Secret Smile (29 page)

At last I was finished. Squatting on the
floor, I ran a finger over the wood, which was full of new patterns and knots.
Once it was varnished, it would look beautiful. I stood up, pulled off the ear
protectors and mask, and shook myself, like a dog coming out of water. I opened
the large windows to let in the spring air and the buzz of traffic. I swept up
the sawdust and then vacuumed the floor, making sure the nozzle got into all
the corners. I pulled all the sheets off the bookshelves and started to vacuum
them too, running the nozzle up the cracks between each volume, sucking up the
fine layer of dust that lay over their tops.

This man had strange books. The first
shelf was full of general things — two thick atlases, several dictionaries and
encyclopedias, a tall book about birds of prey, another one about remarkable
trees. But as I lifted the nozzle up to the second I saw titles such as
The
Addictive Personality, Maternal Ambivalence, Psychotic States in Children,
Forensic Perspectives on Erotic Obsession
and a thick green tome called
The
Handbook of Clinical Psychopharmacology.
I turned off the vacuum cleaner
and pulled down a book with the title
Erotomania and the Sexualization of
Torture
and opened it at random. 'In the structure of unmaking,' I read,
'there is a fundamental differentiation to be established between the
intricacies of this conflation...' I rubbed my grimy face. What on earth did
that mean? My brain felt thick with effort. I sat down on the floor and flicked
forwards a few pages. Karl Marx was being quoted: 'There is only one antidote
to mental suffering and that is physical pain.' Was that true?

I heard a movement behind me. I was
surprised in different ways at the same time. I had assumed the owner was at
work. Not only was he not at work, but also he was wearing striped flannel
pyjamas of the sort that I hadn't seen since visiting my grandfather when I was
a small child. How could anybody have slept through what I'd been doing in that
flat? He looked as if he had just woken up after several months of hibernation.
He had long dark curly hair and 'unkempt' was an inadequate word to describe
its state. He rubbed his hand through it and made it worse.

'I was looking for a cigarette,' he said.

I reached down a packet from a bookshelf.

'And matches.'

I found a box on a loudspeaker. He lit the
cigarette, took a couple of deep drags on it and looked around him.

'I hope you're not going to say that I've
got the wrong flat,' I said.

'You're not Bill,' he said.

'No,' I said. 'He subcontracted the job.'
I looked at my watch. 'Did I wake you? I didn't know you were here.'

He looked puzzled. He didn't seem entirely
to know that he was here either.

'I had a late night,' he said. 'I've got
to get to work at twelve.'

I looked at my watch again.

'I hope it's nearby,' I said. 'You've got
thirty-five minutes.'

'It's very nearby,' he said.

'Still, you'll probably be late.'

'I can't be,' he said. 'There are people
waiting for me in a room. I've got to talk to them.'

'You're giving a lecture?'

He took a drag of his cigarette and winced
and nodded his head.

'Interesting book?' he said.

'I was just...' I gazed down at the book
in my hand, then pushed it back into its space on the shelves.

'Coffee?' he asked.

'No, thanks.'

'I meant, could you make some for me?
While I'm getting dressed.'

I was tempted to say that I wasn't his
butler, but this was obviously an emergency.

He flinched as he took his sip of the
coffee.

'You've got twenty-five minutes,' I said.

'It's only across the square.' His eyes
were more widely open now. 'You've done a good job,' he said, looking at the
boards. 'Not that I'd know the difference between a good job and a bad job.'

'It's the machine that does it,' I said.
'I'm sorry I was messing with your books.'

'That's what they're there for.'

'Are you a doctor?'

'In a way.'

'Interesting,' I muttered inanely. I was
thinking about Brendan pushing dog shit through the car window. And then about
my dream; fragments of it rose in my mind, like the mouths of small fish
nibbling at the surface of the water.

'My name's Don.'

'I know. I'm Miranda.' I sipped at my
coffee. It tasted chocolatey. 'Do you deal with mental illnesses?'

'That's right.'

'I know you must get really pissed off
with people asking you stupid questions, but can I ask you a stupid question?'

'What?'

'It's about someone I heard about. A
friend of a friend.' I put a shortbread into my mouth. 'Of a friend,' I added
thickly.

'Yeah, right,' he said with a faint smile.

'I just know little bits about him,
really.' That was true anyway.

I started to tell Don about Brendan. I
began with the dog turds and then I went on, and when I got to the bit about
the bath flooding and was saying: 'And then she went back and found that her
bath was overflowing when she
knew
that she hadn't Don held up a hand.

'Hold on,' he said. He lit a second
cigarette.

'What?'

'This is you, right?' he said. 'The
woman?'

'Well, yes, in fact.'

'Good.'

'Good?'

'I was worried you might be the one who
put the dog shit in the car.'

'That was a man.'

'You could have changed the sex. For
purposes of concealment.'

'This is pathetic, I know,' I said.

'Go on with the story.'

So I did. Even though time was getting
short before his lecture, I told him everything. I even backtracked and told
him about Brendan whispering to me about coming in my mouth. And then, at the
end, I told him about Troy and Laura — but very quickly, so I wouldn't start
weeping again. When I finished I picked up my mug and took a last gulp of
stone-cold coffee.

'So what do you think?' I asked. For some
reason, my heart was hammering.

'Fuck,' he said.

'Is that your considered verdict?'

'You're well rid of him.'

I gave a snort.

'I
could say that. What I want to know is, is
he a psychopath? Could he be a murderer?'

