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Waiting for Wednesday

Page 13

by Nicci French


  In the bathroom: a bar of unscented soap, apple hand-wash, electric toothbrush – his and hers – and dental floss, shaving cream, razors, tweezers, a canister of deodorant, face wipes, moisturizing face cream, two large towels and one hand towel, two matching flannels hung on the side of the bath, with the tap in the middle, a set of scales pushed against the wall, a medicine cabinet containing paracetamol, aspirin, plasters of various sizes, cough medicine, out-of-date ointment for thrush, a tube of eye drops, anti-indigestion tablets … Frieda shut the cabinet.

  ‘No contraceptives?’

  ‘That’s what Yvette asked. She had an IUD – the Mirena coil, apparently.’

  In the filing cabinet set aside for her use in her husband’s small study, there were three folders for work, and most of the others related to her children: academic qualifications, child benefit slips, medical records, reports, on single pieces of paper or in small books, dating back to their first years at primary school, certificates commemorating their ability to swim a hundred metres, their participation in the egg-and-spoon race or the cycling proficiency course.

  In the shabby trunk beside the filing cabinet: hundreds and hundreds of pieces of creativity the children had brought back from school over the years. Splashy paintings in bright colours of figures with legs attached to the wobbly circle of the head and hair sprouting like exclamation marks, scraps of material puckered with running stitch and cross stitch and chain stitch, a tiny home-made clock without a battery, a small box studded with over-glued sea shells, a blue-painted clay pot, and you could still see the finger marks pressed into its asymmetrical rim.

  ‘There are also several bin bags full of old baby clothes in the loft,’ said Karlsson, as she closed the lid. ‘We haven’t got to them yet. It takes a long time to go through a house like this. Nothing was thrown away.’

  ‘Photo albums?’

  ‘A whole shelf given over to them. She wrote the date and occasion under each. She didn’t do motherhood by halves.’

  ‘No.’

  Frieda went to stand by the window that overlooked the garden. There were drifts of blossom around the fruit tree, and a cat sat in a patch of sunlight. ‘There’s nothing here she wouldn’t want to be seen,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I always think that nobody’s life can tolerate a spotlight shone into its corners.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But from everything you tell me and everything I’ve seen, hers seems entirely ready for the spotlight, don’t you think? As if this house was a stage.’

  ‘A stage for what?’

  ‘For a play about being good.’

  ‘I’m supposed to be the cynical one. Do you mean you think nobody can be that good?’

  ‘I’m a therapist, Karlsson. Of course that’s what I think. Where are Ruth Lennox’s secrets?’

  But of course, she thought, several hours later and sitting at Number 9 – her friends’ café near where she lived – real secrets aren’t found in objects, in schedules, in the words we speak or the expressions we put on our faces, in underwear drawers and filing cabinets, deleted texts, and diaries pushed to the bottom of the bag. They are lodged far deeper, unguessable even to ourselves. She was thinking about this as she faced Jack Dargan, whom she supervised and, even during her convalescence, met at least once a week to track his progress and listen to his doubts. And Jack was a thorny ball of doubt. But he never doubted Frieda: she was the constant in his life, his single point of faith.

  ‘I have a favour to ask,’ Jack was saying animatedly. ‘Don’t look anxious – I’m not going to let down my patients or anything. Especially not Carrie.’ Since discovering that her husband Alan had not left her but had been murdered by his twin, Dean Reeve, Carrie had been seeing Jack twice a week and he seemed to have done better than even Frieda, who believed in him, had expected. He laid aside his self-conscious pessimism and his awkwardness and concentrated on the woman in distress.

  ‘What is this favour?’

  ‘I’ve written a paper on trauma and before I send it out I wanted you to look at it.’

  Frieda hesitated. Trauma felt too close for her to review it dispassionately. She looked at Jack’s flushed face, his tufty hair and ridiculous clothes (today he was wearing brown, balding jeans, a second hand yellow-and-orange shirt that clashed with his colouring and his hair, and a green waterproof even though the sky was cloudless). In his confusion, he reminded her of Ted Lennox, of so many other raw and self-conscious young men.

  ‘All right,’ she said reluctantly.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘You can always ask.’

  ‘But you won’t always answer. I know.’ Jack avoided her eyes. ‘I’m only asking because the others won’t and –’

  ‘What others?’ Frieda interrupted.

  ‘Oh, you know. The usual suspects.’

  ‘Am I that scary? Go on, then.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘That’s what you – they – wanted to ask?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The paper you’ve written was just an excuse?’

  ‘Well, yes. Kind of – though I have written it. And I would like you to look at it if you have time.’

  ‘And I’m assuming that you’re asking me because you’re worried that I’m not.’

