‘It’s Bedlam, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. The Bethlem Hospital. Now part of the Maudsley Trust. You’ll be glad to know conditions have improved.’

‘I should hope so.’ He stirs his tea and dislodges something from his dentures with his tongue. ‘Though you probably have more famous alumni than we do.’

I tell him I’m interested in an old student of his.

‘He’s not a … patient of yours?’

Of course not. That would be highly unprofessional. I say the name and he straight-bats it. ‘Very talented. I was so sad to hear that he’d died.’

‘Were you in touch?’

He shakes his head. ‘I can’t think when I saw him last. But it was many years ago. What’s your interest in him?’

‘I’ve got a patient who says he’s Nicholas Slopen reincarnated.’

I’m surprised how easily it comes out. It seems to amuse him.

‘The poor fellow must have done something heinous in a previous lifetime.’ He drops it like a bon mot but there’s also a genuine hint of bitterness towards his old protégé.

I’m aware that at this point I don’t much like Harbottle. All that posing as a national treasure. The obvious narcissism. The ingrained sense of entitlement. Quite possibly I’m chippy, reminded of those floppy-haired Oxbridge wazzocks I did my training with, who were always stealing bits off cadavers and throwing bread rolls in restaurants. But it’s liberating not to care what he thinks of me. It feels safe to be straight with him. He can’t fire me.

‘The thing is,’ I say it slowly, ‘I half believe he is.’

‘Believe he’s …?’

Something a bit panther-like about him as he lowers his head as though ready to spring on a flaw in my logic.

‘I don’t think he is. But I half believe it. Beliefs aren’t rational. They’re what we invest our emotions in.’

He looks doubtfully at me but says nothing. I remember my sixth-form English teacher ticking me off for using the word ‘empathy’ in an essay, as though it was an arcane bit of psychobabble.

‘He seems to know a lot about you,’ I say.

‘Possibly he’s an ex-student, or knew Nicholas? It’s possible to find out all sorts of things these days. The internet.’

He says ‘the internet’ like it’s a far-off place he’s never been, Timbuctoo perhaps, but from where I’m sitting I can see a wifi router half hidden behind four volumes of Gibbon.

‘What does he look like?’

‘He’s six foot, thickset, heavily tattooed.’

‘Doesn’t sound like a Downing man.’

I set my cup on its saucer and get the print-out from my shoulder-bag. ‘Would you mind if I read you something?’

He makes a flourish with his hand.

I begin: ‘Ronald Harbottle was then fifty-three …’

He’s much more comfortable with this. This is caressing his ego. And he relates more easily to me now that he can pretend I’m one of his students. He gets a thoughtful look in his eyes, turns his head into the air at an odd angle, fingers his chin, smiles at the familiarity of it. ‘Pencilled annotations of the master’ makes him close his eyes like a cat getting its back scratched.

I feel oddly nervous as I begin the section about Matilda Swann but I push through. His smile becomes more fixed. I read more quickly and find I’ve gone further than I intended. At the end, the words ‘usurped by an old man’s vanity’ hang uncomfortably in the room like a fart neither of us will own up to.

Harbottle sips his tea. ‘He was a bloodless little shit,’ he says with surprising mildness.

The clock on the mantelpiece begins the Westminster half-hour chimes. He gets up and stifles it in annoyance. ‘But it’s accurate as far as I remember. That’s not what you want to hear, is it?’

I shake my head. ‘It’s not really good for anyone if this man is telling the truth.’

‘Well, rest assured, my dear, he isn’t. We may no longer be creatures in a Newtonian universe, but there’s still gravity and, I don’t know, the Laws of Motion to be obeyed. Just because there’s an area of uncertainty about the nature of reality, that doesn’t mean all bets are off.’

I decline the offer of more tea: my bladder’s bursting but I don’t want to break the atmosphere. He pours himself another cup. ‘We had this kind of problem when post-structuralism came in,’ he says. ‘I had students telling me that Timon of Athens was a play about the inherent contradictions of late capitalism. Self-evidently false, but rather a nuisance to refute. I would say that “I am the reincarnation of an obscure dead academic” is a statement of that sort.’

I try to ask him how Q knows so much, but what comes out is a stumbling, rather confessional sort of question in which I wonder how Q’s got me so confused.

‘You’re confused, young lady, because you’re good at your job. You’re sensitive and compassionate and he’s taking advantage. Not knowing is a gift. Keats knew it. He called it negative capability. You know the expression? “When man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”.

‘As to the less interesting question of how he knows – I would say like any illusionist, this man achieves his effect by the most laborious and dull solution on offer. Hard work, cheating and misdirection. In this case, the answer is he probably didn’t write it himself. My gut feeling is that he’s plagiarised this from Nicky’s papers.’

In the end, I’m reassured and surprised by his generosity of spirit. He sees me to the door and presses Swann’s book into my hand as a parting gift. It’s pristine and unread, but the cheap paper is yellowing with age. I guess that he has boxes of them somewhere.

‘Her poems are very underrated. But I’m not expecting to be vindicated in this lifetime.’

*

Mingled sadness and relief. Sorry for Harbottle somehow. But it doesn’t last long. Tonight, back at the hotel, I can’t think how Q is doing it. I’ve watched the document grow in the weeks he’s been using the computer. Is he cutting and pasting it from somewhere on the internet? Frantic Googling turns up nothing. It crosses my mind to go back into the Maudsley. Check what he’s added since I left? Might be something I can use.

*

Back into work for an ad hoc supervision with PW. I explain everything. He’s absolutely silent throughout the session. I give him Q’s file. Tell him I’m thoroughly puzzled. I don’t know what the truth is, but I believe Q is telling more of it than I think we gave him credit for.

‘You’ve read Rank on doubles?’ he asks.

‘No, but I’ve read Freud. He says the fantasy is rooted in narcissism.’

‘Initially. But then he goes on to say that having been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death.’

For an instant, it seems like he’s threatening me, but then I realise he’s talking metaphorically. I say that I’ve already thought of the chilling effect on my career of all this, but that I promised myself a long time ago that any time I had a conflict between my work and my conscience, I’d follow my conscience.

PW says nothing. I suddenly feel crazed and hollow.

He says he’ll need time to figure out how to proceed, but he’s glad I’ve been honest with him. He suggests I take a further week of leave. As I stand up to go, I feel certain he’s sad. Walking through the DHU, I see Q stretched out on his bed, reading The Economist. He doesn’t notice me.

*

Today a letter from PW. It’s typewritten. PW writes that he’s regretfully decided to accept my offer of resignation. WTF? I call Rog in panic and email PW. I say it wasn’t my intention to resign! At most, I thought this would be handed over to an external agency who could evaluate our work with Q and make a decision about the best way to continue with him. I say that I’m gutted; this is the last thing I wanted to happen. PW replies with a one-line email to say everything being handled now through Human Resources.