Friday on My Mind (11 page)

Frieda went back to Primark. She needed clothes she could wear to a funeral. She looked through the racks, trying to find something that was dark and didn’t have a slogan blazoned across the front. She found some dark grey slacks and a brown pullover. They would do, though Chloë would have wrinkled her nose at the grey/brown combination. She went into a chemist’s and bought a cheap pair of sunglasses.

June Reeve’s funeral was due to begin at eleven fifteen the following day. The East London Crematorium was further out, towards Ilford, and Frieda set off early, taking the tube and then a bus, and she arrived just before ten. She walked through the large iron gates that led up to a building that might have been a Victorian library or a private school, with its façade of pillars and classical doorways. There was a large crowd for the funeral before June Reeve’s, a hundred people or more, in dark suits and dresses. They stood in groups, hovering, waiting to be allowed inside. Like all large funerals it was partly a sombre occasion and partly a family reunion. Frieda saw women greeting each other, hugging and smiling, then realizing where they were and looking sombre. The doors were opened and the mourners started to make their way inside. Frieda attached herself to a group on the edge who didn’t seem like family or close friends.

They walked into a large entrance hall. The Victorian
building had been boldly modernized, with plate glass and steel between the pillars. An official steered the group to the right into the East Chapel. It was like a church interior in stripped pine, from which religious symbols had been tactfully removed. Frieda sat in a pew right at the back and to one side. She was so lost in her thoughts that it came as a surprise when she had to stand up as she heard a creak behind her and a coffin was carried down the aisle. Frieda picked up the leaflet in front of her. Margaret Farrell. She looked at her dates and did the arithmetic. She’d lived to be ninety, or maybe eighty-nine.

The coffin was deposited at the front and a woman in a dark suit stood up and walked to the lectern. She didn’t look like a priest and she wasn’t. The woman described Margaret Farrell as a teacher, feminist, humanist, wife and mother, not necessarily in that order, and there was some laughter and snuffling around her. As people followed each other, delivering tributes, singing, playing a violin, it sounded like a good life. Certainly a far better life than June Reeve had led. Frieda felt a little ashamed at being there under false pretences. She suspected the police might be there, too, looking at people arriving at June Reeve’s funeral, but they wouldn’t think of checking the departures from the funeral before. At least, she hoped not.

Frieda heard snatches of poems and music that Margaret Farrell had loved but mainly she was thinking her own thoughts. She knew that Dean had visited his mother in the nursing home once or twice. Might he come to the funeral? It would be the last chance. The two names, Dean Reeve and Miles Thornton, were joined together in a tune she hated but couldn’t get out of her head.

The mourners stood up again and started to file out to a scratchy old jazz recording. As Frieda waited for the family members to move past, an old woman turned to her: ‘How did you know Maggie?’

‘Through reputation, mainly,’ said Frieda.

As they left the chapel, the official was there again, steering them away from the main entrance towards side doors that stood open, leading to the Garden of Remembrance. It reminded Frieda of the elaborate ways that therapists design their consulting rooms so that the arriving patient doesn’t bump into the departing one. The proprietors of the crematorium didn’t want one group of mourners to collide and remind each other that the chapel was just being rented, like a hotel room or a public tennis court.

The wreaths had been laid out on a patch of lawn that was as smooth as a carpet. People gathered around them and read the labels. Frieda was able to move to a group that was to one side, from where she could see the front of the building. The hearse was just pulling away and immediately another hearse drew up in the special bay in front of the portico. Slowly Frieda edged sideways, so that she could get a full view. The scene was completely different from an hour earlier. As the undertakers slid the coffin from the hearse and hoisted it to their shoulders, there was nobody there at all. Frieda moved a few feet forward and bent down to look at a very small bunch of wild flowers that looked as if it had been picked by hand. Attached to it was a piece of paper with a child’s drawing of a girl with a princess’s crown under a smiling sun and the words:
from sally
.

Frieda glanced round. Not nobody. A large woman was
standing on the steps. Probably a nurse. And two young men, both in jeans and dark jackets. Plain-clothes policemen. That was all. The woman walked in. The two men stayed outside. Frieda felt a nudge and gave a start. Had she been careless? She stood up and was faced by a woman of about her own age.

