The Healing Place

CHAPTER 4

 

  Franz’s early evening meeting, with the human resources director of a multinational company seeking relaxation and motivation courses for its executives, went on longer than planned. Franz left the meeting with a block booking in the diary, and left the director floating blissfully belly-up in the basement flotation pool.

  He had changed ready for this evening’s forum and was on his way to the SoulFood Cafe to grab a halloumi tortilla when he was waylaid by a group of young people in school uniform who, spotting the white suit, thought he must be the person to ask which course would teach them to cast spells. Silently cursing Harry Potter, he escorted the spellbound young people to the front door, assuring them that as long as their parents gave written assent they would all be welcome to return. From experience, he expected they would be back the next day with forged notes (signed Mr or Mrs – a sure giveaway) stating that the signatories were happy and willing for their children to become trainee witches.

  The receptionists were instructed to respond to any young person by picking up the phone to contact their parent to confirm the letter, at which point the boy or girl would mutter something about an urgent need to be somewhere else right now and would not return.

  It was only when the forum was well under way that Franz remembered he hadn’t phoned Ella and told her not to prepare a meal for Sharma and himself at home after all. He tried to phone home but the landline was engaged and her mobile was switched off. He sent a text message and didn’t persuade himself that that would be good enough but when he arrived home at eleven pm ready to apologize Ella seemed unconcerned.

  ‘That’s okay; I thought something like that must have happened,’ she said vaguely and went back to checking the laptop at the kitchen table. The shop was engaged in stocktaking. Bringing work home was something Franz had agreed not to do and he felt mildly upset that Ella was doing it, though he had never asked her not to and he had been out all evening. Still, he half-expected her to stop work when he came in. When she didn’t, he offered her a drink and went to help himself.

  ‘No thanks,’ she said absently, her finger poised over a spreadsheet.

  ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Fine. The food was all stuff that could go back in the fridge, so help yourself if you want.’

  ‘Thanks. This looks delicious,’ he said, with guilt. ‘How about you?’

  ‘I’ve eaten, thanks. You go ahead.’

  Something was definitely wrong. They were being polite. Was she actually really annoyed about his not phoning to save her the trouble of preparing food? It was unlikely, he thought. Ella was extraordinarily tolerant of his unpredictable schedule and never regarded any arrangement as fixed. Besides, she spoke her mind. If she was pissed off with him she would say so.

  Seating himself on the sofa with a plateful of food, he studied her covertly. She looked pale. Time of the month? He couldn’t remember her dates. It was a time of year of course when nobody was in the best health but Ella rarely got even minor ailments. He hoped she was not sick.

  ‘So what happened with Sharma?’ she asked, closing down the screen and pushing her chair back.

  ‘Oh, it turned out to be simple. Some seekers who weren’t suitable for his course. My fault.’

  ‘Why yours?’

  ‘I talked them into it. I wanted to get the numbers made up and the evening over with, if I’m honest.’ He sounded weary.

  ‘He didn’t have anything else he wanted to say to you, then?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I did ask him if there was anything else I could help with.’

  ‘It might be more a question of him helping you,’ Ella suggested. She leaned back in the chair, arching her back, and swept her swathe of long hair over one shoulder. The movement, practical in purpose, was graceful in effect. Franz smiled, watching her.

  ‘I need help, do I?’ he said.

  She sat forward suddenly, her eyes focused and serious. ‘Oh yes, I’d say you do.’

  ‘Huh?’ He was still smiling, not believing she meant it. ‘Why – help with what?’

  ‘With being real,’ she said. ‘I’ve known you a year and a half, Franz, I live with you and I don’t know you any more than anyone else does. Do you realize how evasive you are?’

  ‘Evasive?’

  ‘Think about it,’ she invited. ‘The answers you give when people ask you questions about yourself. The fact that you have a foster sister and you never even mentioned her to me. I still don’t know where you were born, which school you went to, who your friends were. What you think. How you feel.’

  He stopped eating, no longer hungry. ‘You know how I feel about you. Don’t you?’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying, Franz. I know who you are in the present day. And you seem to have clear ideas about your future. But most of your life happened before I met you and you never mention any details. It makes me feel you don’t trust me.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ he said quickly. ‘I do trust you.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So?’ He looked her in the eyes and smiled. ‘The man with no yesterday! Maybe there’s nothing to tell, Ella. No mysterious past. Just not a very interesting one. I prefer to live in the present.’

