by Nicci French
‘You’re no fun.’
‘We should go and visit your grandmother,’ Jack said.
‘I’ve only met her a couple of times,’ Chloë said. ‘And she didn’t seem to like me much.’
‘You know that she’s dying,’ Frieda said.
‘That doesn’t make her any nicer.’
‘I’d like to meet her,’ said Jack.
‘I thought we’d be striding up steep hills,’ said Chloë. ‘Bumping into sheep and jumping rushing streams.’
‘This isn’t the Lake District.’
Chloë grimaced. ‘Where does she live, then?’
Frieda started to give directions.
‘Just show me on your phone.’ said Chloë. ‘I’ve left mine in Jack’s car.’
Chloë held out her hand and Frieda passed across her mobile.
‘What’s the code to unlock it?’
‘Why would I have one?’
‘In case somebody stole your phone.’
‘I wish somebody would.’
Chloë sighed and started tapping at it.
‘You should think about passwords,’ Jack said.
‘I’ve got enough to think about,’ said Frieda.
‘I’m serious. I’ll bet you haven’t changed the password for your remote access number.’
‘I’ll bet you I don’t even have a remote access number.’
‘For getting your voicemails when you’re using another phone.’
‘I’ve never done it. Didn’t know it existed.’
‘Haven’t you been reading the papers in the last couple of years?’
‘Not if I can help it.’
‘Without one,’ said Jack, ‘as people have discovered, it’s easy for someone else to access your email. Like the journalists who’ve been hassling you.’
Frieda frowned. A thought had occurred to her. ‘Or Dean Reeve.’
‘Dean Reeve?’
She thought of the note she’d received, sent as if from Mary Orton. She thought of the scarf she had lost. She remembered footsteps behind her. And further back: back to Mary Orton’s death, when someone had been there to save her. To Hal Bradshaw’s burned house. To the sense that he was always one step ahead of her, anticipating her moves, understanding her secret fears. She took her phone from Chloë and stared at it. ‘So what do I do?’
‘Phone up your service provider and change your password. And not to your birthday or to something about you that someone could guess.’
‘Frieda?’ Chloë’s voice roused her. ‘We’re getting a bit cold. Just give me my gran’s address.’
She did so, still preoccupied with the new certainty that now gripped her. As the two of them were leaving, she took Jack’s arm to hold him back. ‘Keep an eye on her,’ she said.
‘She can be rather wild sometimes.’ He sounded admiring.
‘My mother could crush her.’
She watched them as they walked off together, Chloë taking skipping steps, bumping her hip against Jack’s, seizing his hand and then dropping it. However hard she pretended, she was still a child and Frieda felt a pang at her ungainly eagerness.
Once they were out of sight, she walked up Mount Street and took the little lane that ran out of the town beside a field that in the summer was yellow with buttercups. There was a rickety old horse by the fence, all its ribs showing, and when Frieda held out her hand to it, it drew back its lips and bared its long yellow teeth. A few hundred yards on, she came to the house standing back from the road, Georgian, with large windows and a raised round fishpond near the front door. Frieda peered into it and saw a single mottled carp nosing the bottom.
When Maddie answered the door, her expression was stony. ‘I don’t want you here.’
‘I know. But I hoped we could talk for a few minutes. There’s something I need to say.’
‘You’ve got nothing to say that I want to hear.’
‘Five minutes. If you still want me to leave after that, I give you my word that I’ll go.’
Maddie stared at her, then shook her head slowly from side to side. But she said, ‘All right. I’ll give you five minutes. But I can’t imagine what you’ve got to say that will make me want ever to set eyes on you again.’
Frieda stepped into the house and followed Maddie into the sitting room. The first thing that struck her was the sweet stench, even before she saw that there were flowers everywhere, lilies and hothouse roses, ornate mixed bouquets. Some were drooping and dying. There were cards on every surface too.
‘Go on, then,’ said Maddie. Neither of them sat down.
