Losing My Identity Page 12

  ‘On my side.’

  He grunted approval. ‘Me too. Turn round and snuggle in then. Night-night, Leila.’

  She lay awake. He seemed to be already asleep. Typical. She nestled against him. As long as he didn’t snore, she could surely cope with one night without her radio and earbuds?

  She fell to contemplating her theory that all women feel the same to a man. It was her professional opinion that the biological urge is always stronger in the male. So he doesn’t really compare. One woman or another, or a melon, or liver in a jam jar (wasn’t that in Portnoy’s Complaint?) But men feel different to women. She’d been afraid of that. Having a new memory to try to forget.

  Leila woke, full of amazement that she’d been asleep.

  Hari was grinning at her. ‘I think you slept well?’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Ten past seven. Don’t worry – far too early to get up, on a Sunday.’

  She hadn’t shared with him her usual close acquaintance with the shipping news. He’d think it too weird (though how appropriate for her, since she steered her course through life using dead reckoning).

  She must have slept from just after midnight, for seven hours, straight through – something she hadn’t achieved since she was a teenager. ‘Oh God – did I snore?’

  ‘Not at all. Why – did I?’

  ‘I don’t suppose I’d have noticed.’

  ‘Stay cosy, and I’ll make us some breakfast in a while.’ He nuzzled her neck. Then he gave a little strangled cry, as if he were in pain.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Och, just. Why did we have to wait till now? We were born at almost exactly the same time, in the same city. Probably my mother was still in the hospital with me when yours came in. You were born in Rottenrow, right? We were both with our parents in the same crowd to watch the last tram.’ (They had ascertained this from earlier conversations.) ‘We went to similar schools. We were both clever kids. We both studied medicine. Why couldn’t we have met when we were eighteen?’

  Leila assumed he pictured them as a Glaswegian version of Barack and Michelle Obama.

  ‘At least we’ve met now.’

  ‘That’s what I love about you – well, that among other things. You’re a glass-half-full girl. But it seems like such a waste. Our lives could have been so different.’

  Mine certainly would. Kids, my career on a back burner. Well, she’d been there before, and her answer had been the same then: no. She had her own way to make in the world.

  ‘You’d have hated me when I was eighteen.’

  ‘I’d never have hated you!’

  ‘I might have hated you then. Could never abide men with hair.’

  But she couldn’t make him laugh.

  ‘It’s not good to think about it, Hari. That way madness lies. This is the time we were meant to meet.’ Hark at Leila, the philosopher.

  ‘I suppose you’re right. That’s a very Indian way of looking at the world.’ At least he was smiling again. The he emitted another deep sigh. ‘Will you stay again tonight?’

  ‘I need to go home and get some clothes!’

  ‘We’ll do that as soon as we’ve had something to eat. You will stay then? I can’t promise the same level of service as last night, but I’ll do my best.’

  ‘I think maybe we need to move the bed out from the wall a little before tonight then.’

  That giggle that made her toes curl. ‘We were a bit noisy, weren’t we?’

  ‘Everyone must have heard. What will your neighbours think?’

  ‘They’ll be happy for me. They’ll be telling one another, “the Hindu boy got lucky at last”.’

  ‘They think of you as a boy, do they?’

  ‘Indubitably. I’d say their average age must be late eighties. Even the ones in the top flats. We’re a hardy bunch, here in Dowanhill. All maiden ladies of the old school. Well – a couple of widows too, I suppose. The local population’s very stable. People don’t move from these flats, it seems. Most have lived here for at least fifty years.’

  ‘You know them well? I hardly know any of my neighbours.’

  ‘That’s a shame. I find it terribly useful to know them. They all mother me shamelessly. And I’m shameless enough to enjoy it.’

  ‘You got to know them all in a year or two?’

  ‘They’ve known me for ages. And they all know what a celibate chap I am. “Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.” You know who said that?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Samuel Johnson.’ He was trying to lighten the tone. He sensed the tension building in her.

