Friday on My Mind (10 page)

‘There’s no refunds,’ he said.

Frieda walked out onto the pavement. Which way should she go? Since it didn’t matter at all, she found it strangely hard to decide. She turned right and walked along the road, then right again along a residential street until she came to a small park. At one end was a children’s playground, but the rest was just rhododendron bushes and grass. She went and sat on a bench away from the playground. For a time she found it difficult to organize her thoughts. They felt more like images from a dream than anything coherent. She closed her eyes and saw Sandy, as in a montage, in fragments. Sandy with his slow smile, Sandy lying in bed and watching her while she dressed, driving in the car with her beside him, that last awful walk down to the Thames when she had broken with him. And then the way he had been after, stuck in his anger and distress. Suddenly she felt an urge to hand herself in. It would take only a phone call. Let someone else deal with all of this.

She was shocked by a strange sensation on the fingers of her right hand, warm and wet. She opened her eyes. It
was a tongue. A dog was licking at her fingers. It was a Staffordshire bull terrier with a studded metal collar, like a dog in a cartoon. She gently stroked its snout and it sniffed at her. She wondered whether this was wise. Weren’t they fighting dogs? Didn’t they bite you and then not let go even if you were dead?

‘You like dogs?’

The owner looked much like the dog. His round fat head was shaved except for a little neat moustache and goatee.

‘I like cats,’ she said.

‘He likes cats too,’ he said, with an ominous laugh. ‘Come on, Bailey.’ He hit the dog half-heartedly with the lead and Bailey slunk away.

Frieda saw a man wheeling a shopping trolley right through the middle of the park. It was piled with stuffed bin bags and rolled blankets. Then Frieda didn’t see anything at all because she was thinking about Dean Reeve. The thought of him nagged away at her and wouldn’t let her go. It was like a sharp stone lodged inside her shoe, hurting with every step.

Dean Reeve: she had met him five years ago and then, as far as the police were concerned, as far as the world was concerned, he had died. He had killed himself. But Frieda knew that he wasn’t dead and ever since he had haunted her. He was like a figure in her dreams, watching her, watching over her. Once upon a time a young woman had tried to kill Frieda. She had stabbed her and stabbed her. But when the police arrived, the woman was dead, her throat cut. The police believed Frieda had done it in self-defence, but she knew it was Dean Reeve. Hal Bradshaw had taunted Frieda, tried to destroy her, and his house had
been burned down. People believed that Frieda had instigated it somehow, but she knew it was Dean Reeve. And a man had committed a terrible crime against Frieda when she was just a girl. Frieda had tracked him down, found him. The law could do nothing against him, but he had been found dead, brutally killed. Frieda knew that Dean Reeve had done it. She had broken up with Sandy. There had been cross words, bad feelings, and now Sandy was dead. It had to have been Dean Reeve. It just had to.

Frieda got up and started to walk out of the park. There was only one way to begin. She walked to the station and caught the train going north of the river. She changed at Shadwell onto the Docklands Light Railway and headed east. She was retracing a journey she had taken before but it felt different. Looking out of the window at the back gardens, the allotments, the junk yards, the piles of tyres, it felt like a foreign city, as if she didn’t belong.

Frieda got out at Beckton. She knew the way. Dean Reeve had disappeared. His only brother was dead. But Dean Reeve had a mother, June. She lived in the River View Nursing Home and Frieda had visited her there. As she walked into the front entrance, the smell of floor cleaner and disinfectant vividly brought back a memory of that shrivelled old woman, the woman who had done terrible things with Dean. Frieda walked up to the front desk. There was nobody there. She rang a bell and a gaunt, harassed woman in a nurse’s uniform emerged from an inner office. Frieda forced a smile.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘My aunt’s here. June Reeve. I wonder if you could tell me where she is.’

The woman seemed puzzled. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. And your name is?’

‘Jane. Jane Reeve.’

‘Her niece, you say?’

Frieda met her gaze; her face, with its new glasses and haircut, felt naked. ‘That’s right.’

‘I’ll just check.’ Frowning, the woman disappeared back into the office.

