by Nicci French
‘So you want me to get hold of it for you?’
‘Could you?’
‘I could try.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re going back there?’
‘My mother has a brain tumour.’
Karlsson lifted his head and stared at her. ‘I thought you never saw your mother.’
‘She’s dying. I’ve decided that for two or three days every week, on the days I’m not seeing patients, I’ll stay in Braxton.’
‘With your mother?’
‘No. With an old school friend who’s a potter. She has a shed in her garden that she rents out.’
‘A shed.’
‘A very comfortable shed, with electricity and running water and a small shower. She thinks I’m going down just to be with my mother.’
‘It’s all decided, then.’
‘I’m going to find out what happened to Becky.’
‘And what happened to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll make some calls tomorrow.’
‘Thank you.’
He suddenly seemed uncomfortable, rubbing the side of his face in that way of his, then staring into his whisky. ‘Sandy called me.’
‘When?’
‘Yesterday evening.’
‘He shouldn’t have done that.’
‘He was angry.’
‘I’m sorry you were dragged into it.’
‘Frieda, is it really over?’
She looked at Karlsson in puzzlement. ‘Do you think I would have done this if I wasn’t sure?’
‘He doesn’t think it’s over.’
After Karlsson had left, Frieda sat at her desk in her garret study and wrote emails to the patients she saw on Thursday afternoons and Fridays, asking if it would be possible to rearrange their sessions for earlier in the week. She said that she could see them in the evenings if that made it easier. Then she went to her room and packed a bag to take to Eva’s. She would go the next day, after her last patient. In Suffolk, the wind sweeps in from the east. She put in warm tops and extra socks and a hot-water bottle, walking boots and a fleecy jacket. She remembered to add a box of the tea she liked, as if they didn’t have real shops in Braxton. She put in a tin of soft-leaded pencils and sticks of charcoal, and a sketch pad. Then she considered the cat: was it all right to leave it for two nights, with the food and water topped up? She decided it was. Cats can look after themselves, unlike many people.
18
Eva was in her clay-spattered work clothes when Frieda arrived. There were grey flecks on her cheek and in her hair; there was even a daub on the glasses that hung round her neck on a chain. She hugged Frieda, transferring some of the clay, and led her around the side of the house and through the garden, past the vegetable patch to the shed at the end. She showed Frieda the bed and the towels, how the radiators worked, where the hot water switched on, a drawer and a cupboard that Frieda could use. There were pots lining the shelves, waiting to be fired. There was also a tiny stove and a kettle, but she said that Frieda could use her kitchen whenever she wanted. They could eat meals together, she said. At the same time she told Frieda how lucky it was that the space was free. Until a few weeks ago it had been occupied by a German student – a lovely girl, really gorgeous – but she had met someone and now they had moved in together. It was all a bit quick. Kristina had seemed so young, almost a child. As she said this, she sounded melancholy.
When she had finished and the two of them stepped back outside, Eva looked at Frieda appraisingly. ‘I can’t believe I’m here with you again,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d gone for ever.’
‘I thought so too,’ said Frieda.
Frieda was finding it hard to see Eva clearly – her younger self kept getting in the way. A skinny, tomboyish scamp, with bright red hair that at one point she had cut into tufts and spikes. She’d loved climbing trees, Frieda remembered, and could scramble through branches with amazing agility. She had a sudden flash of recall: Eva’s narrow face grinning down at her between green leaves, and a thick worm of blood on her bony knee. Of course, later she’d put on skirts and makeup and entered the teenage world, but even so, something of that unruly girl had remained.
‘Do you still climb trees?’ she asked.
‘You remember. It was fun, wasn’t it?’
‘I think I stayed on the ground.’
‘No, you didn’t. You came with me. Surely you came with me.’ She frowned. ‘Weird what you remember and what you forget,’ she said dreamily.
‘It is.’
‘I don’t have kids myself, but I have a niece and she’s a tree-climber too – maybe it’s in the blood.’
‘You used to do headstands as well.’