  ‘I thought you’d only lived here for three years or so?’

  ‘I’ve owned this flat since 1984.’

  She drew back from him involuntarily, more precipitately than she’d intended.

  ‘This has been my only home for three years.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I thought you’d always lived here alone.’

  ‘I have. Always slept here alone too, Leila. I’m not saying I didn’t have the odd fling. But not here. This has been my sanctuary.’

  She should have taken a warning from the change in his tone. ‘Why did you buy a flat if you had another house – was it too far to travel to work?’

  He sighed, and removed his arm from around her waist. ‘I needed a place of my own. In fact, I’ve spent most of my nights here, ever since I bought it.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘My wife never stayed here, if that’s what you’re wondering. Now, what’s wrong?’

  ‘I just thought…’

  His scalpel voice now. ‘Leila, I’m lying here with you after we made love very passionately last night. I’m delighted that you’ve agreed to be back here with me tonight. And for many, many nights to come, I hope. This isn’t the time I want to lay some trip on you about how my wife didn’t understand me. It’s irrelevant anyway. I’m with you now. And you’re the only lady I ever invited to spend the night here. And by the way – nothing here is from the other house. Not a single, solitary item.’

  ‘Not your glass collection?’

  ‘Of course not. I already told you, that would have been regarded as more junk to gather dust.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ But she didn’t know if she was all that sorry. She recognised that she came from a dysfunctional family – generations of dysfunctional families, by the sound of it. Hari’s childhood sounded as if it was so conventional as to be boring. He had no excuse.

  ‘So am I. I should probably have explained to you before,’ he added. ‘I realised you’d have questions. Can it wait till we’ve at least had a cup of tea? Give me a kiss. I don’t want us to rise from bed having had harsh words with each other.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it either.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  He hugged her close. She tried not to resent the way he had ultimate control over his emotions. On and off like a tap. Not a cold person; just ultra-controlled.

  ‘OK. But you can ask if you ever want to. I assure you, there’s nothing lonelier than being with someone you don’t love any more.’

  Yes, I do know that.

  ‘Friends?’ he asked.

  ‘Friends.’

  ‘Possibly more than friends?’

  ‘That’s certainly how it might seem to the casual observer.’

  He disentangled his limbs from hers. ‘Tea.’

  Not only tea. He produced a veritable feast of fresh fruit – blueberries, rasps, loganberries (where in earth had he found those?), slender watermelon wedges he’d sliced down precisely to the skin. Watching him as he fanned one out to eat, bending back the dark green skin and taking such undisguised, childlike pleasure in biting into the flesh, gave Leila an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach. His every action was sensuous.

  ‘You’re too quiet and thoughtful, Leila. What do you want to know?’

  �
��What do you want to tell me?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it at all. It all seems so distant now. I’m very happy, being with you. I don’t want to remember unhappy times. But I already promised I’d answer anything you want to ask.’

  Two can play that game, my lad. ‘I don’t want to talk about it either.’ Then she decided to run with what had been gnawing at her mind. ‘If you always lived here alone, why did you go to the expense of putting in an en-suite bathroom?’

  ‘Because my mother lived with me in her final year or so,’ he said simply.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘When I said no woman ever lived here, I knew you weren’t thinking of mothers.’

  Leila felt another guilt-trip coming on. She hadn’t even bothered to go home to Greer when she was dying, never mind buy her a bathroom of her own. Her mother had almost begged her to come back to look after her. She’d gone in hard on the ‘I’m not getting any younger’ line. But Leila had said firmly that she needed to put in another few months in Devon, where she was getting her feet under the table after two years of bovine TB vaccine trials for Scheiffers. She hadn’t believed her mother could possibly die suddenly. The woman still painted every day of the week, and her hand was steadier than many a fifty-year-old’s. Greer couldn’t have known she was ill.

  And of course, within a few years of Greer’s death, Sam’s.

