‘You’ve got to learn again.’
They walked on in silence. Jennifer said, ‘Could you help me learn?’
‘I’m not sure that would be helping you.’ The silence lasted longer. This time he broke it. ‘Would a book be such a bad idea?’
‘I wouldn’t know how to begin,’ she protested.
‘You don’t have to study or pass exams to do it, do you? There’d be editors, people like that, to shape it for you. You’d probably get a lot of guidance before you even got started.’
‘It would be like letting people stare at me.’
He searched for the right reply. ‘Or stop them doing it.’
‘I know that’s going to be a problem,’ she admitted.
You don’t, thought Halclass="underline" you haven’t any conception. ‘I think you should think about it quite seriously.’
‘I hardly need the money.’
‘I’m not thinking about the money. It would get the whole thing out of your memory.’
‘I don’t imagine anything could ever do that,’ Jennifer said, soberly.
‘I wasn’t talking about forgetting. I was talking about adjusting.’
‘That’s something else I know I’ve got to learn: how to adjust.’
It was time he himself adjusted, Hall decided. Past time. So he had to stop putting it off.
Chapter Thirty-six
His going burst her bubble. No-one knew, of course. Not even Julian Mason, with whom she had always been totally open and honest. She supposed being one hundred per cent better which was what Mason and Cox, with Dawson smiling beside them, had just declared her to be – meant she could successfully lie now without anyone guessing. Like Dawson hadn’t guessed about her conversion. That wasn’t so much an outright lie, any more than her not telling the psychiatrist the aching loss – the feeling that something had literally burst – she felt at Jeremy leaving. It was more retaining some privacy, which everyone did. In fact she was probably more honest than most people. Always had been. She did believe in something because when everything else had failed she’d been set free by a miracle, with a priest’s hand on her head. So there had to be some higher authority, some Supreme Being. And if Dawson represented it, then it was to his God she had to be eternally grateful. So she would be. It was the most sincere promise she’d ever made and she’d keep it. She’d probably need to.
There was a huge difference between talking to Dawson and Julian Mason but talking was the operative word. Jeremy’s departure had signalled the beginning of the end. Now Mason and Cox had told her there was nothing more they could do, so their contact was virtually over as well. So she needed the church as much – maybe even more – than people who insisted they didn’t have the doubts. Which wasn’t badly dishonest, either. More a compromise, which again everybody did about a lot of things, religion most of all. The important thing was keeping her promise.
She wished it was as easy to rationalize her feelings towards Jeremy Hall. Julian had done his best to prepare her – not about Jeremy alone but about all of them, himself and Dawson and Dr Cox – and she’d recognized at once that her dependence upon them had to be broken. But it wasn’t the same with Jeremy. It wasn’t dependence. What then? It couldn’t be love. That was ludicrous. Their close-together walks had been kindness, nothing more, just his helping her get better. And she didn’t think love – any sort of relationship – had a place in her life any more. She was still unsure what did, apart from Emily. And that remained the biggest, still-avoided uncertainty of all.
She wasn’t sure, either, whether his daily telephone calls weren’t adding to whatever it was that was troubling her. They weren’t specifically to her, she reminded herself. He always spoke to the two doctors, sometimes even the priest, and there was always a practical reason for their conversations. She’d needed to confirm she still wanted Geoffrey Johnson to retain her power of attorney, for instance. And it had seemed important for him to tell her the Metropolitan authority had dropped their claim for the cost of policing St Thomas’s Hospital and to remind her she still hadn’t made a decision about the media and publishing offers.
Did her uncertainty – the pricked-bubble feeling – really have so much to do with Jeremy Hall? Or was she transferring on to him – lying to herself – the true reason for it? Wasn’t it, quite simply, the terror of going back into the outside world: of being alone, with no-one to rely on? None of them – Mason or Cox or Dawson – would have made the decision if they hadn’t been totally convinced, individually and collectively, that she was ready for it. It was Jennifer herself who wasn’t convinced. So she had to convince herself about her readiness, as she had to convince herself about a God.
There was no cause to be ashamed – embarrassed – by how she felt: nor try unnecessarily – unfairly – to involve Jeremy. It wasn’t even the unknown terror of what awaited her. Jennifer was terrified about only one person she was going to meet. And from whom, because of what Mason had just told her, she no longer had to be parted.
Jennifer jumped at the telephone, momentarily hesitating before picking it up.
‘I’ve already spoken to Julian,’ announced Hall. ‘Excited?’
‘Frightened.’
‘I’d be surprised if you weren’t.’
‘I can leave whenever I want.’ Stop avoiding it! she told herself.
‘I know.’ There was a long pause. ‘Jennifer?’
‘I can go back with Emily. Be her mother again.’ The words sounded odd: artificial.
‘Yes.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Hampshire. She arrived back last week, from Paris.’
‘Is it safe for her to be there?’
‘We’re employing a lot more security people. Annabelle thinks it’s best.’
‘Does she know I’m better?’
‘I’ve only just heard myself.’
‘It’s going to take me a day or two to get ready.’
‘Is it?’ Hall asked, pointedly.
‘Emily will have to get used to the idea, as well as me. Just a day or two.’
‘I’ll probably need that, to set things up.’
Jennifer felt a jump of excitement, through the apprehension. ‘You’re going to fix things for me?’
‘Would you like me to?’
‘Yes, please!’ she said, hurriedly.
‘And come with you?’
‘Yes. I’d like that very much.’
‘Welcome back!’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said, doubtfully.
Jeremy Hall had discerned her mood and understood it, with more practical cause to be apprehensive than Jennifer could yet imagine. The circus had begun again the very moment he’d arrived back at his neglected, mailbox-overflowing apartment. A media ambush still awaited him and he literally ran the envelope gauntlet. There were more letters inside. There were also two from his bank, which coincidentally he opened in the right order. In the first the manager assured him he had no cause whatsoever to worry at being overdrawn because the man fully understood the preoccupying circumstances and cordially invited him to lunch. The second thanked him for the cash infusion so substantial that the lunch would be a good opportunity to discuss investments. The tape on his answering machine was exhausted with messages, some from people he hadn’t heard of since university, others from girls claiming to have met him at functions and parties he couldn’t remembering attending. There were three calls from Patricia Boxall.
The chambers were besieged the following morning and one by one the forgotten luncheon invitations from Proudfoot’s celebration party were pressed upon him during the morning. Experimentally he accepted Sir Richard’s. They had to force their way out of the building and led a pursuing road race to Pall Mall. He was asked three times for his autograph in the Reform Club, which Proudfoot insisted he’d never known before and promised to complain to the membership committee. When he returned to chambers, Hall had his home telephone number changed and made ex-directory.
He took all three briefs Bert Feltham had offered at the clinic. A police line had to be formed to get him into court to defend the earl’s son on the heroin charge, which he won in a single day’s sitting which ended with the case being dismissed and the magistrate referring the evidence of a drug squad officer to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner with a suggested internal enquiry. The hospital insurers had doubled their original out-of-court settlement offer, which Hall considered satisfactory, but the parents of the child urged him to take it to court. ‘It’s not as if you can lose, is it, Mr Hall?’ said the father, who wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise.