Close to Death

It wasn’t just that they were so much older than him. They seemed to be quite nervous of the outside world. Roderick couldn’t help noticing that they seldom received any post and what letters did come their way, he suspected, were bills or circulars. He had never seen any visitors arrive at their door. He knew that they ran their weird little bookshop in Richmond, although he had never shopped there. He had no interest in crime fiction and tried not to eat sugar or carbohydrates, since why would he want to give Treponema denticola or Streptococcus mutans a free lunch? There were occasions, however, when he had picked up the two ladies in his Skoda Octavia because it was raining, pausing at the bus stop and taking them where they wanted to go.

He had tried to learn a little more about them on these brief journeys, but, as grateful as they were, they were also quite reluctant to talk too much about themselves. He knew they had both been married, that they weren’t related, that May had a son living in the USA and that Phyllis was childless. May had grown up less than half a mile away. Phyllis had come from Stourbridge, on the edge of Birmingham. The most remarkable thing about them was that they had both taken holy orders, which was how they had met. They had been Franciscan sisters in the Convent of St Clare in Leeds but had left when May inherited money from a distant relative. That was when they had moved to Riverview Close. The Gables had been the first house to be sold.

Riverview Lodge had been the last to change hands. Making sure he couldn’t be seen from the other side of the glass, Roderick Browne watched Lynda Kenworthy disappear through her front door, then he stepped away and continued getting dressed. He always wore a suit to work, even though he would change into white scrubs as soon as he arrived at the clinic in Cadogan Square. He owned the practice and it was important to make a good impression on his staff: the two receptionists, the oral hygienists, the assistant dentists. He was, after all, ‘the Dentist to the Stars’. That was what he had been called in the Evening Standard diary and he still liked to play the part. He did indeed have several well-known actors, a major pop singer and two bestselling authors among his clients, and although many people might not find anything particularly glamorous about dental medicine, he strongly disagreed. He loved his work, helping people and making them healthier. It was all he had ever wanted to do.

He picked out a wide, patterned Versace silk tie and tightened it around his neck. The tie was pink and worked very well against the pale blue Gieves & Hawkes suit. Looking at himself in the mirror, Roderick was not ashamed by what he saw. For a man approaching fifty, he was in good shape, with a head of hair that was still thick and lustrous even if it had already turned white, bright eyes, ruddy cheeks and, of course, superb teeth. He had put on a little weight recently. He would have to watch that. He tilted his head, wondering if the flesh around his neck was beginning to sag – or was it just the line of his collar? The trouble was, it had been years since he had played squash or tennis, and he had stopped jogging too.

No. It was the collar. He looked fine.

Everything in their lives had changed shortly after they had moved into the close. If Roderick had been a philosophical man, he might have considered more seriously the randomness of what had happened, the toss of a coin or the throw of a dice that could derail two careers, two lifestyles, a successful marriage. Felicity had been a senior associate in a leading firm of chartered accountants, on the edge of becoming a partner, but then she had become ill. It had started with tiredness. She couldn’t sleep. Then there had been the lack of focus, the memory loss, the headaches, more and more days spent in bed. Glandular fever, hormone imbalance, anaemia . . . all of these had been suggested by the various doctors they had consulted. In a strange way, the real diagnosis, which was much worse, had almost come as a relief. At least they both knew what they had to fight.

Myalgic encephalomyelitis. ME for short. A condition whose main symptom was chronic fatigue.