The Treatment

Seven.

He called Rebecca. The whole weight of the day was on him. "Let's just go home, cook something and go to bed…" But she was exuberant: she was in Brixton -she was at a private view at the Air Gallery on Coldharbour Lane she wanted him to pick her up. OK, she agreed, they'd do some shopping in twenty-four-hour Tesco's, get some wild rice, some lamb, a bottle of something red and cook at home. But he could tell he was souring it for her. He could tell she wanted to stay at the party.

As he parked on Effra Road a herd of bright young things passed, bussed in by the score from West London and the home counties, moving through the street on their long, alien legs, heads back, faces lit like God's own converts as they moved through the darkness towards the lights in Brixton Central. Just as if they didn't know what had happened half a mile away in Brockwell Park. Just as if they had never heard of Rory Peach. He pocketed his keys and crossed Windrush Square into Coldharbour Lane, heading for the chief source of light, a great living column of heat and colour: the Air Gallery, lifting up into the night, a huge industrial space of textured concrete and galvanized steel. As he got nearer he could see Rebecca at the foot of the building, in the entrance, sipping a cocktail and looking at her watch.

He could remember a time when she would wait for him calmly, hands behind her back, the left foot resting lightly on the right. Now she stood with feet planted wide, dressed in a short leather jerkin, bubblegum-pink combat trousers, and, of course, her new accessory: her strange unhealthy energy, unravelling out into the night around her like a veil.

"Jack." She wormed a long brown arm under his jacket and pulled him nearer, standing on tiptoe for a kiss. Her nose was warm and her breath was sweet and orangy like Cointreau. He realized she was drunk. "I've just been speaking to someone from The Times, and Marc Quinn's in there you know, the one with the frozen-blood head. He's in there and Ron Mue…"

"Great shall we go?"

"And I told the guy from The Times I was doing more of my vaginas '

"I'm sure he's made up about that." He tried to take the cocktail from her but she grinned and shook the glass at him, the crushed-strawberry-colour drink rattling like ice… "Diabolo," she sang, curling her fingers at him. "It's a Diiiii-aaa bolo The Devil?

"Becky," he could feel irritation rising, 'can we just get something to eat and head home He broke off. A Japanese woman in zipped PVC platform boots and a white vinyl raincoat had appeared from inside the crowded gallery bar and was staring at Rebecca. Caffery was used to the shamanic appeal she had for strangers, but he didn't like it. He turned to the woman. "What?"

In reply she gave him a long, cold look, lifted a camera and before he realized what was happening had fired off two flashes. "Hey!" She slid back into the gallery bar and he caught Rebecca by the arm. "Right, come on time to go." He took the drink from between her fingers and put it on the pavement outside the gallery. "Let's get some food."

She trotted along beside him, smiling and chattering about all the journalists she'd met. He walked fast, not listening to the details. Where had she got this hard gaiety of hers? The change in her had started like a sudden fever a month after the inquest. In the first few weeks, while she was back and forward from the hospital and he had been busy with tying up the case, there had been a strange lulled silence, a dreamy fermata in which Bliss's name wasn't mentioned. Then suddenly, overnight it seemed, Rebecca began talking. But not to him to the press. To him she still wouldn't mention it directly.

"Are you ever going to talk to me about it?"

"I already have. I gave you a statement, didn't I"

And off she went to bury herself in her mad art. Plaster casts of other women's genitals. It was as absurd as it was dispiriting. Sometimes he believed she could make her heart move in the opposite direction to her body, in a way his unsophisticated heart couldn't.

"You could have been a bit nicer," she said, as they walked around Tesco's. "You don't know who she was she might have been with one of the papers."

"Or she might have been a ghoul."

"You don't understand." She lingered a little behind him, idly looking at the shelves, swinging her arms like a bored schoolgirl. "I have to be on display at these things it's part of the game."

