Friday on My Mind (24 page)

‘Maria from Poland. Was she connected with an agency? Do you have her bank details?’

‘I paid her in cash. I know you’re not supposed to, but everyone does it.’

‘Do you have a phone number for her?’

Sasha took a piece of paper from her trouser pocket and handed it over. Hussein looked at it. ‘She probably used a pay-as-you-go phone?’

‘Probably,’ said Sasha.

‘Would Ethan’s father confirm your childcare arrangements?’

‘We’re separated. He leaves it to me mainly. He doesn’t really know what’s going on day to day.’

‘He’s a barrister, is that right? Frank Manning.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Has he talked to you about your friend, Frieda? About the legal implications?’

‘No, he hasn’t.’

‘Many people don’t realize how serious it is to interfere with a police inquiry. A person who is caught and convicted will go to prison. Do you understand that?’

‘Yes.’

Hussein leaned in more closely and put her hand on Sasha’s elbow. ‘I know about you and Frieda. I know that she has helped you in the past and that you owe her a debt of gratitude.’

She saw that tears were running down Sasha’s cheeks. Sasha took a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. Hussein felt so close. Just another push.

‘This insane behaviour cannot continue,’ she said. ‘The best thing you can do for your friend is to help us to find her.’

Sasha shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. Her voice was surprisingly firm. ‘I don’t know. I can’t help you.’

‘Do you understand what you’re risking?’ said Hussein. ‘You could go to prison. You’d lose everything. You’d be separated from your son.’

‘He’d probably be better off without me.’

‘Miss Wells. Do you expect us to believe this story? We can check it.’

Sasha wiped her face with her tissue. ‘I’ve told you everything I know. Check all you want.’

‘All right,’ said Hussein. ‘We’ll go through it one more time. And in more detail. And after that, we’ll go through it again. We have plenty of time.’

After Hussein and Bryant had gone, Sasha walked upstairs to Ethan’s room. He was asleep. She leaned down as she always did to check that he was still breathing. Sometimes she was so anxious that she woke him up to make absolutely sure, but this time he shifted slightly and gave a small whimper. Then she walked downstairs, picked up a phone and went out onto the little patio at the back of the house. She dialled a number and heard the click of it being answered.

‘Frieda?’

‘I’m here, Sasha.’

‘The police came to my house.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s all right. I repeated what you told me to say.’

‘I don’t mean that. I put you at risk. I put Ethan at risk.’

‘You saved me and you saved him as well.’

‘This will be over soon,’ said Frieda. ‘For you as well as for me.’

‘That’s what I was ringing about. In a way. I need to tell you something.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t tell you over the phone. This needs to be face to face.’

‘That’s a bit awkward at the moment.’

‘I have to see you.’

Frieda paused for a moment. ‘All right. Where?’

‘There’s a place on Stoke Newington Church Street. It’s called Black Coffee. Can we meet there at half past ten tomorrow?’

‘Have you got anyone to look after Ethan?’

‘Frank’s coming round this afternoon. He might be able to take him. Or I’ll bring him along. He’ll be glad to see you.’

‘So things are better with Frank.’

‘I’m trying to get him to do more.’

The next morning Frieda took the train up to Dalston early and she was in Stoke Newington Church Street at half past nine, an hour before her meeting with Sasha. The road was dotted with cafés. She walked past Black Coffee, then crossed the road to another café, about thirty yards further on. She sat near the window and ordered a black coffee. The café had a pile of newspapers for customers and she took one and opened it on the table in front of her. But she didn’t read it. Instead she gazed out at the street. Once, in what seemed a previous lifetime, she and Sandy had sat in restaurants and, as an amusement or an exercise, they had tried to guess the stories and problems of the people at other tables, what they were doing there. Now, looking at the passers-by on Stoke
Newington Church Street, Frieda did it for real. She saw the mothers, in groups, some of them pushing buggies, on their way back from dropping the older children at school. An old woman made her way with agonizing slowness along the pavement with a walker. At one point her walker got stuck where a driveway crossed the pavement. Over and over again she pushed the wheels against the edge of the driveway, and over and over again they wouldn’t quite get over. Frieda could hardly bear just to sit there watching. Finally two boys, who probably should have been in school, helped her over the tiny obstacle.

There was a bus stop right next to Black Coffee and a queue of people waiting. Two old women, one with a shopping bag on wheels. A young woman glancing anxiously at her watch, late for work. A young man, early thirties, bomber jacket, jeans, with earphones. Three teenagers, two boys and a girl. The girl looked like she was the sister of one of the boys. A middle-aged couple, together, but not speaking. He was doing something on his phone; she appeared irritated.

