He handed the book back to her. ‘Have a closer look. It strikes me that the body of the message is written in a different pen from the name above it.’
Laurel moved to beneath the tree-house window and let sunlight stream directly onto the page. She adjusted her reading glasses and stared hard at the inscription.
Well—some detective she turned out to be—Laurel couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed before. The message about friend-ship was written in one pen, and the words ‘For Dorothy,’ at the top, though also in black ink, had been written with another, slightly finer. It was possible Vivien had started writing with one and then switched to a second— the ink of the first might have been running low—but it was unlikely, wasn’t it?
Laurel had the dispiriting sense she was clutching at straws, particularly when, as she continued to look, she started to perceive slight variations in the two handwriting styles. Her voice was low and clipped: ‘You’re suggesting Ma might have written her own name in the book, aren’t you? Made it look as if it were a gift from Vivien?’
‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just saying two different pens have been used. But yeah—that’s a distinct possibility, particularly in light of what Dr. Rufus observed.’
‘Yes,’ said Laurel, closing the book. ‘Dr Rufus—tell me everything you found, Gerry. Everything he wrote about this—’ she waved her fingers—‘obsessive condition of Ma’s.’
‘First up, it wasn’t an obsessive condition, it was just your garden- variety obsession.’
‘There’s a difference?’
‘Well, yes. One is a clinical definition, the other is a single trait. Dr Rufus certainly thought she had some issues—I’ll get to those—but she was never actually his patient. Dr Rufus had known her as a child—his daughter had been friends with Ma when they were growing up in Coventry. He liked her, I gather, and he took an interest in her life.’ Laurel glanced at the photograph in her hand, her beautiful young mother. ‘I’ll bet he did.’
‘They met regularly for lunch and—’
‘—and he just happened to write down most of what she told him? Some friend he turned out to be.’
‘Just as well for our purposes.’
Laurel had to concede the point, but only grudgingly.
Gerry had closed his notebook and he glanced at the Post-it note stuck to its cover. ‘So, according to Lionel Rufus, she’d always been an outgoing sort of girl, playful, fun and very imaginative—all the things we know Ma to be; her origins were ordinary enough, but she was desperate to lead a fabulous life. He first became interested in her because he was researching narcissism—’
‘Narcissism?’
‘—in particular the role of fantasy as a defence mechanism. He noticed that some of the things Ma said and did as a teen-ager tallied with the list of traits he was working on. Nothing over the top, just a certain level of self-absorption, a need to be admired, a tendency to see herself as exceptional, dreams of being successful and popular—’
‘Sounds like every teenager I’ve met.’
‘Exactly, and it’s all a sliding scale. Some narcissistic traits are common and normal, other people parlay the same traits into forms for which society generously rewards them—’
‘Like who?’
‘Oh, I don’t know—actors …’ He gave her a crinkly smile. ‘Seriously though, despite what Caravaggio would have us believe, it’s not all about staring into mirrors all day—’
‘I should think not. Daphne would be in trouble if it were.’
‘But people with a bent towards narcissistic personality types are susceptible to obsessive ideas and fantasies.’
‘Like imagined friendships with people they admire?’
‘Yes, precisely. Many times it’s a harmless delusion that fades eventually leaving the recipient of the ardour none the wiser; other times, though, if the person is forced to confront the fact that their fantasy isn’t real—if something happens to crack the mirror, so to speak—well, let’s just say they’re the type to feel rejection rather deeply.’
‘And to seek revenge?’
‘I should say so. Though they’d more likely see it as justice than revenge.’
Laurel lit a cigarette.
‘Rufus’s notes don’t go into enormous detail, but it seems that in the early 1940s, when Ma was around nineteen years old, she developed two major fantasies: the first with regards to her employer—she was convinced the old aristocrat looked up-on her as a daughter and was going to leave her the bulk of the ancestral estate—’
‘Which she didn’t?’
Gerry inclined his head and waited patiently for Laurel to say, ‘No, of course she didn’t. Go on …’
‘The second was her imagined friendship with Vivien. They knew each other, they just