Losing My Identity Page 5

  Utter puzzlement.

  ‘You said one evening you were late you’d had to go home to feed them.’

  His brow cleared. ‘The beasts? Leila, of course I don’t have children at home. I have two pet rabbits. House-rabbits. And they don’t usually clock-watch.’

  ‘Rabbits?’ The last type of pet she’d have expected him to have.

  ‘I always hankered after having a rabbit when I was a boy, but my father wouldn’t allow it. And to be fair, my mother would probably have regarded it as a good basis for a meal. She was not a sentimental woman. Now I can please myself, I decided to get one. I got two, in fact, so they’re company for each other. Two girls, because I didn’t want any fights, and two are definitely enough. I was pretty keen to have pets who wouldn’t eat my face if I died.’

  ‘I suppose you’ve seen cases of that…’

  He pulled a mock-serious face. ‘In nearly forty years in the job? Not once. Rats maybe, never cats or dogs. And obviously, not rabbits.’ His hand rested on her shoulder again for a nano-second. ‘Sorry. You need to expect black humour from people in my line of work. I expect vets are just as bad.’

  ‘Worse.’

  ‘Don’t you have pets then?’

  ‘Too much of a tie. I need to be away a lot.’

  Harry pursed his lips. ‘And you a vet!’

  Leila had tried to adopt a kitten, when she was nine. She’d been playing out in the back green when she heard what sounded like a baby crying, and traced it to the bin shed. A grey kitten had climbed into an open bin to find warmth. What it had found were cinders from someone’s coal fire, still hot. She fished the animal out and ran crying to Greer, who did actually take it to the local vet; Leila wasn’t allowed to go into the examination room. ‘Its burns were too severe,’ her mother said, wiping her hands on her skirt as she emerged. ‘It had to be put to sleep.’ Leila had always felt that was the moment when she’d decided to become a vet. To save the lives of kittens.

  She didn’t tell Harry that. She’d never told anyone, in fact, possibly because it didn’t reflect well on her mother. Plus: she knew in her heart it was always best to have some secrets.

  ‘Anyway, now will you come for a drive with me?’ he added.

  ‘I suppose.’ A man who owned house-rabbits was surely to be trusted. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your wife.’

  He frowned, and said tersely, ‘Anita.’

  Leila visualised someone blonde and buxom and cheerful.

  ‘Pretty name!’

  He sighed and wriggled his shoulders, as if he had a cramp there. ‘I don’t like to talk about her. Not for the reasons you’re probably thinking. Can we just drop it, please?’

  Leila was taken aback. ‘Of course.’

  ‘And before any of the worthies from the choir decide to enlighten you, I’ll tell you now: I have a son. He’s grown up. I never see him. I made sure that he had an excellent education, and a good start in his career. Now it’s up to him to get on with it.’

  The scalpel voice again. There was a hard side to this man. Maybe it was because of his work. Leila found it faintly thrilling. ‘OK. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry. I just wanted to establish some ground rules for conversation.’

  Jesus! Pompous, or what?

  ‘So what is his career – has he gone into medicine too.’

  ‘No, IT.’

  He still looked grim as he started the car. They drove in silence for a long time. Leila went over in her mind the whole history of the Beatrice incident.

  They’d worked together when Leila was in her first five years as a vet. Beatrice had acted mainly as receptionist, since the practice owners were too mean to put her through the exams as a veterinary nurse (though she was far better with skittish animals than the trained vet nurses were; and they in turn were useless at admin, and routinely buggered up the computer system, according to Beatrice). Leila and she had palled around together, partly because they were reasonably close in age, but also because they had, on the surface, a lot in common: both ultra-independent single women, only daughters of overbearing mothers. They’d kept in touch after Leila moved on. But as Bea grew older, she seemed to grow more desperate. She didn’t settle into the knowledge she’d never marry, the way the elderly war-single women who’d taught at Leila’s school had settled. She seemed to be permanently on standby, waiting for a man to switch her to ‘play’. No dignity. Bea had seemed to feel like half a person, not to have found her own identity. Leila felt whole. Sufficient unto the Leila is the Leila thereof.

