by Nicci French
‘Just at that moment, a woman came walking towards me. I wasn’t paying attention to her at first. She was walking through my field of vision, if you understand what I mean. She was wearing a bright orange jacket and a very short tight skirt and these high-heeled boots.’
Alan fidgeted and looked down. He went on speaking but no longer met Frieda’s eyes.
‘Suddenly, I realized she was talking to me. She said, “Oh, you!” and she pushed herself close against me.’ Alan faltered and then continued. ‘She put her arms round me and she kissed me. She – It was a proper kiss. With her tongue. You know when you’re in a dream and strange things happen to you and you just accept them and go along with it? It was like that. I didn’t push her away. I felt as if I was in a film or something, that it wasn’t really happening to me but to someone else.’ He swallowed hard. ‘There was blood on my lip. Then, after a bit, she pulled back. She said, “Call me. It’s been a while. Haven’t you been missing me?” And then she was gone. I couldn’t move. I just stood there and watched her walking away in her orange jacket.’
There was a silence.
‘Is there anything else?’ asked Frieda.
‘Isn’t that enough?’ said Alan. ‘A woman I don’t know coming up and kissing me? You want more than that?’
‘I mean, what did you do?’
‘I wanted to follow her. I didn’t want it to end. But I went on standing there and then she was gone and I was back in myself, if you see what I mean, dull old Alan who nothing really happens to.’
‘What did this woman look like?’ asked Frieda. ‘Or did you only see her jacket and skirt and boots?’
‘She had long hair, sort of blonde-red. Jangly ear-rings.’ Alan touched the lobes of his own ears. He coughed and turned red. ‘Big breasts. And she smelt of cigarettes and something else.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Like yeast or something.’
‘And her face?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You didn’t see her face?’
He looked bewildered. ‘I don’t remember it. I think she was -’ he coughed ‘- you know, nice-looking. It all happened so suddenly. And my eyes were shut a lot of the time.’
‘So, you have an erotic, arousing experience with an unknown, almost faceless woman, in the street.’
‘Yes,’ said Alan. ‘But I’m not like that.’
‘Did this really happen?’
‘Sometimes I think it didn’t – that I just went to sleep on the bench in the park and dreamed it.’
‘Did you enjoy it?’
Alan thought for a moment and almost gave a grin. He seemed to catch himself at it. ‘I felt excited, if that’s what you mean. Yes. If it happened, that’s bad, and if I made it up, that’s bad as well. In a different way.’ He grimaced. ‘What would Carrie say?’
‘You haven’t told her?’
‘No! No, of course not. How can I tell her that, although we haven’t had sex in months now, I let some attractive woman with big breasts kiss me but I don’t know if it really happened or if I just wanted it to?’
‘What do you make of it?’ asked Frieda.
‘I’ve told you before, I’ve always thought of myself as invisible. People don’t really notice me, and if they do, it’s because they’ve got me mixed up with someone else. When this happened, I think a little bit of me was tempted to go off with this woman, be the person she mistook me for. It sounded as if he was having more fun than I was.’
‘So what do you want me to say?’
‘After it happened, I was totally confused and then I thought, That’s the sort of thing Dr Klein wants me to tell her. Mostly I think what I’ve told you has been quite boring, but I thought this was weird and a bit creepy and it would be just the sort of thing I should tell you.’
Frieda couldn’t stop herself smiling at that. ‘You think I’m interested in weird and creepy things?’
He let his head drop into his hands. Through his fingers, he said, ‘Everything used to be so simple. Now nothing’s simple. I don’t even know who I am any more, or what’s real and what’s in my mind.’
Chapter Twenty-six
‘So what do you think?’ said Frieda.
Jack pulled a face. ‘It’s a classic fantasy,’ he said.
They were sitting in Number 9, their habitual meeting place now for Jack’s mentoring sessions, which had become less formal and more frequent. Jack was nursing his second cappuccino. He liked it here: Kerry fussed over him, a mixture of motherly and flirtatious; Marcus sometimes came out of the kitchen and insisted that he try his latest creation (today a marmalade Bakewell tart that Jack ate, though he didn’t really like almonds or marmalade) and Katya sometimes came and sat on Frieda’s lap. Jack thought Katya liked Frieda the way cats like people who don’t fuss over them. Frieda would ignore her or, sometimes, simply lift her off and deposit her on the floor.
‘In what way?’
‘For men, anyway. A sexually provocative woman approaches, pulls you out of your boring everyday life into a weird, more exciting existence.’
‘So what does this woman represent?’
‘It might be you,’ said Jack, and took a hasty gulp of his coffee.
‘Me?’ said Frieda. ‘Large-breasted, orange jacket, tight short skirt and blonde-red hair?’
Jack went red and looked around the café to see if anybody had overheard. ‘It’s a sexualized version of you,’ he said. ‘It’s a classic example of transference. You’re the woman who is stepping into his ordinary life. He can talk to you in ways that he can’t talk to his own partner. But he still needs to disguise it by expressing it in terms of this exaggeratedly sexual female figure.’
