"You hang on in there, too," said Ray.

Jamie brushed an insect off his face.

"The stupid thing..." said Ray.

"What's the stupid thing?" asked Jamie.

"I love her. She's b.l.o.o.d.y hard work, but I love her. And I know I'm not very bright. And I know I do some moronic things. But I care about her. I really do."

On cue, the kitchen door opened and Katie emerged carrying a plate.

"Where are you?" She walked gingerly onto the lawn and trod on something. "s.h.i.t." She bent down to retrieve a dropped fork.

"We're here," said Jamie.

She made her way over. "There's supper inside. Why don't you two go and get something to eat and I'll sit with Jacob."

"You give me that," said Ray. "I'll stay out here."

"All right," said Katie. She sounded like she'd had enough disagreements for one day. She gave the plate to Ray. "Spaghetti Bolognese. You sure you don't want a man portion?"

"I'll be fine," said Ray.

Katie got down onto her hands and knees and put her head inside the tent. She snuggled close to Jacob and kissed his cheek. "Sleep tight, banana." Then she got up again and turned to Jamie. "Come on. We'd better go and keep Mum company."

She headed back toward the house.

Jamie got to his feet. He put his hand on Ray's shoulder and patted it gently. Ray didn't react.

He walked over the damp gra.s.s toward the lit house.

75.

Katie knew there was going to be a row over supper. She could feel it in the air. If things went particularly badly they could have an argument about her own wedding, Dad's mental health and Mum's lover all at the same time. going to be a row over supper. She could feel it in the air. If things went particularly badly they could have an argument about her own wedding, Dad's mental health and Mum's lover all at the same time.

Halfway through the spaghetti Bolognese Mum said she sincerely hoped Dad wouldn't be having any more silly accidents. There was a slightly hunted look on her face and it seemed pretty obvious to Katie that she knew the chisel story was b.o.l.l.o.c.ks but wanted to make sure neither of them did. There was one of those uneasy silences where you can hear everyone chewing and the sc.r.a.pe of cutlery and Jamie saved the situation by saying, "And if he does, let's hope he does it in the garden," which allowed them to defuse the tension with a bit of forced laughter.

They were clearing the plates when Mum dropped the big one. "So, is there going to be a wedding or not?"

Katie gritted her teeth. "I just don't know, OK?"

"Well, we're going to have to know pretty soon. I mean it's all very well us being sympathetic, but I've got to make some rather difficult phone calls and I'd rather not leave them any longer than I have to."

Katie put her hands flat on the table to calm herself. "What do you want me to say? I don't know. Things are difficult at the moment."

Jamie paused in the doorway with the plates.

"Well, do you love him or not?" asked Mum.

And that was when Katie really lost it. "What the h.e.l.l do you know about love?"

Mum looked as if she'd been slapped.

Jamie said, "Hang on. Hang on. Let's not have a shouting match. Please."

"b.u.t.t out," said Katie.

Jean sat back in her chair and closed her eyes and said, "Well, if you're feeling like that then I think it's safe to a.s.sume that there's going to be no wedding."

Jamie's hands were actually shaking. He put the plates back down on the table. "Katie. Mum. Can we just leave this, OK? I think we've all been through enough already."

"What the f.u.c.k has this got to do with you?" said Katie, and she knew it was childish and spiteful but she needed sympathy, not a b.l.o.o.d.y lecture.

Then Jamie lost it, too, which she hadn't seen in a very long time.

"It's got everything to do with me. You're my sister. And you're my mother. And the two of you are s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g everything up."

"Jamie..." said Mum, as if he was six.

Jamie ignored her and turned to Katie. "I've spent the last twenty minutes sitting outside with Ray and he's a really nice guy and he's busting a gut to make it easy for you."

Katie said, "Well, you've changed your tune."

"Shut up and listen," said Jamie. "He's putting up with all this c.r.a.p. And he's giving you a place to live for as long as you like even though you don't love him, because he cares for you and he cares for Jacob. He drives up here and sits in the garden because he's perfectly aware that Mum and Dad don't like him-"

"I never said that," countered Mum weakly.

"And I've sat with Dad today and talked to him and there is something seriously wrong with him and he didn't have an accident with a stupid f.u.c.king chisel. He was chopping himself up with a pair of scissors and you're hoping it'll all blow over. Well, it's not going to blow over. He needs someone to listen to him or he's going to stick his head in the oven and we're all going to end up feeling like s.h.i.t because we pretended there was nothing wrong."

Katie was so stunned by Jamie's sudden character change that she didn't hear what he was saying. No one spoke for a couple of seconds and then Mum started to cry very quietly.

Jamie said, "I'm going to take some pudding into the garden," and walked out, leaving the plates on the table.

76.

Jean went upstairs and lay down on the bed and cried until she had run out of tears. and lay down on the bed and cried until she had run out of tears.

She felt desperately lonely.

Because of Jamie, mostly. Katie she could understand. Katie was going through a difficult time. And Katie argued with everyone, about everything. But what had come over Jamie? Did he have any idea of what she had been through today?

She no longer understood the men in her family.

She sat up and blew her nose on a tissue from the box on the bedside table.

Though, to be frank, she wasn't sure that she ever had.

She remembered Jamie at five. Going off to his room "to be private." Even now they would be talking sometimes and it was like talking to someone in Spain. You got the basics. The time of day. Directions to the beach. But there was a whole level you were missing because you didn't speak the language properly.

