‘So how are you coping? How has it been?’ There was something in Denise’s tone; it took me a moment to realise she was addressing me not as a colleague but as a patient.
‘Numbing,’ I said. ‘I talk to him a lot. There are things I don’t understand. Things only he can explain.’
‘Yes,’ Denise said. ‘The suicide of someone close raises questions we can rarely hope to answer. And that knocks us off balance. Can you tell me how your feelings have evolved? Is that something you’re able to do?’
‘Most of all I feel great sorrow and great pity for Tom. I feel deep sadness and loss for myself. Regret and guilt about the past. Anger with some people’s behaviour. And terrible bewilderment about the whole thing. That’s where I’ve got to.’
‘I think we discussed this when you asked me about your friend whose father was killed. We spoke about the unanswered questions that make death so painful to cope with.’
‘We did. And back then it seemed interesting in a detached sort of way. But it’s different now . . .’
‘Of course. Things are different when they happen to us rather than to other people. And how are you – in yourself, I mean?’
‘Okay . . .’
‘You can see why I’m asking about this. It’s partly because suicide has a genetic component. Your mother and your brother both killed themselves.’
‘I can’t picture a dejection so awful that it would stop me wanting to see the spring, if that’s what you mean. If my life fell apart I’d still want another go at things. I’d always want to see what life could bring.’
‘Yes. And it’s true that you haven’t sunk into inertia. Far from it. I wonder if there’s even a bit of the opposite going on . . .’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning the way you’ve thrown yourself into all the chasing around, the compulsive pursuit of answers. It’s about Tom now, but it struck me first in connection with Ibrahim. I just wonder if there’s a bit of mania about it, a bit of obsession?’
‘You mean, am I turning into Captain Ahab?’
‘Yes, something like that. And if you are becoming Captain Ahab, perhaps you need to ask yourself if you understand – I mean really understand – why you are so driven . . .’
‘Am I doing it to help Ayesha, or for some motive of my own?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘To do with Tom, you mean?’
‘Maybe. But perhaps more even than that. I wonder if you’ve been conflating the two deaths. I wonder if the answers you’ve been pursuing are not just about these individual deaths . . . but about death itself.’
‘I’m not sure I follow.’
‘Is your obsession directed not just at solving Tom’s death and Ibrahim’s death, but at solving death itself? Are you trying to pursue death, to pin it down? Talking to you and reading your notes, I have the impression that you’re waging a one-man assault on mortality, trying to deconstruct it by unleashing the powers of reason upon it, trying to defuse it, draw its sting . . .’
‘That sounds a little hubristic. How exactly do you see me conducting this assault?’
‘Wasn’t it Shakespeare who said that what we understand we tend to forgive? Maybe not Shakespeare. I sense that your mind is straining to understand death, to chronicle it and grind it down with your reason . . . So that when you finally understand it you will be able to forgive it; you will reconcile yourself to its purpose . . .’
‘I can’t say I’ve ever thought of it that forensically.’
‘I’m not saying that you have. Powerful emotions can drive us to do things without us knowing why. All I would say, Martin, is that you aren’t going to triumph over your own mortality by playing the detective in someone else’s.’