The Way You Look Tonight (2 page)

Stella nodded reluctantly. ‘Sort of. Well, yes, I suppose. I want to focus on psychopathy. But most psychopaths aren’t anything like Norman Bates, you know, and anyway he had split
personality disorder as well. All very muddled. But psychopaths hardly ever kill anyone. They’re defined by . . .’ Stella paused. ‘Sorry, I don’t want to get all
technical.’

Cassandra smiled thinly at her. ‘Don’t worry. I may be a trolley-dolly but I’m quite bright myself, actually.’

Stella flushed. ‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘Well . . . psychopaths generally find it impossible to empathise – you know, connect with other people, put themselves in their
shoes. That’s why they can often seem unfeeling, even cruel.’

‘Perhaps that’s because they
are
unfeeling and cruel,’ Cassandra said drily. ‘Sounds a pretty good description of Norman Bates to me. But how did you get
interested in this kind of stuff?’

The thick grey curtain separating the first-class compartment from the rest of the cabin was drawn briskly aside and another stewardess pushed through. She was older than her colleague and
looked at her beadily.

‘Oh. So you’re in here, Cassandra,’ she said crisply. ‘You’re needed in the galley. The captain says we should try and get dinner served as soon as possible this
evening; he’s had reports of turbulence a couple of hours ahead of us.’

Stella’s eyes widened slightly but the woman smiled down at her and shook her head. ‘Nothing to worry about, madam. Turbulence is perfectly normal. Think of it as a patch of choppy
sea. We just don’t want our passengers spilling their gravy all over themselves.’

Stella’s new friend had already discreetly stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray that was built into the seat’s arm-rest, and now she stood up. ‘Duty calls. Would you like a
drink before dinner, madam?’ A touch of formality had returned now a colleague was present. The woman was clearly Cassandra’s senior.

‘Definitely. And if it’s going to be a bumpy night on my first flight, you can make it a
very
large gin and tonic.’

‘Certainly, madam.’ Stella thought she caught the ghost of a wink from Cassandra.

As the two stewardesses left, Stella turned to look back out of the window.

They were moving out across the sea now.

She slept after dinner and when she woke again the plane was far out over the Atlantic. It seemed to her to be chasing a setting sun that was almost motionless, a dull-red disc loitering lazily
just above the horizon, going down in its own good time and refusing to be hurried. It was the most reluctant sunset she had ever seen.

So far there was no sign of the predicted turbulence.

The only other first-class passengers – a middle-aged American businessman with a crew-cut and wearing a loud checked suit, sitting across the aisle from an elderly woman wearing
wing-tipped glasses and a hat with artificial cherries pinned to it – were awake now, both writing busily on light-blue airmail paper that, to save weight, was almost transparently thin.
Stella reached into her bag and pulled out the last such letter she had received from Boston, only three days before.

For what seemed like the hundredth time since receiving the letter, Stella read the names that followed. Her head swam slightly. The idea that she might see, shake hands with,
perhaps even
speak
to the family her generous hostess in Northampton so casually mentioned here . . . the mere thought made her more nervous and excited than she had been during take-off
earlier.

Cassandra materialised in the seat next to her. ‘Enjoy your dinner? What did you have?’

‘The Beef Stroganoff. Yes, it was delicious, thank you.’

The stewardess nodded towards the blue airmail letter.

‘Writing or reading?’

‘Reading. It’s from the family I’ll be staying with to begin with, the Rockfairs. They both lecture at Smith. My mother stayed with them last year when she was a visiting
professor there.’

Stella gestured to the letter. ‘This is telling me about their plans for the weekend.’ She hesitated before continuing. ‘It seems we’re going to a private beach barbecue
in Martha’s Vineyard this Sunday.’

Cassandra’s mouth fell open. ‘Martha’s Vineyard? My goodness, you’ll be mixing with America’s
crème de la crème,
my dear. Martha’s
Vineyard is where anyone who’s anyone goes for the summer. It’s a millionaires’ playground. Lucky you! Do you know who else is going? Anyone I might have read about in the
newspapers?’

Stella nodded. ‘Yes, actually, I do know who will be there. In fact you generally see something or other about them in the papers every other day.’

The stewardess’s mouth opened wider before she prompted: ‘Go on then! Who? Who is it?’

Stella took a deep breath.

‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you this but . . . well . . . it’s the Kennedys. Bobby Kennedy and his wife Ethel and their children, and according to this—’ The
thin sheet of paper crackled as Stella waved it in the air – ‘Bobby’s brother JFK might actually be there too. The President! With Jackie! I don’t know who I’ll be
more terrified of meeting – him, or her.’

Cassandra gaped at her. The stewardess seemed to be struggling for words, before she finally managed:

‘Well, you can fly me to Timbuktu!’

Stella was disappointed that she hadn’t had the chance to explain to Cassandra why she had chosen to study Psychopathy. For some reason she would have been comfortable
confiding in the young stewardess.

Most people were curious to know why she had chosen to follow such a challenging path, especially as a woman. Psychology and psychiatry were still overwhelmingly a male preserve. But things were
slowly changing, and anyway the science of the mind was becoming increasingly fashionable. Reflex suspicion of ‘trick cyclists’ was fading as the bright new decade got underway. Many
were willing to accept and even embrace a discipline that their parents had dismissed as being little more than witchcraft.

It was true that Hitchcock’s 1960 film
Psycho
had a lot to do with changed perceptions. When it was released two years earlier, Stella was one of the first in the queue to see it
at the cinema in Cambridge.

