Tuesday's Gone fk-2

by Nicci French

  ‘By redecorating their house?’ said Karlsson.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Jasmine. ‘Don’t knock it. The places we live express us. Healing our house is the first step to healing ourselves. That’s what Lenny used to say.’ She looked at Frieda. ‘I know what you’re doing,’ she said.

  ‘What am I doing?’

  ‘You’re studying my house. You’re trying to do on me what we used to do on House Doctor.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d be qualified,’ said Frieda.

  ‘No need to be modest. I’ll tell you what you’re seeing. Looking around the room, you’re seeing a living room that’s surprisingly tasteful for a presenter of downmarket TV. The colour of the wall is based on something I saw in Pompeii. There are a couple of photographs of me with well-known personalities, but they were taken a suspiciously long time ago. Did you know that when House Doctor went off the air, Channel Four didn’t even have a website? Well, no, of course you didn’t because you hadn’t even heard of it so I’m sure you haven’t seen the shows I’ve done for other companies.’

  ‘I mainly watch sport,’ said Karlsson. ‘And not much of that.’

  ‘What you’re seeing,’ said Jasmine, ‘is the house of a fifty-one-year-old female TV presenter in an industry that doesn’t want fifty-one-year-old female TV presenters. You can see the photograph of one ex-husband, because we’re still good friends. You can’t see the photograph of the other because we aren’t. You might have expected this to be the house of someone who’s trying to hold on to the past, someone who is bitter about her fate. Tell me, Dr Klein –’

  ‘Please, call me Frieda.’

  ‘Frieda, is this the room of a bitter woman?’

  Suddenly Frieda thought of her grandfather. A friend of his had told her about what he’d do at a party if someone discovered he was a doctor and then, as people so often did, asked him about some ache or pain they had. In a concerned voice, he would ask them to close their eyes and stick out their tongue. Then he would walk away and start talking to someone else. She thought for a moment. ‘If this was a consultation,’ she said finally, ‘I’d be asking you what it is that you want me to tell you. It feels like you’re trying to force me to say something about you. But we’re not in a session. Sometimes a room is just a room. I think this is nice. I like the colour from Pompeii.’

  ‘Do you know what I did at university?’ said Jasmine. ‘I went to Oxford. I got a first in English. In fact, I got a double first. That’s not the kind of thing you expect from a woman who did a TV commercial for incontinence pads. Which, incidentally, paid for about half of this house. But do you know what it means? The double first, not the TV commercial.’

  ‘It sounds impressive.’

  ‘It means I would be a difficult person for someone like you to analyse. What people like you do is turn people’s lives into stories, stories with a moral and a meaning. But I learned that when I was at Oxford. I know how to analyse stories and I know how to turn things into stories. When I did House Doctor, and even when I did cut-price documentaries about people behaving badly on holiday, every one of them was a little story. That’s why you can’t just come into my house and fit me into the psychological story you might have about a faded TV presenter.’

  There was another pause. Karlsson looked stunned. He glanced at Frieda: it seemed to be up to her.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘What was your story with Robert Poole?’

  ‘He was a friend,’ Jasmine replied. ‘We worked together. In a way.’

  ‘Can you expand on that?’ said Frieda. ‘How did you meet?’

  Jasmine looked wistful. ‘It was a bit like something in a film. I go to the gym a couple of times a week but sometimes I also go for a run. One day, a few months ago, I was in Ruskin Park, behind the hospital. I was doing my stretches and he just struck up a conversation.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Just about the exercises I was doing. He said what a good thing it was to warm down like that, but then he said that one of the moves I was doing could be straining my back and he suggested other things. We got talking and went for a coffee, and I asked if he could help me with exercise.’

  ‘Like a personal trainer?’ said Karlsson.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why?’ said Karlsson.

  ‘What do you mean “why”?’ she said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Someone you just met in a park.’

  ‘How else do you choose people?’ she said. ‘I’ve got an instinct for people. He knew what he was talking about. I got on with him. I felt like it would be a good motivation for me.’