Frieda looked at the front desk: there was a phone and a computer on it. The sort of computer you would check for patient information, so where had the woman gone? Something was wrong. The woman knew who she was. She turned at a sound behind her: a man was pushing a trolley along.

‘I’ve got something for June Reeve,’ she said.

The man stopped.

‘Didn’t she die?’ he said. ‘I think she died. The manager’s going to the funeral in three days’ time, at the crem down the road. I’m sure that’s what she said. Hang on, I’ll –’

‘That’s all right,’ said Frieda.

It took a great effort. Inside, a voice was screaming at her to run, to get out of there as quickly as possible. She turned and walked at a normal pace outside onto the street. It felt like slow motion, as if she were in a nightmare, walking in wet sand. She cursed herself for her carelessness. Karlsson knew about her and June Reeve. He had even been to this very place with Frieda. She wasn’t just up against Hussein, she was even perhaps up against Karlsson, and he knew her. He knew her as well as anyone. She turned a corner and then another corner. She didn’t dare make for the DLR. They might guess she’d head there. She needed to walk away in a completely different direction.

As she walked, she thought. June Reeve was dead but there was still the funeral: on Monday at the local crematorium, the man had said. Would Dean go to that? Perhaps. And would the police?

She saw a bus pulling up at a stop and jumped on it without even checking the destination. She went upstairs and sat at the front, where she could see the street. It seemed unreal, like a film she was watching. She knew that she would go to June Reeve’s funeral, because she could think of no other way in which she could find Dean. This frail thread was all she had to lead her to the man who had killed Sandy.

Frieda had not realized how tired she was until she sat down with a tumbler of whisky as the summer sky darkened in the window frame. She had eaten a poached egg on toast at a little café down the road, looking out at the flow of people passing on the street outside. Now she thought about what she should do tomorrow, which seemed an appalling blank. She remembered that when she was a student one of her professors had once said: ‘If you can’t solve a problem, then find a problem you
can
solve.’ A name came into her mind and she held it there.

Miles Thornton.

Frieda woke to the sound of pipes banging and a man shouting in a language she didn’t recognize. She lay for a few moments, looking up at the ceiling, which was cracked and stained. In her own little house, the cat would be walking from room to room, where everything was clean, neat, ordered. Her bed was made, waiting for when she would return.

It was still early, but she rose and swiftly washed in cold water, then dressed in her new bright skirt and top, her head feeling oddly light after her haircut. As she went down the flights of stairs, a young woman sitting hunched in a corner of the stairwell, smoking, lifted her head and stared at her, but incuriously. In the courtyard a bristle-haired boy with jug ears was cycling round and round, singing to himself. Otherwise, the place felt deserted; under the white sky, it was like a ghost town.

Frieda had a mug of bitter coffee in the café she had eaten in the previous evening, then set out for the Underground station. On the train, she thumbed through the pages of a
Metro
that was on the next seat and found a photograph of herself and a brief story. All around her, people were reading the same paper. She put on her fake glasses.

She knew the road that Miles Thornton lived on in Kensal Green, and she remembered that he had once
talked about living with three others above a shop that sold office furniture. It wasn’t hard to find. She knew that he had violently fallen out with his flatmates; one of them had moved out rather than live with him as he entered his period of most florid psychosis. The other two had sometimes locked him out of his own home and, on a couple of occasions, reported him to the police. But it had been Frieda who had finally had him sectioned, believing he was a danger both to himself and to others, and it was Frieda who he felt had betrayed him above all others. He had called her a cold-hearted bitch, a monster, a cunt. She remembered his face as he shouted at her, wrenched almost beyond recognition, his mouth wide and wet and his eyes brilliant with hatred. But she remembered him, too, as he was on calmer days, when he was terrified by himself.

She rang the bell, and when a voice crackled on the intercom, she announced herself.

‘This is Anne Martin. I’m from social services and it’s about Miles Thornton. Could I have a quick word?’

The person at the other end said something unintelligible and she was buzzed in. Her new sandals clacked on the boards as she went up the narrow stairs. A young man was standing at the open door of the flat, wearing smart trousers and a shirt but barefooted. He was holding a mug of coffee.