  She was silent, keeping her eyes on his face.

  He stood up and took his plate to the sink and washed it. Behind him, he heard her gathering up papers.

  ‘Think I’ll take a shower,’ he said, moving towards the door. ‘Unless you want to go first?’

  ‘No, I’ll have one in the morning. Franz?’

  He stood still but did not turn around. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You might try asking Sharma. If he had something else he wanted to say to you.’

  There was a pause so momentary it was no more than a breath.

  Then, ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll do that.’

  At the week’s final forum on Friday evening, Franz found himself distracted. Numbers of seekers were down this evening, though given the crowds earlier in the week that was no cause for concern, he told himself; besides, Friday was traditionally an evening for binge drinking, not signing up for Tai Chi and astrology.

  The week had gone well, all in all. Franz’s intervention had softened an exchange of hostilities between the rival guides of Relaxation - The Antidote To Stress, and Harmony Through Biorhythm Monitoring.

  Sharma had acquired four late registrations by email, which enabled him to run the Introduction To Clairvoyance course for two full-size groups on consecutive evenings. And most of the other courses were running at full capacity, which ensured extra income for The Healing Place to rely on for the ceiling repair.

  That was a major cause of Franz’s distraction this evening. Every time he glanced upwards he couldn’t help thinking the crack was longer, deeper or wider. He took a deep breath, remembering the admonitions of positive thinking and silently reciting the daily personal affirmations: 'I am in control of my destiny. I am a strong and capable person. There are no problems, only challenges.' For some reason, he could only hear them in a Homer Simpson voice.

  ‘Franz.’

  She had to say his name twice before he heard her.

  ‘Marisa. What are you doing here this evening? Your forum night was Tuesday, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Monday. You sent me those three boys.’

  ‘Oh, I remember.’ He thought he did.

  ‘They wouldn’t stop making sexist jokes about masseuses,' Marisa said.

  ‘They didn’t sign up for the course in the end, then?’

  ‘They did. So did that guy Matthew, the one who kept going on about his erotic dreams.’

  Franz laughed. ‘Erotic, were they? I couldn’t work out what he was talking about.’

  ‘You might think it’s funny,’ said Marisa.

  He stopped laughing. ‘Sorry. What?’

  ‘Those boys followed me home. Shouting offensive remarks about my tits.’

  ‘Did they hurt you?’

 
‘Not physically.’

  ‘Okay. I’m sorry that happened to you, Marisa. Leave it to me now: I’ll check their registration forms and call them and make it clear that they’re no longer on for your course, and offer to redirect them to some other form of ….’

  ‘They’re in hospital,’ Marisa interrupted him.

  ‘They’re what?’

  ‘My dad thumped them.’

  ‘Marisa, you can’t do this! You’re aiming to be a holistic therapist, responsible for introducing a gentler, more spiritual approach to life. Besides, The Healing Place could be sued – had you thought about that?’

  ‘Tough shit,’ said Marisa. ‘If you think I’m going to be pursued by thugs that this Healing Place sets on to me …’

  Franz was stung. ‘The Healing Place is open to everyone,’ he pointed out. ‘For mutual benefit. Before you approached The Healing Place, you had how many clients on board?’

  ‘Two,’ she said. ‘Both of them genuine.’

  ‘Your brother’s girlfriend and your cousin. And how many were queuing up to register with you at the forum? Not one.’

  Marisa appeared to have stopped listening and was gesturing to someone across the room. It was easy enough to spot the man she was waving at: he was head and shoulders above anyone else there and built like a rhinoceros.

  ‘There’s my dad,’ Marisa told Franz. ‘He wants a word with you.’

  ‘And I’d love to meet him too,’ Franz said, ‘sometime when I’m not so busy.’

  He had almost reached the door at the back of the hall when the force of a giant hand landed on his shoulder.

  ‘Mr Kane?’

  Franz turned, with deep reluctance and what he hoped was a smile. ‘Hello! You must be Marisa’s father?’

  ‘Marisa, she may call herself to you. Maria, her mother and I baptized her and it’s always been good enough for us.’ The man’s accent was strongly Irish.

  ‘You’re from County Kerry?’ Franz hazarded.

  ‘What if I am? You’re going to make jokes about Kerrymen now?’

  ‘A wonderful part of the world,’ said Franz warmly. ‘Greatly underrated by the Irish from other regions but unique in the beauty of its scenery.’

