by Nicci French
They stared down at him now as he sat back in his chair with his tumbler of whisky, no added water, and his cigarette. He never used to smoke inside the house, but now there was no one to care. He looked from face to face: there was the first girl, Hazel Barton, with her radiant smile – he felt he knew her well by now. Then there was Vanessa Dale, the one who had got away. Roxanne Ingatestone, her asymmetrical face and grey-green eyes. Daisy Crewe, eager and a little dimple on one cheek. Vanessa Dale was safe, Hazel Barton was dead. What about the other two? He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another at once, sucking smoke down into his lungs, staring at the faces until it almost seemed that they were alive under his gaze and were looking back at him, asking him to find them.
That was a very enigmatic little email. What’s going on? Tell me how you are, tell me how Reuben and Josef and Sasha are? What about Chloë? I miss hearing the details of your days. I miss you. Sandy xxx
THIRTY-FIVE
Frieda had arranged to meet Sasha at eight o’clock. Sasha had rung to say there was something she needed to tell her. Frieda hadn’t known from her voice whether it was good or bad, but she did know it was important. Before then, as she had promised, she went to see Olivia.
She didn’t know quite what to expect, but she was taken aback by Olivia’s appearance. She came to the door in a pair of striped drawstring trousers, a stained camisole and plastic flip-flops. The varnish on her toenails was chipped, her hair was greasy – but, above all, her face, puffy and pale, was bare of any makeup. Frieda thought she had never seen Olivia without it. As soon as she got out of bed in the mornings, she would carefully apply foundation, eyeliner, thick mascara, bold red lipstick. Without it, she looked vulnerable and defeated. It was hard to feel angry with her.
‘Did you forget I was coming?’
‘Not really. I didn’t know what time it was.’
‘It’s six thirty.’
‘God. Time flies when you’re asleep.’ She made an attempt at a laugh.
‘Are you ill?’
‘I had a late night. I was just having a nap.’
‘Shall I make us some tea?’
‘Tea?’
‘Yes.’
‘I could do with a drink.’
‘Tea first. There are things we need to discuss.’
‘Like me being a crap mother, you mean.’
‘No.’
They went into the kitchen together, which was as bad as Frieda had ever seen it. It was a bit like the disorder Chloë had created in Frieda’s kitchen, with glasses and bottles everywhere, rubbish spilling out of bin bags on to the sticky tiles, puddles of wax over the table, a sour smell in the air. Frieda started stacking things in the sink to create a space.
‘She ran away from me, you know,’ Olivia said, who seemed not to notice the state of the room. ‘She might have told you I threw her out, but I didn’t. She said terrible things to me and then ran off.’
‘She says you hit her with a hairbrush.’
‘If I did, it was only a soft-bristled one. My mother used to hit me with a wooden spoon.’
Frieda dropped teabags into the pot and picked two mugs out of the sink to wash. ‘Things have got a bit out of control here,’ Frieda said. ‘You need to sort them out before Chloë comes back.’
‘We’re not all like you. Everything in its proper place. That doesn’t mean I’m not coping.’
‘You look ill. You’ve spent the afternoon in bed. The house is in a dreadful state. Chloë’s left. I gather Kieran’s left too.’
‘He’s a fool. I told him to get out but I didn’t think he’d take me literally.’
‘How much are you drinking?’
‘You can’t tell me how to live my life, you know.’
‘Chloë’s in my house and we need to talk about how long she’s going to be there, and when you’ll be ready for her to come home. She can’t come home at the moment, can she?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘Olivia, she’s still a child. She needs boundaries and she needs order.’
‘I knew you were going to tell me I was a crap mother.’
‘I’m saying that Chloë needs to be woken in the morning, talked to in the evening. She needs a clean kitchen and food in the fridge, a room where she can do her schoolwork, a sense of stability.’
‘What about me? What about what I need?’