‘Hello,’ Frieda said, holding out a hand. ‘Anne Martin.’

‘Duncan Mortimer,’ he said. ‘Hi.’

‘Could I come in? This won’t take long.’

She didn’t wait to see if he would ask for identification, but walked past him into the flat. She should probably have bought a briefcase yesterday. She pulled her notebook from her bag.

‘Would you like some coffee?’

‘No, thank you. I won’t take up your time.’ She could hear a tap running down the hall, then a door slammed.

‘You said this was about Miles?’

‘Yes. Just a routine follow-up.’

‘Poor sod.’ He took a gulp of coffee. ‘Tell me. Have you seen him yourself?’

‘Seen him? You mean, before?’

‘I feel gutted about what’s happened and just want to know if he’s OK.’

‘Of course, we all do. That’s why I’m here.’

‘But will he be all right?’

Frieda looked at him; she felt that they were having different conversations. ‘That’s impossible to say, until we find him.’

‘Find him?’

‘You did know that Miles has been missing for several weeks?’

‘What?’ She started to speak, but he interrupted her. ‘Don’t you know?’

‘Know what?’

‘Haven’t the police told you?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘He’s come back.’

‘Miles has come back?’

‘Yeah. He turned up yesterday. I thought that was why you were here.’

‘Oh,’ said Frieda. She pushed her glasses back up her nose and tried to keep her expression neutral. ‘Well, that’s good news.’

The young man’s laugh was harsh and unsteady. ‘You think so? He’s in a complete fucking mess.’

‘Psychotic?’

‘That’s the least of it. He’s off his head, as far as I can make out. And he’s badly injured. Well, that’s the polite way of putting it. I spoke to his poor mum. She said he looked as if he’d been tortured.’

The room suddenly seemed smaller and colder.

‘What does that mean?’ Frieda asked.

‘It’s all I know. She was weeping so hard I didn’t like to ask her for details. I wanted to go and see him but he probably doesn’t want to see me. We didn’t part on very good terms.’

‘Do you know where he is?’

‘He’s in that psychiatric hospital south of the river. Hang on, I wrote down the name.’

‘It’s all right. I know the one you mean.’

‘If you see him, tell him I said hi. Tell him I said get well soon.’

‘I will.’

After she’d gone to an internet café to look up the time that June Reeve’s funeral would take place the day after tomorrow – it was eleven fifteen at the East London Crematorium – Frieda bought a cinnamon pastry from a bakery on the high street, then went into a quiet square to eat it and to think. She sat on a wooden bench; the sun was warm on her exposed neck and bare legs; a pigeon pecked at the grass a few feet away. She ate the pastry very slowly, feeling its stodgy sweetness comfort her. Tortured. What did that mean? Who would have done such a thing? The question was like an ill wind blowing through her, making her feel chilly in spite of
the summer heat. Because she thought she knew the answer.

She opened her
A-Z
, found herself on the map and saw she was near Peckham Rye Park. She would go there and she would decide what to do next; she would make herself a plan, a grid for the hours ahead. Frieda was a woman who ordered her days. Even when she was relaxing, she did so purposefully, setting aside time for friends, or for making her drawings in her little garret room. Now the day seemed large and shapeless. She sat in the ornamental garden, in the flat summer green of the park. For a while, she concentrated upon the fact of Miles Thornton’s reappearance, and his torture. But it was like a foggy darkness that she couldn’t grasp and she let it slide back into her mind. She would retrieve it later.

Normally she would be in her consulting room now, sitting in her red armchair, watching the face of a patient opposite her and listening to their words or their silence. She’d let them go and there was no way of knowing whether they were all right or not. Her mind turned to Josef and his mournful brown eyes, to Reuben, to her niece Chloë, who had always known that when she was in trouble or need – as she often was – she could turn to Frieda. Not any more.

Then she let herself think of Sasha and Ethan, and her heart constricted painfully. Of everyone she had left behind, it was they who worried her the most. Chloë was often chaotic, but she was also angry and resilient. Sasha, on the other hand, never fought her own corner. She was vulnerable and needy, especially now that she
was a single mother with a demanding job, a small child, an angry ex and a nanny who, as far as Frieda could tell, was self-righteously unsympathetic. And Ethan couldn’t stand up for himself. However much he retreated under the table to his own small place of safety, in the real world he had a crumbling mother, a wounded and angry father, and a hard-voiced nanny who called him a ‘bad boy’.

