When You Are Mine(76)

Tempe has noticed my retreat. She keeps leaving messages, asking me if something is wrong. I’ve told her that I’m distracted and that I need some space. I feel like saying, ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ but on the list of pathetic excuses that always comes near the top.

It’s difficult because the wedding is a week from Saturday and we still have to finalise the seating plan, and the dress rehearsal, and a hundred different particulars, each a fraction of a whole.

Another complication is that Tempe’s mother is arriving tomorrow. Elsa has been calling me every few days, asking about ‘my Maggie’. Always cheerful and chatty, I can hear the relief in her voice when I tell her that Tempe is fine and living at the same address. She used the word ‘we’, which makes me think that Mr Brown is coming too.

‘Why did Maggie run away?’ I asked her on her last call.

‘It was a misunderstanding.’

‘An argument?’

‘Something like that. Does she ever talk about me?’

‘Not really.’

‘Is she taking her medication?’

‘What medication?’

There was another pause. ‘For her anxiety. I shouldn’t really talk about it. I’ll explain when we meet.’





42


The flight is twenty minutes late. Chauffeurs and taxi drivers are gathered at either end of the barriers, holding up clipboards and handwritten signs with passenger names and company logos. I borrow a piece of paper and a marker pen from one of them, writing the name Elsa Brown in capital letters. I’m holding the sign above my head when a man steps in front of me. He’s so big that I lean sideways to make sure Mrs Brown isn’t hiding behind him.

‘Philomena McCarthy?’

‘Yes. Are you Mr Brown?’

‘No. I’m Dr Thomas Coyle.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Elsa thought it best if I came instead. I’m a psychiatrist. I was looking after Maggie in Belfast.’

He is so tall that I have to tilt my head to see his face. ‘Why? What was wrong with her?’

‘Let’s talk somewhere more private.’

An awkward silence follows. I toy with my car keys.

‘Why didn’t Elsa tell me?’

‘We were concerned that you might alert Maggie and we’d lose her again.’

There’s that phrase again.

‘Do you often lose her?’

‘A poor choice of words, perhaps.’

He’s in his early forties, with salt-and-pepper hair, and a body assembled from odds and ends, bulging where it should taper, except for his eyes, which are large and brown and full of intelligence. He’s wearing a cotton business shirt, folded to his elbows, tan trousers, baggy around the bottom, and lace-up loafers. A crumpled linen jacket hangs over his arm.

My Fiat is on the second level of the car park. It feels smaller because Dr Coyle’s knees are touching the dashboard and his head is brushing the roof.

‘Are we going to the address?’ he asks as we pass through the boom gate.

‘I want some answers first. I told Elsa I wouldn’t reveal Tempe’s address without getting her permission, or unless I felt it was in her best interests.’

‘It is,’ he says adamantly.

‘Why didn’t Elsa come?’

‘Maggie has a fractious relationship with her parents. She blames them for having her sectioned.’

‘Is Tempe dangerous?’

Coyle treats the question with interest rather than surprise. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘People are usually sectioned when they pose a risk to themselves or to others.’

He considers this for a moment and pats his stomach.

‘Do we have time for breakfast? I’m famished.’

I take him to a café in Richmond, overlooking the river. The outside tables have umbrellas and wooden boxes with cutlery and condiments. The serviettes are pinned beneath painted rocks.

Dr Coyle has a strange way of sucking his teeth while he’s studying the menu, as though he’s imagining how each dish will taste before deciding what he should order. Our coffees arrive. He opens a sugar sachet, but only adds a few granules. The silence is filled with the clack and bang of crockery and hiss of steaming milk.

Coyle takes a small notebook from the pocket of his linen jacket and begins scribbling something on a page.

‘Are you going to be taking notes?’ I ask.

‘Does that bother you?’

‘I’d rather you answered my questions.’

He puts the notebook away.

‘I first met Maggie Brown at the Rathlin Ward in Belfast, a twenty-four-bed acute facility for people with serious mental health issues. Maggie was nineteen when she was first admitted; and had three subsequent stays over the next eight years.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘I can’t discuss the specifics of her case.’

‘What can you tell me?’

‘Eighteen months ago, Maggie left the clinic unexpectedly. We were close to making a breakthrough, but sometimes that’s when a patient is most vulnerable because they’re more exposed. She signed herself out of the hospital and left Belfast. We know she caught a ferry across the Irish Sea to Liverpool and a train to London. After that we lost her.’