A Traitor to Memory

She cut in anxiously. “It's the party that's made all the difference. Having our friends in … being surrounded like that. I feel as right as … well, as right as can be.”


Miranda's appearance at the kitchen door saved Webberly from having to make a reply. With an “Ah. Here you are,” she dropped her trumpet case onto the floor along with a weighty rucksack, and she went to the cooker, where Alfie—the family's Alsatian mix—was having a lengthy post-party lie-in on his blanket. She gave the dog a brisk rub between his ears, which he responded to by rolling over and offering his stomach for her ministrations. She cooperated, pausing to plant a kiss on his head and to accept a wet dog kiss in return.

“Darling, that's terribly unhygienic,” Frances said.

“That's doggy love,” Miranda replied. “Which, as we know, is the purest kind. Isn't it, Alf?”

Alfie yawned.

Miranda said, over her shoulder to her parents, “I'm off, then. I've two papers to hand in next week.”

“So soon?” Webberly set his shoes to one side. “We've had you barely forty-eight hours. Cambridge can wait another day, can't it?”

“Duty calls, Dad. Not to mention the odd exam or two. You still want me to try for a first, I take it?”

“Hang on, then. Let me finish with these shoes and I'll drive you up to King's Cross Station.”

“No need. I'll go by tube.”

“Then I'll run you up to the Underground.”

“Dad.” Her voice was a model of patience. They'd walked this path often in her twenty-two years, so she was well-used to its twists and turns. “I need the exercise. Explain it to him, Mum.”

Webberly protested. “But if it begins to rain on your way—”

“Heavens, Malcolm, she's not going to melt.”

But they do, Webberly countered, in his mind. They melt, they break, they disappear in an instant. And always when melting, breaking, or disappearing is the very last possibility in your head. Still, he knew the wisdom of compromise in a situation in which two females were beginning to join forces against him. So he said, “I'll walk a bit with you, then.” And he added, “Alf needs his morning toddle, Randie,” when Miranda rolled her eyes and was about to remonstrate against the idea of a father chaperoning his adult daughter down the street in broad daylight as if she were incapable of using a zebra crossing on her own.

“Mum?” Miranda looked to her mother for support. Frances said with a regretful shrug, “You've not taken Alfie yet yourself, have you, darling?”

Miranda surrendered with good-natured exasperation. “Oh, come along then, you twit. But I'm not waiting for the shoe polish routine to be done.”

“I'll see to the shoes,” Frances said.

Webberly fetched the dog's lead and followed his daughter out of the house. Outside, Alfie rooted an old tennis ball from the shrubbery. He knew the routine when Webberly was on the other end of the lead: It would be a stroll to Prebend Gardens, where his master would unhook the lead from his collar and throw the tennis ball across the grass, whereupon Alfie would dash after it, refuse to return it, and run wildly around for at least a quarter of an hour.

“I don't know who has less imagination,” Miranda said as she watched the dog snuffle through the hydrangeas, “you or the dog. Just look at him, Dad. He knows what's up. There's not the least bit of surprise in store for him.”

“Dogs like routine,” Webberly told her as Alfie emerged triumphant, a hairy old ball in his jaws.

“Dogs, yes. But what about you? Do you always take him to the gardens, for God's sake?”

“It's my walking meditation twice a day,” he told her. “Morning and night. Doesn't that satisfy?”

“Walking meditation,” she scoffed. “Dad, you're such a fibber. Really.” They set off to the right once beyond the front gate, following the dog to the end of Palgrave Street, where he made the expected left turn that would take them up to Stamford Brook Road and Prebend Gardens that lay just on the other side of it.

“It was a good party,” Miranda said, linking her arm through her father's. “Mum seemed to like it. And no one mentioned … or wondered … at least not to me …”

“It was fine,” Webberly said, squeezing his arm to his side to hold her closer. “Your mother enjoyed herself so much she was talking about working in the garden today.” He felt his daughter looking at him but he kept his own eyes resolutely forward.

Miranda said, “She won't. You know she won't. Dad, why don't you insist she go back to that doctor? There's help for people like Mum.”

“I can't force her to do more.”

“No. But you could …” Miranda sighed. “I don't know. Something. Something. I don't understand why you won't take a stand, why you've never taken a stand with Mum.”

“What d'you have in mind?”

“If she thought you meant to … well, if you said, ‘This is it, Frances. I'm at my limit. I want you to go back to that psychiatrist or else.’”