The bus arrived, obscuring the queue. When it left, the two old women had gone. The other woman was still looking at her watch. An old man and an old woman separately joined the queue, alongside two teenage girls. Another bus pulled up and then left. The young woman was gone. Frieda felt absurdly relieved. The two boys and the girl and the two teenage girls were gone. But the man with the earphones was still there. Another bus came and then another and another. Frieda came to see the queue as a kind of organism, permanent and permanently changing its constituent parts, mutating, shedding, accumulating. But the man with the earphones was still there.

Frieda ordered another coffee. On the other side of the road, further along, a car was parked on a yellow line. The light was shining on the windows, so she couldn’t tell whether anyone was inside. She looked at her watch. It was a quarter past ten. She saw the familiar green uniform of a traffic warden. She watched as he approached the car hopefully. Traffic wardens were paid by results, weren’t they? He leaned down towards the car. He seemed to be talking to someone. He moved on without taking action. Across the road, a bus came and went. The man with the earphones was still standing there. If the two of them had been in uniform it couldn’t have been any more obvious.

A young woman brought Frieda’s coffee.

‘Is there a loo here?’ Frieda asked.

‘Through the door at the back,’ said the woman, gesturing.

Frieda turned and walked through the door. Straight ahead of her was the loo door. To the right was a doorway that led to a storeroom, with cardboard boxes and canisters. On the left was a fire door. She pushed at it and found herself in a small side-street. She walked up it, away from Stoke Newington Church Street. After a couple of turns she found herself walking along railings, then went through an opening and into the park. She just hoped that people weren’t still looking for the have-a-go heroine.

Almost without thinking, she headed across the park, then out through the gate on the other side, southwards towards the river. For a time she felt her mind was in a fog that only slowly started to clear. So they had got to Sasha. She tried not to think about it and then she realized it was her responsibility, all of it, so she made herself think about it. She imagined the police interviewing Sasha, threatening
her with prosecution and with losing Ethan. Losing her son after having lost her partner. Then she imagined Sasha ringing her, what it must have cost her to lure her friend into a trap. Friend. Even saying the word silently to herself made her feel a pang of guilt. Was this what she did to her friends?

Suddenly she found herself on Blackfriars Bridge, staring at the water. A long open-topped boat passed under her. There was a party on board and some revellers at the back waved up at her and one shouted something she couldn’t make out. Next to them a dark-haired woman was standing alone, without a drink, both hands on the guardrail. Suddenly she looked up and saw Frieda and they seemed to recognize something in each other and then, almost instantly, the boat was too far away and the moment had gone.

Frieda took out her phone. It was tainted now; it would lead people to her. She leaned her hand over the railing and released it. It hit the water with a small splash she saw but couldn’t hear. She stared at the water and suddenly thought of Sandy. This was the river that had taken him and then had given him up. For the first time she thought of the sheer physicality of those days his body had been in the water, carried up and down with the tide, as if he were being breathed in and out.

When she arrived back in the flat she heard voices. She looked through the kitchen door. Ileana and Mira were sitting at the kitchen table. Although it was still early, they were drinking red wine from tumblers and there were the remains of a pizza in a box on the table.

‘There is left for you,’ said Mira. ‘And some of the wine.’

Ileana poured the last of it into a tumbler. It fizzed and
bubbled like Coca-Cola. Frieda took a sip. It tasted a bit like Coca-Cola as well. Mira looked at her appraisingly.

‘Hair good,’ she said. ‘Tired also.’

‘Thanks,’ said Frieda.

‘No, no,’ said Ileana. ‘Eat pizza, drink wine, then sleep.’

‘I’ll just make myself some tea.’

‘There is no tea. And there is milk but not good.’ Ileana gave a sniff.

‘I’ll go and get some,’ said Frieda. ‘Do you need anything else?’

It turned out that they did need other things, so many that Frieda had to find an old envelope and write a list.

It took longer than she expected. The list was surprisingly complicated. She twice had to ask the man behind the counter where something was. Each time he sighed, took his headphones off and walked laboriously round the shop. Once he had to climb on a chair, once he went back into a storeroom. Finally Frieda emerged from the shop. It was late afternoon, sunny, warm. But she just wanted to get into bed with a mug of tea. Not to sleep. There was no prospect of that. She just needed silence to process the events of the day.

Almost immediately she felt a nudge and looked round. It was Mira. Frieda was so startled that she didn’t know what to say.

‘Is no good,’ said Mira. ‘Police there.’

‘Where?’

‘In flat.’

Frieda still had difficulty speaking.

‘But how are you here, then?’

