The Bone Clocks

With ill grace, Holly accedes. I mime a cup and mouth “Coffee” at Nestor, who makes a coming-right-up face. “First,” I tell Holly, “Hugo Lamb knows nothing about this. We hope. He’s gone by the name of Marcus Anyder for many years, incidentally.”

“So if Hugo Lamb hasn’t sent you, how can you possibly know that we met years ago in an obscure Swiss ski resort?”

“One of us resides in the Dark Internet. Overhearing things is what he does for a living, as it were.”

“And you. Are you still a Chinese doctor who died in 1984? Or are you alive and female today?”

“I am all those four.” I put a business card on the table. “Dr. Iris Marinus-Fenby. A clinical psychiatrist based in Toronto, though I consult further afield. And, yes, until 1984 I was Yu Leon Marinus.”

Holly removes her sunglasses, scrutinizes the card, and me, with distaste. “I see I have to spell this out, so here goes: I haven’t seen Hugo Lamb since New Year’s Day 1992, when he was in his early twenties, yeah? He’ll be in his midfifties by now. Like me. Now, the manipulator of this image shows Hugo Lamb stilllooking twenty-five years old, give or take, with the Helix Towers—built in 2018—and iShades hooked over his Qatar 2022 World Cup T-shirt. And the car. Cars didn’t look like that in the nineties. I was there. This photo has been buggered about with. Two questions for you: ‘Why bother?’ and ‘Who bothered?’ ”

A kid at the next table’s playing a 3D app: A kangaroo’s bouncing up a scrolling series of platforms. It’s off-putting. “The photo was taken last July,” I tell Holly. “It has not been altered.”

“So … Hugo Lamb found the fountain of eternal youth?”

A young waiter with Nestor’s heavyweight nose walks by with a T-bone steak sizzling on a hot plate. “Not a fountain, no. A place and a process. Hugo Lamb became an Anchorite of the Chapel of the Blind Cathar in 1992. Since his induction, he hasn’t aged.”

Holly takes this in and puffs out her cheeks. “Well, great. That’s that cleared up. My one-night fling is now … let’s say it, ‘immortal.’ ”

“Immortal with terms and conditions,” I equivocate. “Immortal only in the sense that he doesn’t age.”

Holly’s exasperated. “And nobody’s noticed, of course. Or does his family put it down to moisturizer and quinoa salad?”

“His family believe he drowned in a scuba-diving accident off Rabaul, near New Guinea, in 1996. Go ahead, call them.” I give Holly a card with the Lambs’ London number on it. “Or just shirabu one of his brothers, Alex or Nigel, and ask them.”

Holly stares. “Hugo Lamb faked his own death?”

I sip my tap water. It’s passed through many kidneys. “His new Anchorite friends arranged it. Obtaining a death certificate without a dead body is irksome, but they have years of experience.”

“Stop talking as if I believe you. Anyway, ‘Anchorites’? That’s something … medieval, isn’t it?”

I nod. “An Anchorite was a girl who lived like a hermit in a cell, but in the wall of a church. A living human sacrifice, in a way.”

Nestor drifts up. “One coffee. Say, is your friend hungry?”

“No, thank you,” says Holly. “I … I’ve got no appetite.”

“Come on,” I urge her, “you just walked from Columbus Circle.”

“I’ll bring a menu,” says Nestor. “You a veggie, like your friend?”

“She’s not my friend,” Holly fires back. “I mean, we just met.”

“Friend or not,” says the restaurateur, “a body’s got to eat.”

“I’ll be leaving soon,” declares Holly. “I have to rush.”

“Rush, rush, rush.” Nestor’s nasal hair streams in and out like seaweed. “Too busy to eat, too busy to breathe.” He turns away and turns back. “What’s next? Too busy to live?” Nestor’s gone.

Holly hisses: “Now you made me piss off an elderly Greek.”

“Order his moussaka, then. In my medical view, you don’t eat—”

“Since you’ve raised the subject of medical matters, ‘Dr. Fenby,’ I knew the name was familiar. I checked with Tom Ballantyne, my old GP. You came to my house in Rye when I was very nearly dying of cancer. I could have your medical license revoked.”

“If I was guilty of any malpractice, I would revoke it myself.”

She looks both outraged and baffled. “Why were you in my home?”

“Advising Tom Ballantyne. I was involved in trials of ADC-based drugs in Toronto, and Tom and I both thought your gall-bladder cancer might respond positively. It did.”

“You said you’re a psychiatrist, not an oncologist.”

“I’m a psychiatrist who owns a number of other hats.”

“So you’re claiming that I owe you my life now, are you?”

“Not at all. Or only partly. Cancer recovery is a holistic process, and while the ADCs contributed to your cancer’s remission, they weren’t the only curative agent, I suspect.”

“So … you got to know Tom Ballantyne beforemy diagnosis? Or … or … just how long have you been watching my life?”

“On and off, since your mother brought you into the consulting room in Gravesend Hospital in 1976.”

“Can you hear yourself? And it’s your actual job to curepeople of psychoses and delusions? Now for the last time, why did you send me a digitally jiggled image of a verybrief, veryex-boyfriend?”