(1998) Denial Read Free Page B

maintained a large retinue of staff, whose principal role, in my judgement, was to pander to her ego and maintain her delusion that she was still a grand star (there are certain parallels that may be drawn here with the character in the film
Sunset Boulevard
).
    ‘On a number of occasions during consultations the deceased broached the subject of suicide, although my records show that she had not mentioned it for two years. It is recorded that she attempted to take her own life in 1967, and again in 1986, following the failure of a theatrical play in which she was attempting an acting comeback. Previous attempts are a known high-risk factor and I was aware of this throughout my dealings with her. However, from the relatively low dosages of pills taken on these previous occasions, the wording of the notes, and the general circumstances, it has been my opinion that these attempts were more a cry for help than serious intent to take her own life.
    ‘She was able to maintain her lavish lifestyle due to inheriting a substantial part of the estate of her estrangedhusband, the German industrialist Dieter Buch, who died in a skiing accident before any divorce arrangements had been finalised.
    ‘Since the mid 1960s the deceased’s life had revolved totally around her son, Thomas, who has lived at home with her for most of his life, and upon whom she has been utterly – and abnormally – dependent, emotionally and socially.’
    Michael stopped dictating. His report would almost certainly be read out in court at the inquest. He needed to consider her son’s feelings carefully. Gloria Lamark’s relationship with the son she rarely spoke about, and whom he had never met, had always bothered him, but he’d never succeeded in drawing out of her the full truth of it.
    He gathered that the boy had been expelled from school for some reason she would not talk about, and had spent years of his childhood undergoing psychiatry. He had the feeling Gloria knew something was wrong with him, and had been shielding him, but whether it was for the boy’s sake, or to protect her own image, he had never been able to ascertain.
    At fifty-nine she had still been a beautiful woman. After her husband had left her, she’d had a series of sexual relationships, but they had never lasted, and from the time her son had reached his early teens, she had stopped seeing other men.
    He sensed that she was desperately protective of Thomas, and knew that for most of his childhood he had been educated at home. She had told Michael that Thomas had wanted to be a doctor but again, for some reason he could never elicit from her, the young man had dropped out of medical school and returned home. He appeared to have no friends.
    Michael was pretty sure that this was due to the control she exerted over him. An overbearing possessiveness was not uncommon in mother-son relationships, although, he suspected, in Gloria Lamark’s case it might have gone further than that.
    Gloria had always told him that Thomas was perfect inevery way. It was inevitable she should think that. It would have been inconceivable to her that she might have produced a son who was less than perfect. In his mind Michael had an image of a meek, inadequate, brow-beaten weakling.
    He wondered how the poor man was coping now.

Chapter Four
    This place. The stairwell. The multi-storey car park. Grey precast concrete. Used syringes and torn burger wrappers. The smell of urine. Ceiling lamps squeezing out feeble haloes of light through filters of dead flies and dust.
    Tina Mackay did not have a problem with this place in the mornings when there were always people around and daylight enough to read the graffiti, but at night, in dusk or darkness, it hot-wired her imagination, firing up all kinds of thoughts that she really did not want to be having.
    The door slammed behind her, silencing the snarled traffic on High Holborn and replacing it with a hollow reverberating boom as if she was standing inside a