‘I did, didn’t I? I haven’t done one of those in years. Maybe I’ll try later, when I’m wearing trousers. It’s very good to see you, Frieda. I missed you, you know. Where did you go?’
‘Nowhere very glamorous.’
‘We all talked about you for ages. What happened to Frieda? Every so often I thought of trying to get in touch with you but I didn’t dare. I don’t know why.’
‘You should have done. I wasn’t so far away.’
‘Now you’ve come back.’
‘Yes.’
‘It feels like you’ve come at exactly the right time.’ Suddenly her expression changed and her pale skin flushed red. ‘I’m sorry, I know it’s terrible news about your mother. I didn’t mean …’
‘That’s all right. It’s good to see you. But what do you mean about me coming at the right time?’
‘Did nobody contact you about the high-school reunion?’
‘What sort of reunion?’
‘It’s an anniversary. The eightieth or something like that. It’s in a couple of weeks’ time, maybe three. There was one about ten years ago,’ said Eva. ‘It was a bit strange. I remember wondering if you were going to be there. I kept thinking I’d see your face.’
‘Nobody had my address.’
‘I bet you wouldn’t have come.’
‘I’m not sure I’ll go to this one.’
‘Why wouldn’t you want to see what’s happened to people you were at school with?’
‘I suppose because they’re a group of people I didn’t care enough about to stay in touch with.’
Eva pulled a hurt face. ‘That’s telling me.’
‘I didn’t mean you.’
‘You did because you didn’t stay in touch with me either. But they’re a part of your past,’ said Eva. ‘They – we – are part of what made you who you are, even though you did run away from us all. Come on inside and let’s have some coffee. I’m going to convince you that reunions are a good idea.’
‘I can’t,’ said Frieda. ‘I’ve got an appointment.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Eva said. ‘You’re suffering this tragedy with your mother and I’m just rabbiting on about things.’
‘It’s not my mother. I’ve some unfinished business to deal with.’
‘Are you up to something mysterious?’ Eva sounded jovial, but Frieda shot her a look. Her tone changed and she said that she needed to get on with her work but that maybe she’d see Frieda later. As she talked, she was tying her hair back more firmly, rolling up her sleeves. A purposeful expression came over her face. Frieda thought about how people are different at work: this was an Eva she had never suspected, no longer vague and flyaway but expert and sure of herself, mistress of her own world.
The young officer behind the front desk at Braxton police station had difficulty understanding what Frieda wanted, and when Frieda explained again, she didn’t seem to believe it. In the end she had to fetch a sergeant and the sergeant had to go away to make a phone call while Frieda sat on a bench by the front door. When the sergeant returned, he still seemed suspicious but he buzzed her through the re-inforced door. He was a heavy-set, florid-faced man, who didn’t look as if he’d be much use in a chase, and he seemed discontented.
‘You’ll need to leave your
phone at the desk.’
‘Why?’
‘Security.’
Frieda took it from her pocket and placed it on the desk. The sergeant led her along a corridor and into an office. There were two desks, phones, a wall of box files. A safety leaflet and several picture postcards were pinned on a corkboard. There was a large window but it only looked out on a yard with a high wall at the end.
‘Apparently you’ve got a friend,’ said the sergeant.
‘He’s a detective. Can I take the file away?’
‘There’s more than one and, no, you can’t. You can sit here.’ He steered her towards the desk by the window. Frieda sat down and he brought a small pile of faded blue cardboard files, three of them, and placed them in front of her.
‘This is about you, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘What do you want to go through it all again for? It’s a long time ago.’
‘It doesn’t feel like that.’
She took a pen from her pocket.
‘You’re not allowed to take notes,’ said the sergeant, removing it from her.
‘What?’ said Frieda.
‘No notes or recording devices.’
‘Is that a real rule or a made-up one?’
‘If you have a problem with this, we can stop now and you can make a query. In writing.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Are you thinking of making a complaint? Breedon. B-R-E-E –’
‘There’s no need to spell it out. I don’t have a pen.’
