Nicci French - The Memory Game

‘That’s a lot to represent,’ I said warily.

The last thing I wanted was an argument about who Natalie meant most to, but Paul just looked solemnly down into his glass. People started to move around the table and Crispin’s girlfriend, Claire, sat down on my right. She grinned at me. She had a bob of dark hair, half-way between Louise Brooks and a Beatle, and a round face like a teddy bear, made rounder by her granny glasses.

‘When’s it due?’ I asked.

‘God, is it that obvious?’

‘No, not really. I didn’t dare say anything at first. One of the worst experiences of my life involved congratulating a woman on being pregnant and it turned out that she was just fat. But if the woman who looks a bit pregnant is also wearing loose-fitting dungarees and she doesn’t drink or smoke anything for the entire evening, or touch the cheese, then I can take the risk of congratulating her.’

‘Bloody hell, I didn’t know I’d spent an evening sitting across the table from Sherlock Holmes. What else do you know about me?’

‘Nothing. Except that you look very well.’

‘I’m afraid you get a point deducted for that. I’ve been throwing up every day. I thought it was meant to stop after the first trimester.’

‘There’s no guarantee,’ I grinned. ‘A friend of mine was suffering from morning sickness while she was in labour.’

‘Thanks,’ said Claire. ‘That makes me feel really sick.’ She edged a little closer. ‘Look, I’m really sorry about this awful thing with your sister-in-law and everything else that’s been happening with you. It must be terrible.’

‘It’s all right, but thank you.’

‘And you were being very funny about that woman you saw but I thought she sounded horrid.’

‘I don’t know about that, but she isn’t what I need just at the moment. I think you would need to be in perfect psychological health to cope with Dr Prescott.’

‘You seem quite robust to me, Jane. You just need someone to talk to about it all. Look, you don’t really know me, and please just ignore this if it’s an irritation, but we do know this therapist who is the most lovely man. He might be just the sort of person you need.’

I must have looked doubtful because Claire became alarmed.

‘Alex isn’t a guru, or anything out on the fringe, Jane. He won’t be doing things with crystals. He’s a proper doctor, he’s got letters after his name and all that. The main thing is that he’s just great, a really nice guy. Let me give you his number. Which I haven’t got of course. Crisp, love, have you got Alex Dermot-Brown’s number?’

Crispin was deep in conversation with Paul about some technical matter and only heard the question when it was repeated.

‘What for?’

‘Don’t you think he might be a good person for Jane to talk to?’

Crispin thought for a moment, then smiled. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Be nice to him, though. He’s an old friend.’ His Filofax was open on the table and he flicked through it and found the number.

‘Here,’ he gave me a slip of paper. ‘Should your mission fail, Jane, we will of course deny any knowledge of you.’

The following morning I wrote a letter to Rebecca Prescott enclosing a cheque for the session and saying that I had decided not to proceed. Then, feeling foolish, I rang the number that Crispin had given me. The phone was answered and somebody said something unintelligible.

‘Hello, can I speak to Dr Alexander Dermot-Brown, please?’

More unintelligible speech.

‘Hello, is your mummy or your daddy there?’

This achieved something at any rate as the gibberish became the comprehensible ‘Dada, Dada’. The receiver was apparently snatched away from the first speaker who gave a high-pitched scream.

‘Be quiet, Jack. Hello, is there anybody there?’

‘Hello, I want to speak to Dr Alexander Dermot-Brown.’

‘That’s me.’

‘You’re a therapist.’

‘Yes, I know.’ There was a clatter in the background and Dermot-Brown shouted something. ‘I’m sorry, you’ve caught us in the middle of breakfast.’

‘Sorry, I’ll try to be brief. I was given your number by Crispin Pitt and Claire um…’

‘Claire Swenson, yes.’

‘Could I come and talk to you?’

‘All right.’ He paused. ‘What about twelve?’

‘You mean today?’

‘Yes. Somebody’s gone on holiday. If that’s not all right, it’ll have to be next week some time. Or the week after that.’

‘No, twelve will be fine.’

He gave me his address, in Camden Town, near the market. God, more disruption in the office. Not that it mattered all that much. ‘Work’ for me was the CFM office on the top floor of an old molasses warehouse overlooking the canal and the basin in Islington. The C – Lewis Carew – died of Aids in 1989. Now there was just me and the F, Duncan Fowler, and after the years of recession we were only just approaching a time where there was enough work for two of us. As long as I went to all the meetings concerning ‘my’ hostel and kept the paperwork up to date and popped into the office regularly then nothing much would go wrong.

I cycled over to the office anyway. I looked through the mail and chatted to our assistant, Gina (she’s our secretary, really, but we call her our assistant to compensate for paying her so badly). Duncan came in at eleven looking as relaxed as ever. Duncan is a portly fellow, quite short, with a nearly bald head fringed with reddish curly hair and an almost excessively expansive beard. I told him about some new complications with the hostel, he told me about a housing co-op job which would earn us even less money. Still, it was nothing much to worry about. I have no mortgage, and the children are away being paid for mainly by Claud. Duncan has no mortgage and is divorced with no children and no alimony. We own our leasehold. As Duncan put it in the dark days of the early nineties, before we could go bankrupt, we would first have to get some work.

I told Duncan I was going to see my second therapist in two days and he laughed and gave me a hug and then I got on my bike. I was predisposed to like Alexander Dermot-Brown because I was able to get almost all the way from my office to his house by cycling along the canal. I just had to cross Upper Street and then I could make my way through the wastes of gasometers and railway land past the post office depot and leave the towpath when I got to Camden Lock. Just a couple of hundred yards or so later I was chaining the bike to the railings.

Alexander Dermot-Brown was wearing trainers, jeans and a thin, worn sweater with holes in the elbows through which a checked shirt was visible. He had a craggy jaw, almost like Clark Kent in the old comic strip, and he had wavy brown hair flecked with the first hints of grey and very dark eyes.

‘Dr Dermot-Brown, I presume.’

He smiled and held his hand out. ‘Jane Martello?’

We shook hands and he gestured me in and downstairs into the kitchen in the basement.

‘Would you like some coffee?’

‘Lovely, but oughtn’t I to be going into a room and lying on a couch.’

‘Well, we can probably find a couch somewhere in the house if you’re desperate. I thought we should have a chat first and see what we think about things.’

With its ceramic floor and stained-wood panelling and cupboards, the kitchen would have seemed elegant if it had been empty. But there were toys on the floor, the walls were covered with posters, postcards and children’s drawings stuck haphazardly with pins and tape and Blu Tack. The walls were scarcely less crowded than the notice board, a largeish area of cork tiling above one of the work surfaces, on which takeaway menus for local restaurants, invitations, notices from schools, snapshots were attached in what looked like a whole series of layers. Dermot-Brown saw me staring around.