She consulted her
A-Z
once more, then made up her mind. Ten minutes later she was on the train that went from Peckham Rye to Dalston Junction. From there she walked to the bus station and took the 243 towards Wood Green. She was the only person on it, apart from a small, sad-looking woman with a bedraggled miniature dog at her feet. Neither of them paid any attention to her. She got off at Stoke Newington and went into a small health-food café where she bought a vegetable wrap and a bottle of water. Then she walked towards Sasha’s house. It took an effort not to glance round continually. She kept a steady pace as she passed the door, looking sideways but seeing nothing. The curtains upstairs were closed, the shutters downstairs half open. There was no sign that anyone was in. She walked to the top of the road and leaned against a plane tree. She wasn’t hungry but ate some of her wrap, watching to see if anyone came or went. Sasha would be at work for a few more hours, but Ethan and Christine would surely turn up.

At two o’clock, she left her post and walked the short distance to Clissold Park. She had been there many times before, with Sasha and Ethan, sometimes Frank as well – and a few times with Sandy. They had taken Ethan in his
buggy when he was a small baby and shown him the ducks, the deer. For a moment, she almost felt him beside her now, looking at her, listening, throwing back his head in laughter, taking her hand in his. But, no, he was dead – murdered – and she was alone. How had they come to this?

She stood by the enclosure where the deer were kept and put her face to the fencing, and then she saw them on the other side, half hidden by trees. Ethan first, his face red and blotchy, and there was Christine beside him, holding his hand and pulling him. He was crying; now she could hear him, though she couldn’t make out the words and perhaps there were no words, just a sobbing wretchedness. Christine was tugging him, her face set hard. She wasn’t responding at all to his distress, simply dragging him along as if he were a heavy object that needed to be moved to a different place. Ethan stumbled and she kept on walking at her brisk, steady pace while he hung from her. ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy,’ he was saying, and reaching behind him, pulling to go back in the direction they had come from, his face screwed up and blubbery with tears.

Frieda stood quite still and watched them as they disappeared round the bend in the path and his sobs died away. Her fists were clenched; her heart was clenched. It took all her strength not to run after them and wrench the child from the woman’s grip. But she did not. She turned and walked down the path they had come from. She noticed items scattered in front of her and, bending down, discovered they were some of Ethan’s miniature wooden animals – the ones he took with him under the table into his imaginary world. That was what he had
been trying to get back to. She picked them up one by one, carefully checking that she had not missed any and brushing off the dirt.

Frieda walked for several hours that afternoon, missing her familiar comfortable shoes. She walked down to the canal, past all the houseboats, some of which were large and freshly painted and others that looked like floating slums, then all the way to Islington, coming up at the tunnel and descending again until she came to the Caledonian Road. She walked past Sandy’s old flat, though she knew she shouldn’t, and let herself imagine walking to her own house. She went instead to the little nature reserve by King’s Cross, where she sat for a while looking at the barge that had been turned into a herb garden and hearing the shouts of the schoolchildren who were being taken round by a volunteer.

Then, when it was early evening and the sun was dipping lower in the sky, she walked back to Stoke Newington and stood once more at the top of Sasha’s road. She knew that Sasha would come back from work from the opposite direction and sure enough, just past six, she saw her friend making her slow way towards her house. Even from a distance, she appeared thin and her shoulders had a familiar droop. When she got to the door, she dropped her key and knelt down to retrieve it from the dirt. When she stood up again, she didn’t immediately open the door. It was as if she was fortifying herself for an ordeal. At last she went inside.

Four minutes later, Christine marched out, crisp and neat and vigorous. Lights went on upstairs. Frieda waited for a few moments, then went to Sasha’s door. She had
bought some envelopes earlier and put the wooden animals into one, writing Ethan’s name in large block capitals. She pushed it through the mailbox and, before she weakened, she walked swiftly away.