In the car, when he was driving me back home after lunch, Bushy said, “Doctor, I hope you don’t mind me saying this to yer now, but Bushy’s got a funny feeling.”

“Is it affecting your driving?”

“Na. It’s about you.”

“Me?”

“Sir, I have to tell you—you’re being well looked at. Perceived. You know.”

“Perceived, you say. Perceived by whom?”

“A man.”

“A man? What sort of perceiving man? What are you talking about, Bushy?”

“I got this feeling—a freshness, a tingle—in me nose, which don’t betray me.”

“Go on, tell me about it.” As he was about to open his mouth, I said, “Hold on, Bushy. Are you absolutely certain I really need to know this stuff?”

Bushy was examining his nose in the mirror, running his nicotine finger down the centre of it. “Nothing strange about me today is there, boss?” He turned round. “Look into my face. At my…nose.”

I peered into a coarse landscape of blackheads, whiteheads, redheads, broken capillaries and holes. “All in order.”

“Yeah, right.” He went on, “I was saying, this guy who’s perceiving you—I reckon he might be dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

“Very, very much so,” Bushy said, with some relish.

I had been enjoying the journey. Bushy knew the route I preferred, knew I liked to see what was happening in the Harvey Nichols window, keeping left at the Knightsbridge junction and swinging past Harrods until the V & A came into view on the right, and I could see what the latest exhibition was. The V & A was a place I’d go to relax sometimes. Being in a building—perhaps in any beautiful building which wasn’t a shop—where you could stroll about looking at art, enabled me to have good thoughts, even if I had Josephine with me: we liked to go there often.

After the V & A there wasn’t anything of much interest until we reached Gloucester Road. If I had the time, I’d get Bushy to drop me off outside the Gloucester Road bookshop, a secondhand place just up from the tube. I could spend half an hour in the basement there, and then go to Coffee Republic next door to read. My excitement and appetite for books—and the ideas they contained—hadn’t modified over the years. My shoulder bag was always weighed down with the numerous volumes I couldn’t wait to get inside me.

Like many taxi drivers, Bushy considered a journey an opportunity to express himself to a captive audience, but we’d been around enough together for him to know I wouldn’t listen or reply.

He said, “You’re off on one, I know. But I think you need to know this stuff. A man without this knowledge inside him could suffer consequences.”

“Is that right?”

It was a while before I could turn my brain round to concentrate on what he was saying, if anything. I was still thinking of what Karen had said over lunch.

Almost first thing in the morning, she had rung to invite me to the Ivy. There was some strange news she just had to give me. A reputation for listening to others can ruin your life. You can begin to feel like the village whore or, worse, a priest. But I hated to turn down an invitation to the Ivy.

Usually lunch there took too much time out of the day, as it was thirty-five minutes away by tube or car. However, on Mondays I had a patient who came to my door, gave me a cheque and shuffled away, head down, buying my time but not my presence. This gave me an extra hour. Bushy had turned out to be free; he drove me up to the Charing Cross Road and would pick me up later.

I was on time, and had a good nosy around the restaurant as I waited to be shown to the table. One of the assets of the Ivy was that the room was ideal: everyone could see everyone else without seeming intrusive. Today there was a good mixture of pop stars, actors, media executives, TV comedians and a couple of writers.

Karen had downed most of a bottle of wine by the time I arrived. I ordered a cappuccino and began to hear about Karen’s husband, Rob; their girls; and Rob’s girlfriend, Ruby, who had been to Disneyland while we were at Mustaq’s.

“I think I might have told you they were all at Disneyland, Jamal, but you won’t remember.”

“Won’t I?”

“You were pretty much out of it at George’s. I haven’t seen you that way for years.”

“Oh, Christ, I hope I didn’t make a fool of myself. I don’t much like to be drunk now.”

“Despite that, Jamal, you do tend to remember the details of a lot of things. They just cling to the underside of your sticky head.” She went on: “Now, this girl Ruby is at the LSE doing political science. She plays in a women’s football team, and makes documentaries about asylum seekers in her spare time. She wants to be a film director. Maybe she will be. She’s completely uninhibited and hip when it comes to sex. I asked him one time, What can she do that I can’t? A stupid question, don’t you think? Well, she takes her girlfriends along to join my husband in bed, a story which flustered me for days.”

“You wanted to be the friend?”

“How can I compete with this Ruby?”

“What else?”

“My youngest girl mentioned that Ruby was putting on weight. ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I said. The other daughter then said, ‘It’s not fat, it’s a bump.’” Karen’s eyes must have either narrowed or widened here, and rapidly. “‘A bump?’ I asked. ‘A bump? Did you really say that? We’re fucked. That’s it. He’s never coming back now. Give me a minute, I have to take two of my pills.’ Pour me a drink, darling Jamal.”

