Relatively Strange by Marilyn Messik Page A

I’ll see she gets back to the others.” And to me, “This way, young lady.”
There was a mahogany desk in the middle of his consulting room and on the walls an uneasy combination of nursery rhyme illustration interspersed with diagrammatic illustrations of the brain. In one corner of the room a high, brown leather examination couch was next to a movable screen on wheels which partially concealed a couple of instrument trolleys and a small sink. Closing the door behind him, Dr Dreck leaned back against it and looked at me for just a moment longer than was comfortable.
“So.” he said, “Stella?”
“’Sright.”
“Iris tells me, there was a dizzy spell?” clipped accent and rising intonation at the end of each sentence made question out of statement. He indicated the couch, “Please.”
Perched high on the slippery leather surface, legs dangling. I felt totally at a loss. I was unable to read the situation in any way other than with inadequate eyes and ears but even so, I could sense there was more going on here than there should have been and my stomach clenched with unease. The door re-opened and a woman smoothed into the room. She was tall, nearly as tall as him and he must have been well over six foot. Thin also and tight-featured with high-bunned ash-blond hair and a white blouse, starched to stiffness and buttoned tight under her chin. He introduced her without looking round,
“My assistant, Miss Merry.” She gave no response to my polite smile which didn’t really surprise me – hers wasn’t a mouth made for warmth.
With Miss Merry gliding between couch and instrument table – I never worked out how she moved like that, she certainly had feet like everyone else, they just seemed to operate differently – Dr Dreck took my blood pressure again, my pulse, checked my eyes and ears then had a go at my knees and elbows with a small hammer. From my vantage point high on the couch, I had an unattractive view as he bent, of thinning black hair overlaying pink scalp and caught the faintest whiff of strong aftershave. He kept darting glances at me, searching my face for some kind of reaction other than the one he was getting and our gazes kept clashing in mutual bafflement. Finally, he straightened, tapping the small hammer sharply in the palm of his hand.
“Well, no obvious problems to account for the dizziness. How do you feel now?”
“Very well, thank you.” I said politely. “It was probably just the coach journey.” He nodded, not really listening and moved over to his desk with Miss Merry. I couldn’t quite see what they were looking at but I thought they were the forms Iris had been completing earlier. I could have kicked myself. Something in my stupidly glib responses to the tests had set alarm bells ringing, although that in no way accounted for the black-out still going on in my head. They talked for a while longer in undertones, of which I only caught the occasional word before he turned back to me.
“Do you think,” he asked “You could tackle just a few more of our tests?” I nodded, I didn’t think I had much choice and it would be a relief to leave his unsettling presence. “Right you are,” he lifted me down, “Off you go now.” I obediently followed the smooth-moving, inscrutable Miss Merry.

Chapter Twelve
Miss Merry wasted no time on small talk, a relief as I needed all my breath to keep up with her. It felt, one way and another that in the course of that morning I’d done a great deal of walking from one place to another. I followed her down a flight of narrow stairs which led steeply from the older part of the building. There were no windows down here and we moved down a short artificially lit corridor, at the end of which she hauled open a heavy door which swished silently closed behind us. Through a second similar door and then we were in an enormous space, one side of which was taken up with about six small glass isolation booths, the sort Hughie Green put people in to