  ‘No – well, yes. You seem –’ He stopped.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Brittle. Like an eggshell. More unpredictable than you usually are. Sorry. I don’t mean to offend you. But maybe you aren’t taking your recovery seriously enough.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All of you?’

  ‘Well – yes.’

  ‘Tell everyone – whoever takes it upon themselves to be worried for me – that I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re angry.’

  ‘I don’t like the thought that you’ve been discussing me behind my back.’

  ‘Only because we’re concerned.’

  ‘Thank you for your concern, but I’m fine.’

  Later that afternoon, Frieda had a visitor she wasn’t expecting who brought the recent past flooding back. She opened her door to find Lorna Kersey standing on the doorstep, and before Frieda had time to say anything, she had stepped inside and closed the door behind her with a bang.

  ‘This won’t take long,’ she said, in a voice high and cracked with rage.

  ‘I won’t pretend I don’t know why you’re here.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs Kersey.’

  ‘You killed my daughter and now you say you’re sorry for my loss.’

  Lorna Kersey’s daughter, Beth, had been an unhappy and dysfunctional young woman who suffered from paranoid delusions and who had killed Mary Orton. Frieda had got to the house too late to stop her. The vividness of the flashbacks in which she remembered Beth standing over her with a knife, and re-experienced the blade slicing through her, still woke her in the night, drenched in sweat. She had known that she was dying, felt herself sliding into darkness and oblivion – yet she had survived and Beth Kersey had not. The police had called it self-defence and even Karlsson hadn’t believed Frieda when she insisted that it was Dean Reeve who had killed Beth and saved her life.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ said Frieda, steadily. It would do no good to tell Lorna Kersey she hadn’t killed her daughter. She wouldn’t believe her, and even if she did, what did that matter? Beth, poor lonely Beth, was dead, and a mother’s anguish was etched into Lorna Kersey’s face.

  ‘Yo
u came to me and you got me to tell you things about Beth we never told anyone. I trusted you. You said you would help find her. You made me a promise. And then you killed her. Do you know what it feels like to bury a child?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No. Of course you don’t. How can you bear to get up in the morning?’

  Frieda thought of saying that Beth had been very ill, that in her frantic sickness of the mind she had slaughtered an old woman and would have killed her, Frieda, as well. But of course Lorna Kersey knew all of that. She wanted someone to blame and who more obvious than Frieda?

  ‘I wish there was something I could say or do that would –’

  ‘But there isn’t. There’s nothing. My child’s dead and now she’ll never be all right. And you did that. In the name of helping people, you destroy them. I’ll never forgive you. Never.’

  Frieda – you sounded a bit distracted today. I know that something is up but in spite of everything that’s passed between us, you’re not very good at confiding in me, are you? Why? Are you scared of being beholden – as if I’ll have some hold over you? I think you feel you have to deal with things by yourself, as if it’s some kind of moral obligation. Or maybe you don’t trust other people to help you. I guess what I’m saying is that you should – can – trust me, Sandy xxx

  SEVENTEEN

  The Sir Philip Sidney was a pub on the side of a busy road. It looked lost and abandoned between a petrol station and a furniture store. When Fearby walked in he recognized his man immediately and he knew at the same moment that he was a policeman, or an ex-policeman. Grey suit, white shirt, striped tie, black shoes. Slightly overweight. Fearby sat down beside him.

  ‘Drink?’ he said.

  ‘I was just leaving,’ said the man.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘You don’t need to know,’ said the man, ‘because we’re never going to meet again. You know, we all got pretty sick of you. On the force.’

  ‘They got pretty sick of me on my paper as well,’ said Fearby.

  ‘So you must be feeling chuffed with yourself.’

  ‘Is that what you’ve dragged me out here to tell me?’

  ‘Are you finished with the story?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Fearby. ‘Conley didn’t kill Hazel Barton. Which means someone else did.’

  ‘The police are not currently pursuing other leads. As you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fearby. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘I was wondering if you had any avenues of enquiry?’

  ‘Avenues of enquiry?’ said Fearby. ‘I’ve got a room full of files.’

  ‘I was having a drink once,’ said the man, in a casual tone, ‘and someone told me that on the morning of the Hazel Barton murder, a few miles away in Cottingham, another girl was approached. But she got away. That’s all. It was just something I heard.’

  ‘Why wasn’t this given to the defence?’

  ‘It wasn’t thought relevant. It didn’t fit the pattern. Something like that.’

  ‘So why are you telling me now?’

  ‘I wanted to know if you were interested.’

  ‘That’s no good to me,’ said Fearby. ‘That’s just pub chat. I need a name. I need a number.’

  The man got up. ‘It’s one of those things that irritate you, that won’t let you go,’ he said. ‘You know, like a little stone in your shoe. I’ll see what I can do. But that will be it. One call and then you won’t hear from me again.’

