4: The Truth Spoken

Catharsis. A word she has always loved and Boyd has always hated. Grace believes in it in the same way that she believes the sun will rise in the morning, and not simply because she is a psychologist. She believes in it because she has so often experienced its beneficial properties. With no-one present to judge her, she cries without restraint. It helps. The emotional firestorm inexorably breaks her free from both the humiliating grip of self-pity and from the maudlin effects of one or two too many glasses of good wine, and eventually, the majority of the tears shed, she piles up the luxurious pillows on the luxurious bed and she sits in stately solitude quietly and calmly lets her thoughts go where they will.

It's strange, but for a while she dwells not on Boyd and her current situation, but on the earlier years of her life and some of the harshest of the mistakes she made back then. Of course she inevitably thinks of Harry Taylor and perhaps that's what eventually brings her back to Peter Boyd and the present. He might not believe it, but Grace is a realist; she's also not the sort of woman who makes rash decisions. There will be no dramatic gestures, no unwise declarations, no reckless letters of resignation. She will simply do what she's always done – suppress her inconvenient and painful feelings the best way she can and keep moving resolutely forward. She has her health, after all, and the last year has very definitely taught her the huge value of that. She has her health and she has him. Perhaps not quite in the way she wants, but possibly at their time of life it's far more important to cherish a good friend than it is to waste time regretting the lack of a lover.

Friendship, she thinks with renewed determination. Friendship is far more important than the kind of ridiculously immature infatuation far better suited to a girl of sixteen than to an experienced woman already past sixty. Besides, she's increasingly certain that it's only the difficult events of the last few months that have stirred up all her old feelings. The ones that should have stayed dead and buried forever. A little less introspective and considerably more sanguine, Grace does her best to concentrate on appreciating what she does have.

It's a further fifteen minutes or more before Boyd knocks on her door again, and as before he doesn't hang around in the corridor waiting for a reply. He has never been a wallflower. Nor has he ever been a man to mince his words. He strides in with an abrupt bark of, "I'm not playing this fucking stupid game any longer, Grace. Every time I think I finally understand the bloody rules, you change them. Nothing I do is ever good enough for you."

Grace stares at him blankly, bemused by the savagery of the accusation. "What on earth are you talking about, Boyd?"

"I'm talking about you," he snaps at her, and she can see his anger visibly increasing, hear it in the rising decibel level of his voice. "I may be a lot of things, but whatever you think, God help me I'm not your fucking lapdog. Just how many times do you think you can get away with turning round and kicking me in the balls just for trying to please you?"

She knows the white heat of his temper well enough to force herself to keep her own voice quiet and level. Tonight is not a good night to be quarrelling with him, not a good night to incite and then attempt to bear the full weight of his rage. It's not cowardice, it's simple self-preservation. She starts, "You – "

"No," Boyd interjects before she can get further words out, and although his voice is suddenly much quieter, the intensity of his anger is more tangible than ever as he bites out, "I'm not taking the blame for tonight's… debacle. All I've done for the last God knows how many months is do my best to look after you. I've tried endlessly to help you, support you and make you happy. But it really doesn't matter, does it? Because this poor deluded fucker is never going to be good enough for the great Doctor Grace Foley, is he? No matter how hard he bloody tries."

He's bristling again, spoiling for a fight, and Grace can see months and months of careful reparations on both sides starting to splinter under the weight of his growing fury. If time and experience have taught her anything, it's that anger always makes Boyd lose perspective; that the angrier he gets the wilder and more unfair his accusations become – and the harder she subsequently bites back at him in brittle defence. It occurs to her that at best they have reached yet another impasse, that they are once again suffering from a critical inability to understand each other. It has ever been so, she thinks grimly. Boyd's uncompromising words seem to echo endlessly in her mind, slowly distilling down into one choice phrase… Because this poor deluded fucker is never going to be good enough for…

Grace looks up at him sharply, refuses to be intimidated by his relentless glare and demands, "What did you just say?"