For a few minutes, there was silence. Olivia sipped her tea and Frieda made piles of dishes and pans and put bin bags out into the hall. After a while, Oliva said in a small voice: ‘Does she hate me?’
‘No. But she feels angry and neglected.’
‘I didn’t mean to hit her. I didn’t mean to tell Kieran to get lost. I wasn’t thinking straight. I just felt wretched.’
‘And maybe you’d had too much to drink.’
‘You’re like a stuck record.’
Frieda didn’t say anything to that, and a few moments later, Olivia spoke again: ‘I can hear myself saying these terrible things. I can hear my voice screeching obscenities. I can’t seem to stop myself, though. I know I’ll regret it later.’
Frieda attacked the pans with a scouring pad. She felt terribly tired, defeated by the disorder of Olivia’s days. ‘You need to take control of your own life,’ she said.
‘That’s all very well to say. Where do I start?’
‘Take one thing at a time. Clear up the house from top to bottom. Drink a little less. Or nothing at all. You might feel better just by doing that. Wash your hair, weed the garden.’
‘Is that what you tell your patients? Wash your hair and weed the bloody garden?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘This wasn’t how I imagined my life would turn out, you know.’
‘No, but I think –’ Frieda began.
‘It’s like the man said, we all need to be loved.’
‘What man?’
‘Oh, just a man.’ Olivia was beginning to cheer up. ‘It was a bit embarrassing, actually. I met him last night when I was a tiny bit the worse for wear. I was so upset by everything and I went to that nice wine bar and had a few drinks, and it was when I was going home that I bumped into him.’ She gave a small yelp of laughter – a mixture of shame and exultation. ‘The kindness of strangers, you know what they say.’
‘What happened?’
‘Happened? Nothing like that, Frieda. Don’t give me one of your looks. I tripped over on the street and there he was. My Good Samaritan. He helped me up and dusted me down, then said he’d make sure I got home safely.’
‘That was kind of him,’ said Frieda, drily. ‘Did he want to come in?’
‘I couldn’t just turn him away. We had another glass together. And then after a bit he went.’
‘Good.’
‘He seemed to know you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. I think he sent his regards. Or his love.’
‘What was his name?’
‘I don’t know. I asked him and he said that names weren’t important. He said he’d had several names, and it was easy to change them. He said you could change names the way you change clothes, and I should try it myself one day. I said I wanted to be called Jemima!’ She gave another of her raucous bursts of laughter.
But the air had cooled around Frieda. She sat down opposite Olivia and leaned across the table towards her, speaking with quiet urgency. ‘What did this man look like, Olivia?’
‘Look like? Well. I don’t know. Nothing to write home about.’
‘No, really,’ said Frieda. ‘Tell me.’
Olivia made the face of a sulky schoolgirl. ‘He had grey hair, cut very short. He was solid, I suppose. Not tall. Not short.’
‘What colour were his eyes?’
‘His eyes? You are strange, Frieda. I can’t think. Brown. Yes, he had brown eyes. I told him he had eyes like a dog we once had so they must have been, mustn’t they?’
‘Did he say what he did?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Why?’
‘He said he’d helped you recently. He said you’d remember.’
Frieda shut her eyes for a moment. She saw Mary Orton gazing at her as she lay dying. She saw a knife raised towards her – and then, like a flutter at the margins of her vision, she saw, or sensed, a shape, a figure in the shadows. Someone had saved her.
‘What else did he say?’
‘I think I talked more than he did,’ said Olivia.
‘Tell me anything you remember.’
‘You’re scaring me a bit.’
‘Please.’
‘He knew I had a daughter called Chloë and that she was staying with you.’
‘Go on.’
‘There’s nothing else. You’re giving me a headache.’
‘He didn’t mention Terry or Joanna or Carrie.’
‘No.’
‘Or send any message.’
‘Just his regards or love. Oh, and something about daffodils.’
‘Daffodils – what about daffodils?’
‘I think he said he’d once given you daffodils.’