  Beatrice had retired eight years earlier, to Lyme Regis, of all places. Maybe she’d hoped to meet a French Lieutenant on half-pay, strolling on the Cobb? She and Leila had seen each other off and on over the years – not least on the ghastly, ill-judged cruise holiday they’d shared in 2009 after Greer died – but for the past few years (ever since the cruise, in fact) it had been just birthday and Christmas cards. Then, out of the blue, Bea had phoned in mid-December 2012, inviting Leila down for the holiday season, and prompting on-the-hoof excuses about being tied up with work. She’d hinted heavily that she’d come up to Glasgow, in that case. Leila hadn’t taken the bait, even when Bea muttered that some days she could barely be bothered with the hassle of getting out of bed or dressed.

  Anyway, Bea was another only daughter who’d inherited a comfortable chunk of cash from her mother. The practice had given her early retirement the minute she turned sixty. OK, it was mean of them, but she had no actual qualifications. She was one of the last cohort to become entitled to her state pension at that age. Leila hadn’t quite told her friend to pull herself together, but she’d implied it. She tried to jolly her along with vague – very vague – hints that perhaps, if not the coming summer then the next, another cruise. Then she’d made her excuses and ended the call.

  She wasn’t entirely surprised when she got no card from Bea either at Christmas or on her birthday. She became vaguely alarmed when she got no response to the birthday card sent to Lyme Regis the following November. She’d tried phoning a couple of times, but it merely rang and rang…

  Then just before last Christmas, the Google search, that single hit.

  Leila had rung the practice where she and Beatrice both used to work, but the new receptionist was no help. She’d never met her predecessor. The only one of the original partners still working there was off on a six-month exchange in Botswana.

  ‘On or about 5th March’. Presumably that was the last day anyone could remember seeing Bea alive? Leila had tortured herself with images of her friend lying there until she started to ooze through a neighbour’s ceiling, police holding hankies over their faces, and stepping gingerly, throwing open windows to let the stench and the flies out, rookie officers vomiting in the nearest gutter, strangers rifling through all her possessions. At least now she’d been reassured that it hadn’t been quite so bad…

  Harry drove to Cathkin Braes, and that alone was almost enough to set Leila crying again, because she remembered how she used to go there often with Greer when she was a child – but never at night.

  She pulled herself together. She was sure she’d read somewhere that it was a red-hot lovers’ lane after dark, but there were no other cars there, thank goodness. She wasn’t sure how well she’d have coped with finding herself in the middle of a dogging pitch.

  ‘I often come up here. Alone,’ Harry added. ‘The city lights look so delicate and other-worldly. Like fairyland, not Glasgow. “No more beautiful city in the world, provided it’s seen at night and from a distance.” Roman Polanski said that, I seem to remember. About Los Angeles rather than here. Still, it seems apt.’

  They sat for many minutes in silence. He made no move to touch her, and Leila was immensely grateful. She wasn’t at all sure how she’d have got home if she’d had to leap out and leg it in the dark.

  Sitting there in the dimmest reflection of a dashboard light, not having to look at each other
but watching the city shimmer like a mirage, Leila felt a sense of deep peace steal over her. Deeper than any since she’d heard the news about Sam. It wasn’t her fault. None of it was. Her mother had been nearly one hundred, Beatrice had been a chronic depressive. And Sam – well, Sam had just been Sam. He’d have made very discontented old bones (imagine if he’d just been injured. Imagine if he’d been a paraplegic in a wheelchair; imagine if he’d asked her to…).

  Harry was first to break the silence. ‘This friend, this Beatrice. Why do you feel you’re to blame?’

  She told him about the calls before Christmas.

  ‘She was a special friend?’

  ‘Not particularly. We’d been work colleagues for about ten years, and we’d kept in touch. We didn’t have a lot in common. She was one of those women who… well, I don’t know, she never seemed happy in her own skin.’

  ‘I’d say that you are a very different type then.’ She could hear the smile in his voice.