"Well, I'm not up for it." He walked ahead, not waiting for her, trying to get this over and done with, wanting to be out of Brixton as soon as possible, subconsciously scanning the other shoppers, wondering if Rory Peach's abductor might walk past him. He half expected someone to come up to him, point a finger, and say, "Why aren't you looking for him? What do you think you're doing, hanging around in the pasta section of Tesco's when Rory's still missing?" He threw some rice into the basket and continued up the aisle, Rebecca trailing behind. "I'm not up for another night of watching you talk to every dickhead with a mike and a pen."

"Ooooo-wooh," she trilled behind him. "Where's this coming from?"

He didn't answer. He walked a bit faster.

"Is it coming from the case we're working on?" she whispered, closing on him. "Does it all remind us of something we'd rather forget? Is that what the mood is?"

"Shall we change the subject?"

"Oh, Jack! I was joking." She got ahead of him, stopped to pull a bottle of red wine off the shelf and turned to him. "You should learn to lighten up a bit. You take everything so seriously."

"I mean it, Becky. Don't push it." He walked past her. "Unless you're after something, unless you really want to talk, really want to take the gloves off and I don't think you do."

"Oooh!" She caught up and grinned up at him. "I wonder what you're talking about."

"It's not funny."

"I think I can decide what's funny and what isn't. After all' She suddenly leaned back and lobbed the bottle into the air, her head back, watching the swish-swish-swish of light on the glass above her. The bottle twisted back down and she caught it, turned to him and smiled nicely. 'it was my assault."

"Jesus." He started to walk away, disgusted, but she caught up again, grinning at the side of his face, skipping along.

"You just can't stand the fact that I'm not traumatized and you are," she said. "I mean, what am I supposed to be grieving about? I lived, didn't I? I'm dealing with it."

"You call what you're doing with your work dealing with it? You call telling some jerk-off from the Guardian how it's "informed" your art dealing with it? You've got a perverted sense, Rebecca, of what "dealing" with it is."

"Oooh perverted!" She scooted up ahead of him and turned, walking backwards up the aisle. Tell-ver ted she sang, whirling the bottle in the air again, almost missing it on its way down. A couple passed her warily, shrinking back a little against the shelves. "This guy, right." Rebecca stopped in Caffery's path, her face bright. Now he could read the print on her leather jerkin. Article 5 of the Alcatraz inmate regulations, stencilled in white: You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter and medical attention. Anything else you get is a privilege. "This guy says to his girlfriend, "Let's have anal sex "'

"Rebecca '

"He says, "Let's have anal sex." And she says, "Anal sex? Isn't that a bit perverted?" And he says '

"Please just stop it '

"And he says "Perverted? Perverted? My, but that's a big word. Especially for a ten-year-old." She bent over, bottle clasped against her knee and shook with laughter. "A ten-year-old!"

"Yes, very good." He tried to get past her but she jumped from side to side, blocking his path.

"Oh, come on, Jack, read the dating manual. You're supposed to find my jokes funny. You're supposed to '

"Will you just thinkV He pushed a finger in her face and she shrank back a little, taken off-guard. "Will you just fucking THINK, for once." He put his face near hers, his voice low, stooping slightly so that no one else could hear. "Think about what it was like for me to find you, Rebecca, hanging, hanging from a hook in the fucking ceiling. I thought you were dead he told me he'd fucked you and then killed you. How do you think that felt, eh?"

She blinked at him and with that small reaction something hardened in his chest. He slammed down the basket, bottles clinking, and walked away, feeling for his keys in his pocket. She asked for it, she pushed me, she pushed me. He took deep breaths, half expecting her to be bouncing along at his side, poking him, telling him to take a chill pill or something. He had wanted to push her, wanted more than anything to see her rattled, and when he paused at the exit and turned round he knew he'd succeeded.

She was standing motionless in the centre of the aisle under the vast fluorescent lights, a single, small figure, quite alone in the huge supermarket, her face quite blank. He took a few steps back down the aisle. "Becky?"

Her head jerked a fraction and her chin dropped but she didn't answer. When he took her hand it was cold. So you've done it. Congratulations.

Hating himself and hating her, he led her out of the store and across Brixton to the car. They drove in silence and at home she took a bottle of Blavod and a packet of cigarillos upstairs and went to bed without eating. They didn't speak another word to each other that night.