‘Interesting,’ said Frieda. ‘A bit like a textbook, but interesting. Any other theory?’
Jack thought for a moment. ‘I’m interested in this story he keeps telling of his anonymity, that he keeps feeling he’s being mistaken for other people. This may be an example of solipsism syndrome. You know, it’s the dissociative mental state where people feel that they’re the only person who is real and everybody else is an actor or has been replaced by a robot or something like that.’
‘In which case he would need an MRI scan.’
‘It’s just a theory,’ said Jack. ‘I wouldn’t recommend that unless there were other symptoms of cognitive impairment.’
‘Any other possibilities?’
‘I was taught to listen to the patient. I suppose there is a possibility that a woman simply mistook him for someone else and that the whole thing doesn’t mean much at all.’
‘Could you imagine going up to a girl and actually kissing her by mistake?’
Jack thought of mentioning a couple of examples where it would be all too easy and then thought better of it. ‘He must have looked pretty similar to the person she thought he was,’ he said. ‘If it really happened. But if I’ve learned anything from you it’s that what we’re here to do is to deal with what’s inside the patient’s head. In a way, the truth of what happened isn’t relevant. What we need to concentrate on is the meaning that Alan gave to the event and what he meant by telling you about it.’
Frieda gave a frown. It felt strange to hear her own words being parroted back at her like that. They sounded both dogmatic and unconvincing. ‘No,’ she said. ‘There’s a huge difference between someone who is mistaken for other people, for whatever reason, and someone who believes that he is mistaken for other people. Don’t you think it would be interesting if we could find out whether that encounter really happened?’
‘It might be interesting,’ said Jack, ‘but it’s just totally impractical. You’d have to wander round Victoria Park on the off-chance of seeing someone who was in the neighbourhood two days ago – and whom you wouldn’t recognize anyway because you don’t know what she looks like.’
‘I was hoping you might have a go,’ said Frieda.
‘Oh,’ said Jack.
Jack was tempted to say several things: that it had nothing to do with his trainin
g and that it was unprofessional of her to ask him; that the chances of finding this woman were zero, and that even if he found her it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. He even wondered if there might be some rule about checking up on patients without their permission. But he didn’t say any of those things. Really, he was quite pleased that Frieda had asked him. In a curious way he was even more pleased that she had asked him to do something out of the ordinary. If it had been some straightforward extra work, that would have been a chore. But this was just slightly inappropriate and there was a certain kind of intimacy about that. Or was he kidding himself?
‘All right,’ he said.
‘Good.’
‘Frieda!’
The voice came from behind him, and before he saw whose it was, he noticed how Frieda’s face darkened.
‘What are you doing here?’
Jack twisted round and saw a woman with long legs, dirty blonde hair and a face that looked very young and unformed under its dramatic makeup.
‘I’ve come for my lesson. You said we should meet here for a change.’ She glanced at Jack and he felt himself blush.
‘You’re early.’
‘You should be pleased.’ She sat down at their table and pulled off her gloves. Her fingernails were bitten and painted dark purple. ‘It’s so cold out there. I need something to warm me up. Aren’t you going to introduce us?’
‘Jack’s just going,’ said Frieda, shortly.
‘I’m Chloë Klein.’ She held out a hand and he took it. ‘Her niece.’
‘Jack Dargan,’ he said.
‘How do you two know each other, then?’
‘Never mind that,’ said Frieda, hastily. ‘Chemistry.’ She nodded at Jack. ‘Thanks for your help.’
It was a clear dismissal. He got to his feet.
‘Nice meeting you,’ said Chloë. She seemed very pleased with herself.
Jack emerged from Hackney Wick station and looked at his street map. He made his way over to the junction where the Grand Union Canal branched off to the east from the river Lea. He was wearing a sweatshirt, a sweater, a cagoule, cycling gloves and a woolly hat with earmuffs but he was still shivering with the cold. The surface of the canal was gritty with a slush that hadn’t quite hardened into ice. He walked along the towpath until he saw the gates to the park on his right. He looked at the notes he had taken from Frieda. He could see the playground ahead. There was an icy wind that stung his cheeks so he couldn’t tell whether they were cold or hot. Nevertheless, he could see buggies and muffled, bundled-up little figures in the playground. There were even two track-suited figures on the tennis court. Jack stopped and pressed his face against the wire. They were two grizzled old men, hitting the ball back and forwards hard and low. Jack was impressed. One of them charged the net and the other lobbed him. The player chased back. The ball landed just inside the line.
‘Out!’ the player shouted loudly. ‘Bad luck!’