  ‘I bought a new bed, by the way,’ Hari added.

  With a supreme effort, Leila composed her face into an approximation of a smile. ‘That’s nice,’ she said.

  He laughed. ‘Nice? Are you listening to a word I’m saying?’

  ‘Not really.’

  He pulled her up from her chair and slapped her playfully on the bottom. ‘Time for some exercise, blow those cobwebs out of your head.’

  ‘I need to get home for some clothes.’

  ‘Then we’ll do that first.’

  Ten

  Hari strolled round the flat with a proprietorial air while Leila flung clothing into a bag.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘You have no burglar alarm – that’s silly. These days, in any town, you can’t be too careful.’

  ‘But I’ve lived here all my life, and never had a problem.’

  ‘Even though you’re away a lot?’

  ‘It’s always been fine. I don’t have much worth taking anyway. No one’s going to steal glass birds, I think. And my TV set’s ancient. If I’m away, my laptop’s with me. Anyway – those ugly boxes they stick on the outside wall are a signal to burglars there’s something worth stealing.’

  ‘Not the one I have. It gets monitored. The burglars know that too. You have some nice jewellery. And your laptop wasn’t with you last night.’

  ‘I didn’t realise I wasn’t going to be home last night. I mean to take it with me now.’

  ‘Bring a swimsuit with you. I go to the baths a few mornings a week, before work. We’ll go tomorrow. I can sign you in as a guest.’

  Bloody hell. She rifled through drawers and found her only swimsuit with a small skirt affair that covered that errant vein in her thigh.

  ‘Which baths?’

  ‘Arlington. Been a member since I was at school.’

  She laughed, but didn’t tell him why.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I used to go to the same one, when I was at school. But I didn’t keep up my membership. You mean us to go tomorrow?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I need to drive a long way to work tomorrow, Hari!’

  ‘We’ll go as soon as they open. Then you can still get away in plenty of time.’

  She stifled the surge of irritation. He didn’t mean to sound like her mother.

  ‘Well, I’ll need to get off promptly,’ she said firmly. She’d need to factor in time to wash and dry her hair afterwards. No way she was disporting herself in the tight silicone swimming hat she usually wore. But on an afterthought, she remembered to pack a shower-cap.

  They went to Kelvingrove Park. Leila knew from previous conversations that Hari loved that place. He didn’t notice how untidy and litter-strewn it had become by 2014.

  As they set out on their walk, he greeted a pretty blonde woman jogging in the opposite direction.

  ‘One of the detective sergeants I see frequently at work,’ he explained.

  ‘Nice-looking.’ And young. ‘What’s her name?’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Laura… Lauren… Lorna. Something of the sort. DS Reid. I don’t socialise with anyone from work, you know. Neither the medics nor the police.’

  ‘You don’t like the police much, do you?’

  ‘They have their job to do, I have mine. As you know, I never like to take my work past the door. I can’t see the point of fraternising with the people you work with.’ He performed his mind-reading trick. ‘I’m not interested in getting a sports car, or a hair transplant, or a young dolly-bird on my arm, by the way, thank you very much. I love it that you and I share all the same experiences, right from when we were kids. Why – do you hanker after a toy-boy?’

  ‘About as much as I hanker after a dose of herpes.’

  ‘That’s another reason why you and I get on so well together. We’re neither of us fantasists. Anyway – mortuaries and crime scenes are the milieux least conducive to fostering sexy thoughts,’ he added. ‘Contrary to what TV would have you believe.’

  ‘But I find your work interesting. Is it true you get lots of the police passing out? I heard they send the rookies in for fun.’

  ‘Nonsense. The ones who attend are normally accustomed to it.’

  ‘And the stories I’ve heard about the trick of rubbing Vicks under your nose?’