‘Becky didn’t kill herself. I don’t have evidence that I can give to the police but she was killed.’ Maddie started to protest but Frieda continued. ‘She was killed by the man who raped her. I believe that he found out – somehow – that she was going to the police.’
Maddie shook her head. ‘You’re a liar. You just want it not to be your fault.’
Frieda paused. She hardly heard Maddie because she was preparing herself to say what she had come there to say.
‘I know she was raped because twenty-three years ago the same man raped me.’
‘What did you say?’
‘When Becky told me about her experience, I recognized it as my own. The same scenario, the exact same words the rapist said to her. I know that the pattern of her behaviour leading up to her death made it seem clear to you, and to the police, that she killed herself. She didn’t. There is a man out there who preys on vulnerable young women and who raped and killed your daughter.’
‘No. No.’ Maddie looked utterly baffled and disgusted.
‘She wasn’t making it up.’
All of a sudden, Maddie sat down on the carpet. She put her arms round her knees and pulled herself into the smallest shape possible. Frieda remembered her as she’d been in her house in London, a few weeks ago: impeccably presented, carefully smiling, smelling of expensive perfume and smooth with makeup. Now she was dishevelled, unbuttoned and undefended. She, Frieda, had led her to this. If Becky had not told her the story, if Frieda had not encouraged her to go to the police, the girl would still be alive and her mother would not be crouched on the floor, like a pitiful animal, her ordered life in shreds.
Frieda squatted beside her. ‘Do you believe me?’ she asked.
‘She was in a mess. Everyone knew that. It was your doing. That’s what you can’t deal with.’
‘She was troubled, it’s true. But if I’m right, then the man who raped her always picks on young women he knows to be particularly vulnerable. He felt confident she wouldn’t be believed.’
Maddie lifted her head. ‘You say it happened to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘How can you know? How can you possibly know? It was twenty years ago. More than twenty years.’
‘I know,’ said Frieda, ‘that it was the same man.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ She clambered to her feet. ‘If you’d told me, I would have believed her.’
‘I should have told you.’
‘And then maybe she wouldn’t be dead.’ She stared around at all the dying flowers. ‘This just makes everything worse. Now I have to live for the rest of my life with the fact that I didn’t believe her.’
‘He knew that no one would believe her because she was going through such a rough time. That’s the point.’
‘Who is he?’
‘I don’t know. But he isn’t a stranger. He knew me. He knew Becky.’ Frieda hesitated, then added, ‘And I feel certain that he knew Sarah May.’
‘Sarah May? Did it happen to her?’
‘I think so.’
‘Someone we know? Someone I know?’
‘It must be.’
Maddie’s head seemed to wobble slightly and her eyes had a glazed look. Suddenly she picked up a vase of lilies and threw it against the wall, where it shattered. Flowers and glass lay on the floor. She picked up another vase, this one full of tight pink roses, water slopping over the brim. But Frieda took i
t from her and put it back on the surface.
‘Bastard,’ Maddie said. ‘Bastard. Evil, stinking bastard. My little Becky. My darling daughter. What have I done? Why can’t I tell her I’m sorry?’
‘Maddie –’
‘Don’t you talk to me in that calm voice. You don’t understand. You’ll never understand. You’re not a mother. You’re just a machine. You don’t know what it feels like here.’ And she punched herself hard in the chest. ‘You should have told me. If you knew Becky was in danger, you could have saved her. I’ll never, ever forgive you. I still think you’re making it up. It’s mad. You’re mad.’
‘Listen to me. I believe that whoever raped Becky found out that she was going to the police and that was why he killed her. We need to work out who knew about it.’
‘It was you who told her to go to the police. You did it.’
‘Did she tell you she was going?’
‘Of course. I was still her mother, even if she felt I’d let her down.’ Her face crumpled. Tears rolled down her cheeks, into her mouth, on to her neck. ‘I let her down,’ she whispered. ‘That’s the last thing she felt about me, that I let her down.’
‘Did you tell anyone else?’
