Chapter One

The appointment was a mistake, for the psychiatrist looked more disturbed than he was. He was about his own age, a wiry figure in a pin-striped suit. No tie, but a pink shirt that spilled out from the front. Thick, greying hair and pebble glasses that gave his eyes a fanatic look. Outside, the one-way traffic thundered up Wimpole Street. Inside, the consulting room was bathed in cream light, filtering through venetian blinds.

“How would you describe your state of mind?” asked Dr Adcocke.

“Bored, listless, apathetic…”

“Suicidal?”

“No. Not that.”

“Your appetites? Food, sleep, sex…?”

“Normal.”

“What would you say was wrong with you?”

He had never been exactly sure. Whether it was something he inherited from his mother, a brain abnormality, or the result of too much philosophy. Even now, he was certain that thoughts would find him rather than the other way around.

“That each thing I think, say, or do has been decided in advance. That nothing that comes from me will make any difference.”

“The statement you just made: was that, too, decided in advance?”

“Indeed. Rather like the sounds on a vinyl record when you place the needle on it.”

The psychiatrist licked his lips and typed some more.

On went the questions. The man loaded the answers into a laptop, unaware that Michael was drifting away.

He looked at the dreamy prints on the walls: mass produced surrealism from eBay. On a polished side table was a hunched figure of a woman embracing a child, although it was hard to tell whether she was nurturing it or suffocating it. 

On completion, Adcocke sat down on the leather recliner opposite.

“You have at least five markers for clinical depression,” he said. 

“I don’t feel depressed.”

“That is what depression is. An absence of feeling.”

Adcocke stretched out his legs. First point to him. Michael met that with more silence.

“There are more unusual markers.”

“Such as?”

“The absence of volition, for one thing. That, and the schizoid element in the clinical picture.”

“Spare me the jargon. Tell me what that means in your own words.”

“No.”

“What?”

“The ‘jargon’, as you call it, is an essential part of the procedure. It carries an exact meaning.”

“Tell me what the exact meaning is, then.”

“The schizoid personality separates from ordinary human relationships. Locked in paranoid thoughts and fantasies with the delusion of having special powers. The problem you have is that your mother shared those delusions. What we call a folie à deux.”

“Whereas your delusions are fine, because you share them with other psychiatrists?”

“We have a consensus of scientific opinion, if that’s what you mean.”

“This schizoid thing you’re worried about: should I be concerned?”

“You should be greatly concerned. Such people are capable of violence once their rage and despair are unleashed.”

“I don’t wish anyone any harm.”

“Quite so. The rage is often well hidden.”

“How do I know it is there?”

Adcocke took off his gold-rimmed spectacles and made a show of polishing the lenses.

“You will need treatment, my friend.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“A course of psychotherapy.”

“How would that work?”

“An operation to uncover the lineaments of frustrated desire.”

Adcocke replaced his spectacles and rebalanced them on his nose. His eyes gleamed from behind them.

“How would you go about uncovering those?”

“Through tracing the objects to which that desire is affixed. I’m particularly interested in the fact your mother brought you up, that you shared her bed as a child, and that she was taken from you when you were sixteen.”

“She wasn’t taken, she was murdered.”

“Quite so. Yet the roots of your disorder can be found there.”

“If they are there.”

“If it is the word ‘depression’ you dislike, then we can call it something else. ‘Anguish’, for example. For myself, it is simply a disturbance that began at birth.”

“You think birth is a mistake?”

Adcocke shrugged and stretched out his legs some more. 

“It’s a convenient view to have for a man in your profession. You’ll never run short of patients.”

“I would put it the other way. Your cynicism means that you will never have to become a patient.”

“I’d consider becoming one if I thought I was going to be understood. Seems to me you’ve already made your mind up about my case before we started.”

“You taught philosophy, I believe? At Queen’s?”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Only that your education makes you more resistant. It has become your refuge, has it not? A place where you are safe from the truth.”

“The truth I will only find once you have taught me psychoanalysis? And a new vocabulary to go with it?”

Adcocke’s moustache twitched. Michael’s smile of mockery was unyielding. At length, he gave up.

“I can prescribe an anti-depressant if you prefer.”

“Another drug? Don’t you have anything apart from indoctrination and chemicals?”

Adcocke’s hand patted the armrest while he searched for a retort.

“It seems your visit has been a waste of time,” he said at last, getting up.

“Not entirely,” said Michael, going over to fetch his coat. “It’s always enlightening to see how these cults work.”

On his way out, the receptionist stopped him.

“Dr Adcocke has the four-thirty slot on Mondays free. Will you take that? An annual block booking is seven thousand pounds.”

“I have decided not to accept that privilege.”

The receptionist, a well-groomed woman who looked as if someone had thoroughly analysed her, opened her mouth in surprise. 

“You won’t find anyone better in London.”

“Someone else told me that,” said Michael. 

Out on the street, the spring shower had cleared; it was warming up again. Michael looked at his watch. The reception at the Bayes Gallery would start about now; he wanted to miss that. He walked up to Cavendish Square and went into Pret a Manger. Ordered a macchiato and sat by the window. 

His phone buzzed, and a text appeared.

Where are you? Wilf.

He put the phone back on the table and tried to clear his head. What was swirling around inside his skull, waiting for him to open the door on it? It had a feeling of dread attached to it with something like a string.

He thought hard as he stared out the window. Prosperous citizens laden with fresh bags from department stores walked on up towards Marble Arch. Others, not so fortunate, were heading in the other direction towards the Oxford Circus Tube station.

It had something to do with his wife, he guessed. A reasonable assumption, since she occupied his thoughts a lot these days.

Random images came up. Of he and Peggy sitting on a beach in Blackwater the summer before. She in a deck chair and sun hat, dozing, voluptuous in the heat. He staring out at the sunlight flashing off the sea, listening to the cry of the gulls circling above. Connecting nothing with nothing. A smell of rank seaweed in his nostrils. The feeling of something trying to break into his head. With so much force, he had dived off the rocks into the cold, green sea. Shortly after that, he requested leave from his university post. Peggy hadn’t been pleased about it, something that had led to their estrangement. 

Was it for her he had made the appointment? Knowing in advance that no one could understand his oddity better than he did himself? Now that possibility, too, was closed. Leaving him with little else to go on.

He wondered where Peggy could be now. Would she miss him as much as he missed her? He doubted that. Most likely she was busy at her kiln. Or spending the afternoon with her lover. Unable to bear that last thought, he hurried out of the cafe. A black cab was cruising along by the pavement, its For Hire sign showing. On impulse, he got in.

“Where to, mate?”

“The Bayes Gallery. Halfway up the Old Brompton Road.”