Mira seemed out of breath. Frieda couldn’t tell whether it was from physical effort or just the stress of it all.

‘Ileana open door. I hear, go into room, out window. I grab some of your things for you. Not much, I have no time.’

She held out a plastic shopping bag. Frieda took it. It didn’t feel like it had a great deal in it.

‘And this.’ Mira put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a wad of banknotes. ‘Is yours,’ she said.

‘Thank you. But how did you know where it was?’

‘Frieda. You put money behind the mirror.’

‘Yes.’

‘So I find it.’

‘Oh.’ Frieda looked down at the notes, then back again at Mira. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Very much.’

Mira glanced at the bag Frieda was carrying.

‘You keep food? Is OK.’

Frieda just shook her head and handed her the bag.

‘Flat no good now,’ said Mira. ‘You must go.’

‘Yes.’

Mira took Frieda’s free hand, not as though she were shaking it, more like she was restraining her. She pushed Frieda’s sleeve up. Then she took a pen from her pocket, clicked it on her chest and started writing on Frieda’s lower arm. Frieda saw it was a number.

‘You call us,’ said Mira.

‘Some time.’

‘Good luck from us,’ said Mira.

‘Yes. Will you be all right? With the police?’

Mira held up the bag. ‘Fine. I have been shopping.’

Frieda walked swiftly, her sunglasses on and her head held high, but she didn’t know where she was going. The police had been waiting for her at the café and they had also tracked her to her new place; everything was closing in on her, all the doors shutting. She briefly thought of calling Josef again, but she no longer had a phone and, anyway, he had done enough, and she couldn’t go to yet another strange and lonely room.

She walked until she had no idea of where she was, in a labyrinth of side-streets and shabby houses. There she stopped and looked inside the bag that Mira had given her. Inside she found her cafetière, the new red skirt that she hated, two shirts, the dark trousers she had bought for June Reeve’s funeral, all the contents of her underwear drawer, the bottle of whisky, which was nearly empty, and a pack of playing cards that didn’t belong to her. And, of course, she still had her money, though it wouldn’t last her long. She let her thoughts rest for a few seconds on what she did not have: her beloved walking boots, a scarf that had been a present from Sandy, her sketchbook and pencils, her toothbrush, her keys … She stood quite still for a moment, with the flat blue sky above her and the hot tarmac under her thin shoes, feeling almost dizzy with the lightness of her life. It was as if she were suspended in space, in time. Then she made up her mind and continued.

An hour and a half later she knocked at the grey door and stood back to wait. When she heard footsteps she removed her sunglasses. The door swung open and Chloë stood in front of her.

‘Yes?’ she said politely. Her hair was cut very short, almost to a bristle, and she had new piercings and a tattoo on her shoulder. ‘Can I help?’ Then she frowned and her mouth slightly opened. ‘Fuck.’

‘Can I come in?’

Chloë reached forward, seized her by the forearm and dragged her across the threshold, slamming the door shut on them both.

Frieda was trying to smile but her mouth felt an odd shape. ‘I didn’t know where else to go.’

The words seemed to take both of them by surprise so that they stared at each other for a few seconds before Chloë threw her arms around Frieda’s neck and hugged her so hard that she could scarcely breathe.

‘I am so happy you’re here,’ said Chloë. There were tears in her eyes.

‘It’s not for long. Just for the night.’

‘Fuck that.’

‘The police are looking for me.’

‘I know that. But they’re not going to find you.’

Frieda felt she had arrived somewhere utterly familiar but that it had become strange and dreamlike: to be here, in this house where she had so often sorted out the chaos of Olivia’s life or cared for Chloë, and where now she was the outcast, the one in need of help.

‘You’ve cut your hair.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s not exactly a foolproof disguise.’

They went into the kitchen, which was in a spectacular state of disorder, but for once Frieda had no impulse to clean it up. She lifted a straw hat and an apple from one of the chairs and sat down in it. ‘Where’s Olivia?’

‘Out for a drink with a new date.’ Chloë gave a snort. ‘She said she’d be back for supper.’

‘I can’t meet the date.’

‘Leave it to me. Let’s have a whisky.’

‘It’s not six yet.’

‘Let me make you something. Scrambled egg? Or a toasted cheese sandwich? I bought one of those toasting machines. I can do it with tomatoes and pickles added, if you want. Or maybe a bath first – would you like a bath? I can run it for you and you just sit here. Just tell me what I can do and I’ll do it.’

‘Just tea. I need to make plans.’

