Susan Howatch - Mystical Paths

I opened my mouth. No words emerged. I clutched the phone and started to sweat.

‘It’s all right,’ said Marina rapidly. ‘She didn’t get far – the knife she chose was blunt. I got hold of the doctor and we managed to get her into that funny-farm near Banbury, the one where everyone goes to be dried out and detoxified. Emma-Louise went there after her first husband ran off with another man, Holly spent a month there after her first suicide attempt and Venetia’s sister Arabella practically lives there, so it’s all madly respectable.’

I managed to say: ‘Katie needs a hospital, not a chic rest-home! She needs a psychiatrist!’

‘My dear, there are oodles of psychiatrists there, they’re wall-to-wall. Anyway, I got Katie settled in and now I’m back in Oxford waiting for Katie’s mother to collect the children – that au pair’s good but I don’t think it’s right to give her total responsibility for three children in a crisis which could last some time. I plan to stay the night here, go back to the funny-farm tomorrow morning for a visit and then head for London. If you could come to my flat –’

‘What time?’

‘About three? Oh, and don’t forget I’ve moved from Cadogan Place – you do have my new address, don’t you?’

I flicked stiff-fingered through my address-book and eventually read aloud some words which included ‘Eaton Terrace’.

‘That’s it. Thanks, Nick.’ She hung up.

That night I walked in my sleep, and when I awoke the next morning I was lying on the library couch. That shocked me so much that I almost decided to visit Father Peters after all. Eleven years ago after my mother’s death he had cured me of somnambulism just as he had simultaneously cured me of triggering the poltergeist activity; he had taught me to stroke my psyche at regular intervals by prayer and meditation, and to channel the abnormal psychic energy out of my body by means of strenuous physical activity.

Remembering these vital lessons I devoted myself to reciting the mantra for half an hour. Then after attending mass I meticulously expended a lavish amount of energy on washing and waxing my car until it looked like a four-wheeled fantasy in an advertisement. But all the effort was worthwhile. By this time I was feeling well in control of myself, and as soon as I had finished an early lunch I drove off in my jet-black Mini-Cooper towards the road which led to London.

Marina now lived in a large maisonette, the bottom two floors of one of those houses which cost a fortune a stone’s throw from Eaton Square. There was a sixty-foot garden, all paved, with a fountain flanked by stone cherubs at the far end. Marina told me she planned to hold ‘happenings’ there provided that the summer weather was benign and the neighbours were tame.

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