  ‘You’re right enough there,’ the man allowed. ‘The most beautiful place on God’s earth.’

  ‘And the hospitable and generous nature of its people,’ Franz continued, ‘has to be experienced to be believed.’

  ‘You’ve been there?’

  ‘Many years ago - too young to remember place names,’ Franz said, ‘but the magical nature of the area stays in my memory. And its kindly and understanding people.’

  ‘It’s only the truth,’ the man agreed.

  ‘You must miss it?’ Franz said.

  A huge sigh escaped from the massive chest, releasing a strong aroma of whisky.

  ‘I do, that,’ Marisa’s father admitted. ‘Thirty years I’ve been over here and never a day when I haven’t thought of home and longed to be back there.’

  ‘You came for the work, I imagine?’

  ‘I did. There was plenty of it then. A man could arrive on the boat, get himself on a coach to London, turn up at six o’clock in the morning at the first building site he set eyes on and be certain of getting hired for as long as the job lasted. It’s not like that these days.’

  ‘Not like that now, certainly,’ Franz echoed.

  ‘It’s a week here, a few days there and half the time you’re expected to do the whole job on your own, not even an apprentice to mix the plaster for you.’

  ‘You’re a plasterer?’ Franz said.

  ‘Man and boy. And I’m good!’ he asserted. ‘I’m one of the best in the trade and if I can’t get work, who can?’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Franz, taking the man gingerly by the elbow, ‘if you might give me the opinion of an experienced professional on this crack in the ceiling that seems to have appeared?’

  To his relief, the man looked up where he pointed and shuffled sideways across the room, surveying the crack from different angles. People moved out of his way. In the distance, Franz spied Marisa watching the two of them. She looked puzzled.

  ‘That’s a bad enough crack you’ve got there,’ her father pronounced, looking down at Franz.

  ‘Poor quality plastering, you reckon?’ Franz suggested.

  ‘That’s not plastering, that old crack. Not at all. What have you got above this hall? Any heavy equipment or anything?’

  ‘Meeting space and treatment rooms. Mostly empty. Some with couches, storage cabinets, nothing heavier than that. The flotation tank is in the basement.’

  ‘That’s not it, then. I’d have to take a look. You want to take me upstairs?’

  A wholly inappropriate bubble of laughter stirred in Franz’s gut. He suppressed it. ‘That would be very kind of you,’ he said instead. ‘By the way, we haven’t properly met. Franz Kane.’ He extended his hand and hoped.

  ‘Mick Murphy.’

  The hand was returned to him, pulped. Franz breathed a sigh of relief. He opened the door with his intact hand and said, ‘After you. Stairs on the right.’

  He was just in time to stop Marisa from hurling herself at her dad as he went ahead.

  ‘No,’ Franz said, quietly and firmly. ‘I’ll handle this.’

  ‘Don’t go outside with him! He’ll hurt you!’

  ‘I can take care of myself,’ he said heroically.

  Upstairs, Mick Murphy, in giant-sized steelcapped boots, jumped up and down on the polished floorboards, listening for groans in the joists. The only groans were inward ones, heard by Franz alone.

  ‘It’s not your joists,’ Mick pronounced.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘It’s not good. You’d want it to be your joists, if you consider the alternatives,’ Mick said darkly. ‘Did you remove a load-bearing wall below here at all?’

  ‘The whole place was gutted. We only kept the side and back walls and the air venting and ducting system and updated the underfloor heating.’ Franz told him. ‘It used to be a cinema with a couple of shops behind it.’

  ‘I remember it,’ Mick said. ‘Stood empty for years, didn’t it?’

  ‘Before my time,’ said Franz. ‘It was derelict when I bought it,’ he added, not without pride. ‘A damp empty shell. Bit of a difference now, heh?’

  Mick’s face was creased with worry. ‘You got in an architect?’

  ‘Of course! Architect, planning authorities, project manager, building regulations inspectors, subcontractors in everything.’

  ‘You see these walls here aren’t solid,’ said Mick, slamming his fist into the pastel paintwork. The wall shuddered but didn’t give way.

  ‘They’re movable partition walls,’ Franz said. ‘For flexibility.’

  ‘They wouldn’t cause a crack in the downstairs ceiling, so,’ said Mick accusingly.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t have thought so.’