‘Just so you’ll remember it. And I’ll stay here while you’re doing what you need to do.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’ll have to be done in half an hour.’
Frieda opened the first file. She saw a typed page, the paper so thin that the page beneath showed through. At the top was a date: 15 February 1989. And she saw a name: Frieda Klein. She stopped for a moment, almost dizzy at the thought of it. Her name and, below her name, her words. They had been on this paper and the paper had been in the file and the file had been in a cabinet or on a shelf somewhere for all these years. She looked up. Sergeant Breedon was seated at the other desk. He was staring at her.
‘Could I get a glass of water?’ she said.
‘I can’t leave you alone with the file. I can accompany you to the bathroom.’
‘Forget about it.’
She returned to the typed statement and started to read, running her forefinger down the right margin.
Exactly half an hour later Frieda came down the steps of the police station and walked briskly along the pavement, almost breaking into a run. With what she had in her head, she felt as if she was holding her breath and that, if she was careless, everything she had read and seen in the file would be lost. It would be like those mornings when she woke from a vivid dream and could almost see the dream flowing away, being irretrievably lost and forgotten. She needed somewhere to sit.
On the high street she passed a dentist’s, a kitchenware shop, a fish-and-chip shop, then found what she was looking for. There was a gallery that doubled as a coffee shop. She walked inside and sat as far away from the front window as she could, at a tiny table. She opened her notebook and began writing. She started with the names, the hooks that the memories would hang on: me, Jeremy, Lewis, Ewan, Chas. Then there was Dennis Freeman, the loner who had died in prison and whom she had assumed until a few days ago was the man who had raped her. And another one. Carrey. Michael Carrey.
‘Yes?’
Frieda looked up. A woman was standing in front of her: mustard-yellow sweater, short dark hair, early thirties. ‘Sorry?’
‘What can I get you?’
Oh, yes. This was a café. ‘Coffee. No milk.’
‘Pastries? Carrot cake? Bakewell tart?’
‘Just coffee. Thank you.’
Frieda went back to her list and began to fill in the memories, starting with herself. She turned to a new page and wrote ‘Me’ at the top. What she mainly remembered from the transcript were not her answers but the officer’s questions. As she wrote them down, it brought the scene back to her, almost as if she were there again. Two male officers. They had seemed old to her, but were probably no more than forty. They had sat too close. One of them had done almost all the talking, as if he were in charge. Detective Tom Helmsley, it had said on the file. She hadn’t known his name was Tom but she certainly remembered him. Tall and bulky, with thick blond hair that he pulled at, and a round, doughy face, slightly sweaty. He dabbed at it occasionally with a handkerchief and didn’t look directly at her. Occasionally he had smirked, and now she thought that perhaps he had been embarrassed, although at the time she had seen him as indifferent to her and almost amused.
Did you resist? What did he do? Were you naked? Did he ejaculate? Why didn’t you scream? Why didn’t you report it straight away? Were you a virgin? Do you have a boyfriend? Had they had a row? Where was he? Why wasn’t she there?
They were at the concert. They all were. Except for her.
Reading through the statement, she had seen herself through their eyes: resistant, troubled, broken home, dead father. Sexually active.
And then there was her mother’s statement. Frieda jotted down the phrases ‘going through a bad patch’, ‘highly strung’, ‘confrontational when challenged’, ‘vivid imagination’, ‘self-dramatizing’.
‘Here’s your coffee.’ The woman placed a mug on the table in front of Frieda. ‘Getting some work done?’
‘Just a few notes.’
‘Are you a writer?’
‘No.’
‘Have you been looking at our pictures?’
Frieda glanced around at some blurry, smudgy seascapes, trees, clouds and then some brightly abstract designs, like Turkish carpets fashioned in neon.
‘They’re all local artists,’ the woman said. ‘Are you here for a break?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Frieda, gesturing at her notebook. ‘Could you give me a minute?’