Yes. Dean had sent a little girl across the park to her, bearing a bunch of daffodils and a message. Four words that Frieda had carried with her: ‘It wasn’t your time.’
She stood up. ‘Did you leave him alone at all?’
‘No! Well, I went to the loo, but apart from that – he didn’t steal anything, if that’s what you mean. He was just being kind to me.’
‘How many spare keys do you have?’
‘What? This is stupid. Anyway, I don’t know. I’ve got keys and so has Chloë and there are a few others knocking around, but I’ve no idea where they are.’
‘Listen, Olivia. I’m going to get Josef to come round and change all the locks in the house and fit proper safety devices on your windows.’
‘Have you gone mad?’
‘I hope so. He’ll come tomorrow first thing, so make sure you’re up in good time.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing, I hope. It’s just a precaution.’
‘Are you going?’
‘I’m meeting Sasha. But, Olivia, don’t go letting any more strange men into your house.’
THIRTY-SIX
Before his appointment with Sadie, Karlsson spent twenty minutes with Dora Lennox. They sat in the kitchen together, while Louise made loud clearing-up noises in the living room and hall. Karlsson thought that everything about Dora was pale – her thin white face, her bloodless lips, her small, delicate hands, which kept fiddling with the salt cellar. She seemed insubstantial. Her blue veins showed under her milky skin. He felt brutal as he took out the rag doll, hearing the suppressed whimper she gave on seeing it. ‘I’m sorry to distress you, Dora, but we found this in your room.’
She stared at it, then away.
‘Is it yours?’
‘It’s horrible.’
‘Did you do this, Dora?’
‘No!’
‘It doesn’t matter if you did. No one’s going to be angry with you. I just need to know if you did this yourself?’
‘I just wanted to hide it.’
‘Who from?’
‘I don’t know. Anyone. I didn’t want to see it.’
‘So you cut it up a bit and then wanted to hide it?’ Karlsson asked. ‘That’s OK.’
‘No. I didn’t do it! It’s not mine. I wanted to put it in the dustbin but then I thought someone would see it.’
‘If it’s not yours, whose is it?’
‘I don’t know. Why are you asking?’ Her voice rose hysterically.
‘Dora. Listen. You haven’t done anything wrong, but I just need to know how this came to be in your room, if it’s not yours.’
‘I found it,’ she said, in a whisper.
‘Found it where?’
‘I was at home one day on my own, ill. I had a temperature and had the day off school. No one else was there. Mum said she’d come back from work early and she left me a sandwich by my bed. I couldn’t read because my head hurt, but I couldn’t sleep either, and I just lay there listening to sounds in the street. Then there was a clatter and someone pushed something through the letterbox but I thought it would be junk mail or something. Then later, when I needed the bathroom, I saw it from the top of the stairs and I went down and picked it up and saw –’ She gave a small shudder and came to a halt, staring up at Karlsson.
‘You’re saying that someone pushed this through the letterbox?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cut up like this?’
‘Yes. It scared me. I don’t know why, but I just had to hide it.’
‘And it was done during the day, when normally no one would have been there?’
‘I had the flu,’ she said defensively.
Karlsson nodded. He was thinking that on any ordinary day it would have been Ruth Lennox who found the mutilated doll. A message. A warning.
This time Sadie had not put on any makeup or perfume. She had arrived early and ordered a tomato juice, and greeted Karlsson as if he was a business colleague. He bent down to kiss her cheek, which she turned away from him so he kissed her ear instead.
‘Get yourself a drink if you want. Then we can talk.’
He went and bought himself half a pint of beer, then took the chair opposite her. ‘I don’t know what there is to say,’ he began. ‘I behaved like an idiot. I’ve always liked you, Sadie, and I didn’t want to mess you around.’
‘But you did mess me around. If I’d known you just wanted one quick fuck on your night off, I wouldn’t have let you near me.’