I emptied the bottle for her. She leaned across the table and said to me, “The bastard’s starting again. Maybe he didn’t like it the first time. Now he’s going to be happy. The girls and I, and the family life we had for years, mean nothing to him. I have to admit that we imagined for ages that one day he’d walk back in through the door he went out of.”

“The girls are growing up,” I said. “You’ll have to find new things to do.”

She looked around the restaurant helplessly. “There are no men available, you know that. I won’t go with some urine-stained git on Viagra. And the girls, they’re teenage trouble, seeing their first boyfriends, they’re on the phone even more than me. They don’t want to see me bringing some bastard his tea on a tray.”

Not having time to look at the menu, I had one glass of champagne and ordered my favourites, the potted shrimps to start, followed by the fish cakes with chips. I didn’t notice what Karen was eating, but it wasn’t much.

I mentioned Henrietta, an acquaintance of ours, who made no secret of her liking for men and sex. I said, “Think how much pleasure she has. Far more than either of us. Men are in and out of her place all night, and she’s got three daughters.”

Karen said, “Henrietta? She’s got a big house. There are still men walking around in there lost, unable to find the front door. Anyhow, the other day she was sleeping with some political fool. She woke up, went downstairs and looked at his phone. He had messages from eight other women. He was no Adonis, of course.”

“She makes sure she gets what she needs.”

“You know what she said to me the other day? She’d trade it all in for someone who just wants to be with her. Oh, Jamal, what’s wrong with an alpha female like me apart from the fact that I’m old, fat and alcoholic? Who’s going to care for me, listen to me, make love to me?”

“You’re humiliated, you poor thing.”

She was sobbing. “Was I ever like Ruby? I was never that brilliant. There were always more intelligent and beautiful women in London.”

Karen had eaten little, but we did share a dessert. I despatched a double espresso. “What about Karim?”

“I didn’t hear from him, obviously. I called him a few times. He said he was busy preparing for his appearance on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me out of Here.”

“Have you thought of getting a therapist?”

“Don’t fucking say that to me!” she said wildly, as though we were still a couple. “Can’t we go to a hotel this afternoon? I’ll do anything you want.”

I got up and kissed her. “I have to work.”

She said, “It’s okay for you, you’ve got your girl back. Ajita,” she said slowly and with some scorn. “Are you dating her again? George told me she’s installed herself at his place. She came for a few days but now just refuses to go home. He doesn’t know what to do with her. She’s making him crazy.”

“Really?”

“Is that because of your influence?” She was holding my hand tightly. “Jamal, don’t you ever think about our son?”

“Sorry?”

“The one you wanted me to get rid of.”

She wouldn’t let me extricate myself. “Karen, please,” I said.

“What age would he be today, so big and strong and handsome?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I have no idea.”

“He could be having lunch with us! The parents of a murdered child are still its parents. I am absolutely certain you would have wanted more children!”

I was late already. When I managed to get away from her, she was looking around the restaurant for another table to join. Bushy was outside with the other drivers, and we took off, the car fragrant with air freshener.

After all this, and the champagne, I wanted to nap, but hearing of Bushy’s suspicions, I said, “Okay, let me have it. What’s going on with this perceiving man?”

“Yesterday, right, I’m parked up the street waiting to pick Miriam up from lunch with you when I noticed this bloke nosin’ yer from a car. An oldish man, kinda strange looking, well built. Your manor’s full of weirdos, but when I came back he was still there. Then he followed us—I know because I took an odd route especially. He’s been having a good look at you. You wouldn’t mess with him—”

“Maybe it’s one of my patients,” I said. “Or a patient’s spouse. When people start therapy, they sometimes separate from their partners, and the therapist is blamed. I’ve had people throw bricks through my window.”

I didn’t mention the fact that for a while Josephine would stand outside the flat when I was seeing patients, convinced I was having affairs with them. I could hear her yelling: “You’re not allowed to touch them, you know! You’ll be reported and struck—if not struck off!” I did also have a psychotic therapist colleague—not a patient but someone I’d attended conferences with—who began, after the publication of my first book, to stand outside my door handing out a written statement to my patients, saying what a phoney I was.

“Maybe,” Bushy said. “A man without a stalker is a nobody. But this one could be like that song—you know the one.”

“Which one? What are you saying?”

“‘Psycho Killer.’”

He started to sing it.

I said, “Right, right. Because?”

“Because he’s not spontaneous. We should check him out—now.”

“How can I check him out?”

Bushy told me what he required me to do and then said, “It would be to yer advantage.”

“Bushy, I have to see a patient now.”

“Shrinky, I’m insisting you better do what Bushy says.”