‘I can’t think. I can’t remember anything. We have to go to the police ourselves.’ She clutched Frieda’s sleeve. ‘We have to go right now.’
‘I’ve already spoken to them.’
‘Without telling me?’
‘Yes.’
‘I always thought you were a stuck-up fucking bitch. She was my daughter. Mine. Not yours. How dare you?’
She seemed to be stretching out for another vase. Frieda took hold of her hand and held it. ‘I need your help.’
‘How?’
‘First of all, and this is important, you mustn’t talk to anyone about what I’ve told you. If it’s someone you know …’
Maddie snatched her hand away and took a step backwards. ‘You’re just sick. And you spread sickness. If I hadn’t asked you for help, everything would be all right.’
‘I want you to think very hard about what happened to Becky in the last few weeks of her life, and talk to me about it, not anyone else. I particularly want you to try to remember who you told about Becky going to the police.’
‘I never told anyone Becky had claimed to have been raped.’ She heard her words and her face twisted; she was swinging wildly between rage and despair. ‘Was she really raped?’ she whispered to herself. ‘My little girl? Raped and murdered. It can’t be true.’
‘You’re sure you never told anyone?’
‘I didn’t want to. I thought it was best to keep it quiet.’
‘But you might have confided in someone.’
‘I can’t remember. I don’t feel very well. You have to go now.’
‘You have my number and I want you to call me when you’ve thought things over.’
‘Just leave.’
‘Can I ask one more thing?’
‘What?’
‘It might seem intrusive.’
‘What?’
‘I saw Greg Hollesley at the funeral and I wondered …’
Maddie’s face turned a flaming red. ‘Get out of my house. Out of my life. Out of this town. We don’t want you here. We never did.’
When Frieda reached her mother’s house, Chloë was in the kitchen, making tea in a very angry, noisy manner, banging mugs down and slamming cupboard doors shut.
‘Not a success, then?’
‘She called Mum a slut. I can be rude about my mother, but no one else is allowed to be.’
‘I’ll talk to her.’
She strode into the living room where Juliet sat in her usual armchair, gazing vacantly at a manic cartoon on the TV. Frieda turned it off.
‘I was watching that.’
‘You were rude about Olivia to Chloë.’
‘Who’s Olivia and who’s Chloë?’
‘Olivia was married to David.’
‘Oh, her.’
‘And Chloë is your granddaughter. As you know.’
‘I’ve got a brain tumour. Maybe I’ve forgotten.’
‘She’s your granddaughter and she’s not got a particularly easy life –’
‘Because her mother’s a slut. Yes.’
‘Stop now! Just because you’re dying it doesn’t mean you have a licence to be cruel to everyone.’
‘She’s got a tattoo and a nose ring and one of those horrible love bites on her neck that she doesn’t even bother to hide. What makes her think she can come here with her lover-boy and pretend to care about me? She called me “Gran”.’
‘What is she supposed to call you?’ Frieda looked carefully at her mother. Perhaps the brain tumour had made her so hectic with rage. Then something caught her eye through the window.
‘What’s Jack doing in your garden?’
‘Weeding,’ said Juliet, triumphantly.
‘Why?’
‘I told him to. He is a gardener, after all.’
‘No, he isn’t. He must be freezing out there.’
‘I preferred that man from the council.’
‘Josef.’
‘I never really had any time for women.’
Chloë came in with three mugs of tea, which she set down on the small table. Frieda could see that she had been crying.
‘I never had time for cosy girl talk,’ continued Juliet, with a kind of relish. ‘Why aren’t you in New Zealand?’ This was addressed to Chloë.
‘What?’
‘It’s Ivan who lives in New Zealand. Chloë’s father is David.’
‘I hated being married,’ said Juliet. ‘That’s my advice to you, young woman. With my dying breath. Don’t marry and don’t have children. And if you do marry, don’t marry a man who is depressed day in and day out, week in and week out, so that you feel you’re being sucked into a black hole and will never escape. Everyone else felt sorry for him. Poor, adorable Jacob.’