‘I’m sorry.’ There was a silence and she regarded him coolly. He found himself talking, to fill it and to bring some warmth back into her unyielding face. ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘I’ve been a bit wretched.’
‘Lots of us are a bit wretched.’
‘I know. It’s not an excuse. My children – Mikey and Bella, you met them when they were younger – they’ve gone away with their mother.’
‘Gone away – for a holiday, you mean?’
‘No. She’s got this new man – she’s going to marry him, I guess, so he’s really their step-father – and he got a job in Madrid and they’ve gone there. The four of them, the happy family.’ He heard and hated the bitterness in his voice. ‘So they’ve gone away for two years. I’ll see them, but it won’t be the same. Well, it hasn’t been the same since they moved out, of course. I kind of lost them then, but now I feel I’ve really lost them. And now that they’ve gone, I …’
He stopped dead. He suddenly found he couldn’t continue, couldn’t tell Sadie that he didn’t really know what his life was about any more. That he woke each morning and had to make an effort to face the world.
‘I thought I could fill the gap a bit,’ he said lamely. ‘Just to get through.’
‘Fill the gap with me?’
‘I suppose so. I feel detached from everything, as if everything is happening to someone else and I’m watching it, like in a film. So when I woke that morning and saw you lying next to me, I just – well, I knew I’d made a mistake and I wasn’t ready for you or anyone.’
‘So that’s it?’
‘Yes.’
‘You should have thought about it before.’
‘You’re right.’
‘I’m a person, me. Someone you used to call a friend.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m sorry about the way you’re feeling. It must be hard.’ She stood up, her tomato juice unfinished on the table.
‘Thank you for being honest with me, in the end. If you ever feel in need of comfort again, call someone else.’
Frieda arrived back at her house just before Sasha. She called Josef, who said he would go round to Olivia’s immediately, put bolts on the front and back door and change all the locks the next morning. Then she called Karlsson, but only got his voicemail. She didn’t leave a message – what would she say? ‘I think Dean Reeve was in my sister-in-law�
�s house last night’? He wouldn’t believe her. She didn’t even know if she believed herself, but dread washed through her.
Sasha arrived just after eight, bearing a takeaway, steam rising from the bag. She was wearing a loose orange dress and her hair was soft around her face. Frieda saw that her cheeks were slightly flushed and her eyes bright. She pulled naan bread out of a damp brown paper bag and laid it on a plate. Frieda lit candles and pulled a bottle of wine out of the fridge. She thought how strange it was that even in front of Sasha she could so successfully conceal her distress and fear. Her voice sounded steady; her hands as she poured wine were steady.
‘Is Chloë still here?’
‘Yes. But she’s seeing her father tonight so I have the house to myself for once.’
‘Do you mind?’
‘I don’t think I had a choice.’
‘That wasn’t the question.’
‘Sometimes I come in,’ Frieda said, ‘and she’s made herself completely at home. Mess everywhere. School stuff slung every which way. Dirty dishes in the sink. Sometimes her friends are here as well. Not to mention Josef. There’s noise and chaos and even the smell is different. And I feel like an intruder in my own home. Nothing belongs to me in the same way. It’s all I can do not to run away.’
‘At least it’ll soon be over. She’s only here for a week, isn’t she?’
‘That was the agreement. This looks good. Wine?’
‘Half a glass. So I can clink it against yours.’
They sat at the table facing each other and Frieda lifted her glass. ‘So, tell me.’
Sasha didn’t lift hers, just smiled radiantly. ‘Do you know, Frieda, the world seems sharper and brighter. I can feel energy pumping through me. Every morning I wake up and the spring outside is inside my body as well. I know you’re anxious that I’ll let myself get hurt again – but you’ve met Frank. He’s not like that. And, anyway, isn’t that partly what falling in love is? Opening yourself up to the possibility of feeling joy and being hurt? Letting yourself trust? I know I’ve made mistakes in the past. But this feels different. I’m stronger than I used to be, less pliable.’
