She spots a kestrel, a quivering fan of feathers fixed in space. Last summer she visited a birds of prey centre near Loch Lomond, and afterwards wished she hadn’t. Lots of chit-chat about conservation but ultimately birds in cages and birds tethered to posts. There’s no such thing as a cage big enough for an eagle. Now James is no eagle, but he could be, say, a Harris hawk — perched in a cage of his own devising. It used to have big ideas; now it blinks and fidgets on a well-soiled perch looking a bit foolish. But still handsome: the noble soul undefeated.
Brenda, on the other hand, is a hooded crow soaring free: the Highlands are calling. Will her van start? And is James on her side, or not?
Mike Vickers doesn’t have his money yet. His unauthorised nocturnal trade was probably a breach of contract and could, in theory, give the bastards an excuse not to pay him. But, he keeps telling himself, it made money: whoever heard of a rogue trader who made money? Nobody. Anyway, the trade seems to have gone unnoticed. Too small to matter. Mike just has to sit tight for another three weeks, and not get fired.
Every January an email goes round offering tax planning advice. Every year Mike, one of the small fry, embarrassed enough by his net pay, ignores it and takes the near-fifty-per cent PAYE hit like a gentleman. This year, Mij persuades him to make an appointment. If Mike has always felt like an imposter in this business, an inside man, now he feels like a double agent. He’s always hated spy thrillers — can never follow who’s working for whom.
‘Mr Vickers. Please take a seat.’ The accountant is an amphibian — small, moist and astonishingly ugly. Isn’t the devil supposed to wear fine raiment? His wife, in her silver frame, presents a stoical smile to the camera; the gurning children have their father’s looks.
Apparently Mike can whack some of his bonus into his pension, but not all of it because he’d blow his lifetime allowance. Or he can invest in some shady-but-safe scheme that attracts tax relief. Attracts it, just like that. Or he can keep the money offshore and withdraw a small amount each year, tax-free. A small amount, in his case, means over a hundred grand.
As he listens to these choices, Mike understands perfectly why the wealthy are so despised. Offshore bank account: here is the irrevocable fork in the road, the decisive plunge into Macbeth’s bloody river, the final, unambiguous breach of another, more important contract: the social contract.
But. For ten years this job has been a fat, obscuring blob of self-deception stuck fast in the middle of his life. Important things — beauty, truth, perhaps love — have peeped and curled at the margins, always just out of reach or sight. He could have been someone else, someone real, but he’s been this instead. He wants payback.
‘I’ll take the offshore option,’ he says, decisively. Stepped in so far.
The neurologist is younger than Dan. Sporty sort of chap — triathlon finisher’s medal, bicycle helmet hanging on the back of his door. He’s called Dan too.
During the past few family-filled and friend-filled weeks, our Dan’s apprehension has been a lonely burden. He said nothing more to his parents. His mum has always been a worrier, which of course means her children — usually Laura, but this time Dan — have always been less likely to tell her the things she so desperately wants to know. As for his dad, ten years ago Dan might have talked it all through with him in the pub, or more likely in the garage. But one of the subtle changes age has engineered in his dad’s mind is to make him a worrier too. The pair of them are now as bad as each other. And Dan might not be horribly ill, or might be only moderately horribly ill.
Finally, Natalie: he has told her everything the GP told him. Every last detail. He’s wanted to go further, to fling his worst fear on the table, but something has stopped him. He doesn’t want to touch that worst fear, to utter it, to justify it. Natalie’s matter-of-fact optimism — she may not be a doctor, but she’s no fool — is all he’s had to hold on to.
Now he needs answers. As he describes his symptoms again and the other Dan nods thoughtfully, he’s struck by the towering asymmetry between doctor and patient. No other human interaction is quite like it. Little wonder doctors have been revered and reviled over the millennia — setting themselves up as God. Dan himself, trained to a comparable level of specialised knowledge and skill, is a god only to his electrons; if he loses a batch, nobody weeps. Here, he might as well be on his knees.
The young doctor looks grave, but otherwise gives little away. He wants tests. As an experimentalist Dan is no stranger to the process of diagnosis, and tries to read between the lines. What he reads is not good.
‘Can you give me some possibilities, in order of likelihood?’
‘I’d rather not. I know it’s frustrating. We’ll get these tests arranged as quickly as possible — next week, hopefully. What I want you to do in the meantime is just…’
Something about wellbeing, relaxation and living his normal life.
Brenda rubs a little Swarfega into her palms to work out the grease, then cranks up the gas fire and changes into a fleece and jeans. While she’s eating her supper of tinned soup and half a pack of stale crackers, Callum, her neighbour, knocks on the door to tell her that another neighbour, Mrs McCready, had a turn after Christmas and died last week. Peacefully, he says. The funeral is on Friday.
Brenda drifts back to the kitchen, frowning. Old Mrs McCready led an uncomfortable life; her only pleasure, probably, came in cheerfully chronicling her many discomforts to anyone within earshot — usually Brenda. ‘Och, don’t worry about me,’ she would reply to any words of sympathy. ‘I’m no good to anyone.’ Which was true. A dark, tangled forest of memories, connections and secret foibles now clear-cut. Pulped. Peacefully pulped. Gone. Poor Mrs M.
Mike bought Brenda a laptop for Christmas — this is so that she can take an online self-help course which her therapist recommended after she missed three appointments in a row. ‘You will develop alternative, more helpful core beliefs,’ the programme confidently declares. ‘Fear extinction is achievable.’ She and Mike refer to it light-heartedly as her re-education course, a term her therapist gently rejects.
The first session explains the difference between agoraphobia, which as a solo mountaineer, fell-runner and expert in wilderness self-sufficiency she presumably doesn’t have, and social phobia, which sounds more like it. There are video clips of other messed-up people telling their stories. I’d like to hear your story, James said, but he’s not going to hear this story. Sweating seems to be a common symptom, but nobody in the videos says anything about their mouth going funny, or being unable to smile, or suspended arcs of blood.
Mike gave her cash as well, as usual. Always in fifties, always slipped into her bag without a word — it’s meant to be for the therapy. She fetches the envelope, rolls the stack of notes into a tight, red-and-white cigar and pushes it into an empty whisky miniature. Screws the lid tight. She appreciates his love and concern — even if they carry a faint, selfish odour of penance for crimes unknown — but she doesn’t need his money. This time, Mrs McCready doesn’t either. Someone else might — someone noble and undefeated.
The annual comp letters — yes, compensation is the euphemism of choice — always come in heavy white envelopes. Super opaque. Mij pretends to lick his enormous finger, reaches over to Mike’s envelope and makes a sizzling sound. Mike slides it silently into an inside pocket. He opens it later, in the park. It’s a short letter, and the number is in the first sentence. ‘Your total gross compensation for the year 2011 is £3,145,966.’ Then some blah blah. Finally: ‘We thank you for your ongoing contribution to the firm.’