  Mick gave the floor one more jump. A crystal strung from the ceiling detached itself, fell to the ground and splintered.

  ‘It’s not your joists,’ Mick repeated. He stood lost in thought among the crystal fragments. Finally he said, ‘I could get my brother to take a look.’

  Franz didn’t feel enthusiastic about closer contact with Marisa’s family. ‘I should get back to the original builder.’

  ‘You might have to do that,’ Mick agreed. ‘If you have to sue somebody.’

  ‘You think it’s that bad?’ I am in control of my destiny, Franz repeated to himself, positively. I am strengthened and invigorated by challenges.

  ‘Could well be.’

  Mick preceded him down the stairs and back into the hall. Registration had almost finished. A few seekers lingered by one or two of the desks, talking to guides. Guides of less popular subjects had already packed up and gone home.

  The Guardian Angels stand still had a host of hangers-on waiting in the wings for a chat with its guide; the small group around Mystic Symbols in Rope Weaving
was unravelling and trailing towards the door, and the Know Your Aura stand had dimmed its lights. Franz reminded himself to go back upstairs before he went home, to retrieve the fragments of crystal from the floor of the meeting room. He had a feeling that Trance Dancing had a session booked in that room for tomorrow evening and the dancers would be barefoot and mindless of risk.

  Marisa was waiting for her father by the door. ‘I hope you resolved the issues,’ she said.

  ‘Nothing that can’t be resolved over a Guiness,’ said Mick. He clapped Franz on the back, sending him staggering. ‘In Gallagher’s Bar on the corner.’

  Franz looked from Mick’s face to Marisa’s and assessed that refusal was not an option. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘You get them in and I’ll pay. I’ll just lock up here then I’ll join you.’

  ‘We’ll wait,’ said Mick. ‘Outside.’

  Franz moved swiftly between the desks, collecting spare registration forms and discarded leaflets, ushering the remaining guides towards the receptionists to double-check their lists, and directing the lingering seekers towards the main door.

  Once the last person had left the hall, Franz collected the folders from Alan, one of the receptionists, and asked him to remain on the premises until he returned. Going out through the back door of the hall he locked it behind him before going upstairs to his office. Having locked the office door behind him as well, he opened the safe behind the large picture of a woman in flowing robes and bare feet surrounded by dolphins and unicorns, pushed the sheaf of papers and payments into it and locked it again.

  He stood upright, stretched his arms upwards, then bent forward from the waist and touched the floor, remaining there for a few seconds. He straightened up slowly, took a deep breath, then went back to the hall and thanked the yawning receptionist. A couple of female seekers approached him, smiling and linking their arms through his, and he waltzed them into the street and twisted deftly out of their grip to lock the doors.

  As the seekers let go, his arm was seized by Mick, and Franz found himself half-escorted, half-carried to the corner where the noise from Gallagher’s Bar spilled into the street. Too late, he remembered the shattered crystal on the floor and made a mental note to check on it first thing next morning, in case the cleaners overlooked it.

  To his relief, what was left of the evening passed without incident. Marisa relaxed, Mick downed pints and told anecdotes about the various bosses he’d had on building sites, and the three of them, joined for a while by a few of Mick’s mates, ended up laughing at Mick’s stories.

  The only break in the harmony occurred after they left the pub, with Mick’s broad shoulders swathing a path through the crowded bar, and had walked some way down the road towards the station. A man emerging from the pub stopped and stared after them, then shouted, ‘Mick!’

  ‘Who’s that, Dad?’ Marisa asked him.

  Mick shook his head. ‘Don’t know him.’

  ‘Mick! You remember me! Pat Quinn!’

  ‘Keep walking, if you don’t know him,’ Franz said. He took Mick’s arm and increased his pace. Mick walked on, his long stride making Franz and Marisa almost run to keep up with him.

  They could hear the man shouting, from a distance now.

  ‘Mick! Micky Finn!’

  ‘A drop too much taken,’ said Franz, assuming an Irish accent that made Marisa giggle.

  ‘Are you Irish yourself?’ Mick asked.

  ‘Am I ‘eck as like!’ said Franz in phony Lancashire.

  ‘And where in the name of God d’ye get a name like Franz?’

  ‘I’m cosmopolitan,’ Franz told him. They parted at the entrance to the station, with painful slaps on the back from Mick, a hug from Marisa, and smiles and handshakes from Franz.