‘Tea. And then you can tell me what’s going on – or maybe you don’t want to. Of course, if you don’t want to, I won’t put pressure on you but I want to say this. I know you didn’t kill Sandy, because you wouldn’t kill anyone and especially not a man you had loved so much – except, of course, I do know that people often kill the ones they love the most. Anyway, I know that if you had killed him, you wouldn’t have gone on the run. I know what you’re like – I know you believe in facing up to things. But if you had killed Sandy …’ She saw the look on Frieda’s face and stopped abruptly. ‘Tea,’ she said.

‘Thank you.’

‘Biscuit?’

‘Just tea.’

‘Right.’

‘And then I think I need to borrow some clothes.’

‘That might be complicated. There’s my grubby black goth clothes or Mum’s drunk ballerina or despairing diva ones.’

‘Something unobtrusive.’

‘I’ll see what I can do. I keep wanting to touch you to see if you’re real.’

Frieda held out a hand and Chloë grasped it. ‘I am real,’ she said, as though she were telling herself.

She drank her tea very slowly, then poured herself another mug. The sun came through the large, smeared windows and lay across the tiled floor. She could hear Chloë running up and down the stairs, and doors slamming. Eventually she returned to the kitchen.

‘I’ve put a pile of clothes in the spare room,’ she said. ‘Take your pick. They might not be quite the thing. I’m afraid the room’s not very tidy. Mum’s been sorting things in there.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘Have you made your plans?’

‘I’ll have a shower, if that’s OK, then go out. I’ll be back later.’

‘You’ve only just arrived. What if you don’t come back?’

‘I will.’

‘What if someone sees you?’

‘I’ll make sure they don’t.’

‘I want to come with you.’

‘No, I’ve put enough people at risk.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘I do.’

Chloë stared at her, chewing her lower lip. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ll answer honestly?’

Frieda hesitated. ‘Yes,’ she said eventually.

‘If I was in your position and you were in mine, what would you do?’

‘I really, really hope that could never happen.’

‘But you’d do something, wouldn’t you? Do you believe you can help other people, but no one can help you?’

‘I don’t think I believe that.’ Frieda thought of Mira and Ileana risking themselves to help her, a stranger about whom they knew nothing. She would be in a police cell now, were it not for them.

‘So. I’m going to help you. If you say no, I’ll follow you anyway. Don’t look at me like that. I will! I’m not going to let you go off on your own again.’

Frieda put a hand across her eyes for a moment, thinking. Then she said, ‘OK. I’ll have a quick shower and put on different clothes and then we’ll go.’

‘Where?’

‘I need to fetch something.’

‘That sounds easy.’

‘Unfortunately there’s a problem.’

Frieda pulled off her clothes but as she was about to step into the shower she saw the phone number Mira had scrawled on her forearm. For an instant she thought she should just scrub it off, but something stopped her. She wrapped a towel round her, went back into the spare room, found a pen and some paper, then wrote it down.

After she’d showered, she pulled from the pile of clothes Chloë had left some high-waisted black trousers with wide legs, Chloë’s old Dr Martens and a white blouse
that had see-through sleeves and lots of tiny buttons, with a faint perfume still caught in its folds. Better than Carla’s clothes, anyway. She ran her fingers through her wet, spiky hair, then tied a patterned scarf round it, put on her sunglasses and went downstairs to find Chloë waiting, hot with excitement, by the door.

‘So where are we going?’

‘To the Warehouse. I need to find something there.’

‘Won’t someone report you?’

‘They’ll have gone by the time we get there.’

‘Do you have keys?’

‘No.’

‘But …’ And then Chloë stopped. ‘Oh. Right. That’s amazing. How does that work?’

‘When I was last there, there was a window with a broken latch. It’s been like that for a year.’

‘So we just climb in.’

‘I just climb in. You keep a watch out for anyone coming.’

‘That’s a bit boring.’

‘Good.’

They took the Overground to Kentish Town West, almost entirely in silence.

‘Is this about Sandy?’ Chloë asked.

‘Of course.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not exactly sure.’

‘But you will know,’ Chloë insisted, both confident and in need of reassurance. ‘You’ll find out.’

‘I hope so.’

‘And then you’ll be able to come home properly.’

‘That’s the plan.’

They left the station and walked along Prince of Wales Road towards Chalk Farm.

‘Where have you been, though?’ Chloë asked.

‘Oh. Places where people go when they don’t want to be found.’

Chloë took her arm and squeezed it. ‘I’m so very happy you’re not there any longer, wherever it was.’

‘Tell me how you’ve been.’

‘Me? Well, compared with you, not much has happened. It’s not been so long since you disappeared.’ She made Frieda sound like some magic trick. ‘You know – same old. I like my course, though Mum is disgusted.’

