it. Got appt for Thurs. C
A few minutes later, as I jumped on a bus that just happened to be going in the right direction, I heard the beep of a reply.
That’s great news. Fancy a brew? ;) S x
For some stupid, crazy, bizarre reason, the text wink and the “x” meant that I only had to check the front door once when I got in. Just once. I couldn’t remember how long since it had been just once. I stood there when I’d finished, waiting for Mrs. Mackenzie to come out, wondering how it was that I’d done it right first time. How was such a thing possible? I reached out to touch the door, faltering, when I heard the door to Flat 1 behind me.
“Cathy? Is that you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Mackenzie. How are you?”
“Fine, dear, you all right too? Cold out there, is it?”
“Yes, you’d better get back inside, you’re letting all your heat out.”
She went back in—to EastEnders, by the sounds of it—and the door shut again. I looked at the front door, at the locks, and I turned and went upstairs to start the checks.
Stuart took a while to open the door when I finally got up the stairs, and there he was, left arm in one of those slings made out of fetching pink sponge.
“What happened?” I asked, shutting the door behind me.
“Ah, I got kicked in the shoulder. It popped out. Bloody painful.”
He stood in the kitchen while I made the tea and he watched me. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “How are you doing?”
“Me? I’m fine. Really. Don’t you want to sit down?”
“Nah. I’ve been sitting down all day, it’s driving me mad.”
“So who kicked you in the shoulder, some sort of ninja?”
He laughed. “No, it was a patient. It was my fault—he got a bit distressed while I was asking some questions in an assessment. I got booted before I could get to the panic button. It’s happened before. I got a kick in the nuts once—now that was painful.”
“I kind of assumed you just sat with people and listened to them talking about their childhood.”
“I do that too, in clinics. But I spend a lot of the time on the short-stay crisis ward. In between all that I’m doing research, paperwork. Hence the long hours.”
I put a mug of tea on the counter next to him and made a start on the small mountain of dishes that had accumulated in the sink.
“I was just getting around to that,” he said.
“You were going to do it one-handed?”
He watched me and sipped his tea. “Amazing the things you can do one-handed if you put your mind to it,” he said. “So you’re going to see Sanj?”
“Yes. They’re nice in there, aren’t they? There was an old guy in the waiting room, fast asleep. They were just letting him sleep. I thought that was good.”
“Not George, was it?”
“Yes.”
“I could come with you on Thursday, if you like,” he said.
I looked at him, just a quick look up from his socked feet up to the jeans and dark green sweater that matched his eyes, to his poor tired face.
“No, thanks.”
After the dishes I microwaved some beef chili he’d made and frozen last week, and we sat on the sofa and ate. He told me about the two years he’d spent traveling in between his degree and his doctorate. He went into his bedroom and fished out a flash drive that he said held several hundred pictures, if I ever fancied a look at them. He said he’d always meant to get them put into albums but had never gotten around to it. Talking about traveling got him onto the topic of this crazy comedy show that he’d seen in Australia, and from there the DVD filmed at the Sydney Opera House came out, and as I laughed with him I realized that I was starting to relax. I was warm and tired and I was actually starting to relax.
Wednesday 17 December 2003
When Lee was working, he was away for days at a time. Some days he phoned me constantly, texting me in between, asking how I was, wishing he was with me, asking what I was doing. Some days he clearly couldn’t use the phone at all and I was all alone.
Wednesday evening, heading home from work in the dark. I hadn’t heard from him since Saturday. I stopped at the supermarket and bought some groceries for dinner. I was going to make a chicken