"You heard me," Boyd growls, and she can see the angry tension in him, the naked aggression in his stance. She suspects he's had another drink or two since he left her room the first time, that some of his sudden rage is being fuelled by whiskey. Some, but not all. His fists are tightly balled at his sides. "I'm sick and tired of you moving the damn goalposts and then blaming me. You can be so – "

"Boyd," Grace interrupts him sharply, a strange sort of comprehension beginning to dawn, "what did you say? About you never being good enough…?"

He immediately drops into sullen, defensive mode, still bristling angrily. "Well? It's the bloody truth, Grace. I'm done with – "

Grace cuts him down again, shaking her head in absolute disbelief. "For God's sake… For an apparently intelligent man, sometimes you can be unbelievably stupid."

"Thank you," he retorts, grinding out the words. "Thank you so much for that, Doctor."

"Boyd – "

"No," he raps out again, and somehow – and Grace has no idea how – he manages to rein in his blistering temper enough to simply turn on his heel and stalk haughtily from the room. He isn't particularly gentle with the door, but perhaps in deference to quality of the hotel and the lateness of the hour he doesn't slam it quite as violently behind him as she expects.

-oOo-

Grace allows him five minutes, resolutely counting the long seconds off one by one, and then she calls his mobile phone. She instinctively knows he will answer, simply because answering will be the most infuriating and contrary thing to do. Sure enough, he picks up in just three rings, his tone on the over-controlled side of glacial. "I'm not talking to you."

"Manifestly you are," Grace contradicts, gazing sedately up at the ceiling above the bed.

"Fuck off, Grace," he says curtly, but he doesn't terminate the call. She understands and stolidly refuses to take offence. He isn't swearing at her, he's swearing at the whole sorry situation, at his own angry frustration. She's not the only one who's painfully aware he has significant trouble expressing himself in any vaguely articulate way when he's angry.

Still studying the ceiling, Grace asks quietly, "Do you have an Alexandrian solution, Boyd?"

There's no hesitation. Boyd was a grammar school boy, after all. He doesn't need the reference explained to him. "I have an Alexandrian solution to everything. But you always attempt to talk me out of it."

It's true. She instinctively tends to do whatever she can to curb the worst excesses of Boyd's impulsive behaviour. Over the years it's become an unofficial and unspoken but nevertheless highly important part of her role at the CCU – to provide a steady counterbalance to his reckless inclination to just put his head down and charge headlong at the obstacles that so often appear in the unit's path. Now, however, such bullish impetuosity may actually be necessary. Dryly, she says, "Well, we certainly seem to have a Gordian Knot on our hands this time."

"I left my sword at home," he tells her brusquely. But at least he's still on the line, still talking.

"Fair enough." It's time to roll the dice and see where they land, for better or worse. It's either that, or face returning to a dark purgatory of endless pointless fights and misunderstandings. She hasn't got the stomach for it anymore, and perhaps Boyd hasn't, either. Sometimes things can't get any worse. Grace takes the gamble, dangerous though it is. "All right, I'll attempt to cut through the knot if you won't. But first I want you to promise me something."

"Jesus…" Boyd mutters, sounding incredulous. Then, impatiently, "Fine. What?"

"It's very late and I'm very tired. I really can't cope with any more tonight. Promise me that we're done for now. Promise me you won't come storming back in here. Not until the morning, at least."

"What the…?"

"Promise me, Boyd," she insists.

"Fuck's sake, Grace… You're really pushing your luck." The ominous note in his voice is quite clear. But to her surprise he abruptly capitulates. "All right. Go on, then. Give it your best shot."

There's a roiling and a simultaneous tautness in the pit of Grace's stomach that's only matched by the way her head seems to be spinning slightly. Stress, she realises. She maps another square yard of the ceiling with her eyes, bites the metaphorical bullet. She says, "I'm in love with you. I've always been in love with you. Idiot."

The Alexandrian solution – don't attempt to untie the complicated knot. Just decisively slice straight through it.

And without another word she ends the call then and there, immediately switches off her mobile and takes the hotel room's phone off the hook for good measure. But when she locks the door, it's only from habit and the need for general security. There's no point in locking it against Boyd. He will either keep his promise or he won't; and if he doesn't, Grace knows a locked door won't be enough to stop him confronting her.

-oOo-

cont...