinner without hope, and all because I drank too much wine.’
‘You just had a good time,’ said Dave. ‘I wouldn’t let it get you down.’
The morning passed away with further reminiscences of this kind and then we broke for lunch. I sat with Big Mick, who seemed to have taken a shine to me.
‘He’s not a bad bloke, your Eric,’ said Big Mick confidentially to me. We were sitting together at a table eating pasta and salad. Eric was talking earnestly to Angela at another table.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m sure his heart’s in the right place.’
‘Yes, and he was a bit of a piss artist in his own right, once upon a time,’ said Big Mick. ‘It wouldn’t take much for Eric to be sucking on a bottle of whisky again - know what I mean? Anyway, tell me what you do in the real world?’
‘I used to be a software developer. In fact, I used to own a software company until recently.’
‘Really,’ said Big Mick. ‘I know all about that. I’m a tax accountant. I specialise in corporate stuff, sheltering high earners and private equity types from paying more tax than they need to. What was your company called?’
‘Wilberforce Software Solutions,’ I told him. ‘But I sold it to Bayleaf, and it’s Bayleaf UK now.’
‘Great business,’ said Big Mick. ‘Those are excellent software packages. I use them myself. I’m really pleased to meet you.’ He reached across the table and took my hand and shook it.
For a while we sat and talked happily about tax computations, and the deficiencies of Inland Revenue software.
Later, when we were on our own together, Eric said to me, ‘I was so pleased to see you getting on so well with Big Mick. Not everyone can adapt to him. I expect you were talking about religion, were you?’
‘In a way,’ I agreed.
Eric and I continued our daily sessions together, and every day there would be a group session as well where we traded experiences. Some of the members of the group went; others arrived. When it was Big Mick’s time to depart he gave me his business card and said, ‘Get in touch some time, if they ever let you out of here. We could maybe work on some ideas for new software packages together, now that I’m cured.’
‘Are you cured?’ I asked.
Big Mick winked and said, ‘One step at a time, Wilberforce. One step at a time.’
I did try to get in touch with him a few months later, but when I rang the number on his card I was told that he’d left the office. I kept asking questions and in the end I found out that he had been shot dead by his crack dealer in a disagreement about money.
Eric continued to work on my case. We spent an unproductive morning talking about God.
‘Are you OK about God, Will?’
‘In what way, exactly?’
‘I mean we believe that it helps in this process if you can put your trust in a Higher Power. For me, that’s God. But, Will, if you don’t want to talk about God, that’s cool too.’
‘I don’t think it would be especially helpful,’ I said.
Eric looked at me with pity mingled with regret. ‘I think that’s the wrong judgement, Will, but, hey, it’s your judgement. Maybe we’ll talk about this again.’
The next day was more difficult. Eric went to the whiteboard and wrote: ‘A list of all the persons I have harmed.’ Then he turned to me and said, ‘This one isn’t an option, Will. If you want to get better, you need to understand that your illness may have caused harm to other people. You might have made them sad; you might have hurt them, like Big Mick did; you might have stolen from them, lied to them, or deceived them in other ways.’
Eric looked at me expectantly. I looked back at him. As I so often found with Eric, I had no real idea what he was talking about. I said nothing, so Eric wrote on the whiteboard: ‘Mrs Wilberforce’. Then he smudged it out and wrote, ‘Mrs Will’.
‘Catherine,’ I corrected him. ‘But I didn’t harm her. It was an accident.’
‘Don’t tell me she sat and watched you drink and wasn’t hurt by it in some way,’ said Eric.
‘I know what Catherine suffered because of me,’ I said. ‘Yes, Eric. I may have caused her unnecessary worry.’
‘Was there anybody else?’ asked Eric. ‘There usually is.’
Ed Hartlepool. Eck. Catherine’s parents. My foster-mother. My foster-father.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I can’t think of anyone.’
‘Yes, you can,’ said Eric. ‘There is someone.’
