(1998) Denial by Peter James

Putney into a beautiful space, and had worked a miracle in the garden. They had shared so much together, they had been more than lovers, more than great friends, they had been soul-mates.
    Why the hell had he fouled it up?
    In Amanda, for the first time, he had encountered someone who seemed to have some of Katy’s qualities. But instead of rising to the occasion, he found his tongue tied in a granny knot, a double reef, a round turn and two halfhitches, a figure of eight, a bowline and a whole raft of others all at once. And his brain mushed.
    He had stood in her stunning flat, mumbling about the weather, the traffic, the problems of parking in London. If she’d had any suspicions that he might be a sad old Volvo-driving fart last week, that ten minutes in her flat confirmed it. With knobs on.
    He wished he’d come on his motorbike. But the red Ducati had stood at the back of his garage under a dust sheet for the past three years. He simply hadn’t felt like riding it any more.
    They’d talked about London’s changing architecture in the car all the way to the theatre. They both liked the Lloyds Building and hated Canary Wharf. It had been an improvement, but damage limitation rather than progress.
    She had terrific legs. And he wasn’t sure whether her skirt was simply a fashionable length, or whether it was deliberately provocative. That showed how far out of touch with fashion he was.
    Sad bastard.
    On stage, a man was proclaiming,
    ‘Ay but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod, and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbèd ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence about
The pendent world; . . .’
    His chance for redemption came during the first interval. They fought their way through the crowd at the bar and found the drinks he had ordered. They clinked glasses and Amanda’s eyes were alight.
    ‘So,’ she said, brightly, ‘how was your day? What did you do?’
    He nearly blew this chance, big-time. ‘I was out early thismorning collecting dog faeces.’ Instantly he regretted telling her this: it was not the stuff of romance.
    ‘I used to have a dog,’ she said, with a vehemence that startled him. ‘And I always used a pooper-scooper.’
    ‘I didn’t mean I object to dog faeces,’ aware he was digging himself in deeper. ‘I was collecting them for a patient.’
    She gave him a seriously strange look.
    ‘An OCD sufferer,’ he added hastily.
    ‘OCD?’
    Someone jostled him, spilling beer over the top of his glass and down inside his shirt cuff. He pretended to ignore it. ‘Obsessive compulsive disorder. She’s panicked by dirt – uh – by the thought of dirt. I was collecting dog faeces in specimen bottles to bring into the room as part of her therapy.’
    Amanda lightened up. With a startling burst of enthusiasm she asked, ‘Could we include this in the film segment?’
    ‘I’d have to ask my patient, I don’t know if she’d agree.’
    ‘We could use an actress.’
    He nodded.
    ‘So what kind of things do you make her do with these faeces?’
    ‘Exposure is the conventional treatment. Facing up to fear. She’s obsessed with contamination – she’s frightened to touch door handles, taps, public telephones, and she’s a compulsive handwasher, gets through several bars of soap a week. And one of her problems is that she’s incapable of walking down a street past dog faeces. She has to turn back. So we start with easy things, like getting her to touch the door handle. I have to try to get her to recognise this is a
thinking
problem rather than contamination.’
    Amanda grinned and drank some of her lager. ‘I love the idea of dog turds in glass jars.’
    And Michael liked how she drank the beer, how she swigged it with gusto; there was something about the way she enjoyed this simple pleasure that turned him on