  ‘You were the one who called me.’

  ‘Don’t make me regret it.’

  Frieda ordered a black coffee for herself, a latte and a Danish for Sasha. She sat at the table and opened the newspaper. She turned page after page until she reached the article she was looking for. Just a few minutes earlier Reuben had been shouting down the phone at her about it, so she was prepared. She skimmed it quickly.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, suddenly, as if she’d been jabbed. There was a detail she hadn’t expected.

  ‘What’s happening with your home improvement?’ Sasha asked. ‘I knew that Josef was giving you a new bath. I didn’t realize it would take so long.’

  ‘I’ve almost forgotten what my old bathroom was like,’ said Frieda. ‘Or what it was like to have a bathroom.’

  ‘He probably thought of it as a kind of therapy for you,’ Sasha said. ‘Maybe a hot bath is the one experience you allow yourself that’s a complete indulgence with no redeeming moral features. So he thought you’d better have a good one.’

  ‘You make me sound … bleak.’

  ‘I think it was also therapy for Josef.’

  Frieda was puzzled. ‘Why would it be therapy for Josef?’

  ‘I know that you were there when Mary Orton was killed. I know how terrible it was for you. But Josef knew her as well. He looked after her, repaired her house. And she looked after him. Her Ukrainian son. Better than her English sons.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Frieda.

  ‘When that happened to her and to you, it hit him hard. I have the feeling that when something bad happens to him, he doesn’t talk about it. He gets drunk or he makes something for someone.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Frieda. ‘I just wish his therapy wasn’t so messy. And so loud.’

  ‘And now you’re getting written about in the papers again. Do you ever get sick of being picked on?’

  Frieda let a few moments go by. ‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know about this, but there’s something you should know.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘These researchers targeted four psychotherapists. I’m one, of course. Reuben’s another. One of them is Geraldine Fliess. They probably chose her because she’s written about extreme mental disorders. And the other is James Rundell.’

  Neither of the women spoke immediately and they didn’t need to.

  ‘Who brought us together, I suppose,’ said Sasha.

  ‘And got me arrested.’

  Rundell had been Sasha’s therapist. When Frieda had discovered that he had slept with Sasha while she was his patient, she had not only confronted Rundell but attacked him in a restaurant and been taken to a police cell, from which Karlsson had rescued her.

  ‘Does the article mention me?’ said Sasha. ‘Sorry. I know that sounds selfish. I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘It doesn’t mention you,’ said Frieda. ‘So far as I can see.’

  ‘You don’t need to worry, you know. I am better. That’s all in the past. It doesn’t have power over me any more.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘In fact …’ Sasha paused, and Frieda looked at her enquiringly. ‘In fact, I’ve been meaning to tell you but there didn’t seem to be a right time. I’ve met someone.’

  ‘Really? Who is he?’

  ‘His name’s Frank Manning.’ Her face took on a soft and dreamy expression.

  ‘You have to tell me more than that! What does he do?’

  ‘He’s a barrister – a criminal barrister. I only met him a few weeks ago. It all happened so quickly.’

  ‘And is it …’ She hesitated. She wanted to ask Sasha if this Frank was single and free or, like several of Sasha’s previous relationships, there were complications. She feared for her beautiful young friend.

  ‘You want to know if he’s married? No. He’s divorced and he has a young son. Don’t look at me like that, Frieda! I trust him. If you met him you’d know what I mean. He’s honourable.’

  ‘I want to meet him.’ Frieda took Sasha’s hand in hers and pressed it. ‘I’m very glad. I should have guessed – you’re looking very radiant.’

 
; ‘I’m just happy – I wake up in the morning and I feel alive! I haven’t felt like this for so long. I’d almost forgotten how lovely it is.’

  ‘And he feels the same.’

  ‘Yes. He does. I know he does.’

  ‘I have to meet him. See if he’s good enough for you.’

  ‘I’ll arrange it. But, Frieda, you, Reuben, him, all in the article. Is that just a coincidence?’

  ‘The man running the research project is a psychologist called Hal Bradshaw. He works with the police and we were on the case that nearly got me killed.’

  ‘And you didn’t get on?’

  ‘We disagreed about various aspects.’

  ‘Do you mind if I have a look at the article?’

  Frieda pushed the newspaper across the table. Sasha leaned over and peered at it, not reading it through but seeing it in flashes. She took in the headline:

  SILENT WITNESSES

  She saw a row of photographs. A picture of Frieda that had been in another press report, a photograph of her taken in the street, caught unawares. There was a picture of James Rundell, more youthful than when she’d been involved with him, and a much older picture of Reuben. He looked like a psychoanalyst in a French New Wave movie.

 

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