Liz Jensen - The Rapture

‘Is there a guest-list?’ I ask bluntly.

‘In Reception, I think,’ offers Jennifer. Clearly relieved I have found a project, Sheldon-Gray smiles, winks in a generalised way, and excuses himself: he and Jen are off to work the room. I part the seas again.

The guest-list is attached to a noticeboard on the wall just out of my reach. This feels dangerously like the final straw. After a few attempts at grabbing it I’m about to give up and go home when a large, tall man emerges from the mC1i.e of the hall wiping his face with a napkin. Spotting my predicament he strides over, rips the list down and presents it to me with a comedy flourish.

‘Thank you.’

‘Are you looking for someone on there?’ he asks. His accent is Scottish.

He is big and slightly overweight, with a soft-featured, pleasant, if unassuming face and an interesting oddity in his left eye — a splotch of green in the hazel-brown of the iris. ‘Not really. I’m just interested to see who’s here.’

‘Well,’ he says, pointing at a name. ‘Members of the great-andthe-good club mostly. But there I am. A non-member.’ Dr Frazer Melville, Department of Physics. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ He thrusts out a hand to shake. ‘And you?’

‘Gabrielle Fox,’ I tell him. His hand is warm and a little sweaty.

‘I’m a therapist at Oxsmith.’

Dr Frazer Melville — who I pray is not going to be a weirdo — is studying my face sidelong with forensic interest. ‘Shall we re-enter the fray?’ He gestures at an empty table just inside the hall, near the shelter of a large pot-plant. When we have made our way to it, he pulls up a chair and sits himself opposite me. ‘So you’re a Londoner.’

‘You can tell just by looking?’ I ask.

‘Yes. As it happens.’

‘Are you some new breed of urban anthropologist?’

‘No, but I’m a Scot, and one fish out of water can spot another.’

‘It’s not London that does that. It’s the chair.’ It comes out more grumpily than I intend. ‘But if you’re a physicist, maybe I could pick your brains about something. I have a patient who has a kind of climate-and-geology obsession.’

The big Scot smiles. I like the splotch of green in his eye. It’s like a tropical fish darted in and set up home. And his teeth. I like Dr Frazer Melville’s teeth, too, which are white and even and not too small for his face. This matters to me. He is probably — though this is totally irrelevant — about forty.

‘Sure. But I’ll be honest with you. I’m not planningto stay here long. I hate these functions, and I hate wearing this ridiculous costume. There’s an Indian restaurant across the road that won’t poison us.’

Immediately, the prospect of rejecting a chaotic buffet scrum in favour of a quiet curry has distinct appeal. In addition, Frazer Melville’s accent entertains me enough to make me want to hear more of it, and I like his attitude to the charity event.

‘But if you’d rather stay here with the thoughtfully assembled, er, amuse-gueules…’

I shake my head as a pesto confection glides past on a tray. ‘My turn to be honest. I can guarantee you that this thing I’m wearing is even more uncomfortable than your outfit, if we’re having a competition. I’m hitting seven out of ten on the pain scale here.’

‘Well, it may not be comfortable, but it’s flattering,’ he says, openly surveying my cleavage. ‘You’re a joy to behold, if I may say so.’ Oh well. I have put it on display, so it would be hypocritical to complain, I suppose. But I am on shaky ground.

‘My friend sent it. She’s a fashion buyer,’ I say quickly, feeling a radical blush spreading upwards from the flesh in question and blooming on my face like a Rorschach test.

‘What you need is food, Gabrielle Fox. I can see you’re hungry. May I?’

When he manoeuvres me out through the frenzy of the kitchen, I feel like a baby in a buggy kidnapped by its eccentric uncle.

Outside, I take charge of the chair again. The heat from the kitchen is still burning on my skin in the warm air. The blush hasn’t quite died down either. As we approach a zebra crossing side by side, I wonder whether I should tell him it’s my birthday. No: he’d offer to pay for the meal, and I can’t allow that. I stay on the pavement but Frazer Melville steps out jauntily, forcing two cars to brake hard. With a burst of inappropriate amusement, I realise that I am in the company of a man who might well turn out to be as dangerous as he is energetic.

Delhi Dreams, aromatic and low-lit, with flock wallpaper and red furnishings, is a classic British Indian with d6cor untouched since the 1970s. Ensconced at a quiet corner table, the physicist is telling me that he moved to Hadport from Inverness six months ago, having obtained a grant to continue his research at Hadport University. His background is pure and applied physics. He tells me that his current branch of study, fluid dynamics, covers a wide spectrum but, in the case of his PhD, involves the kinetics, pressure and flow of ocean currents. ‘But then I wanted to broaden things out, so I studied meteorology and started investigating air turbulence. Trying to discover why molecules move the way they do. Did you know that flocks of birds and shoals of fish and swarms of insects follow similar kinetic rules? It seems random but there’s a logic to it. There are lots of new theories around at the moment. None of which I can explain without drawing mathematical equations on a napkin and boring the pants off you. So tell me about this patient of yours.’

Wait! Me first! It’s my birthday! I want to blurt. But even if I could find an unchildish way of telling him it would still sound abrupt, incongruous and borderline tragic. He’d wonder why I’m not somewhere else, with friends. Which would set me wondering, too, and reaching dismaying conclusions. We order poppa-dums and a comfortingly aggressive house red, and I tell him about Bethany — who, in a last-minute nod to professional confidentiality, I refer to as ‘Child B’. I tell him about Child B’s Faith Wave background, Child B’s nihilistic delusion of being dead, followed by her breakthough with ECT, her intelligence, her intractability, her militant cynicism, her artwork. I can’t have spoken at length to anyone for a long time, because it’s like someone has unplugged a cork. I wonder if I sound a little obsessed with Child B — but if I am, it’s still a relief to discuss her with someone who isn’t in the business and will never meet her. ‘It’s like she’s always playing some kind of game with you. She’s unsettling. She claims to have the power to predict natural catastrophes.’

‘Meteorological or geological?’

‘Both. Just the other day she said, there was going to be a tornado in Scotland. And sure enough, there was.’

‘The one in Aberdeen?’

‘I have to admit I found it unsettling.’

He smiles. ‘You shouldn’t have because it’s emphatically a coincidence. Small tornadoes happen far more often than anyone realises. We get a lot in this country. Case dismissed. Go on.’

‘And she can sense things in people’s blood too, or so she claims. Blood and water and rock.’

‘They have more in common than you’d think,’ says Frazer Melville, tearing off his tie and shoving it in his pocket. The poppadums arrive and he attacks them with verve. ‘Why not make a note of what she says? Or better still, get her to write it down.’

‘She already does. She has notebooks full of drawings. But I don’t press her on the detail. It’s best neither to confirm nor deny a patient’s fantasy.’

‘That’s policy?’ This also seems to amuse the physicist. ‘You have a fantasy policy at Oxsmith?’

‘In a way. And not just at Oxsmith.’