Frieda Klein 2 - Tuesday's Gone (39 page)

‘This is a resumption of the
interview,’ said Karlsson, sounding slightly self-conscious. ‘We’ve
now been joined by Dr Frieda Klein. Mr Wyatt, I’d like to remind you that
you’re still under caution.’

He nodded at Frieda, then stepped back
behind her, out of her sight. Frieda hadn’t really thought about what she was
going to say. She looked across at Wyatt. His eyes flickered. He was angry and
defensive. Both his hands were resting on the table, but Frieda could see that they were
trembling.

‘What did you think of Robert
Poole?’ she said.

He gave a sort of laugh. ‘Is that the
best you can come up with? What do
you
think?’

‘Do you want me to answer that?’
asked Frieda. ‘Do you want me to tell you what I think?’

The lawyer leaned across. ‘I’m
sorry. Mr Wyatt is here as a courtesy. He has made it clear that he is eager to
co-operate but, please, if you have relevant questions, then ask them.’

‘I’ve just asked a
question,’ said Frieda. ‘And then Mr Wyatt asked me one. Now, he can answer
mine or I can answer his.’

Joll looked at Karlsson as if appealing to
his authority to a put a stop to all this. Frieda didn’t turn round.

‘What I’m meant to say,’
said Frieda, ‘is that you found
out that Robert Poole had slept
with your wife and that he’d stolen your money. He’d cheated you and made a
fool of you. You had to get back at him.’

There was a pause.

‘Yes?’ said Joll. ‘Is
there some question at the end of this?’

Frieda continued to gaze at Wyatt. He leaned
back in his chair and ran his hands through his hair. ‘Is that what you wanted me
to say?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘And I don’t care, really.’

‘What I want to know is why, when you
started to see what was going on, you didn’t confront your wife. Why didn’t
you talk to her instead of hiding your feelings away and brooding over them?’

Now Wyatt leaned forward, his head in his
hands. He mumbled something.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Frieda.
‘I couldn’t make that out.’

He looked up at her. ‘I said, it was
complicated.’

‘You found out, but you couldn’t
talk to your wife about it. So what did you do?’

Wyatt looked uneasily around, over
Frieda’s shoulder at Karlsson, at Joll. She felt he was avoiding her gaze.

Suddenly Karlsson spoke. ‘You
confronted him, didn’t you?’

Wyatt didn’t reply.

‘Well?’ Karlsson’s tone
hardened.

Wyatt looked at the floor. ‘I talked
to him,’ he said, in a low voice.

‘Stop this,’ Joll said. ‘I
need a moment alone with my client.’

Karlsson gave a thin smile. ‘Of
course.’

Outside, Karlsson broke into a grin.
‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘If his lawyer’s got any sense, he’s
telling him to confess.’
He glanced at Frieda and frowned.
‘You should be enjoying this. You know, the thrill of the chase.’

‘It doesn’t feel like a chase to
me,’ she said.

After a few minutes, they had resumed their
positions. For Frieda it felt artificial now, as if they were all actors, resuming a
rehearsal after a break for tea.

‘Mr Wyatt would like to
explain,’ said Joll.

Wyatt coughed nervously. ‘I talked to
Poole about the money.’

‘I bet you did,’ said
Karlsson.

‘When I asked him about it, it was
more complicated than I expected.’ Wyatt was speaking in a low, miserable tone.
‘You’ve heard about him. When he talked about the money, it sounded
convincing, or sort of convincing. He talked about his business plans. We ended up
having a drink. It almost felt like I was the one in the wrong.’

‘Where was this?’ asked
Karlsson.

‘At our house. My wife was out. She
didn’t know – didn’t know I knew.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us about
the meeting before?’

‘I don’t know,’ said
Wyatt. ‘It was difficult to explain.’

‘That’s true,’ said
Karlsson. ‘And you haven’t managed to explain it. Frieda? Is there anything
you want to say?’

‘I want to go back to my original
question,’ she said. ‘What do you think of Robert Poole now?’

‘I don’t know that I can answer
that,’ he said. ‘And, anyway, what does it matter what I think?’

‘It does matter,’ said Frieda.
‘Some people would say that you couldn’t do anything worse to a man than
what he did to you.’

‘Thank you for that,’ said
Wyatt. ‘Is that what they pay you for?’

‘What interests
me,’ said Frieda, ‘is that you really don’t seem all that angry with
him.’

