thirty, I find Elaine in the common room, alone and drinking coffee. She is sitting on a radiator below one of the windows, her right leg lifted and resting on the arm of the sofa. Her skirt has ridden up to the midsection of her thighs, but she makes no attempt to cover herself, or to lower her leg when I come in.
‘Nearly over,’ she says.
I must look exhausted. I settle into one of the armchairs and sigh heavily.
‘My brain is numb. Numb.’
Elaine nods in agreement. Bare-skinned thighs, no tights.
‘You finished?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘One more.’
Our conversation is slow monosyllables. It feels as if we are talking like old friends.
‘What is it?’
‘Interview with the departmental assessor.’
‘Rouse? He’s a straight-talker. You’ll like him.’
‘What about you? What do you have?’
‘Just the shrink. Four thirty.’
‘Nice way to finish off. Get to talk about yourself for half an hour.’
‘You’ve had her?’
‘Yesterday. Very cozy. Like one of those fireside chats on Songs of Praise.’ Elaine stands up, smoothing down her skirt. ‘We’re all going to the pub later. Sam’s idea.’
‘He’s a leader of men, isn’t he? Takes control.’
Elaine smiles at this. She agrees with me.
‘So meet you back here around five fifteen?’
I don’t feel like drinking with them. I’d rather just go home and be alone. So I ignore the question and say, ‘Sounds all right. Good luck with your interview.’
‘You too,’ she replies.
But in Dr Stevenson’s office I fall into a trap.
There are two soft armchairs in the corner of the hushed warm room. We face each other and it is as if I am looking into the eyes of a kindly grandmother. Stevenson’s face has such grace and warmth that there is nothing I can do but trust it. She calls me Alec–the first time that one of the examiners has referred to me by my first name–and speaks with such refinement that I am immediately lulled into a false sense of security. The lights are dim, the blinds drawn. There is a sensation of absolute privacy. We are in a place where confidences may be shared.
Everything starts out okay. Her early questions are unobtrusive, shallow even, and I give nothing away. We discuss the format of Sisby, what improvements, if any, I would make to it. There is a brief reference to school–an inquiry about my choice of A levels–and an even shorter discussion about CEBDO. That these topics go largely unexplored is not due to any reticence on my part. Stevenson seems happy simply to skirt around the edges of a subject, never probing too deeply, never overstepping the mark. In doing so she brokers a trust that softens me up. And by the time the conversation has moved into a more sensitive area, my guard is down.
‘I would like to talk about Kate Allardyce, if that would be all right?’
My first instinct here should have been defensive. Nobody ever asks Alec about Kate; it’s a taboo subject. And yet I quickly find that I want to talk about her.
‘Could you tell me a little bit about the two of you?’
‘We broke up over six months ago.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she says, and then, with sudden horror, I remember the lie to Liddiard. ‘I was led to believe that she was your girlfriend.’ She looks down at her file, staring at it in plain disbelief. Mistakes of this kind do not happen. She moves awkwardly in her seat and mutters something inaudible.
It was a throwaway deceit. I only did it to make myself appear more solid and dependable, a rounded man in a long-term relationship. He asked for her full name, for a date and place of birth, so that SIS could run a check on her. And now that the vetting process is over they want to square their deep background with mine. They want to know whether Kate will make a decent diplomatic wife, a spy’s accomplice. They want to hear me talk about her.
My left hand is suddenly up around my mouth, squeezing the ridge of skin under my nose. It is almost funny to have been caught out by something so crass, so needless, but this feeling quickly evaporates. The humiliation is soon total.
Out of it, I knit together a shoddy retraction.
‘I’m sorry. No, no, it’s my fault. I’m sorry. We just…we just got back together again, about three months ago. Secretly. We don’t want anybody to know. We prefer things to be private. I’m just so used to telling people that we’re not back together that it’s become like a reflex.’
‘So you are together?’
‘Very much so, yes.’
‘But no one else knows?’
‘That’s correct. Yes. Except for a friend of mine. Saul. Otherwise, nobody.’
‘I see.’
There is disappointment in the tone of this last remark, as if I have let her down. I feel ten again, a scolded child in the head-teacher’s study.
‘Perhaps we should talk about something else,’ she says, turning a page in my file.
I have to rescue this situation or the game is up.
‘No, no. I’m happy to talk about it. I should explain. Sorry. It’s just that after we broke up I never spoke about it to anyone. No one would have understood. They might have tried to, but they would never have understood. They would have put things in boxes and I didn’t want that. It would have trivialized it. And now that we are back together, both of us have made a decision to keep things between ourselves. So we’re used to lying about it. Nobody else knows.’ An uneasy pause. ‘This must sound childish to you.’
‘Not at all.’ I may have got away with it. ‘But can I ask why you broke up in the first place?’
This is expressed in such a way that it would be easy for me not to answer the question. But my embarrassment at having been caught out by Stevenson is substantial, and I do not want to refuse her request.
‘Largely on account of my selfishness. I think Kate grew tired of the fact that I was always withholding things from her. I had this insistence on privacy, a reluctance to let her in. She called it my separate-ness.’
There is suddenly a look of deep satisfaction in the lined wise eyes of Hilary Stevenson. Separateness. Yes. A good word for it.
‘But you don’t have a problem with that anymore?’
‘With privacy? No. Not with Kate at least. I’m still an intensely private person, but I’ve become far more open with her since we got back together.’
This emphasis on privacy could even work in