  ‘I am. Is it that obvious?’

  ‘It’s obvious that you’re a balanced, confident person. And you have a responsible job. Do you work for a local practice?’

  ‘I don’t work for any practice nowadays.’

  ‘Sorry, I remember you told me that.’

  ‘I work as a consultant with one of the big pharma companies, running tests on vaccinations for bovine mastitis.’

  ‘Wow! I’m impressed.’

  She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, to see if he was mocking, but he seemed to be sincere.

  ‘It’s interesting. I’m sure as a medical man, you know all about antimicrobial resistance? It’s making mastitis much more difficult to treat, so developing a vaccine’s important. And I can decide my own schedule, which I like. I get plenty of trips to Brussels too, bending the ears of the good folk in DG Health and Food Safety and DG Agri. It’s much more varied than working in a city practice.’

  ‘How long have you been doing that?’

  ‘A few years. Since I came back to Glasgow full-time. Anyway, I’m sure it’s not nearly so impressive as your job.’

  ‘I suppose the gabby types in the choir told you all about that? Phyllida is so terribly impressed by people’s jobs. Why did you join the choir? I’m glad you did, by the way.’

  ‘I enjoy singing.’

  ‘You’re good. You have a beautiful voice.’

  She wanted to tell him about when the urge to sing alongside others had first come upon her, sitting in the middle of King’s College chapel listening to a boy chorister hit that high C in Allegri’s Miserere, then the falling cascade of liquid notes, as the candles were gradually extinguished, one by one, for the service of Tenebrae, and her heart feeling as if it would break for the lack of something she couldn’t begin to define, because it wasn’t long after Sam had abandoned her, and knowing she lusted after raising her voice in song along with others, although she didn’t want to sing religious music, no matter how beautiful, and being glad her own voice had a lower register, because a soprano could never hope to achieve the same purity of sound as a boy’s. Her own college, St Severus, was one of only four to retain an all-male chapel choir, so she’d have been out of luck there anyway. She’d stopped to glance at the posters outside the Round Church on her way home, and seen the invitation for singers to audition with a madrigal group. It was either that or become a nun. Maybe one day, she’d tell Harry that story. In fact, maybe she’d tell him that what turned her on to singing in the first place had been her grannie’s old 78s of the American contralto Marian Anderson. What a voice, even on a scratchy record! What a stupendous range.

  ‘Why did you join?’ she asked Harry.

  ‘Same reason. I love singing. I actually went the first time at the behest of a colleague who’s now left.’

  ‘Left the choir?’

  ‘Left Glasgow. Left Scotland, in fact. But I was hooked by that very first night. Phyllida’s a good conductor, though she’s such a prickly personality.’

  Not to you, my lad.

  ‘What does she do? She seems terribly high-powered.’

  ‘She’s the departmental secretary in the Anatomy department at the university.’

  ‘Oh my. I imagined something slightly grander. And was there ever a Mr Phyllida?’

  ‘The man isn’t born who could meet that specification!’

  They giggled together, conspiratorially. Leila felt a glow of satisfaction at being such a traitor to the spirit of sisterhood.

  ‘I’m sure the only reason she accepted my application to join the choir was when she heard where I’d done my previous stint of singing.’

  When she’d spilled the beans at her choir audition, Phyllida was snared by the mention of the place. Andrew had been more interested in the music. ‘Were you a member of the Cambridge Madrigal Society?’ he’d asked. And Leila told him that had disbanded the year she went up, because Raymond Leppard had newly left Cambridge. The Group she’d sung with had been based in Trinity, and although they were good, she supposed, with hindsight, they weren’t that good. They did it for love, not fame.

  Harry chortled. ‘She accepted you because you have a superb voice. But yes, I’m sure she practically wet her pants at the mention of Cambridge.’

  Leila had another fit of nervous sniggering. Harry seemed so prim and proper, she found it hilarious that he could also be a touch crude. The same way she found it funny when small children swore – though of course, she’d always try hard to hide it.

