Just Last Night(63)

“You’re a therapist, aren’t you . . . are we into therapy now? Can you charge for this?” I say.

“No matter how many years I’ve done my job, this being said to me never gets old,” he says, still smiling, but it’s thinner, and I make a mental note he doesn’t want to discuss his work.

“Do I like Nottingham. Yes in some ways, no in others,” I conclude.

“That’s every adjusted person’s view of anywhere really, isn’t it?” Fin says. “I’d mistrust anyone who said, ‘Yeah where I live, best place ever, it’s perfection.’ I would suspect it’s more about their choices having to be the best ones.”

I steal a sidelong look at him. This sort of cynicism, I can work with.

“You say that, but my dad lives on a sheep farm in Australia and I think you’ll find it’s literal heaven on earth.”

“Do you mistrust him?”

“. . . Yes,” I say, and in mutual surprise, I laugh and Fin grudgingly smiles. His face looks completely altered in amusement, like he was never the other person all along. It freaks me out a little.

God, it’s come back to me: Susie conceding he was probably a good model because “he looks different in every single photo. Not like a different photo of the same person, or another angle, a different person. Brrrr.”

That now-familiar hard pang that I can never tell her any of this. With the added psychic blockade of the fight I can never have with her either.

After over an hour of intermittent, low-key small talk, Fin sees a blinking on a mobile he has in a holder and says: “Ah. Romilly’s calling me.”

“Romilly?”

There’s no time for further explanation as he prods “Accept Call.”

“Hi, Rom.” Fin frowns. “You’re on speakerphone, I’m in the car. I have someone with me.”

Crackle. “Who?”

“Eve. She was a friend of my sister’s. She’s helping me find my dad. Remember he absconded?”

“Oh. Hello, Eve?” says a crisp, East Coast, Sex and the City voice. A Charlotte one, or actually—Miranda.

“Hi!” I say.

“I wanted to let you know that Ethan’s appointment went fine. They want to see him again in three months, but they don’t think there’s any damage to his hearing.”

“That’s great. Is he happy?”

“Oh yeah, he’s back to being a little jerk again. I took him to Balthazar to celebrate and he ate half the breakfast menu. The waiter couldn’t believe it.”

“Good! Tell him I’ll bring him something back from here.”

A pause. Hard to say if it’s a transatlantic connection pause or a loaded pause.

“Call me when you get to Scotland. On a private line,” Romilly says, eventually, which I take as a forthright dig at me. Or maybe it’s merely Big Apple directness?

“Your girlfriend?” I say, once Fin’s pressed to end the call.

“Ex,” Fin says.

“Ah.”

From her frostiness toward me, I intuit that Fin ended it and she’s not over it, but who knows.

“She has a little boy, from a previous relationship. I like to know how he’s doing,” Fin says. “We stay in touch about him.”

“Was she at your mum’s funeral? She had red hair?”

Fin looks surprised. “Yes. Were you there?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t see you.”

This strikes me as a peculiar thing to say. If he didn’t know me in adulthood, he wouldn’t have known me by sight, so how would he know if he saw me? That event doesn’t strike me as one to pry into further, however.

“Romilly,” I say. “Unusual name.”

“Her parents are French Canadian. Why did you make that face?”

“What sort of face?”

“A kind of ‘huh typical’ face.”

I realize I did do this. “It’s just. ‘Romilly.’ So cool. You were never going to date a Doris.”

“Given Dorises are over eighty, no, probably not.”

“You say that, but it’s becoming trendy again. Middle-class nurseries are full of Dorises and Mauds.”

“I wasn’t planning on dating a five-year-old either.”

“Everyone calls their kids grandma names or silver-screen film star names now.”

“Isn’t Eve an old movie name? All About Eve.”

“I’m Evelyn, actually.”

“Evelyn. That’s nice.”

I can’t tell if Fin being pleasant is him being pleasant, or being pleasant is a tactic of some sort, which I’m not Wolf of Wall Street enough to grasp.

“Thank you. It is nice. Even if it sounds a bit like I listen to The Archers and keep dried lavender sachets in my pants drawer.”

“You’re fond of saying whatever’s in your head, aren’t you?” Fin says, throwing me an accompanying smile to defuse the accusation.

“You’re fond of never saying what’s in your head,” I blurt, with a return smile.

Despite the fact he’s driving at eighty-two miles per hour, Fin manages to give me a stare of mild consternation. Is the shrink not used to being shrunk on?