She had thought it crude and rather silly in its jumbled, sensationalised depiction of certain clinically recognised mental conditions. But, she reflected, as her plane droned on through the
gathering Atlantic darkness, Hitchcock had certainly put psychopathy on the map.

Her own private interest in this extreme corner of the human zoo was anything but modish. Stella had been fascinated by the dark backwaters of the human psyche for years; ever since she was ten,
in fact.

Because long before Hitchcock’s fictional motel-owner had become a byword for murderous depravity, she had encountered a real-life psychopath of her own.

He was, like Bates, superficially charming, persuasive, and credible.

Like Bates, he was extraordinarily dangerous.

He was Stella’s father.

‘Three hours to go!’

Stella jumped as the air stewardess flopped back down into the seat next to her.

‘Sorry, dear. Did I startle you?’

‘A bit,’ Stella admitted. ‘I was miles away.’

‘Penny for them?’

Stella hesitated. She’d read about this syndrome somewhere recently; the compulsion to unburden oneself to a fellow passenger, a complete stranger, on a long flight – particularly at
night. Cassandra wasn’t a passenger but she was a girl of about Stella’s age and she was bright and friendly. Her uniform gave her a touch of authority, too, and even her name added a
certain distinction. Suddenly Stella laughed to herself.

‘Seer and instant therapist,’ she muttered under her breath.

‘Come again?’

‘Instant therapist,’ she repeated, more distinctly. ‘I read an article the other day saying that strangers tell each other all sorts of private things on aeroplanes. It’s
something to do with a journey into the unknown, and the fact that when you’re up here, you’re sort of . . . well, nowhere. I think the headline was “Instant In-Flight
Therapy”, something like that, and I was just thinking—’

‘That I’m your therapist! How funny, considering, you know, what
your
degree is in . . . but it’s true, people do tend to open up between continents at twenty thousand
feet.’

Cassandra leaned her head conspiratorially towards Stella’s. ‘We see all sorts of heart-to-hearts going on between passengers who’ve only just met. The other night coming back
from New York I found myself virtually taking confession from a man who told me he’d been cheating on his wife.’

Stella laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t have any admissions like that,’ she replied. ‘I don’t even have a boyfriend to cheat on.’

‘Watch out for JFK at the barbecue on Sunday, then.’ They both laughed.

The stewardess lit two cigarettes and handed one to the girl next to her. ‘So what is it you want to tell me? Don’t worry. I’m good at keeping secrets. Anyway, no one believes
what I tell them. I’m Cassandra, remember?’ She smiled.

Stella paused. She didn’t
have
to do this . . . suddenly, she made her decision.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘It’s just that, before, you were asking how I became interested in the human mind . . . but we were interrupted by your boss – she
is
your boss, isn’t she?’

‘The Wicked Witch of the West? Oh yes. She’s been on my back all night. Says I forgot my comfy shoes on purpose so I could swank about in heels. As if! I’ll be hobbling for
days . . . anyway, go on. I think you’re the first woman psychologist or psychiatrist or whatever you are that I’ve ever met.’

Stella sighed. ‘I told you, I’m neither . . . well, not yet, anyway. I just study the field. But as to why I chose to do that . . . the honest truth, I suppose, is that I was scared
into it.’

The air stewardess tucked her legs comfortably underneath her. ‘Really? Who by?’

‘My father. Or rather, what he was . . . what he did.’ Stella hesitated again. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

But Cassandra’s next remark could have been no clearer sign for her to continue. ‘I never knew mine – my father, I mean. He was killed in the war. Went to sea to sink German
submarines before I was born but they sank him first.’

Stella stared at her. ‘How extraordinary! My father died in the war before I was born, too. He was a fighter pilot. He was shot down and killed over France.’

Cassandra arched her perfectly pencilled eyebrows. ‘Then how could he have scared you into anything? I don’t understand.’

‘Because he wasn’t killed at all. He certainly vanished – but the RAF jumped to completely the wrong conclusion: missing, presumed dead.

‘In fact he bailed out of his aircraft just before it crashed, and promptly deserted – spirited himself down to the south of France and was never heard of again. Well, not for ages,
that is. My mother eventually remarried and, as fate would have it, we went to live with my stepfather near Nice.’

The air stewardess gave a knowing nod. ‘Oh, don’t tell me. One day out of the blue you—’

‘Bumped into my father. Yes. Or rather, my mother did first. She . . . well . . . she had an affair with him, to be honest, a very brief one, before she discovered he was a gangster
– a killer, too. He ran a really vicious protection racket in Nice.’

‘Wow. This is one hell of a story, Stella. You should write the book.’

‘Maybe one day I will. Anyway, to cut a long story short, my father tried to extort money from my mother. When she wouldn’t play ball, he tracked me down. I knew him the moment I set
eyes on him.’

‘How? You’d never met him!’ Cassandra suddenly put a finger to her lips and got to her feet. ‘Hang on, Stella: don’t answer that question before I fetch us both a
drink. This is so fascinating that I reckon we’re in gin and tonic territory now for sure.’

She vanished to her galley and returned with two brimming glasses.

‘Cheers. Right. Continue.’

Stella sipped her drink. ‘I recognised him from the photo I’d kept on my bedside table since I was tiny. Obviously my mother put it there so I’d know who my father was, what he
looked like. He was
so
handsome, Cassandra, in his RAF uniform. The picture was taken about a month before he was shot down but when I saw him in the flesh ten years later, he’d
barely changed.’