  ‘How much did you pay him?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Sixty pounds a session. Does that seem unreasonable?’ She looked at Frieda. ‘What do you charge?’

  ‘It varies,’ said Frieda. ‘Did he talk about his other clients?’

  ‘No,’ said Jasmine. ‘That was part of what I liked about him. When I was with him, he was completely focused on me, on the job in hand.’

  ‘Were you emotionally involved?’ asked Karlsson.

  Briefly she was flustered. ‘He was just a trainer,’ she said. ‘Well, not just a trainer. The good thing about Robbie was that he was someone I could talk to.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’ Frieda asked.

  ‘When you’re on TV, people think you’re different. He didn’t. He was a good listener. That doesn’t sound like much but there aren’t many people like that.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’ said Karlsson.

  ‘About a month ago.’

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘Same as ever – warm, interested, attentive. Then we had an appointment for the end of January and he didn’t turn up. I called him but he didn’t answer. And then all this … I wish I could say something that made sense of it all. I’ve been thinking and thinking about it ever since I heard. I really didn’t know anything about it.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about friends or family?’ said Frieda. ‘Or anything about his past or any other part of his life?’

  ‘No.’ Jasmine shook her head with a curious smile. ‘It was all about me. Maybe that’s why I liked him.’

  ‘And all you paid him was that sixty pounds a session?’ said Karlsson.

  ‘That’s right.’

  There was a pause. Karlsson gave a slight nod to Frieda, and she thought of the secret signals couples send each other when it’s time to leave a party. They both stood up. Jasmine held out her hand to Frieda, who took it and said, ‘You told me I wouldn’t be able to understand you by looking at your house and that I wouldn’t be able to be your therapist because you’d studied English. What did Robert Poole understand about you?’

  Jasmine pulled her hand out of Frieda’s grasp. ‘Now you’re just trying to be clever. The thing about Robbie was that he didn’t see me the way everybody else sees me. He just saw me for who I am. As simple as that.’

  As they came out of Jasmine Shreeve’s house into the quiet little Camberwell street, Karlsson seemed discontented. ‘Who the hell is this guy?’

  Water seemed to be getting into the boat. She couldn’t tell where from, but it was wet on the floor and all her clothes were damp. One morning it was so cold her trousers were stiff as well, like cardboard, and she had to grit her teeth when she pulled them on. Her hands throbbed and they were a bit swollen. She held them up to the window and examined them. She needed to look good for when he came. Not glamorous and simpering, he hated all of that – he liked strong women who could accompany him through a world full of dangers – but clean, fit, ready for whatever he wanted her to do.

  She had lost weight. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel it from her clothes, which hung off her, and from the new definition of her pelvic bone. Also, she hadn’t had a period for – how long? She couldn’t remember. She would have to look at the calendar where she’d marked it. It didn’t matter. But she was worried that she seemed to be having trouble seeing clearly – little motes floated in front
of her eyes, and things seemed out of focus at the edges. She wouldn’t tell him that and she’d make sure it didn’t interfere with the task in hand.

  Task in hand. What was it? Her hair, yes: she wetted it and combed it straight, and then, standing in front of the little mirror in what had once been the boat’s shower room, she tried to cut it, snipping at the ragged ends with the scissors. When she used to go to the hairdresser in town and sit in front of the large mirror, she would close her eyes and let André massage her scalp with lemony oil before she had it washed and conditioned and then, very slowly, cut and caressed and dried into shape. This was different – it was functional, a way of preparing herself, but it was hard to get the hair even in this dim light, and her face seemed to shrink, then loom out at her so she had the horrible feeling she was looking at a stranger, whose skin was the colour of mushrooms and whose eyes were too big and cheekbones too sharp. But she liked the feeling of the blades slicing through her wet locks.

  Afterwards, she washed what was left of her hair over the cracked sink, pouring cupfuls of water on to it and rubbing in the last of her shampoo. Her face felt rubbery with cold but she was hot as well. Hot inside. Her hands gripped the sink. It felt greasy and hard to hold on to and the boat seemed to be tipping to one side.