‘We’re driving over to the house,’ said the woman. ‘We’ve got space in the car. Can we give you a lift?’

‘That would be great,’ said Frieda.

As they walked down the drive, the woman talked about how Margaret Farrell had been her headmistress, thirty years before, and what she’d been like. Frieda rather wished she’d known her. When they reached the high road, Frieda said that she’d suddenly remembered that someone else had promised her a lift and the woman said it didn’t matter and Frieda felt rather bad about the whole thing.

An hour and a half later, Frieda stood in the entrance hall of the Jeffrey Psychiatric Hospital. She examined the large map of the building. It showed the toilets and the various food outlets, coffee shops and gift shops. But Frieda was looking at the staircases and the fire exits. It was like a party game. Find your way in and find your way out. She had visited the hospital from time to time, and she’d even been based there for a few weeks when she was a student, but she had never paid it that sort of attention. Now she stared and stared at the map, getting a sense of the building as if it were a body, seeing how it fitted together. She had already found out where Miles was and that the visiting time was later in the day.

She walked along the corridor and up three flights of
stairs. As she emerged onto the corridor she saw a man and a woman walking towards her, deep in conversation. She knew him. Sam Goulding. She’d referred a patient to him and they’d met to discuss her. But that had been a couple of years ago. He wouldn’t be expecting to see her and he was distracted. She looked to one side. But as they passed, she noticed a movement and he said, ‘Hey.’ She kept walking and didn’t respond. He hadn’t said her name and she wasn’t even sure it had been addressed to her. But still. She looked at her watch. It was eight minutes to one. If he remembered her, if he knew what had happened to her, he’d still have to make a phone call. Someone would have to make the connection. Even so. She looked at her watch again. Ten past one: whatever happened, at the latest she would have until ten past one and then she would go.

She turned right, reached Wakefield Ward and went up to the nurses’ station. A nurse was fiddling with a paper jam in a fax machine. She looked up.

‘I rang earlier,’ said Frieda. ‘I’m Miles Thornton’s cousin.’

‘Visiting hours start at three,’ said the nurse.

‘I explained that on the phone. I’ve just come down on the train. They said it would be all right. I’ll only be five minutes. You can check if you like.’

The nurse gave a tug at the paper. It was thoroughly stuck. ‘He’s down there on the left,’ she said. ‘Bed two.’

‘Thanks so much.’

Frieda looked at her watch. Four minutes to one. The ward was more like a network of corridors. In the first bed, a very old man was sitting up, staring straight in front of him. As Frieda walked past, his eyes didn’t even flicker.
The next bed, bed two, looked unoccupied, as if it had been left unmade. There was just a bundle of hair on the pillow that showed Thornton was there, unconscious or asleep. She knelt on the floor by his head. Three weeks earlier this face had been distorted with anger and resentment. Now it was swollen and discoloured, half swallowed by the pillow. Tentatively, Frieda put out a hand and touched his cheek.

‘Miles,’ she said. ‘It’s me. Frieda. Frieda Klein.’

He gave a sort of groan and his head shifted slightly.

‘Miles. You’ve got to wake up. I need to talk to you.’

His eyes opened and he looked at her, blinking. He raised his right hand towards her as if to shield himself. It was heavily bandaged. She took it in her hands as gently as she could. He gave another groan. Her touch seemed to be painful.

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ she said.

‘Drink.’

There was a jug of water on the table by his bed and a plastic cup. She half filled the cup and held it to his lips. He had to prop himself up to drink from it. She replaced the cup. She looked at her watch. One o’clock. She could see the front desk from where she was.

‘Where were you?’ she said.

‘Voice in dark,’ he said.

‘What voice? What did it say?’

‘Telling me. He was cross.’

She had heard this before. When he first came to see her, he was experiencing anxiety, but in the next sessions he had begun to talk about the voices he heard, about how angry they were with him, and Frieda had decided that talking therapy wasn’t going to be sufficient.

‘Was it the same voice as before?’

