RATING: VERY GOOD
SPOILERS!!!
This was a superb read. It was intense, thought-provoking and deep.
Davey finally discovers the story behind Elizabeth's mental issues. They stay in his room after office hours, and she tells him all the details of her life and how she came to attempt against her life. The key of everything is a man: Thomas Carrington.
Elizabeth hired a flat and her landlord was quite economical in its upkeep. When the boiler started to act up, her neighbour told her that she was welcome to use her bathroom as he was away a lot. Once when she was having a bath in the neighbour's flat, she heard steps and a voice which was not the neighbour's. Rapidly she threw a dressing gown over her, and she found a stranger. He introduced himself as Thomas and said he was a friend of Bainbridge's (the neigbour), who sometimes let him use his flat when Thomas was in the city. Elizabeth and Thomas talked for hours, and she felt that he was a person who she seemed to know intimately.
They parted ways and Thomas promised to see her again. Yet, days and weeks passed, and there was no word from Thomas. Elizabeth tried to located, writing a letter to Bainbridge but her letter remained ignored. Feeling abandoned and lonely, Elizabeth left the flat and enrolled in a course in the politechnic as Thomas mentioned having taught there. Yet, Elizabeth never saw him. It was there that she met Neil, who she eventually married and had two children with. Life with Neil was uncomplicated, but she disliked her mother-in-law, who was controlling and a busybody.
Elizabeth had to go to Rome to sort out some inheritance for her Italian father, and in the airport she saw Thomas. It was fifteen years after their first encounter, and they travelled together on the plane. Thomas was happy and told her that after they first met, he has suffered from septicaemia for months, and when he went to find her, Elizabeth was not in the flat any longer.
In Rome Elizabeth and Thomas became lovers, and when they were to return, Thomas begged her to leave Neil and not to return. Yet, Elizabeth felt that she had to do it properly. Things did not go to plan because two days after her return, Primrose, her mother-in-law, had a stroke, and she felt she couldn't leave Neil. Thomas implored her and tried to make her understand, but Elizabeth was adamant, and time passed, and Elizabeth did nothing to part from Neil and live with her lover. Thomas then told her that he had accepted a job in Milan where he would work on some research about Caravaggio, his speciality. Thomas went to Milan, and Elizabeth and he kept in contact, and he sometimes went to see her in England.
Elizabeth was supposed to go and be with him in Milan, and at first she refused because it was her children's holidays. Yet, Thomas persuaded her, and Elizabeth came up with a story about getting a vacancy in an art course, and she joined Thomas. The holiday was cut short when Primrose rang to tell her that she needed to return for some emergency. Once again Thomas begged her not to give in to what he considered emotional blackmail. Elizabeth returned, and the reason Primrose had made her return was to tell her that Neil was going to divorce her. They had hired a detective and found out that she was unfaithful.
At this point of the narration Elizabeth tells Davey that Thomas is dead. After she returned to England, he went to some monastery to see some painting which might have been painted by Caravaggio, and on the way he suffered a heart attack. He was unconscious in his car for two days, and when Elizabeth flew to his side, the doctors told her that it was too late.
The conversation between Davey and Elizabeth is full of throught-provoking ideas, and I like how he shares his pain for the death of his brother. It seems that both have helped each other in their own emotional problems.
When Davey and Elizabeth finish their session, Bar is waiting for him, asking if he has seen Dan, who told her that he was playing squash with him. Davey and Bar realise that Dan and Olivia are having an affair.
The next day turns out to be terrible for Davey. First, the patient who believes to have a wolf inside and who Davey thought it would be good to lower his restrictions has tried to kill a nurse, and an investigation will ensue. Also his patient and cleaner, Lenny, has hit another doctor, Mackey, and Davey manages to calm down the doctor. He also learns that Elizabeth has left. And when he goes home, Olivia admits to the affair, but she also confesses she is pregnant and has no idea what to do or who the father is.
Davey eventually leaves his work at the hospital, and it is in Rome when he gives a conference that he talks to Elizabeth again, who has tried to find him. They have another heart-to-heart conversation, and secretly Davey admits that what Gus told him was true, and there was love between them. Yet, neither did anything because they were both afraid and already injured. Elizabeth told him that she was staying with her son, and now he was moving to Rome for good as this was when she had felt she was more real. Now Davey and Olivia were separated, and Olivia had an abortion.
Years later which is the time which Davey tells the story from, he is dedicated to his private practice and writing. She is in a relationship with a sculptor, and he says that he has a good relationship with her children, and children's children. In the National Gallery he discovers a book that Elizabeth has written about Caravaggio. He writes a letter to her, and after a while she writes back, mentioning that time when he helped her.
I really loved the book and the style it is written in. I had to read some of the sentences and paragraphs twice or three times for the meaning to get through me, and one reflection I loved was when Davey says that we people know each other for what we can show externally whereas the major part is our inner self and the most important one, and nobody knows about it.
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