Dr Dick was examining the cast on his ankle. ‘I’m sure it’s not the only thing that’s broken,’ he complained without even looking at me, ‘and they wouldn’t listen when I told them I was tachycardic, they could at least have run an ECG. And I banged my head, how do they know I haven’t got concussion?’
‘Did you tell that nurse you were my father?’ I interrupted him.
‘Of course I didn’t,’ Dr Dick said indignantly. ‘I’m not even old enough to be your father, although I feel it,’ he added, lying back on his pillows. He removed his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘My head hurts,’ he said again. I had to admit, he did look exhausted. I felt an unusual twinge of pity for him and reached out and clasped one of his hands in mine. He smelt of Savlon.
‘You’re a good girl,’ he murmured. Like all hypochondriacs, Dr Dick was distressed at finding he actually had something wrong with him and ended up making such a fuss (‘Is he often hysterical?’) that the junior house officer on duty decided it would be easier to keep him in overnight than it would be to persuade him to go home.
I was shooed away by a nurse with a bedpan who whisked the curtains around the bed with great theatricality as if she was about to perform a disappearing trick on Dr Dick. I hung about for a minute, unsure what to do until the nurse suddenly popped her head through the curtains and said, ‘This might take some time. Don’t worry,’ and then added, with routine cheerfulness, ‘we’ll take good care of your dad.’
It felt very late, although the clock in reception only said nine o’clock.
‘Bye,’ the receptionist said indifferently, ‘take care now.’
It was snowing outside, big, wet flakes that whirled dramatically in the wind but dissolved as soon as they landed on the ground. They found their way inside the collar of my coat as I trekked along Dudhope Terrace against a strong headwind. A bus sailed by like a ghostly galleon. Dudhope Castle, cloaked in a swirl of snow, seemed to glow eerily as I passed it. The street was deserted and I began to feel anxious. I glanced behind but the snow made phantasmagoric shapes in the dark that made me more nervous so I kept my head down and shuffled on. Where was Chick when you needed him? Or better still Ferdinand, who had been absent from this tale for far too long.
~ Yes, bring Ferdinand back, Nora urges. You left him stranded on a beach, it’s time he returned. He’s the only remotely sexually attractive male in the entire story.
(You must forgive the eagerness of my mother (who is not my mother). Remember – she is a virgin. Not to mention a murderess and a thief.)
We must pause for a second. We have come to a critical fork in the path. If I had a choice of white knights on chargers come to save me – admittedly only from the weather, but it was very bad weather – which would I prefer, Chick or Ferdinand? A foolish question surely, for there could be only one answer –
The snow was beginning to settle thickly and most of the traffic had stopped but I could just make out the yellow headlights of a car, moving slowly towards me along the Lochee Road. The car was almost obscured by the snow as it slewed to a gentle skidding halt on the other side of the road. It was a Wolseley Hornet. The driver’s window rolled down and Ferdinand’s handsome features resolved themselves out of the white kaleidoscope of snow.
‘Hop in,’ he said, in a curious echo of the ambulance-man earlier in the evening. Here was excellent good fortune.
The Hornet presented a perfect contrast to Chick’s Cortina. Its new-smelling interior was warm and its little engine chugged manfully through what was now a raging blizzard. It even had a tape-deck fitted on which John Martyn’s ‘Bless The Weather’ was, fittingly, playing.
Ferdinand seemed somewhat edgy. He hadn’t shaved recently, which made him look older and more dangerous. His eyes, I was relieved to see, were green and the dark hollows beneath them hinted at sleeplessness and the criminal in him seemed more evident than before. His navy-blue Guernsey, I noticed, was spiked with needles of coarse yellow dog hair. There was sand on the floor of the car and the slight brackish scent of the seaside that I knew only too well.
‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked. He sounded hoarse as if he had a sore throat and I offered him a Strepsil, which he declined.
‘So?’ Ferdinand asked, tapping his hand impatiently on the steering-wheel.
‘So?’ I repeated absently.
‘So where do you want to go?’
‘Anywhere.’
He gave me a funny look so I narrowed it down to Terri’s address in Cleghorn Street as we were already quite near there and it successfully removed the Bob factor from the me–Bob–Ferdinand equation.