Catch Your Death (4 page)

‘
I’ll remember that.’ He pretended to make a note on an invisible notepad. ‘Fish have feelings too.’

He was charming. Just like Stephen – or rather, how Stephen would be if he’d had sixteen more years to practice. She had to keep reminding herself, though, that this wasn’t Stephen. She had to remember that she had only met this man this afternoon. Her fantasies were not coming true. On the way over, she kept asking herself why she was doing this, what her motives were. There were, in the end, two things.

One, she had never been able to talk to anyone else about Stephen. Now, like his brother, she relished the chance to talk to somebody about him, somebody who knew him intimately. Perhaps that way, after all these years, she could achieve some kind of – and she hated the word but couldn’t think of a better one – closure.

Two, she was glad of the distraction. She had only been able to think about one thing since arriving in London. Her brain needed a break from the worry. What better way to stop fretting about the future than to concentrate on the past?

‘
So,’ Paul asked. ‘What brings you to London? Visiting relatives?’

It was far too complicated to explain, even if she’d wanted to. ‘No. Well, not really. Jack and I are just about to move over here.’ She played with her chopsticks, unsure of how much to tell him. ‘I’m looking for a place at the moment. Actually, I’m kind of shocked by the price of property in London.’

‘
Where do you live at the moment? – oh yes, you said earlier, didn’t you: Boston, wasn’t it?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Nice.’ He waited for her to give more details but she wasn’t forthcoming. ‘And what do you do in Boston?’

‘
I work at Harvard.’

‘
Doing..?’

Kate laid her chopsticks on the table. ‘I’m a professor in the department of immunology and infectious diseases. I specialise in the study and treatment of viruses.’

She watched Paul closely to see his reaction. Telling people what she did usually had two effects. Weak men, the kind who were intimidated by clever women, would try to outsmart or belittle her. Other people would inch away, like people she talked to on the extremely rare occasions she went to parties, as if they might catch something from her.

Paul didn’t appear to be at all intimidated or frightened. ‘Cool. So is that how you knew Stephen? You worked with him at the Cold Research Unit?’

‘
No, I was a volunteer there. I’d only just graduated. And after that, I went to Harvard and, apart from the odd visit, never came back.’

‘
Until now?’

‘
Until now,’ she echoed, thinking how strange it was that you could summarise a life so quickly and painlessly. Only the details were missing. Of how she went to Harvard, still in a state of shock, only weeks after Stephen’s death. The years she spent in the graduate research programme. The glorious day she became Professor Kate Carling. Meeting and marrying Vernon Maddox and having Jack. The happy years, and the deterioration.

She could sit here and talk all night, adding layer after layer of detail to those basic facts, like peeling an onion in reverse. And after that, Paul would know her story. But he would still only understand a fraction of who she was.

‘
And what do you do?’ she asked.

‘
You might not believe this, but I chase viruses too.’

‘
Really?’

‘
Yes – but a different kind to you. Computer viruses. Or I should say, the scum who create them and send them out across the internet.’

‘
You’re a cop?’

‘
No. Not really. I work for an internet security firm. It’s a very exciting business.’

She smiled. ‘Sounds a bit geeky to me.’

‘
Er, says the professor of – what was it? – immunology and infectious diseases?’

‘
Touché.’

Paul laughed. ‘Actually, a lot of people think it’s a geeky job, and I do spend a lot of time staring at computer screens. But so must you.’

‘
You’re right. Too much time.’

‘
Except now you’re moving to London. Are you moving to a university over here? Kissing the Ivy League goodbye?’

He asked a lot of questions. Stephen had been curious like that too, interested in others.

Their food arrived, the waiter plonking it down on the table, shoving their glasses out of the way then stomping off. Kate was too busy trying to decide how honest to be to feel aggrieved by the waiter’s rudeness. Should she tell Paul that she had no idea about what she was going to do professionally; furthermore, that she didn’t care right now?

She said, ‘I’m considering my options at the moment.’

‘
I see.’

They emptied their beer bottles and Paul put his hand up to order more. Kate licked her lips. She hardly drank at all these days and the beer tasted good: sweet and mood-changing. Tongue-loosening. They talked about Stephen, Paul telling her stories from their childhood, making her laugh until there was an awkward pause in the conversation and she could see him struggling to say something.

'Are you OK?' she asked.

Instead of speaking he reached into his pocket and took out a folded sheet of paper. He didn’t show it to her, just held it, gazing into space. Kate could hear his thoughts ticking away. Stephen used to do this too.

He said, ‘As soon as you told me your name was Kate, it rang a bell.’

‘
Stephen told you about me?’

‘
Yes. In a manner of speaking. It wasn’t something I’d thought about for a long time, but yes, I recognised your name straight away. I went home to check, to make sure I wasn’t imagining things, or mis-remembering, and there it was. In black biro.’

‘
I don’t understand.’

Paul tapped the piece of paper. ‘A few days before he…before the fire, he wrote to me. He mentioned your name.’

‘
And you’ve kept the letter all this time?’

‘
I’ve kept every souvenir of Stephen I could. But this letter – I would have kept it anyway.’

‘
Why?’

He handed it to her. ‘Read it and you’ll understand.’

She hesitated before taking the piece of paper from him, and as it touched her fingertips she felt a thrill, a shiver, as if the ghost she thought she’d seen earlier had touched her.

CHAPTER 5

She couldn’t hear the clatter and murmur of the other diners any more. There was a wall of silence around her and Paul. The words on the page were all she was aware of. She recognised Stephen’s handwriting. Before seeing it again she would never have been able to describe it, but as soon as it was there before her she knew those looping Ls, that tight, messy scrawl. A doctor’s handwriting. They’d joked about it more than once.