  ‘That’s nonsense too. It’s not actually that bad. The new place has fabulous ventilation. And believe it or not, the women are much less likely than the men to faint or vomit in the cutting-room,’ he added. ‘You lot are made of stern stuff.’ He tucked Leila’s arm more firmly through his and walked in silence for a few moments. ‘And you never wanted to be married?’

  She studied the rooftops of Park Terrace and the university. ‘I discovered a very long time ago that I prefer not being married.’

  Like mother, like grandmother, like daughter. What am I doing? I’ve lain all night with this man, skin to skin, and I’m telling it slant? But the moment had passed. Possibly it didn’t matter anyway. This was more likely to be Brief Encounter than ‘Happily ever after’. No one else knew. Even Greer hadn’t known. That’s how brief it all was. And it helped her feel she was one up on him, somehow. He was the one who stuck with a failed marriage for – what – almost forty years, by the sound of it? She’d had more sense.

  ‘You’re a much stronger person than me, I think,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you didn’t settle for the wrong person. You didn’t waste your life. But who hurt you so deeply, Leila?’

  ‘Why do you think anyone did?’

  ‘You’re hyper-sensitive. Any tangential reference to the fact I was married before, and you retreat into your shell. A heart that’s been broken once is terribly susceptible to further damage.’

  ‘You speak from experience?’

  ‘I speak from my experience of human nature. Tell me – who broke your heart?’

  To hell with that. She decided to tell him not about heartbreak, but rather of humiliation. About why she loathed married men on the pull, and why it never paid to think that one man would do as well as another.

  Leila had been flattered when Simon, the senior partner in the Dorset practice where she first worked, took her with him on a house-call to one of their most important clients. She’d only been qualified for a few months, and horses weren’t her thing. Not yet.

  The client was waiting for them as the Land Rover drew into the yard beside a large, purpose-built stable block. In the middle distance, Leila could see a substantial Georgian house.

  Her boss propelled her forward. ‘This is Leila Ghazali, our newest recruit.
Fresh out of the vet school at Cambridge. Same college as you, if I remember correctly. You’re a Severan too, aren’t you, Tarquin? Leila – this is Tarquin Buckley-Ford.’

  The ridiculous name should have been warning enough. Even in deepest, darkest Dorset, how many Tarquins would you expect to meet? And yes, from his dress he was every bit the uppity prat you’d expect with a name like that. But he also had eyes the colour of beech leaves in August, and black hair that flopped forward over his forehead, and a profile that would have had Greer reaching for her sketch-pad. As Leila learned later, probably a throwback to his Irish ancestry.

  Tall too – she liked that, because she was no midget herself. Tall and tanned, and young(ish) and lovely… no, that was the ‘Girl from Ipanema’. The sort of permanent tan you only got from being outdoors a lot in all weathers. Even his plummy voice didn’t raise her hackles the way such voices usually did (which had meant she spent nearly all of her time as a student suffering from raised hackles; she supposed she had acquired the reputation of being a nippy sweetie even in those days).

  Tarquin held her hand for a fraction too long after shaking it. ‘Always delighted to meet a fellow-Severan. But it’s yonks since I left there. I don’t suppose anyone I knew was still there when you arrived. I left in the late ’50s.’

  That made him at least fifteen years older than she. Anyway, he was bound to be a family man, with a pad that size.

  Simon was climbing into his overalls. ‘This mare of yours, Tarquin. What seems to be the problem?’

  ‘Ripped her leg on a barbed-wire fence. Nasty cut – I reckon it probably needs stitched. Tell you what – while you take a dekko at her, can I borrow Leila to look at Anna’s pony? She seems to have gone a little lame.’

  Simon grunted in reply, already in the loose-box and bent over the foreleg of a handsome chestnut. Leila followed Tarquin round the corner of the stable-block, and through double gates into a paddock where two ponies were grazing, a pure black one and a palomino, which ambled towards them as soon as Tarquin called it by name.

  ‘This is Nutmeg, my daughter Anna’s mount. Her pride and joy.’