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He knew whe
n a cause was lost and gave up.  For now.  ‘Tomorrow, at half-past twelve.  At St. Luke’s.  Are you thinking of going?’

She nodded distantly, not forgiving him for
intruding into her private pain.  And guilt, of course.  Never forget the guilt, however irrational and undeserved.

He paused and then said, ‘I think Peter didn’t invite you out of concern for your feelings.  You kn
ow what his sisters are like; he was afraid they’d plague you with questions about your break-up.’  He gave her a wry smile, ‘Even a big tough macho-man like Peter can show sensitivity sometimes.  In fact, his size is one of the things that attracted you to him.  Your unresolved…’

‘Do you wish to rema
in my friend?’ she asked almost gently, but with an unmistakable edge to her voice, leaning forward to glare at him across his desk with those huge eyes, ‘And have me continue to treat Grainne?  Because if so you will stay out of my personal life!  Is that clear?  Because if you ever pry into my affairs again
I will walk. 
And you will never set eyes on me again!’

He ey
ed her reflectively, more concerned about her wellbeing than worried by her threat.  And in fact now that she had begun he doubted if anything would stop her treating Grainne; part of her own psychological profile manifested itself as a compulsive need to help others with similar emotional problems.  But he said only, ‘Very well.  I can’t force you to deal with your own problems.  I only spoke out because I care about you.  But if you insist I won’t speak of them again.’

‘I do insist,’ Kat
e said instantly.  She got to her feet, ‘I think Grainne needs a little time to adjust to whatever conflict is going on inside her so I won’t come back tomorrow.  I’ll see her every second day for the moment.  We can see if there’s any change in her condition then.’  And she walked out of the room without another word, forgetting to ask him why he had been hanging around Monkstown the previous evening, as she had intended.  She went in a sedate, controlled manner, careful not to slam the door behind her because she wanted to so much.  And because she knew he would only smile at such childish antics.

Once out of his
sight, however, she stormed out of the clinic to her car, seething with fury and ready to kill.  Kill
him,
that is. 
Just who the hell does he think he is?
  She got into the car and roared off, the spinning wheels sending gravel flying in all directions.  She had to slow down at the gatepost but when the gates swung open she shot through and headed for home at a maniacal pace, trying unsuccessfully to focus only on the road ahead.  And trying too not to see her compulsive love for her fast, powerful but hard to control car as a metaphor for her equally tenuous control over her life.  And God knew no sports car could compare in power or volatility to her emotions.  She snapped down on this train of thought with an effort, thinking instead,
How
dare
he throw her past back in her face?  Things she had told him in confidence, and only with difficulty, with unspeakable pain?  How
could
he?

By the time she got home she had calmed down a little, now more up
set than angry, and she allowed the thought to surface that anything he had said was prompted by concern for her. 
Mistaken
concern, of course; as if she didn’t already know how flawed she was!  She parked her car and made her way down into her apartment, too preoccupied to worry about burglars.  She was hardly inside the door before the tears started;
He was right, wasn’t he? 
That was the problem.  The little voice that tormented her so often told her that he was, and this time for some reason she could not ignore it, as so often before.

This time she
did
slam her front door before going into the bedroom and flinging herself face-down on the bed, wracked by memories and emotions she would have preferred to forget forever.  God knows she had tried to wipe them from her mind but some memories will not go away; they lie just below the surface like great black jagged rocks, ready to shipwreck the unwary.  Her father had destroyed her childhood, her innocence; she had finally and with difficulty come to realize that, years before.  But had he really wrecked her adult life also? 
Was
he the cause of her inability to sustain a relationship?  Well yes, of course, she had always known that, on the surface levels of her mind; she just had never faced how deep the damage really went.  She didn’t want to admit it now either but the relentless train of thought Trevor had set in motion told her it was so.  Told her that whatever her ego might say she was just as vulnerable as any other human being.  And just as needy.

As ever her mind slid away from self-exami
nation, concentrating on someone else’s problems rather than her own; it was
Grainne
she needed to focus on.  Her tears ceased as she remembered her idea from earlier and, eager to seek a distraction from self-analysis, she got up and hunted through her handbag for her mobile.  Returning to the bedroom she lay down again and keyed in Michael’s number, her eyes black holes in the dim light.

He answered almost immediately and she said, ‘Michael?  Hi,
it’s Kate here.’

‘Kate! 
At last!  How are you?  You’re a hard woman to reach, you know that?  I was trying to get hold of you last night, and today.  Where have you been hiding yourself?’

Kate forced herself to keep her tone light as she replied,
‘Well, I turned off my mobile last night to do some work, and I’ve been too busy today to take calls; I’ll have to remember to take if off silent.  But I
am
a working woman, you know.’

He barked out
a short, disbelieving laugh, ‘Thanks very much!  You really know how to make a man feel special, don’t you?’

In her present mood this was the last thing
she wanted to hear and she replied shortly, ‘Sorry, but I wasn’t put here on this earth to make you feel special.  Now, I need some information from you.  The name of Grainne’s ex-boyfriend, to be precise.  The drug-pusher she was seeing.  The police will know it but I doubt if they’ll give it to me.  Do you know it, or can you use your influence to find it out for me?’

There was a long silence and then he said
in puzzlement, ‘Why would you want information like that?’

‘I told you before,’ she said coldly, ‘I don’t discuss my patients.  With anyone.  Now, it might be nothing but it just might be important.  Are you willing to help me or not?’

He replied in a tight, irritated voice, ‘I don’t know what school you went to but it clearly wasn’t one of the charm variety.  And no, I’m not willing to help you.  What you’re suggesting is illegal, for a start, quite apart from the fact that I don’t like the way you’re asking.  Or do you think that being a politician I must be such a lowlife that I won’t mind breaking the law?  Well, I do, and I’m not about to abuse my position to have privileged police information released to the general public.  And yes, that means you.  You aren’t Grainne’s doctor, you aren’t even her psychiatrist, yet you expect me to start pulling strings merely on your
whim
?  Well, I won’t do it.  Give me a good reason and I
might
help, but as things stand I cannot and will not.’