I did what he said. He dropped me at the corner of my street, and I walked to my flat with him driving behind. My patient was waiting outside the building.

After she’d gone, I phoned Bushy. “So?”

“When you came along the street as per advised, our character hid—sliding down in the car. I think it’s a rented motor. I’ll check him out and let you know what’s what.”

“You’re going to a lot of trouble, Bushy.”

“I’m worried. Miriam ordered me to keep an eye on you.”

“I don’t want her to know about this. She’ll get in a flap and start casting spells.”

I woke at four in the morning, wondering who was out there watching me. I wondered whether Mustaq had employed someone to keep an eye on me. He was the only person who had the money, as well as the motive, to do that. But what would he hope to see? Occasionally I’d go to the window and look out, but I saw no one.

My first patient was at seven the next morning: an Old Etonian in his fifties whose relationships with women had been wretched. Haunted by the idea that he will find the one who will complete him, therefore rejecting all others as wrong. The founding myth of heterosexuality: completion, the ultimate fulfillment.

My second patient was at eight: a woman who had been phobic about drinking water since childhood, after hearing a story about a dead bird in a water tank. Reaching the stage when she was unable to drink anything she thought had contaminated water in it, her life was being gradually annulled, until it was almost impossible for her to be with others socially.

At nine I had some toast and made another pot of coffee. I rang Bushy. “How’s my stalker?”

“Boss, as I speculated, it is a rented car. I followed him all the way into Kent. I thought we were going to end up in damned Dover. He kipped in a deserted street near a park.”

“Which part of Kent?”

He named the street, and I knew it, though not well. That part of Kent was close to the city and not far from the coast, and had plenty of the sort of houses favoured by criminals and pop stars. The street he mentioned was in the area where I’d grown up. That puzzled me. Why would he go there? Then it occurred to me that the street was closer to Ajita’s than to my old house. If it was one of Mustaq’s men, why would he sleep in a car there?

I asked, “What should we do?”

“I can’t bring him in and ask him questions meself,” Busy said. “I’d have to get geezers. That would cost yer.”

“I don’t want men,” I said. “I can’t afford it and I can’t get involved in anything lunatic.”

He could only laugh at my naivety. “You might already be up to the throat in the lunatic, Jamal. I reckon he’ll make his moves in the next twenty-four hours. He can’t hang around much longer. He’s perceived what he wants to perceive.”

There was a silence, then I said, “It sounds as though I’ll have to start taking this seriously. What we need is a photo.”

“I can do that.”

Bushy borrowed my Polaroid camera and later dropped by with the picture he’d taken. It was difficult to make out who it was, as Bushy was no Richard Avedon. Someone was asleep in a car. I could see a shoulder and an ear, but had no notion who they might belong to.

“I can’t wait anymore,” I said to Bushy on the phone. “I’m going to approach this guy. If I know him and he’s not scary, I’ll take him into the flat and try to talk to him. If I raise the blind, you come in.”

“Jesus no, there’s no way I’d advise that!”

“Don’t worry.”

Bushy said, “You don’t know what goes on half the time.”

“I don’t?”

“You think you can X-ray people with your eyes, but you can’t always.” He went on: “When I see you on the street, I always think: there goes the student.”

“Student?”

“With your worn jacket and uptight look, and always carryin’ books, head down, as if you don’t want to talk to no one…”

I put the phone down, a worried man with a worried mind, and went out of the house and approached the car.

The man was asleep, or at least his eyes were closed. I was about to knock on the window when he opened his eyes. He seemed to surge into life and wound down the window.

“Ah, Jamal! At last! Did you know it was me?”

“Hello, Wolf. My eyes are open,” I said, looking up the street to where Bushy’s car was parked.

“Can I come in?”

I said, “Let’s go to a café.”

“We have so much to talk about!”

“Why have you been hanging around out here?”

“I was afraid, nervous,” he said. “It’s been so long. But you do remember me?”

He was out of the car, embracing, kissing me and looking me over, as though wanting to see what remained after so many years.

He said, “I thought this moment would never come. Hallo, and hallo again, my dear, my most missed, friend. What an important moment this is—for both of us! The moment I’ve been waiting years for!”

I was looking at him too and said, “Perhaps like me you look the same, apart from your hair. My son says I get more and more hairy, except on my head, where it counts.”

“Your son?” he said. “I’m so glad for you. Is he here?”

“I hope he’s at school.”

“I’ve got to hear all about him. Will you tell me everything? Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Yes,” I said. “I am. Come right in.”

“Thanks,” he said. “This is beautiful. A beautiful moment.” He was looking up at my building. “London is so great. It feels like I’ve come home. This is where I belong—here with you again, my dear friend! You know, I’ve got the feeling it’s going to be like the old days again!”