‘Haha. Never mind Jay Gatsby, I could tell them wealth and social climbing as a mysterious nobody in New York doesn’t lead anywhere good. My culture is not your prom dress, Bobby,’ Finlay says, with a knowing smile, looking up from under his brow. I’m momentarily floored by his exceptionally quick and self-aware riposte, combined with looking like a sodding film star. I can practically see the fireworks going off behind him.
‘A “passage of time” irony … is a good phrase. I’m a walking “passage of time irony”,’ he says.
I laugh in admiration, and Fin and I share a confidential look. I get the distinct impression he’s trying to make a connection with me, but I don’t know why he’d do that. I’ve lost my bearings and need to recover them, swiftly.
‘I wasn’t aware psychology was lucrative and social climby,’ I say, carefully, steadying myself. ‘But then I don’t know any psychologists so I’m not sure what I’m basing that on. Also, psychiatrists in films look old as wizards. Wait, which are you, and what’s the difference?’
‘I’m a counsellor-psychologist. In essence, the difference is that psychiatrists prescribe drugs. I don’t prescribe drugs. Lucrative, it depends,’ Fin says. ‘If you go into private practice and you’re successful. I got a lucky break early on.’
‘What sort of lucky break?’ I ask, sipping my drink.
‘Hmmm …’ Fin says, appraising me. ‘I have these thoughts about what I want going back to Susie, then realise it can’t.’
‘Me too,’ I say.
‘What, you’d have ever worried I’d talk to her?’ he says, raising an eyebrow.
‘No, in general. The impulse to refer back to her and realising you can’t, any more.’
‘OK. Please don’t repeat this anyway, but … when I first began treating people at my own practice, after my residency, a friend sent someone with a profile to me.’
‘With a profile?’ I repeat, blankly.
I think of Finlay as sharing a lexicon with me, and every so often he sounds like an NYT Long Read. As if he’s going to start using words like storied and preposition and luscious plums.
‘They were working on a big-budget film and not able to carry on and needed therapy, someone to talk to.’
‘Oh God, you mean they were famous?’
‘I did sessions with them, they felt able to return to work, the studio saved a lot of money and the film won Oscars.’
‘Shit!’
‘Then the person I helped told their friends about me. That formed the basis of a very strong client list.’
Fin drinks the last of his coffee.
‘You’re the head doctor to a bunch of neurotic A-list actors, so can set your prices at “totally mad bilk” level? And you know all their secrets?!’
‘I’m good at what I do, my clients are human like you or I, and my prices are competitive, thank you,’ Fin says, rolling his eyes, but with no real ire. ‘Patient confidentiality is inviolable.’
‘What made you want to go into it?’
‘I had some therapy myself,’ Fin says, and I feel like his background plus his Statesideness meant I should’ve anticipated this. ‘It was really interesting to me, unravelling why we behave the way we do. I wanted to help people in the same way. Not to sound too Miss Universe.’
‘Susie never knew this thing about being “doctor to the stars”? You really wouldn’t tell her?’
‘I tried to tell my family as little as possible,’ Fin says, and the shutters visibly come down, in his tight expression.
I push my luck with Finlay, but I can feel the danger well enough to not joke or poke any more.
‘Can I ask something?’ he says, putting the spoon in the cup. ‘What was the Twin Peaks music about at the end of Susie’s service?’
‘You didn’t like that?’
‘I didn’t dislike it, I thought it was a curious choice, that’s all.’
‘Why? She loved the show and its atmosphere fitted somehow, I guess. She liked to say she was Laura Palmer.’
The Laura Palmer they couldn’t kill. That has aged badly.
‘A series about a blonde homecoming queen with a demonic side who died tragically young?’ Fin says. ‘Her life a seething mass of sex, drugs and dysfunction behind the apple pie, charity bake sale surface? It honestly didn’t occur it might look like some sort of … comment?’
I open my mouth and for once I’m lost for words.
‘For it to be a comment, any of that would have to resemble Susie?’ I say.
Fin sits back, and contemplates me.
‘Ready to head off?’ he says, eventually, with a nod at my glass, and I say yes and neck my drink.
What on earth …? Did he know about Susie’s few grams of coke, or what?
‘I never thought of Edinburgh as having a seaside,’ I say on the fifteen-minute drive, adding: ‘Despite it being a port, obviously,’ in case Finlay thinks I’m full airhead.
Fin ordered an Uber to take us to Portobello, saying he doesn’t fancy city-centre motoring on what feels like the ‘wrong side of the road’, for the time being, which seems fair enough to me.
‘Apparently, Sean Connery worked as a lifeguard at the swimming baths out here,’ Fin says, as we emerge from the car into the freezing grey of a wintertime promenade.
‘You’d want to be covered in whale grease to do that in Scotland, wouldn’t you?’ I say, shoving my balled hands deeper in my parka pockets.
‘I’m an idiot, aren’t I,’ Finlay says, as we wander down the street, past the railings and the band of pale deserted sand that must be thronged in high summer. There aren’t many people out and about, the odd rollerblader whizzing past us, a pleasant tang of fish and chips in the air, the occasional gull cawing.
‘Why are you an idiot?’ Uncharacteristic of Finlay to self-criticise.
‘As you said. I’ve come to a city of half a million people on the basis I’m going to bump into one confused man who himself is following no real rhyme or reason. Someone who won’t even know who I am if he sees me. I don’t think this makes much more sense than the penguin enclosure.’
‘Hah. It must be so incredibly hard to have a parent treat you like a stranger,’ I say, thinking about it for the first time. ‘Like … abandonment. Even though it’s not, it’s an illness, obviously.’
Finlay looks at me and, I feel, is really focusing on me. He pauses a few seconds before replying.
‘… I didn’t expect Susie to have someone like you as a friend,’ he says, ‘I’m glad she did.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, while feeling there are dots to connect that I haven’t connected, in why these two things followed on from each other. Maybe they didn’t, maybe it was a way of not discussing his dad’s dementia.
‘There were women at the wake who seemed more what I expected,’ Fin says, hesitantly. ‘Vampy kind of clothes?’
‘Oh … The Teacup Girls!’ I exclaim. ‘That’s what Justin called … never mind, another time. Yeah, they’re quite different to us. That speaks well of Susie, really, though. She had different friends from different parts of her life, but she wasn’t snobby. Susie was socially mobile. But not a climber.’