‘Fine,’ snapped Kate, ‘You obviously don’t want your daughter cured quite as badly as you claim!’  And with
that she rang off.  And then switched her phone off lest he ring her back.  Lest
anyone
ring.  She had had enough of the whole world for one day.  To hell with all of them!  Sooner or later everyone let you down.  And Trevor
blamed
her for not being able to fully trust anyone?  Small wonder!  She’d be a fool to trust any man!

She
took her landline phone off the hook too and lay on the bed for a very long time; not moving, not thinking, not feeling.  Just lying.  She made no effort to get up, to shower or eat, or to watch television.  She just lay there until it got dark, trying to focus on Grainne Riordan but with her mind constantly slipping away and drifting back to Trevor’s biting analysis.  Until eventually -a long time later- she fell into an uneasy sleep that gave her no relief and little rest.

    It was a cold, dark morning, and the almost black November sky was flinging stinging needles of rain sideways at Kate, making her umbrella pretty well redundant.  She did her best, aiming the umbrella in the direction of each gust, but before long she was soaked.  But that was okay; the cold and damp fitted the occasion.  Graveyards always seem bleak and grey, and it had rained at every one of the few funerals she had attended in her life.  Including that of her own mother.  Standing there in the graveyard of St. Luke’s Church, at the interment of a woman she had only met a handful of times over the years, Kate was inevitably reminded of the day
her
mother had been buried.  That had actually been in the middle of summer but the sky had still been overcast, and a heavy rain had been falling.  That was standard stuff for an Irish Summer, though on that occasion they had been spared the usual biting wind, and in any case the weather had suited Kate’s mood perfectly.  Warmth and sunshine have no place at a funeral, and their presence would have seemed to be almost mocking the dead.

There had be
en a palpable air of sorrow among the large crowd the day Kate had buried her mother, yet no tears had been shed.  Even Kate had not wept; her crying had all been completed in private in the preceding days.  And the child-Kate had been happy to appear dry-eyed and stone faced; her mother had been a deeply reserved, self-contained woman who had prided herself on her strength of character almost as much as she had abhorred public displays of emotion.  For her pain and grief were, like all emotions, to be borne in silence and dealt with in privacy.  Always.

Things were not done so in the Howitt family.  Not
on the female side, anyway.  The men, Maggie Howitt’s three big powerful sons, comported themselves with all the tight-lipped stoicism Kate would have expected from them, but her five daughters wept openly and unashamedly.  Not loudly, but not fighting their grief either, and certainly without the slightest trace of embarrassment.  And Kate thought that their open sorrow was preferable to the pale, tight, silent grief that had choked her, all those years ago.  Their tears seemed healthier, more natural than her constraint, and a better compliment to their love for their mother.  And the crying did not detract in any way from the dignity of the ceremony.  Perhaps it even added to it; the touch of humanity providing a leavening contrast to the stiff formality of the service.

Kate
held herself dry-eyed and aloof, though she felt like crying herself.  Not so much for Mrs. Howitt as for her own, still-missed mother.  And perhaps for all children, all of whom are eventually forced to consign their parents to the finality of the cold, damp earth.  But she did not give way.  As she and Peter had lived in England the whole time they were together she had barely known Maggie Howitt, and would not cheapen the very real grief of her daughters with spurious tears.  Besides, her habit of keeping her emotions under rigid control was so ingrained it was second nature by now, and she wasn’t sure if she
could
cry in public, even if she wanted to.

She
was standing on her own, well behind the fair-sized crowd, but even so she could see Peter looking steadily at her from the other side of the grave’s hungry maw.  He was standing amongst his sisters but towered above them, allowing him to gaze directly at her.  His face was pale and by contrast his eyes looked even darker than usual, and as she looked at him, clearly seeing the deep sorrow he was trying so hard to conceal, her heart threatened to break.  He had been the youngest son, and his mother’s ewe lamb.  His two brothers had been younger versions of their father but Peter was more like his mother, in temperament at least, and had been much closer to her.  His father’s death the previous year had hurt him deeply, but she knew that his grief on that occasion would be as nothing to the pain he was feeling now.  But he would cope with it.  He would shoulder and carry his grief without her help or anyone else’s.  And that knowledge made her feel small and mean.  He had always been there for her, no matter what; had she ever been there for him?  Once she had thought so, but looking back now she was starting to have doubts.  The distance of the past few months had given her a clearer perspective on herself, and her life, and she was not proud of much of what she now saw.

The priest concluded
the burial rites and the coffin was lowered into the empty earth.  Kate lowered her eyes, thinking of the look that had appeared in Peter’s eyes earlier, when he had seen her at the back of the church.   He had been standing up near the altar, shaking hands with commiserators, and his face had remained grim and immobile, but the naked emotion that had flashed in his eyes when he saw her enter had made it clear how much he valued her presence, invited or not, and she had been glad she had gone.  She had so nearly not.

She had awoken late, feeling heavy-headed and jaded in spite of her lon
g sleep.  She had showered and then, unable to eat, had begun rummaging through her wardrobes in search of something suitable to wear.  The only black dresses she possessed were of the cocktail party variety so she had finally decided on one of the black trouser suits she wore to work.  She tried it on but wasn’t at all happy with the result; it just didn’t look or feel formal enough. 
Somber
enough.  But as she had nothing more suitable it would just have to do.  Besides, she had a long black overcoat with which to cover it, and as she had no intention of going to the wake afterwards she could remain covered up.