Now Wyatt became wary, uneasy, as if Frieda
were laying a trap for him to walk into. ‘I don’t know what you’re
getting at.’

‘What did you mean when you said that
talking to Poole was complicated?’

‘I meant just what I said.’

Frieda left a silence before speaking and
looked at Wyatt closely. ‘I never met Poole,’ she said. ‘I’ve
only heard about him. But it sounds to me as if when people met him they thought he
recognized them, that he knew them. And that can be uncomfortable.’

‘I don’t know what you’re
talking about.’

‘I wonder,’ said Frieda,
‘whether you really feel that in some strange way you almost deserve what he did
to your wife. I was going to say did to you, but that’s not what you feel, is
it?’ She left another silence. ‘What I’m wondering is whether you feel
that Robert Poole was looking after your wife in a way that you hadn’t been doing
for a while.’

Wyatt swallowed nervously. He flushed.
‘That sounds a bit pathetic.’

‘I don’t think it’s
pathetic at all,’ said Frieda. ‘Do you think it’s possible that when
you learned about what Robert Poole had done, even when you learned he’d been
sleeping with your wife, you didn’t feel all that angry? A man is supposed to feel
angry with the man who has slept with his wife, but it wasn’t quite like that, was
it? Or not only like that.’ Now Wyatt was staring at her blankly. ‘I believe
that you were confused. You were humiliated, of course. Maybe you had some fantasy of
revenge. But I believe you’re a thoughtful man, and mainly you thought about your
marriage, about your
children. Perhaps you wondered how could you have
let things get that bad.’

When Wyatt spoke it was in little more than
a whisper. ‘What’s your point?’

‘You’d gone to sleep in your
marriage,’ said Frieda. ‘Robert Poole showed you something. Maybe he even
woke you up.’

‘I couldn’t believe it,’
said Wyatt, slowly. ‘Everything was a lie, everything I’d believed
in.’

‘Have you talked to your wife about
that feeling?’

Wyatt shrugged. ‘A bit. It
doesn’t make much sense to me, so it’s hard to talk about it to someone
else.’

‘You should try.’

Joll coughed. ‘Excuse me,’ he
said. ‘I’m not clear about the relevance of this.’

‘No,’ said Karlsson. ‘I
agree. I think we can stop for the day.’

As they left the interview room, he gestured
at Frieda to follow him.

‘What was that?’ he said.
‘We had him. We were on the verge of getting him to plead. What was all that?
Where was the old Frieda?’

Frieda looked at him with a curious
expression. ‘Wouldn’t you like to have met him?’

‘Who?’

‘Robert Poole.’

Karlsson seemed to be having trouble
speaking. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. And nor should you, Frieda – because
he’s dead and beyond your attempts to understand him or rescue him or change what
happened.’

Chloë was waiting. Frieda noticed that
she had washed her hair and put on a clean white shirt over her miniature stretchy
black skirt. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and looked
vulnerable and childlike. There wasn’t any sign of Olivia.

‘Tapas OK? asked Frieda.

‘I don’t eat meat any
more.’

‘That’s OK.’

‘And only sustainable fish.’

‘Fine.’

‘There aren’t many of
them.’

The restaurant was only a few minutes away,
in Islington, and they walked there in silence. It had been raining earlier and the car
headlights wavered in the long shallow puddles. Only after they’d taken their
seats at a rickety wooden table by the window did Frieda speak.

‘Did you get to school
today?’

‘Yeah. I said I would.’

‘Good. Was it all right?’

Chloë shrugged. Her face was slightly
puffy, thought Frieda, as though she had cried a great deal. Her arms were covered by
her shirt, so she couldn’t see if she’d been cutting herself again.

They ordered squid, roasted bell peppers, a
Spanish omelette and a plate of spring greens. Chloë cut a tiny squid ring in half
and then in half again, put it into her mouth and chewed very slowly.

‘Let’s take one thing at a
time,’ said Frieda. ‘School.’

‘What about it?’

‘You did really well in your GCSEs.
You’re bright. You say you want to be a doctor …’

‘No.
You
say that.’

‘Do I? I don’t think
so.’

‘Anyway, people do. Adults. My dad.
Teachers. There’s this road you’re expected to be on. You’re supposed
to do your GCSEs and then your A levels and then you go to uni and
then you get a proper job. I can see my whole life in front of me like a great slab of
tarmac. What if I don’t want it?’