The letter covered two sides of A4. She read through the first section quickly. Stephen started with a few unremarkable statements and observations – the weather, the recent end of the World Cup, hope you were able to watch it, etc; what did that mean? – and then the tone of the letter changed suddenly. The writing got more uneven, even more messy. It looked like it was written in a rush. There were mis-spellings, crossings out. So unlike the Stephen she knew.

Stuck in his flat one day, when he was at work, she had unearthed an old notebook from the back of his bookcase. In the notebook were poems, a couple of fragments from stories that he’d started writing, observations about places he’d been. It was beautifully written, with immaculate spelling and grammar. She never told him she’d found the notebook in case he was embarrassed. He might, she feared, even be angry that she’d been snooping around. Then there were the notes he wrote her; cards that went with little gifts he’d bring home to her. He was careful and always accurate. This letter, with its mistakes and heavy pencil marks must have been written when drunk. Or under extreme stress.

Towards the end of the letter, the following passage screamed out at her:

I met a girl, her name’s Kate. We’ve had to keep our relationship secret from the people here, but I don’t think we’re the only ones with secrets. _______________ I hope you meet her some day. If you do, and I’m not there, tell her I loved her. Tell her she was right. And tell her to forgive me.

Between the sentence that ended with ‘secrets’ and the start of the sentence that started ‘I hope’ were two lines that had been crossed out with thick black pen, obscuring all but the tips of a few tall letters and the tails of some others.

‘
Are you okay?’ Paul asked, touching her wrist.

She snatched her hand away as if his fingers were red hot then looked up, dazzled, unable to speak, to answer his question. Am I okay? No.

She stared at the letter again, reading it over like someone who’s just received a letter telling them that sorry, the blood test result was positive, you failed the exam, you didn’t get the job you so badly wanted, I don’t love you any more. ‘”Tell her she was right.”’ She read the sentence aloud. ‘Right about what?’

Paul raised an eyebrow. ‘I was hoping you’d be able to tell me that.’

‘
And what does he want me to forgive him for?’

‘
You don’t know?’

She screwed her face up, tapped her temples with the flat of her hand, perhaps hoping to knock the memories loose. Here was that thick fog again, descending over her mind, obscuring the past.

Paul said, ‘You know something? I’ve kept this letter for years. I must have read it a hundred times. And every time, I asked myself what Stephen was talking about. What were the secrets? Who was this girl Kate and what was she right about? After Stephen died I became obsessed with finding out what he was talking about. I mean, it was obvious to me that he wasn’t feeling himself when he wrote this letter. He was normally so calm and rational. Not unemotional, but with his head screwed on, you know what I mean?’

Kate did know.

‘
Who was this Kate person, I wondered? What had she done to make him like this, and what had he done to her, that she had to forgive? I asked Mum and Dad if they know anything about you, but they said they’d hardly heard from Stephen in the months before he died. I spoke to the couple of close friends he had, but they didn’t know anything either. You were a mystery woman. Nobody knew anything about you. This letter was the only proof that you existed. I puzzled over it for ages and then I made myself forget about it – I had to in order to be able to get on with my life. But I always hoped that one day I might find this Kate, and that she’d be able to tell me what she was right about.’

Kate’s voice trembled. ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember.’

‘
Can’t you try? Think back?’

‘
You don’t understand.’

She explained to him about how patchy her memory was. ‘It’s so frustrating. I can remember some stuff incredibly clearly, but then there are these holes. I hardly remember anything about my second stay at the Centre, which was when it burned down.’

‘
You stayed there twice?’

‘
Yes. It’s… well, maybe I’ll explain why another time. This letter must have been written during my second stay. Yes, the dates add up. So whatever I was right about, it’s something that must have happened during that second stay.’

‘
Could it just be something to do with your relationship? Maybe he’s saying you were right about, I don’t know, that you could make it work, while he was doubtful. Something like that?’

‘
No. It can’t be. What about this stuff about secrets?’ She was quiet for a few seconds, though the bubble around them remained, sealing out the clatter and clank of the other diners. ‘You’re going to think I’m crazy, but although I can’t remember the details, I do know that there was something, something we couldn’t agree on. Something to do with the Centre itself, or Stephen’s job. I can almost see it. Almost taste it. But it’s like…’ She paused.

‘
What?’

She looked into his eyes. ‘I’m scared. Scared of whatever this truth is. I feel like the heroine in a horror movie, standing outside the door of the big creepy house, grasping the handle, knowing that when I pull open the door I’ll finally see what the monster looks like. But I don’t want to see.’.’

Paul leaned forward. ‘In the films, the girl always goes into the creepy house.’

‘
I know. But my brain won’t let me.’

She sipped her beer. Her heart was still pounding in her ears, but the initial shock had faded a little and the cool scientist inside her had stepped forward. Here was a problem. How was she going to solve it?

She shook her head and sighed. ‘I’m really jetlagged. I’ll be able to think about it more clearly tomorrow. Do you mind if we leave now?’

‘
Where are you staying?’ he asked.

She told him the name of her hotel.

‘
That’s on my way. Let’s take a taxi and I’ll drop you off there.’

The next few minutes – the walk to find a cab, the taxi ride – passed in a blur. When the taxi pulled up outside the hotel, Kate said, ‘I’m really sorry that I can’t answer your questions about the letter.’

‘
Hmm.’ He appeared to have fallen intoa slight bad mood.

‘
It’s not something I can help – I wish I could remember.’

He didn’t reply.