  She knew she needed to eat but she felt sick and couldn’t face the last of the potatoes with reeking tuna fish stirred into them. Tinned peaches: that would do. She couldn’t find the tin opener; she must have dropped it somewhere but the boat was dim and the batteries on the torch had died, and where were the matches? Everything seemed to be slipping from her grasp and she mustn’t let that happen. She was a soldier. Chin up. She found the kitchen knife and, squatting on the floor, started hitting the top of the tin with it, making a little dent that gradually grew bigger until the tin split and a tear-drop of peach juice oozed on to the surface. She licked it greedily with the tip of her tongue. Sweet, life-giving. Her eyes filled with tears. She inserted the knife into the hole and levered it back and forth, gradually making the opening bigger, but then she couldn’t wait any longer and lifted the gashed tin to her mouth and sucked at the fruit and it was only afterwards when she could still taste metal that she realized her lip was cut open and pulpy, her mouth full of blood. She tried to stand up but the floor shrank and the ceiling tilted towards her. She put her head on the wet boards and stared at the hatch, where he would come.

  Twenty-five

  On Sunday morning Frieda woke with a sickening lurch. There were beads of sweat on her forehead and her heart was pounding. For a few moments, her dream lingered: a man with a round face, blotched with ancient freckles, a soft, mirthless smile. Watching her, always watching her. Dean Reeve. She sat up in bed and made herself breathe calmly, then looked at her watch. It was almost ten to nine and she couldn’t remember the last time she had slept so heavily and so late. The doorbell was ringing: that must have been what had woken her. She pulled her dressing-gown around her, walked down the stairs and opened the door.

  Standing on the step, filling the whole space, blocking out the light almost, were Reuben, Josef and Jack. Their expressions were slightly uneasy. Her stomach lurched. Something terrible had happened. Someone had died. She was about to hear bad news. She prepared herself for the blow.

  ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Just say it.’

  ‘We wanted to tell you.’ Jack’s face flushed with emotion.

  ‘Before you hear from anyone else,’ said Reuben.

  ‘What?’ said Frieda.

  Reuben held up a tabloid newspaper. ‘It’s Terry Reeve, or whatever her real name is,’ he said. ‘It’s all rubbish and it’s fish-and-chip paper anyway. But they’ve got her story and – there’s no getting around it – she does mention you and it’s not especially flattering. And they’ve got a photo of you from somewhere. In which you look rather good, actually.’

  Frieda took a deep breath. ‘Is that all?’ she said.

  Josef held up a paper bag. ‘And we have pastries and buns. We will come in and make you strong coffee.’

  Frieda went back upstairs, showered and, to the sound of clattering plates and pans from downstairs, pulled on a pair of jeans and a black sweater, then pushed her bare feet into trainers. As she came down, she saw them arranging a random selection of mugs and plates on the table. Josef had built a fire. Reuben was pouring the coffee. Jack came in from the kitchen with a couple of jars and a packet of butter. An unopened one, when Frieda knew there was an opened one in the door of the fridge. What did it matter? Josef handed her a mug, and just as she raised it to her lips, the bell rang again. She opened the door to find Sasha standing there.

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard,’ said Sasha. ‘I just wanted to come right round and …’ Her voice faded as Frieda pushed the door open and she saw the scene inside.

  ‘We’ve got breakfast,’ said Frieda.

  Sasha held up a bag of her own. ‘I got some croissants from Number 9,’ she said. ‘They’re still warm.’

  Sasha came in and coffee was poured and there was an immediate chorus of voices saying all over again that it really wasn’t so bad and that nobody who knew her or, in fact, anyone else would take it seriously and that she could probably sue if she wanted. Frieda held up a hand. ‘Stop,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to look at any of this. Someone just tell me in two sentences what it says.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Basically that she’s a victim,’ said Reuben.

  ‘And it’s everybody else’s fault,’ said Jack.