  She glanced at her watch, more for something to do than because she needed to know the time.

  Harry stretched his shoulders, leaned forward and started the engine. ‘You got your seat belt fastened? I think I need to take you home, Leila Ghazali. I think you should call yourself “doctor”, by the way. I looked it up online – I see the Royal College has decided vets should be allowed to do that.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll bother. I’ll probably retire in a couple of years anyway.’

  His eyes widened a little. ‘Really? I’d not have thought you were old enough to think of that.’

  ‘Flatterer.’

  ‘I’ve been trying madly to retire for a year or two. They keep telling me I can’t be spared. If I’d been CID, I’d have been let go at sixty, no questions asked.’

  ‘You can’t be that old either.’

  ‘Sixty-four this June.’

  ‘Really? What date.’

  ‘The eighth. Why?’

  ‘I’ll be the same age on the tenth.’

  They were still laughing as he pulled onto the road back towards town. Both Geminis. That’s probably not ideal. Sam was a Scorpio. That wasn’t ideal either….

  ‘Thanks for this evening. And thanks for finding out about Beatrice,’ Leila said as he pulled up outside her flat. ‘See you next Thursday?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘I wondered – would you have dinner with me next Friday?’

  She owed him that at least, to make up for her rudeness the night she got drunk. And she was touched by his slight hint of nervousness. He had believed she might refuse?

  ‘Yes. That’d be lovely.’

  ‘Suppose I pick you up about seven? Do you like spicy food?’

  ‘I do.’

  He had a most attractive grin when he was genuinely pleased about something. ‘See you on Thursday. We can make any final arrangements then.’

  He leaned towards her suddenly. She thought at first he was going to try to kiss her, but he simply held out his hand, and she shook it.

  ‘I’m glad we’ve had this chance to start to get to know each other,’ he said. ‘We got off on the wrong foot, but it’s all right now, isn’t it?’

  It was well after eleven, but as soon as his car disappeared round the corner, Leila headed out again, deciding to walk to the late-night shop in Duke Street, on the pretext that she needed milk. She so loved walking urban streets at night. It was a different city. New and strange. There were tantalising glimpses into the lives of others, through uncurt
ained windows. It made her feel grounded.

  ‘Street haunting.’ Virginia Woolf called it.

  As she walked, she thought about Harry Gill, and wondered if he’d read any of Woolf’s work.

  When she got home, she googled Anita Gill. No hits at all. She tried Facebook; she never ceased to be amazed by how many dead people’s accounts have never been closed. Nothing. She forced herself not to check Sam’s page. The only reason she’d joined Facebook in the first place was so that she could keep an eye on what he was doing. He’d been in his element with social media. And of course, being Sam, he’d been a very clever photographer. She was fairly sure his page was one of those still live, but she hadn’t looked at it since the previous year.

  Five

  Harry’s expression when he saw her reassured Leila that taking four hours to decide what to wear had been worth it. He noticed the necklace too.

  ‘That’s the one you wore for the competition. It suits you tremendously well. Rubies are made for someone with your colouring. They bring out a dark red glint in your hair. I like that you’ve kept your hair long, by the way. It suits the shape of your face. So many women feel they have to cut their hair when they hit forty.’

  She wasn’t about to remind him that at her age she got the colour from a hairdresser, not Mother Nature.

  ‘It was my grannie’s necklace. She left it specifically to me.’

  She chose first from the extensive menu; lamb bhuna as her main course.

  Harry chose more carefully. Three different vegetable concoctions. He suggested they could share. He offered to get wine.

  Leila was surprised. ‘You don’t drink, do you?’

  ‘Whatever made you think that? I don’t when I have the car, and I’ve brought it tonight because I’ll drop you home.’

  ‘I could always take a cab. I’ll just have water to drink. I don’t think I’ve ever had wine with Indian food anyway.’

  ‘They have beer.’

  ‘Water’s fine.’

  And of course, when the food arrived, and he politely declined to share the lamb, it clicked with her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘If I’d known you were vegetarian, I wouldn’t have ordered meat.’