‘No. Not that. You’re wrong.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Didn’t just talk. Punish. Said punish.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Frieda. She was starting to think that this wasn’t going to amount to anything. It reminded her painfully of when the sessions had started to go awry.

‘No. Not that. Really punish.’

He started to fumble at the bandage on his hand.

‘No, don’t,’ said Frieda.

‘He came back every few minutes. Every few minutes. Took me to punish me. Then he’d come back every few minutes, day and night.’

Frieda looked at her watch again. Four minutes past one. It was nearly time to go. ‘What do you mean come back?’

‘Tied me up. Come back to hurt me more.’

Tears were running out of the corners of Thornton’s eyes. He pulled at the bandages. Frieda saw that he was in a state of terrible distress but he was still clearer than when she had last seen him. More lucid. More coherent.

‘Did my fingers,’ he said.

He pulled the last of the bandage off. The tops of the fingers of his right hand were nothing more than remnants. There were no fingernails and the upper joints were mangled and shapeless, as if they’d been flayed.

‘Oh, God,’ she said softly. ‘Where were you, Miles? Where?’

‘Far away.’ It was barely more than a whisper; a creak of sound. ‘Far, far away. Trussed up like a carcass for the journey. Bumping, bumping along, everything dark. Just a long road and then more dark. Nobody to hear me.
Nobody came. So many days. Days and nights and nights and days. I couldn’t count any more.’

‘You mean you went on a long journey?’

‘He took me to the sea.’

‘Who, Miles? Who took you and did these terrible things to you? You have to tell me.’

‘I could hear the sea all the time. Even when I was crying I heard the waves. They wouldn’t stop, on and on. He wouldn’t stop. Never left me, never went away, never let me sleep. There was a clock on the wall and I watched it. Never away for more than twenty minutes. On and on. Then let me go. He said tell her.’

‘Tell who?’

Frieda heard a sound. Two men had come into the ward, one in a suit, one in some sort of uniform. Security. Suddenly it felt like she’d left things too late.

‘You,’ said Thornton. ‘Frieda Klein. He said tell her. It’s for Frieda Klein.’

The two men were talking to a nurse.

‘Tell her it’s for Frieda Klein.’

‘I see,’ she said. And she did see.

She had to go. She stood up and started to walk in the opposite direction from which she’d come. She heard a voice behind her. She mustn’t look round and she mustn’t run. She remembered the map. There was another exit from this ward. She reached the door. It was closed and there was a sign: ‘Fire escape only. This door is alarmed.’ She tried to remember the map. Was there another exit further down the ward? She couldn’t risk it. Someone was shouting her name. She pushed the door open and immediately there was an electronic pulsing alarm. She ran down the stone stairs. The noise was so loud that it hurt.
One floor down, she pushed a door open and stepped almost into the arms of a man in a uniform.

‘There’s a woman in the ward above,’ Frieda said. ‘She’s causing a disturbance.’

The man ran past her into the stairwell. Frieda counted to five, then followed him back into the stairwell and went down rather than up. She counted the floors. On the ground floor, she saw the sign to the main entrance and went in the opposite direction towards the day clinic, which had its own exit and its own car park that led onto a different road. Within five minutes she was outside and away from the hospital, but she continued walking, taking a series of turns into different residential streets, until she was absolutely sure she wasn’t being followed.

She saw a bench and sat down. She needed to because her head was spinning and her legs shook. She almost felt as if she might faint. But she forced herself to calm down and to think clearly about what she had just heard.

Torture: to turn someone into an instrument, an object; to take away their humanity; to humiliate and wound them until all they are is pain, and then nothing. She thought of Miles Thornton’s wild, animal face and his creaking voice and his mangled stumps of fingers. She knew who had done that and she knew why he had done that, and for a few minutes she sat there and felt so sick and full of helpless anger and confusion that the world in front of her blurred.

Then she got out her notebook and pen and made a table of dates:

–
Tuesday, 10 June: last sighting of Sandy.

–
Monday, 16 June: Dr Ellison (who is she?) reported her concerns about his absence to the police.

–
Friday, 20 June: Sandy’s body found in the Thames.