And it might have been all right if she could just give him a cuddle sometimes. But he wasn't the cuddling sort. No more than George was.

She walked over to the window and pulled the curtains back and looked down into the darkened garden. There was a tent somewhere in the shadows under the trees at the far end.

The idea of swapping places with Ray seemed suddenly very attractive, being down there in a sleeping bag with Jacob.

Away from the house. Away from her family. Away from everything.

77.

When George came round they'd gone. Jean, Katie, Jamie, Jacob, Ray. He was rather relieved, to be honest. He was exceedingly tired, and his family could be hard work. Especially en ma.s.se. they'd gone. Jean, Katie, Jamie, Jacob, Ray. He was rather relieved, to be honest. He was exceedingly tired, and his family could be hard work. Especially en ma.s.se.

He was beginning to think that he could do with a spot of reading, and wondering how he might be able to get his hands on a decent magazine, when the curtains were opened by a large man in a battered canvas jacket. He was entirely bald and carrying a clipboard.

"Mr. Hall?" He rotated a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles up onto his very shiny head.

"Yes."

"Joel Forman. Psychiatrist."

"I thought you chaps went home at five o'clock," said George.

"That would be lovely, wouldn't it." He flicked through some papers on the clipboard. "Sadly, people only get crazier as the day wears on, in my experience. Self-medication, usually. Though I'm sure that doesn't apply to you."

"Certainly not," said George. "Though I've been taking some antidepressants." He decided not to mention the codeine and the whiskey.

"What flavor?"

"Flavor?"

"What are they called?"

"l.u.s.tral," said George. "They make me feel absolutely terrible, to be honest."

Dr. Forman was one of those men who did humor without smiling. He looked like a villain from a James Bond film. It was disconcerting.

"Weeping, sleeplessness and anxiety," said Dr. Forman. "Always makes me laugh when I read that under possible side effects. I'd chuck them, frankly."

"OK," said George.

"You were doing some amateur surgery, I hear."

George explained, slowly and carefully, in a measured voice with a little self-deprecating humor thrown in, how he had ended up in hospital.

"Scissors. The practical approach," said Dr. Forman. "And how are you now?"

"I feel better than I have done in quite a long time," said George.

"Good," said Dr. Forman. "But you'll still be seeing the psychologist at your GP's surgery, won't you." This was not phrased as a question.

"I will."

"Good," said Dr. Forman again, jabbing the paper on the clipboard with the end of his pen in a little rounding-off flourish. "Good."

George relaxed a little. His examination was over, and unless he was very much mistaken, he had pa.s.sed. "Only a week ago I was thinking I could do with a stay in some kind of inst.i.tution. Rest from the world. That kind of thing."

Dr. Forman did not react at first and George wondered whether he had given away a piece of information which was going to change Dr. Forman's a.s.sessment. Like reversing over the examiner's foot after a driving test.

Dr. Forman put the clipboard back under his arm. "I'd stay away from psychiatric hospitals if I were you." He clicked his heels together. It was part changing of the guard, part Wizard of Oz. George wondered if Dr. Forman was himself a little unhinged. "Talk to your psychologist. Eat properly. Get to bed early. Do some regular exercise."

"Which reminds me," said George. "Do you know where I can get hold of something to read?"

"I'll see what I can do," said Dr. Forman, and before George could specify the kind of reading material he might like, the psychiatrist had shaken George's hand and vanished through the curtain.

Half an hour later a porter came to take him to a ward. George felt a little insulted by the wheelchair until he attempted to stand. It wasn't pain per se, but the sensation of something being very wrong in his abdominal region and the suspicion that if he stood up his insides might exit through the hole he had made earlier in the day. When he sat down again, sweat was pouring from his face and arms.

"You going to behave now?" said the porter.

Two nurses appeared and he was hoisted into the chair.

He was wheeled to an empty bed on an open ward. A tiny leathery Oriental man was sleeping in the bed to his left in a cat's cradle of tubes and wires. To his right a teenage boy was listening to music through headphones. His leg was in traction and he had brought most of his possessions into hospital: a stack of CDs, a camera, a bottle of HP Sauce, a small robot, some books, a large inflatable hammer...

George lay on the bed staring at the ceiling. He would have given anything for a cup of tea and a biscuit.

He was on the verge of catching the attention of the teenage boy to find out whether there was any conceivable overlap in their literary tastes when Dr. Forman materialized at the foot of the bed. He handed George two paperbacks and said, "Leave them with the nurses when you've finished, OK? Or I will hunt you down like a dog." He gave a brief smile then turned and walked away, exchanging a few words with one of the nurses in a language which was neither English nor any other language that George recognized.

George turned the books over. Treason's Harbour Treason's Harbour and and The Nutmeg of Consolation, The Nutmeg of Consolation, by Patrick O'Brian. by Patrick O'Brian.

The aptness of the choice was almost creepy. George had read Master and Commander Master and Commander last year and had been meaning to try some of the others. He wondered whether he might have said something while unconscious. last year and had been meaning to try some of the others. He wondered whether he might have said something while unconscious.

He read eighty or so pages of Treason's Harbour, Treason's Harbour, ate a limp inst.i.tutional supper of beef stew, boiled vegetables, peaches and custard, then slipped into a dreamless sleep, interrupted only by a long and complex visit to the toilet at 3:00 a.m. ate a limp inst.i.tutional supper of beef stew, boiled vegetables, peaches and custard, then slipped into a dreamless sleep, interrupted only by a long and complex visit to the toilet at 3:00 a.m.