  Franz watched them go down the steps and then headed for home at a brisk pace. As he walked he let out a huge sigh, as though he had been holding his breath all evening.

  The flat, when he came in, was cold and dark. Ella had been burning geranium oil and there was a smell of something cooked with garlic but there was no sign of Ella.

  She usually left a message on his phone or at least a note on the hall floor if she was going out. But then, he usually phoned her to say he was on his way home and tonight he had been so keen to humour Mick that he hadn’t even tried to call her. The cold blackened dish of mushroom roast, congealing on the kitchen table, told him he should have done.

  Franz went to the bathroom cabinet and searched for indigestion remedies. He hadn’t drunk so much in one evening since he was eighteen. Fourteen years ago. Still, wind was preferable to spending the night in the Intensive Care Unit after being beaten up by Mick Murphy for letting his daughter be insulted.

  Dialling Ella’s friend and colleague Maz’s number, he noticed it was nearly midnight, a bit late to phone. Maz, when she answered, sounded blurred.

  ‘Yes, Ella is here, Franz. I don’t know if she’ll want to talk to you; she’s been quite upset. Hold on – oh, okay, she’s just coming. Bye.’

  He bit his lip and prepared to apologize but Ella didn’t sound resentful.

  ‘Are you all right, Franz?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry, Ell, I just got home. Had a difficult encounter with a Kerryman.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Marisa’s dad. Some lads followed her home from Monday night’s forum and he beat them up, then came looking for me.’

  ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘I’m all right but it took about a gallon of draught Guinness to pacify him. I am sorry, Ella. Maz said you were upset.’

  ‘Not about you getting home late!’ She sounded indignant. ‘Look, I’ll get a cab now.’

  ‘Stay with Maz if you like,’ he offered. ‘It’s late and I’ll probably burp all night, or worse, and keep you awake.’

  He could have done with a night on his own, with a distended stomach and loaded mind.

  ‘I’ll come home, if it’s okay with you.’

  ‘Of course it’s okay.’ He wondered, not for the first time, what made Ella stay with him.

  He picked up the pile of last night’s paperwork he had forgotten to take into work this morning and found she had left him a note of sorts, after all. Over the preliminary schedule he had drafted for the coming term’s classes she had scribbled a comment: 'Shock horror! Franz, you have timetabled the Primal Scream Therapy group at the same time and in the next room to the Psychic Visualization silent meditation group!'

  Franz chuckled and resolved to change the venues tomorrow. He appreciated her continuing interest and occasional involvement in his work. He had never admitted to feeling hurt when Ella decided to withdraw from The Healing Place.

  Franz had met her there in the early days, when he was buzzing with the risk and excitement of his new venture and she was a holistic therapist looking for more space and better light for her iridology clients than the sitting room of her shared apartment. Already trained as an aromatherapist and nutritionist, she was studying for a qualification in this additional therapy, identifying health problems through changes in the iris of the eye.

  Her willingness to embrace new skills made her an ideal mediator in the interminable ‘my way is the only way’ disputes among all the self-proclaimed experts in psycho-spiritual enlightenment, but Franz didn’t know whether the arguments had worn her out, as well as her reservations about some of the courses subsequently introduced. Or maybe it was her difficult situation, being part of the team of guides working freelance under the auspices of The Healing Place, while also becoming the live-in partner of Franz who, when all was said and done, was The Healing Place.

  All Ella had said was, ‘This isn’t the place for me to be at this time.’ Either she found this explanation sufficient or else she was keeping her own counsel. One night after she and Franz had made love he took advantage of her sleepy peacefulness to ask whether her feelings about The Healing Place were entirely positive.

  ‘I suppose no feelings are ever entirely one or the other,’ she had s
aid, her voice muffled against his chest where her dark plaits mingled with the matted black hairs that betrayed the original colour of his silver-white head.

  ‘Not negative, surely?’ he had teased her, keeping it light. ‘After all that practising positive thinking and personal affirmations?’

  She turned over, stretching her back with the luxuriating movement that reminded him of a cat. ‘Of course I think positive. But there’s a point where positive thinking becomes denial, doesn’t it?’ She yawned, not expecting an answer, and said, ‘Goodnight.’

  Tonight when she arrived home she looked white but not tearstained or agitated. She resisted his questions about why she had been upset and had gone to see Maz but accepted the offer of a hot drink and curled up on the sofa, leaving space for him to join her.

  ‘Rosehip or peppermint tea?’ he offered.