‘Catherine left Ed of her own accord,’ I said. ‘It was nothing to do with me, or drink, or anything.’
‘That’s interesting,’ said Eric. ‘We’ll come back to that later. But I wasn’t thinking about your friend. I was thinking about you. It’s you who has been the most harmed by drink.’
I supposed that was true, when I thought about it. I had harmed myself. My life was not better than it had been before I discovered wine; it was worse, immeasurably worse. The day I had first entered the shop at Caerlyon had led me into a new world. I had discovered friendship; I had discovered a kind of happiness that I had never known before. I had discovered I could love somebody, when I met Catherine. I had discovered wine, when I met Francis. Wine had brought pleasures of a different sort. In the secret garden I had entered that evening long ago, it was the fruit in the garden that turned, in the end, to ashes in my mouth. Wine had brought its own labyrinth of experience with it, in which one might twist and turn for ever, forgetting where the entrance to the labyrinth was, forgetting how to leave. If I had not gained the things I had gained - the friendship and the love - I would never have had to experience the loss that I now felt.
I put my forearms on the table, rested my head on them and closed my eyes. I wished I couldn’t hear Eric’s nasal voice, full of triumph, as he said, ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. Now we’re making real progress.’
I finished my course at The Hermitage three weeks later. Eric had arranged an ‘exit interview’ for me with Angela.
‘I’m too close to it, Will,’ he told me. ‘We’ve had our ups and downs, but we’ve worked together as a team and I feel terrifically close to you as a result. I think you’re a really great human being, Will - just a bit of personal development required for you to be able to return to the outside world and lead a full and meaningful life.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Don’t let me down, Will. Don’t leave here and throw all our hard work away. There are demons lurking in the thickets, Will, who will whisper to you to turn aside from the straight and narrow path you must tread. Take this pamphlet. I know you don’t believe in God, but He believes in you, and He can help you. It’s all written down in here. I refer you to page nine specifically.’
‘Thanks, Eric,’ I said. I took the pamphlet without looking at it.
‘Hugs,’ he said, and before I could escape he put his arms around me and squeezed me in a tight embrace. He smelt faintly of perspiration and disinfectant.
‘Thanks, Eric,’ I said again.
‘God be with you,’ said Eric with a sob. He turned away, and I left the room.
The exit interview with Angela was different. She was a tall, cool, severe-looking woman with short-cut straw-coloured hair, a determined mouth and firm chin. She said, when I went to see her for my final meeting, ‘Mr Wilberforce. Come in and sit down. How do you feel about things, now you’ve spent some time with us?’
‘Much better,’ I said.
‘I’m in two minds about your case, Mr Wilberforce,’ she said. ‘Eric’s given you an excellent report. He says the two of you have bonded well together. But Eric works with his emotional intelligence. He gets very involved. It makes him a good caseworker, don’t you think?’
‘Very good,’ I agreed.
‘I’m more of an observer, however,’ said Angela, ‘and what I have observed in you is a great ability to mask your feelings. I don’t really know what you’re thinking. I’m not sure what your level of buy-in has been to what we do here. I think you are walking along the edge of a cliff, which you could still fall over. I am not sure you have understood or accepted everything that we have told you, or shown you. What do you think?’
‘I feel it has done me some good,’ I said slowly. ‘I don’t want a drink right now.’
‘Hang on to that feeling,’ said Angela. ‘I think we have achieved something together. But I believe in clear outcomes to cases. I don’t think we’ve got one with you. I think you’ve made progress, but I don’t know whether you can change your behaviour altogether.’
‘I feel I’ve made progress, too,’ I said. It was true.
‘Come back and see us in six months,’ suggested Angela, ‘and then we’ll see how much progress you have made.’
‘Thanks, I will,’ I promised. But I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see Eric again.
‘That’s a deal, then,’ said Angela. ‘We’ll keep in touch with your doctor, in any case.’ She stood up, and we shook hands.
Half an hour later I was sitting in a taxi and on my way back to the station; then home to London. And when I got there, what then?