‘Still?’

‘She’s going to be disappointed in me for the rest of her life. Instead of having her daughter the doctor, I’m going to be her daughter the joiner.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

‘As for Dad …’ She rolled her eyes.

Chloë talked on: about carpentry, college, the apprenticeship she was now doing at the run-down workshop in Walthamstow, full of men who didn’t really know how to treat her, about Jack and how very glad she was to be no longer in a relationship with him – her voice rose and wobbled as she said it – and Frieda led them on a circuitous route towards the Warehouse, half listening to her niece but alert for anything that seemed out of place.

At last they were at the entrance to the building, which was set back from the road. It looked imposing, impregnable. Frieda led Chloë along the small side alley where the bins were kept, and round to the back. Looking up at the houses that the Warehouse backed onto, she saw how many windows there were. For an instant, she thought she
saw a face at one; then she blinked and it became an earthenware pot on the windowsill. But there really was a figure in the house to the left. A woman was watering the plants in the conservatory, moving tranquilly through the glassy space. Frieda wondered if she should come back later – but then there would be other people to worry about. Best to get it over with.

‘This is the window here.’ She stepped forward and gave it a sharp tug upwards, but it didn’t budge. She put the palms of her hands on the frame and pushed hard. Nothing. Through the glass she saw the corridor and, beyond that, the door to her room. ‘Paz must have got it mended,’ she said.

‘Is there an alarm?’

‘I know the code so I should be able to disarm it. And, anyway, if Reuben is the last to leave he often forgets to turn it on.’

‘Josef should be here. He’d know how to get in.’

‘We need a crowbar.’

‘I’m not exactly carrying one with me. I should have brought my tool bag. What about that loose paving stone?’

‘I’m not sure we should –’

She didn’t have time to finish her sentence, for Chloë had bent down, picked it up and in a single movement hurled it against the window. For an instant, a crazed network of lines appeared in the glass; then, as if in slow motion, everything disintegrated and they were staring at a jagged hole.

Frieda couldn’t think of anything to say and, anyway, there wasn’t time to say it. She picked out some of the glass then untied the scarf from her hair, using it to clear away the fragments sticking to the bottom of the frame.
Now they could both hear the beeps of the alarm, ready to break into full sound.

She stepped in through the window and looked down at Chloë’s scared, excited face framed by the bristle of her hair, her glowing eyes.

‘Wait near the front entrance, but out of sight. You’ve done your bit. More than your bit.’

The woman was still watering her plants in the conservatory. A light went on in the upstairs window of the house next door, though the sky was still silver blue. Frieda walked swiftly up the corridor to where the alarm box was, under the stairwell. She punched in the number. The beeping continued. She tried again, slowly, making sure she had it right. Still the red light didn’t change to green. The security code must have been changed, or she was remembering it wrong. And, sure enough, after a rapid warning stutter of beeps the great scream of alarms started up, almost ripping her eardrums and rolling around her skull like pain.

She went back down the corridor, still not running and oddly calm, her heartbeat quite steady, and went into her room. It was as if she had never been away. Everything was in its proper place. The books on the shelves, the tissue box on the low table, the pens in the mug above the Moleskine notebook. She pulled open the deep bottom drawer of her desk and, sure enough, the bin bag was there, loosely knotted. She picked it up, feeling the objects inside slide and clink, pushed the drawer shut, and left again, closing the door behind her. She stepped out of the window. More lights had gone on in the houses. There was someone standing in his garden, his hand shading his eyes, trying to see what the commotion was about.

She walked down the side alley and to the front entrance, where Chloë was pressed against the wall behind a rhododendron bush thick with dying purple flowers. Her face was pinched with fear.

‘They changed the code. Come on.’ She took Chloë’s arm and led her onto the road, turning away from the direction they had come in, weaving through side-streets. Behind them, the alarm. Her feet were uncomfortable in the heavy boots. Her neck stung and when she put a hand up it came away smeared with blood.

‘What about the police?’ Chloë asked.

‘The alarm isn’t connected to the police station. It kept going off by mistake.’

‘Did you get what you wanted?’ Chloë asked, after a few minutes. Her voice was hoarse.

‘Yes.’

‘So it will be all right now?’

‘We’ll see.’

Chloë went into the house first, to check Olivia was alone. Then Frieda followed. The instant Olivia saw her she burst into noisy and ecstatic sobs, as though someone had pressed a button on the back of her neck. She wept, exclaimed, waved her hands in the air. Mascara ran down her cheeks. She yanked the fridge open and pulled out a bottle of sparkling wine, even though there was already wine open on the table.