The woman’s face fell and she withdrew. Frieda returned to her notes. She started with the two names of people she hadn’t known. Dennis Freeman was the man she had heard of. Michael Carrey was new to her. Frieda assumed that he, like Freeman, had some relevant sexual history. The interviews were short. They’d been asked if they knew Frieda Klein. Neither of them did. Or admitted that they did. They were asked where they had been on the night. Freeman said he had been out drinking. Carrey said he’d spent the evening at home. He’d been ill. Frieda had seen nothing in the file about whether the claims had been checked.
Then there were the boys. They’d all been interviewed although they hadn’t been told why. Frieda remembered how afterwards everyone seemed to think there had been an attempted burglary or something like that, and she certainly hadn’t said anything to disabuse them. She jotted down phrases she recalled from the statements. It had been a bit like reading her own obituary, discovering what people felt about you, or what they said they felt about you, or what they told the police they felt about you. What would she have thought, aged sixteen, if she had heard Chas Latimer telling a grown-up that, although they were in the same friendship group, he didn’t know Frieda Klein that well, that she was ‘a bit weird’, that she kept herself to herself, that they’d never had any kind of relationship, that, no, he’d never wanted one, she wasn’t his type.
As she quickly wrote in the notebook, filling page after page, she had vivid flashes that weren’t even like memories. It was as if she were there, the sights and sounds and touches were so vivid: Chas, in a group of people, always at the centre, suddenly catching her eye, giving that collusive smile; Ewan, clumsy but sweet and well-meaning; Jeremy, the smell of his hair, the smooth skin of his chest and back, almost like a child’s, but whenever she thought of his face, it wore the expression of dismay and disbelief and anger that it had when she’d broken up with him. When she thought of him, that was what it mainly was: an endless parting. And Lewis, it was the smell of cigarettes: even when she reme
mbered his full, almost swollen lips, it was with a cigarette between them; even his tongue, pink like a kitten’s, she thought of it dabbing against the end of the filter.
When she had written everything she could think of, she paused. Her hand ached with the effort. But then she remembered. There was something more. Someone had clearly read through the file, pencil in hand, and marked it the way people did with lines down the margin and even under certain phrases. There had been faded underlinings and question marks. After a bit, Frieda had started to see their point. They had emphasized anything doubtful or problematic, especially about Frieda herself, what people thought of her, how much they trusted her. At the end of her own statement the word ‘NO’ had been written in large capital letters followed by a dash and the initials ‘SF’. Frieda wrote them at the end of her notes and drew a circle around them.
‘Can I get you more coffee?’
The woman had reappeared, like an animal that had been scared away but was now edging back.
‘Yes, please.’
‘So, you’re not a tourist?’
Frieda looked up at the woman, wondering whether she should recognize her. Was this someone she had been at school with? Or the sister of someone she had been at school with? ‘I grew up here. But now I’m a tourist.’
19
Before going back to Eva’s shed, Frieda went shopping in the supermarket that stood where the swimming pool used to be. For herself, she bought ground coffee, milk, bread, butter, marmalade and six eggs. For her mother, she bought a bunch of dahlias, a packet of ginger snaps, some runny cheese (always a favourite of Juliet Klein’s), with crackers to accompany it, and two bottles of red wine.
The front door to her mother’s house was unlocked, and after she had rung the bell and got no reply, she opened it and went in, intending to leave the shopping in the hall. But she heard a noise coming from the living room: the television was on. Frieda put her head round the door. On the plasma screen a chef – whose face was vaguely familiar – was making something with noodles. They were heaped on a plate, looking like a nest of worms. Juliet was sitting on the sofa, her stockinged feet up on a small stool, her head tipped back and her eyes slightly open. She was snoring. One of the buttons of her shirt had come undone so Frieda could see the edge of her bra. A tiny thread of saliva ran down her chin. Frieda watched her for several seconds, frowning. As quietly as she could manage, she put down the shopping and left the house, pulling the door to with a small click. Her mobile vibrated in her pocket and, taking it out, she saw that Sandy was calling. She let it to go voicemail.