Jack felt his fingers freezing inside his gloves. As he walked away from the court, he took his right hand out of the glove and pushed it inside his shirt against his chest to try to bring some feeling back into his fingers. He turned left on to the main path. On his right he could see the bowling green and then, as he walked along, the bandstand and the fountain. He looked around. There was almost no one. Dotted about were people with their dogs. Far away to one side there was a group of teenagers, joshing, pushing each other. This wasn’t the weather for anyone with anywhere sensible to go. He thought of Alan Dekker walking here to clear his mind, if he really had been here at all. In fact, now that Jack was here, he was starting to believe that Alan must have been telling some version of the truth. The details about the canal, the playground and the bandstand were too precise. Why bother with that if it was all a dream? As he walked, Jack felt as if he was clearing his mind as well, in the fierce northerly wind. He’d been feeling discontented with the whole idea of therapy. Was it really so important to talk about things? Was talking about things just another way of getting tangled up with your patient, when what you really should be doing was making them better? Maybe that was another reason why he had agreed to do this for Frieda. It felt good to be going out in the world and seeing if Alan had been telling the truth or not. But, then, what were the chances of finding anything out?
Jack came out of the southern corner of the park, crossed the road and walked along the row of shops. They were just the way Alan had described them. When he got to the hardware shop, he actually stepped inside. It was the sort of place that he hadn’t thought existed any more and it seemed to contain virtually everything he ought to have got for the house he shared, but had never quite got around to buying: washing-up bowls, step-ladders, screwdrivers, torches. He should come back here with his friend’s car and load up. A few more steps took him to the second-hand shop with the stuffed owl in the window. It was scruffy and losing feathers, and it seemed to be staring back at him with its large doll’s eyes. Jack tried to imagine shooting an owl and stuffing it. It had no price tag. It probably wasn’t for sale.
He looked around. This was where Alan had met the woman. If he’d met her. He had said that the street had been empty and that he had suddenly seen her coming towards him. Could she live somewhere here? Jack stepped back and looked above the shops. There did indeed seem to be flats above them and there were entrances along the road between the shop fronts, some of which were boarded up, with ‘For Sale’ signs above them. But he couldn’t just start ringing doorbells at random and seeing if a large-breasted woman answered. The next shop along was a launderette with a cracked window. Alan hadn’t mentioned that she was carrying washing, but he hadn’t said that she was empty-handed either. Jack stepped inside, inhaling the warm steam gratefully. There was a woman right at the back folding some washing. When she saw Jack she stepped towards him. She was black-haired with a mole above her lip.
‘You here for a service wash?’ she said.
‘Someone I know may have been in here a couple of days ago,’ said Jack. ‘A woman dressed in a bright orange jacket.’
‘Never seen her.’
Jack thought he should say something, decided not to and then changed his mind. ‘I’m a doctor, by the way. You might want to get that mole looked at.’
‘What?’
Jack touched his own face just above his mouth. ‘It might need checking.’
‘Mind your own fucking business,’ said the woman.
‘Yes, right, sorry,’ said Jack, and eased out of the shop.
Next door was a café, a real old-style greasy spoon. He stepped inside. It was empty except for a toothless old man in the corner, sucking noisily at his tea. He looked at Jack with his watery eyes. Jack looked at his phone: twenty past one. He sat at a table and a woman in a blue nylon apron came over; she was wearing slippers that shuffled along the not-very-clean floor. Jack looked up at the blackboard and ordered fried eggs, bacon, sausage, grilled tomato and chips and a cup of tea.
‘Anything else?’ said the woman.
‘There’s a woman, dresses in a bright orange jacket, blonde hair, lots of jewellery, does she come in here?’
‘What you want?’ said the woman, in a strong accent. She was looking at him suspiciously.
‘I wondered if she came in here.’
‘You say you meet her here?’
‘Meet her?’
‘Not here.’
There were several more exchanges of questions at the end of which Jack didn’t know whether the waitress knew the woman or even whether she had understood his questions at all. The food arrived and Jack felt strangely happy. It felt like the sort of meal that he could only eat alone, in an unfamiliar place, among strangers. He was just dipping his chips into the remains of the egg yolk and planning what to do next, when he saw her. Or, rather, he saw a woman in a bright orange jacket over tight black leggings, wearing high heels, her hair long and blonde, walking past the window. For a moment, he sat transfixed. Was it a hallucination, or had he really just seen
her? And if so, what to do? He couldn’t let her go. This was real life. He had to approach her. But what could he possibly say? He jumped up, spilling tea over the greasy remains of his meal, and scrabbled in his pocket for change. He threw far too many coins down on the table. Several spun off and fell to the floor. He raced out of the door, ignoring the calls of the waitress. She was still visible, her jacket a vivid flare among the greys and browns of the other people on the street.
He ran towards her, feeling immediately out of breath. For someone in high heels, she walked surprisingly fast. Her hips rolled. As he got nearer he saw that her feet were bare and swollen in the sandals, which looked a size too small. He drew level and put a hand on her forearm. ‘Excuse me,’ he said.
When the woman turned her head, he felt a tremor of shock running through him. He’d been expecting someone young and beautiful, sexy at least – that was what Alan’s story had implied. But this woman wasn’t young. Her breasts sagged. Her face was lined and creviced, and under the thickly applied makeup, the skin was pasty. He saw a rash of red spots on her forehead. Her eyes, circled with dark liner and fringed with heavily mascaraed lashes, were flecked with red. She looked bleary and ill and wretched. He saw her draw her features into an approximation of a smile. ‘What can I do for you, darling?’