‘Don’t you want it?’

‘I don’t know.’ She
stabbed her fork into the bright green pepper and juice spurted out. ‘I
don’t know what the point of any of it is.’

‘You’ve had a hard time,
Chloë. Your father left –’

‘You can use his name, you know.
He’s called David and he’s your brother.’

‘OK. David.’ Even saying the
name left a nasty taste in her mouth. ‘And Olivia has a new boyfriend.’

‘Guess where she is now,’ said
Chloë.

‘I suppose she’s with
Kieran.’

‘Wrong. Guess again.’

‘I can’t,’ said Frieda,
uneasy under Chloë’s interrogation.

‘It’s that accountant or
whatever he is. The one you brought round.’

‘I didn’t bring him
round.’

‘I know what’s going on,’
said Chloë.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I know I’m just a teenager, but
even I can see that it’s really about you.’

‘I don’t even know where to
start with that,’ said Frieda.

‘I can see the way he looks at you.
He’s using my mother as a way to impress you. What do you think of him?’

‘What do you think of him?’

‘Auntie Frieda, you’ve got a
really bad habit of always answering a question with another question.’

Frieda smiled. ‘It’s lesson
number one in therapist school,’ she said. ‘It’s the way of avoiding
being put on the spot. So that whatever your patient says to you, you just say,
“What do you mean by that?” And then you’re off the hook.’

‘But I’m not
your patient. And you’re not off the hook.’

‘We were talking about your
mother.’

‘All right then, let’s talk
about my mother,’ said Chloë. ‘I think she doesn’t care about
me.’

‘I think she cares a lot, Chloë.
But, you know, she’s not just your mother, she’s a woman who feels
she’s been humiliated, who’s worried about the direction of her own road, if
you like, and who’s just met a new man.’

‘So? She’s still meant to be my
mum. She can’t just behave like a teenager herself. That’s supposed to be
me. It feels scary sometimes. Like there’s no solid ground for me, so that
everything shifts under my feet.’

This was so exactly what Frieda felt about
Olivia that she took a moment to answer. ‘You’re right. And maybe you and I
could talk to her about it, try to explain what you’re feeling and draw up some
ground rules. But give her a chance to change as well. Leave doors open. She can be good
at acknowledging when she’s wrong.’

‘Why should I give her a chance when
she doesn’t even notice me?’

‘Is that what you think?’

‘I don’t think it, I know it.
She’s so wrapped up in her own mess, she can’t see mine. I get home and I
don’t know what I’ll find. Sometimes she’s drunk. Sometimes
she’s crying. Sometimes she’s hyper and wants to rush out to the shops with
me to buy me ludicrously expensive clothes or something. Sometimes she’s shouting
at me about Dad and what a wanker he is. Sometimes she’s in the bath and she
doesn’t even wash it out after she’s used it – she leaves hair and tide
marks all over it. It’s disgusting. I have to clear up after her. Sometimes she
cooks and sometimes she forgets. Sometimes she wakes me up in the morning for school and
other times she doesn’t. Sometimes she’s all over me,
hugging me and telling me I’m her precious darling or something, and sometimes
she snaps at me for no reason. Sometimes Kieran’s there – actually, it’s
best when he is. He’s calm and kind and he talks to me. She doesn’t ask
about my work, she doesn’t open letters from school, she forgot to go to my last
parents’ evening. She couldn’t care less.’

Frieda listened while Chloë talked and
talked as though the floodgates had at last been opened to a gush of fear and
wretchedness. She didn’t say much, but anger swelled inside her until she could
barely contain it. Privately she made plans: she would talk to Olivia and make her see
the consequences of her disordered life on her daughter; she would go with Chloë to
talk to her teachers and draw up a plan of work; she would – this last resolution made
her feel slightly dizzy, as if she was peering over a cliff edge – talk to her brother
David.

Half a mile along Upper Street, in a new
wine bar that had been extensively refurbished so that it looked as if it had been there
unchanged since the nineteenth century, Harry was topping up Olivia’s wine glass.
She took a sip.

‘It seems a bit cold,’ she said.
‘For a red wine.’

‘I think it’s meant to be
cool,’ Harry said. ‘But I can get them to warm it up for you.’

Olivia took another sip, more of a gulp.
‘It’s fine. I’m sure you’re right.’

‘You know what they say, white wine is
always served too cold and red wine too warm.’