  ‘Have we got any hot chocolate?’

  ‘Chocolate?’ He laughed. ‘Odd choice for a nutritionist and wholefood store proprietor!’ Rooting in the back of the cupboard he found an old tin of cocoa and made two cups. ‘Full of calories and cholesterol,’ he warned jokingly.

  She didn’t answer but took the cup from him and sipped it, her long hair falling forward over her face.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ he said.

  ‘Sure. How was your evening, apart from Marisa’s father?’

  ‘Good. Not as many seekers as the previous evenings but sufficient to fill all the courses and appointment books.’

  ‘You look a bit strained,’ Ella said.

  ‘Do I? Oh, there’s a crack in the ceiling of the main hall. Sharma drew my attention to it. More serious than a crack in the plaster, apparently, or even a weakness in the joists. I’m going to have to get the builder back.’

  ‘A crack, in a building completely refurbished two years ago? Is that normal?’

  ‘It would be if they’d removed a load-bearing wall without putting in enough support,’ Franz said.

  ‘No! But an architect wouldn’t allow that!’

  ‘I know. And it passed its final inspection. It’ll be okay. Don’t worry.’

  ‘What would happen if someone had overlooked it, Franz – something as fundamental as that? Are you liable, or ….?’

  ‘Listen, there’s no hassle. I’m cool about it – really.’

  A shaft of something resembling annoyance crossed her face. He was reminded of her comment about positive thinking and denying reality.

  ‘I’ll deal with it at the first opportunity,’ he promised. ‘I can’t call the builder at this time of night, can I?’

  ‘No, okay.’ She sipped again then said, studying his face, ‘Did you hear any more about the girl?’

  ‘Marisa? She wasn’t hurt. The boys came off worse.’

  ‘No, the other girl. The one you stopped from getting into the vicar’s car the other night.’

  ‘I didn’t stop her. I shouted out but she didn’t hear anyway; it was the vicar’s wife who did. She sent her husband round to apologize.’

  ‘He apologized? What for?’

  ‘For whisking away one of our seekers. He admitted it was insensitive.’

  ‘That was decent of him,’ Ella said. ‘Why did he whisk her away?’

  ‘His wife knew her slightly. They thought she needed rescuing so they took it on themselves to take her home for the night and then send her off to stay with her sister. Unwise, I would have said, to get so involved. It would have been better to let her find her own way, do some relaxation therapies or something with us and then decide for herself once she was in a better frame of mind.’

  Ella was silent for a few moments. Then she said, ‘Is the vicar’s wife tall and pretty, short hair, big earrings? Called Jan?’

  ‘Why?’ His tone was suspicious.

  ‘She came in the shop today. I’ve met her before; she knows Maz. Interested in aromatherapy.’

  ‘Or said she was. She didn’t sign up for anything.’

  ‘She asked me today if I’d teach her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Maz told her I do aromatherapy. She said she’d prefer to learn from me.’

  ‘Why?’ He seemed to be repeating the same question, sounding even to his own ears increasingly mutinous.

  ‘I don’t know – maybe she doesn’t like a classroom environment; some people don’t. Maybe she liked me.’ She smiled up at him enticingly. ‘Some people do.’

  He refused to be coaxed. ‘I’d stay clear of those people if I were you,’ he said. ‘I think there’s more under the surface than they’re letting you see.’

  ‘Like most people,’ Ella agreed. ‘Anyway, they can’t be bad if they paid that girl’s fare to go and stay with her sister. All the way to Kingston.’

  ‘It’s only a bus ride!’ Franz said.

  ‘Kingston-on-Thames is a bus ride,’ said Ella. ‘Kingston, Jamaica is where the sister lives. Jan had just come back from seeing her off at Heathrow.’

  Franz drained his cocoa, forgetting the sludgy anachronistic stuff had dregs. What had made him drink it anyway, especially on top of all that gassy beer?

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you want anything to eat?’

  ‘No. I’d probably throw up.’

  Ella sighed and uncurled herself from the sofa. 'Wouldn't it be nice,' she said, 'to have a weekend off, just to unwind. And chat about life's possibilities, without any positive thinking to bugger it up.'

  'Right,' he said. It didn't sound relaxing. He hoped she wasn't about to launch some assault on the carefully balanced schedule that was his life. Especially as his public image and equanimity, as well as his public building, were starting to show signs of cracking.