‘What’s she talking about?’ whispered Chloë, to Frieda, urgently. ‘Can we go?’
‘Wait.’
‘What did King Lear say about serpents?’
‘I don’t know,’ stammered Chloë.
‘Of course you don’t. You failed your exams, didn’t you? You see, I do know some things about you. David said he was disappointed in you.’
Frieda laid a hand on Chloë’s arm and stooped down towards Juliet. ‘Is this how you want your granddaughter to remember you?’ she said. ‘As a spiteful old woman?’
‘I don’t care about being remembered.’
They collected Jack from the garden. His shoes were clogged with mud and his face pale with cold. Frieda saw with satisfaction that he had pulled up several plants along with the weeds. ‘You didn’t have to,’ she said.
‘She’s quite scary.’
‘Some of that’s her brain tumour. The rest is her. Come on, Josef’s collecting us in his van at the bottom of the road.’
‘Where are we going?’ asked Chloë. She still looked dazed. ‘What about Jack’s car?’
‘You can pick that up later. I thought you might want to go to the coast.’
‘It’s quite cold and it’s getting dark.’
‘That’s when the sea is at its best.’
Frieda directed Josef until they were driving along the side of a broad and widening estuary where boats were tipped on the mud of a low tide. In the dying light, all colour seemed to have leached away. Eventually they turned into a gravel drive and drew up outside a long white building that stood alone, looking out on to the estuary as it flowed into the grey-brown sea.
‘Sea View Nursing Home,’ read Jack, from the sign. ‘Well, that’s true anyway.’
‘Why are we here?’ asked Chloë. ‘I’ve had enough of old people for one day.’
‘I thought you could go for a walk along the coastal path and I’ll come and join you when I’m done here.’
‘Who are you visiting?’
‘The father of someone I used to know.�
��
‘This day,’ said Chloë, ‘hasn’t really turned out the way I was expecting.’
‘There’s a lovely little inn a couple of miles away, and after this I’ll buy us all a meal there.’
‘That sounds better.’
Frieda turned from them and went up to the main entrance. She was struck by how hot and clean and over-lit it was, and how quiet, almost as if nobody was there at all. Her footsteps rang out. She walked up to the reception desk and pressed a bell.
A woman came out of a side door, carrying a mug. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I was hoping I could see Mr May.’
‘Robbie? Is he expecting you?’
‘No.’
‘It’s quite late for visiting.’
‘I won’t stay long.’
‘I’m sure it will be all right. He doesn’t get many visitors, poor lamb. But now he’s had two in one week! What did you say your name was?’
‘I didn’t, but it’s Dr Frieda Klein.’
‘Are you family?’
‘I used to live round here, many years ago. I was a friend of his daughter’s.’
They walked up the broad stairs and along the landing until they came to a door that the woman pushed open.
‘Robbie,’ she said, putting her head into the room. ‘Robbie, there’s a lady here to see you. That’s right. Her name is Frieda.’
Robert May had a round pink face and a smooth bald head. He was wearing a soft green jersey and baggy trousers, with slippers on his feet, and had a blanket across his lap and a book of crossword puzzles on the table beside him. He looked very cosy.
He examined her in mild puzzlement. ‘I don’t think we’ve met.’
‘It was many years ago. I hope you don’t mind me coming like this, out of the blue. I was a friend of Sarah’s.’
He gazed at her with his blurred blue eyes. ‘You knew my Sarah.’
‘I only just found out that she’d died.’
He gave a sad chuckle. ‘You’re a bit late with your condolences, dear.’
‘I know. But I am sorry. Truly sorry.’ Frieda pulled a chair from the side of the bed and dragged it across so she was opposite him. ‘I liked her a lot,’ she said. ‘I went riding with her a few times.’
He smiled. Everything about him was soft and muted, as if he’d been rubbed away by time and grief. ‘Sarah loved horses. Whenever I see one, I think of her.’
