My father gave a small shrug. ‘I loved her unfortunately.’
We said goodbye outside. My father was going the other way and made me take the umbrella. It broke as I put it up and I was pressing the tangle of bent spokes into a bin when I saw Robert come out of a shop a few feet away from where I was standing. He had a newspaper in one hand and held it above his head while he dashed over the crossing towards a taxi stopped on that side.
He saw me as he was opening the door and paused as if, in another moment, he would be able to place the woman on the other side of the street who looked like she was going to wave, then didn’t. He was still holding up the newspaper and made a friendly gesture with it before ducking to get in. I do not know if he recognised me, or if he acknowledged me to be on the safe side.
The taxi drove away and I kept walking. Nostos, algos. I never went back after the first appointment. I booked dozens in the months afterwards and always cancelled them the day before. The last time I rang his rooms, the receptionist told me I had so many late cancellation fees against my file, this was one of the very rare occasions that she couldn’t let me make another appointment unless I paid them.
I still long to see him sometimes but I know that I won’t because there is nothing else to say. And there will never be ￡540.50 in Martha’s Unexpecteds – even if there was, I worry that as an expert in the human mind, he would be able to discern from my body language that of the 820 views his 2017 address to the World Psychiatric Association has racked up on YouTube, 59 of them were me.
He spoke on the subject of ——。 The conference took place a short time after we met. When I first found it I hoped but now I just wonder if I am the articulate young woman with classic symptoms who he will refer to throughout as ‘Patient M’。
*
Ingrid had her baby. It was two weeks late and enormous and came out facing the wrong way. Patrick and I went with my parents to see her the afternoon it was born. The delivery required forceps and, she told us, that toilet plunger thing and a fucking episiotomy by a doctor who was seriously trying to shut the barn door after the horse had bolted. She suspected him of doing a bad job with the stitches and, as such, she’d decided to just disassociate from the whole area which she described then, and has since, as her Baginasaurus Wrecked.
Winsome was already there when we arrived – by herself because Rowland was on a quest to find unmetered parking, from which, she felt, he was unlikely to return. She stood rinsing a bag of green grapes under a high tap over the basin, pretending that she couldn’t hear anything my sister was saying. Afterwards, Hamish asked Patrick how common it was, these days, for a sonographer to misread the baby’s sex. Ingrid had told everyone it was a boy. Patrick said it wasn’t common, especially not across multiple scans.
‘I didn’t have multiple scans.’ She looked up from whatever adjustment she was trying to make to the strap of her bra and said, ‘The magic isn’t there when you have three boys in the room with you breaking the equipment.’
Patrick said, ‘Even so –’
‘And they didn’t tell me it was another boy.’ Ingrid said, ‘I didn’t ask. I just assumed.’
Hamish made no reaction, except to say ah. Then, regrouping, said, ‘Either way we should settle on a name for her while we’re all present.’
Ingrid looked over to Winsome who was by then snipping the large bunch of grapes into many small ones and arranging them in a cut-glass bowl she had brought from home. ‘I would like to call her Winnie.’ And to Hamish, ‘Is that fine?’
He recited his daughter’s full name. My mother was by the crib, smoothing out wrinkles in the blanket. Hamish said, ‘What do you think, Celia?’
She said the name was perfect. ‘We need as many Winnies as we can get in this life.’
I glanced at my aunt and saw her produce a tissue from her sleeve, putting her back to the room to privately dab her eyes.
‘Actually,’ Ingrid said, ‘Winnie Martha sounds weird. Let’s just not have a middle name.’ And to me, ‘I love you though.’
*
I apologised to Winsome about the vase. I called her first, after reading my mother’s letter and triaging my crimes, letting myself address the smallest or one of the smaller ones first. I asked if I could come and see her and on the day, she invited me out to the garden where a table was preset for afternoon tea.
Even though, on Christmas Day, she had looked on the verge of tears when I’d said in the foyer that I didn’t want the vase, Winsome told me she had no memory of that incident, she said whatsoever, and patted my arm. I asked if she would forgive me anyway.