The Firebird
Page 18I didn’t know how to reply to that. But I did know I could never take part in a film of my psychic ability, baring my secret to strangers and sceptics alike who’d be watching me, judging me.
Rob stopped me there on the pavement and turned me to meet his eyes. ‘Hiding the person you are,’ he said, ‘won’t make you happy. I never hide who I am. What I am.’
Freaks.
I’d nodded. We’d gone out to dinner. He’d walked me home afterwards. And at the door, when he’d kissed me goodnight, he’d done something he’d never done.
Always before when we’d kissed, though there hadn’t been that many times, he had kept his thoughts closed to me. This time the wall had been very decidedly down. I’d been slammed by the force of his feelings, a flood of sensations that caught me and tossed me around like a turbulent river and knocked the breath out of me, so when he’d lifted his mouth from my own I had felt like I’d just escaped drowning.
I’d thought at the time he was showing me how things could be with us, if I could get past my own reservations. But now, looking back, I felt certain that Rob, with his gifts, would have already known what was going to happen, which meant that his kiss was intended to say something else, though I didn’t know what. Goodbye, maybe.
Aloud, he’d said only, ‘I’ll see you, then.’
‘See you on Monday,’ I’d said.
But I hadn’t. I’d closed the door after him, run up the stairs, and I’d gone right on running.
‘You’re quiet this morning,’ Rob said. He was driving, his eyes on the road as he swung round the first turn at Old Craighall Junction and onto the Edinburgh bypass. It was just after nine and the traffic was easing a little but Rob’s car still had to contend with the lorries. He’d been rather quiet himself.
I replied, ‘It’s taking all my energy, digesting what I ate this morning. Your mother wouldn’t let me out the door without a full cooked breakfast.’
‘Aye, well, that’s my mother. Did she give you porridge, too?’
‘She did. I likely won’t need food again for days.’ She’d also sent me off with a spare blouse, in case I spilt something on mine, and loaned me a stylishly cut denim jacket, in case I got cold. I was wearing the jacket now. ‘I like your mother,’ I said.
Rob agreed she was easy to like.
‘And your father is charming.’
‘Aye, he would agree with you there.’ A faint smile, but he wasn’t about to be sidetracked. He sent me another look. ‘Did you not sleep well?’
‘I slept. Are there horses,’ I asked, ‘in your field?’
‘Oh.’ I had never known horses had ghosts. ‘Can you see them, as well?’
‘Sometimes.’
I looked out of the window and watched the world passing and wondered what Rob saw that I didn’t see.
‘So,’ he said to me, ‘tell me about what you want me to do for you up in Dundee.’
I explained how I’d met Margaret Ross, how I’d handled the Firebird, what I had seen. And I told him, too, what I had seen when I’d held Margaret’s scarf. Well, a part of it. Not what I’d seen at her doctor’s – that seemed a betrayal of confidence – but what I’d glimpsed of her loneliness, and of the travel brochure. ‘It just doesn’t seem fair,’ I said. ‘She’s spent her life helping everyone else, you know, putting her own life on hold, and she had her heart set on that cruise.’ It affected me more than it probably ought to have done. I looked down. ‘The thing is, she’s believed her whole life that the carving was worth something. And so it would be, if someone could prove where it came from.’
He glanced over. ‘Someone like you?’
‘I just thought if I held it again, really tried, I might see something useful. I’m going to Russia next week, to St Petersburg, right where her ancestor lived. I just thought …’ I broke off, feeling suddenly foolish, and wearily rubbing my forehead I said, ‘I don’t know what I thought, to be honest.’
‘You wanted to help. I’d have done the same thing, in your place.’
He gave a nod as though he’d fitted a puzzle piece in place. ‘That’s why you stopped here yesterday to go see Dr Fulton-Wallace, was it? You had doubts.’
‘And she confirmed them.’
We were coming off the bypass now at Glasgow Road and for a moment Rob’s attention was diverted by his need to navigate, but I had the impression there were several things he would have liked to say. All he said in the end, though, was, ‘Right. So what’s your plan with Margaret Ross?’
‘I’m going to give her the scarf back.’
‘And she’ll think you’re mad to have come all this way to deliver it.’
‘Probably.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then I’ll introduce you, and say you’re a colleague with specialist knowledge, someone who can maybe tell us more about the Firebird. She’ll let you hold the carving, and then afterwards you’ll tell me what you saw, and I can go and try to prove it in St Petersburg.’