He held up his hands in protest.

'It's a bit early in the morning,' he
said.

'It's actually very late in the morning.'

'I don't want to be pompous and say that I
would have to conduct my own investigation before making any comment like that.
And I don't want to start throwing technical, clinical terms around. The point
is, it doesn't really work that way round. I can't say that this pattern of
behaviour means that he is a murderer

'Could
be a murderer,' I interrupted.

'The way it would work is if someone were
found to have committed certain types of violent acts, then I wouldn't be
surprised to find the kind of behaviour you've described.'

'So there we are,' I said.

'No, we aren't,' he said. 'The majority of
murderers show earlier signs of dysfunctional behaviour. But a very large
number of people display dysfunctional behaviour and the vast majority of them
don't cross the line.'

'But if he has crossed the line, which is
what I think, even if nobody else agrees with me, is that it? Is he finished?
Is he still dangerous?'

Don sipped at his coffee.

'You're piling assumptions on assumptions
here,' he said.

'I'm not in court,' I said. 'I can pile
anything I want on to whatever else I want. I want to know if he could have
burned himself out.' I heard the wobble in my voice and coughed to cover it up.

Don shook his head.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'This is all about
hindsight. When people have acted, when they have committed a crime and been
caught and imprisoned, then the psychologists and the psychiatrists come out of
the woodwork and do their tests and pronounce their verdicts with great authority.
And you'll be able to find experts to argue for or against any issue you want.'

'Thank you,' I said dully. I turned to
face him. I noticed he had a thin face and auburn hair and he was looking at me
kindly.

'Keep away from him,' he said.

'Yes.'

'Are you all right?'

'I don't know.' I pulled the window shut
sharply and the room became quieter. I looked at my watch. 'You've got four
minutes.'

'I'd better go,' he said. 'You don't look
happy.'

'It doesn't make it all right that it
might be just a stranger, does it?' I started to gather up the sheets. 'You
can't just sit on the bank and let people drown.'

Don looked as if he were going to say
something, but had changed his mind.

'What are you going to talk about?'

He frowned for a moment.

'A very rare psychological syndrome. Very,
very rare. Only about four people have ever had it.'

'So what's the point of lecturing about
it?'

He paused.

'If I started asking myself questions like
that,' he said, 'then where would I be?'

I went to see the therapist, Katherine
Dowling, again. I sat for a long time in silence, trying to come to a decision.
Was I going to deal with the world or with my own head? I looked at my watch.
It had been over ten minutes. I told her my dream.

'What does that mean to you?'

'I'd like to continue with you,' I said,
'but in a few weeks. Or a few months.'

'Why?'

'I've got things to sort out.'

'I thought that was why you were coming
here.'

'I can't sort them out here.'

I left after half an hour. They still charge
you the full amount, though.

You didn't kill yourself, did
you? Of course you didn't. I should never have let myself doubt that, not even
for a second. You didn't kill yourself and Laura didn't bump her head and
drown. I always knew it. The question is, what should I do now, Troy? I can't
just not do anything, can I?

No. Of course I can't.

The weird thing is, I should be
scared myself, but I'm not. Not a tiny bit. The truth is, I don't care any
more. Not about my safety. I feel like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff in a
howling wind and I don't mind if I fall off or not. Sometimes I think I almost
want to.

I hope it didn't take too long.
I hope you never knew. I couldn't bear it if you knew.

CHAPTER 32

I couldn't let it go. I was like a bee
buzzing round a honey pot. No, that's not right. Honey pots are good for bees.
I was like a honey pot knowing that there was a bee buzzing around somewhere. I
was like a moth drawn to... No, I'm not going to say it because in fact it's
all wrong. I had a boyfriend once and he was studying insects, which was part
of the problem. The very first time we met he told me that moths weren't
actually drawn to flames. It was a myth. A moth myth. He actually said that. We
were in the student union and he was pissed. Our relationship was doomed from
the start of course. It was just impossible to imagine myself for long with a
boy who would introduce himself to a girl by telling her an interesting fact
about moths. The funny thing is that now, about five years later, virtually all
I can remember about him is that he was called Marc and the interesting fact he
told me about moths which made me fall out of love with him instantly. Because
it was pretty interesting.

I had insisted to Marc that he was wrong.
I had once been camping with my family and there had been a blur of moths and
mosquitoes around the lamp that my father tethered to the tent pole. Marc shook
his head. It's an illusion, he said. They're trying to align themselves with
the moon, which means that they keep the rays of the moon at the same angle.
The only way they can do this with a nearby lamp is to circle it. In practice,
what they'll do is to spiral into it, closer and closer. There's no attraction.
It's just a navigation error. I remember pondering it for a moment. I was
probably a bit pissed myself. It doesn't do the moths much good, I said. They
still end up in the flame. 'Who cares about a fucking moth?' replied Marc. That
was a further bad sign. He was cruel to animals.

So there we are. Moths aren't really drawn
to flames. All those songs and poems are wrong. But the fact remains that the
moth's progress is not helped by the flame. God knows I had plenty else to do
with work and looking round at estate agents and making huge decisions about my
life, the sort you can't possibly make rationally, which you really ought to
make just by tossing a coin. Even so, I rummaged in the pockets of jackets
hanging in my cupboard and found the number that David had scrawled on a
ripped-off corner of a newspaper, the number of the person at the skating rink
who had known Brendan. Jeff Locke.