  ‘Including yours,’ said Sasha. ‘But the photo’s actually rather glamorous. The caption’s not very nice.’

  ‘It is pile of rubbish, all of it,’ said Josef.

  They were all friends. They had come to see her out of the best of motives, but Frieda felt oppressed by the four pairs of eyes on her, as if they were waiting to see how she would react.

  ‘OK, OK,’ she said. ‘What does she say about me?’

  They looked at each other nervously.

  ‘Out with it,’ said Frieda.

  ‘She says you exploited her,’ said Sasha, in an anxious rush. ‘Which is ridiculous because you didn’t take any of the credit. And, anyway, you were the one who saved her.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel like that to her,’ said Frieda. ‘She’d found a kind of safety. I was the one who pushed her out into the big bad world.’

  ‘She says you wanted to be famous,’ said Reuben.

  ‘Anything else?’ said Frieda. More uneasy looks. ‘Just tell me. If you don’t tell me, I’ll hear it from people who aren’t my friends.’

  When Jack spoke, his mouth sounded dry. ‘They mention the victim, Kathy Ripon. They give the impression, you know …’ He couldn’t say any more.

  ‘It’s completely unfair,’ said Reuben. ‘Everyone knows that. I mean everyone involved. Everyone who matters.’

  Frieda thought of Kathy Ripon’s family, of everyone at the funeral. She swallowed hard. ‘I haven’t been murdered,’ she said. ‘It’s just my reputation.’ She pointed a finger at Reuben. ‘Don’t go quoting Shakespeare,’ she said sharply.

  He looked startled. ‘I wasn’t going to.’

  ‘I’ll have a croissant,’ she said, although she didn’t think she could swallow a mouthful of it.

  Josef ripped the photograph of Frieda out of the paper and showed it to her. It was an old picture that had been taken for an appearance at a conference a couple of years earlier. They must have got it online somewhere. She saw one word of the caption: ‘reckless’. She spread jam on the croissant and cut it up but she didn’t eat any. She heard a buzz of voices around her and heard herself responding from time to time and trying to manage a smile. She looked at the little group and thought of them contacting each other early on a Sunday morning and agreeing to come over, and she was touched by that. But when they started to leave, she felt relieved. Then she thought of something. She touched Jack’s sleeve. ‘Could you hang on?’ she said. ‘There’s s
omething I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘What? Is something wrong?’

  He looked apprehensive and ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up in a peak. Frieda tried not to smile – he was in his twenties, qualified as a doctor and training as a therapist, yet here he was, in his horrible orange quilted jacket and his muddy trainers, looking just like a small boy who’d been caught out in a misdemeanour.

  ‘No. I’ve a proposal for you.’ Jack’s expression changed from anxious to eager. He bobbed from foot to foot until she pointed to a chair. ‘Do you want more coffee?’

  ‘I’m OK. What is it?’

  ‘I’d like you to see Carrie Dekker.’

  ‘Carrie Dekker? Alan’s wife? Why? What’s happened now?’

  ‘As her therapist.’

  ‘Her therapist?’

  ‘You keep repeating what I’ve just said.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Jack, you’re a therapist. You have patients. That is your job. I’m asking if you would consider seeing Carrie. She needs help and I think you could be good for her.’

  ‘You’re not just saying this to be nice?’

  Frieda frowned at him. ‘Do you really think I’d recommend you to a woman in distress just to cheer you up? Anyway, she might decide you’re not right for her.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And you might decide, after the initial consultation, that it wouldn’t work.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘She’s in a state of shock. When she thought Alan had left her, that was catastrophic enough, but now after what Dean did to her …’

  ‘That’s too much for me,’ said Jack. ‘I don’t know how to deal with it.’

  ‘Yes, you do. And you can always talk to me about it. I’ll see what she has to say.’

  Jack stood up, zipping his jacket, pulling a yellow and purple beanie over his disordered hair. ‘By the way,’ he said suddenly. ‘Saul Klein.’