I FORGOT. I WOKE UP THIS MORNING WITH TIRED EYES AND LINGERED in my bed. I pulled the crackling duvet up to my chin, warming my neck against the crisp November air seeping through the window. I heard Yeni and Margie downstairs, la-la-singing the Happy Happy Hippo song together and the high tink of cutlery against crockery as Yeni emptied the dishwasher. I smelled bittersweet coffee brewing on the stove.
The house yawned and stretched as the heating warmed the wooden floors; beyond the garden wall neighbors backed their cars out of garages, wheels rolling over damp leaves. Then I became conscious of the cold, dead space next to me in the bed.
For a fleeting, cozy moment I wondered why Susie was up already. I saw her in the kitchen, sipping a mug of coffee and eating an orange. I thought, she’s been up long enough for the sheets to cool down, and then I remembered.
I couldn’t face breakfast or a shave. I got a mug of coffee, hugged Margie for a bit, and then came straight up here.
I’ve found a box file with Gow’s prison files in it, the ones the hospital sacked Susie for stealing from the office. Sinky Sinclair’s suspicions were right all along. I bet he still wonders about that. Despite being a senior member of staff, she still wasn’t authorized to take them off the grounds. She was adamant that she hadn’t taken them. She lied to me. She was so insistent that she said “fuck” in front of Margie. Now I’ve found them here, five paper files and a computer disk sitting in a box file, on the right of the computer where she could reach them easily.
There are a number of matters I want to raise when I go to visit Susie:
1. Why has she never denied having an affair with Gow to me?
2. Where are the insurance papers for the house?
3. What in the name of the almighty fucking bollocks was she doing stealing these files and then lying to me about it? Does she think I’m an idiot or something? Does she think I’m going to take an infinite amount of shit from her and still stand by and save face for her? Has she no regard for my dignity? Am I some sort of pointless prick she thinks she can push around?
I think those three months of us both knocking around the house after Susie had been sacked, before the phone call and her taking off to Cape Wrath, I think they were the happiest of my life. I knew she wasn’t happy; she was forgetful and ratty. She’d lost her wedding ring and was sure she’d left it at Sunnyfields. I bought her another one, a smaller one, which she never wore, and fooled myself into believing that she was adjusting to a new pace of life. I thought she’d get into it, slow the rhythm down. I thought, it’s okay, we’re fine for money, we can spend more time together, just the three of us. I even dared to wonder whether we might have another kid.
It was during that time that the mist came into the front room. It was July and I’d left the front-room window open when I went to bed. When I came down in the morning, the garden mist was all through the room, a swirling fog at chest level. I walked slowly through it, and the damp cloud closed in around me. As my bare feet came down on the red kilim carpet, they smashed the settled dust of water droplets and left perfect photographic prints. I told Susie when she came down for breakfast, but the mist was gone by then, and she listened but didn’t understand. It felt like a dream sequence, and now I think maybe it was. No one around me was living in the same reality. What sort of self-centered buffoon would mistake a cataclysmic event in his wife’s life for a splendid opportunity to spend quality time together? I’m a fool, a selfish fool. I hadn’t a clue what was going on. Rome was burning and I played Dixie on the spoons.
This study’s a mess. Susie’s left bits of paper everywhere, all over the floor, on the desk, Blu-Tacked to the wall; there are even some on the window. I haven’t been in for a while because she’d taken to locking the door and I didn’t want to pry (another clue I completely missed/rewrote/dressed up as a lady rabbit). There’s a photograph stuck to the glass on the skylight, a picture of Gow and Donna’s wedding, with Blu-Tack smeared angrily over Donna’s face. The light shines through it so it’s a translucent picture of Andrew Gow standing with a headless woman. It’s creepy. I’ll take it down.
These prison files trouble me intensely. I want to talk to Harvey Tucker, Susie’s colleague from Sunnyfields, to ask him if what he said in court was right, if Susie had been seeing more of Gow than could be justified professionally. I got the feeling he didn’t mean to insinuate that. During his evidence I looked up at him and he seemed uncomfortable, as if he’d been railroaded into saying things. I’ve got this in my notes:
PROSECUTION: How would Mr. Gow come to be spending time in Dr. Harriot’s office?
HARVEY TUCKER: I’m sorry, I don’t understand.
P: How would any prisoner come to be in the office of a psychiatrist? Can they just walk in and demand to be seen?
HT: No, of course not. They’d first of all have to approach an officer and ask to see someone. Then the officer would refer them on to the psychiatrist.
P: [looking incredulously at the jury] Is that the ONLY way? [He raised a hand in a rainbow gesture as he said it. He really was the most awful ham.]
HT: No, well, we could ask to see them as well.
P: A psychiatrist can call a prisoner to their office?
HT: Yes [faltering] within reasonable hours . . . some prisoners—
P: [cutting him off] We have submitted into evidence Dr. Harriot’s appointment book for the two months immediately prior to her dismissal. Is four hours in the space of three days a usual amount of time to spend with a prisoner?
HT: That’s hard to say [looking very shifty].
P: In this sort of case, where the initial paperwork is done, the risk assessment is done, no one has asked for a new report: would it be usual in such circumstances?
HT: I don’t think it’s poss—
P: JUST a yes or no will suffice, Dr. Tucker.
HT: No.
P: Not a usual amount of time?
HT: [quietly] Not usual, no.
Tucker was very uncomfortable when the prosecution dismissed him, as if he had something else to say.
Anyway, I phoned him just now but got no answer. I left a message asking him to call back, said it was important. I hope he doesn’t think I blame him or anything. I know Sinky Sinclair was responsible for Susie’s getting sacked, not him, but I don’t care about that either at the moment, I really don’t. I can see how the lawyer got Tucker to say what he did. I’m not in a blaming frame of mind, I just want to ask him about it.
It’s obvious in hindsight that Susie was going through some huge crisis before she took off for Cape Wrath. Looking back, it’s so clear. At the time I thought she was just being huffy and withdrawn. She was so insistent that she hadn’t taken Gow’s file, even after they sacked her. That was a massive, throbbing, neon-ringed clue. Sunnyfields only has one applicant per post. It’s so hard for them to recruit for forensic psychiatry, they wouldn’t have fired her unless they had absolutely no other option.
Margie’s gone down for her nap, so I’ve come back up here to do a bit more tidying. This is a nice room. I never thought that before. It’s more of a converted closet than a room. It’s warm because it’s at the top of the house, and there’s a wee stereo. The skylight Susie had put in last summer frames the top of next door’s oak tree and stops the room from being suffocating. The plain white walls and the low bookcase keep it airy and fresh. And of course there’s this computer, which I’ve never been allowed to use because I’m a Luddite and might break it. All I need is the word processing to write up the papers as I sift through them for the appeal. I know how to put the machine on and off and I can save the things I’ve written. That’s all I need to do, really.
Once you’re sitting at the desk, the narrowness of the room and the high sloping ceiling make it feel cozy. It’s only when you’re standing in the doorway, balancing on the shallow top step and looking in at someone else sitting here, asking them when they’re going to come down and spend time with you, that it seems claustrophobic.