Frieda Klein 2 - Tuesday's Gone (40 page)

‘No,’ said Olivia. ‘I
didn’t know they said that. I just drink it, I’m afraid.’

‘Which is the right attitude,’
said Harry. ‘But what I’m really here to talk about is this.’ He put a
folder on the table
and pushed it across to her. ‘I’ve
gone through everything. I’ve looked at your accounts and credit-card bills.
I’ve drawn up a plan for you, made some suggestions. The situation isn’t as
bad as you told me. And I’ve found some standing orders you’ve been paying
for services you no longer get. I’ve written some letters for you to reclaim the
overpayments, so you should get a bit of a windfall.’

‘Really?’ said Olivia.
‘That’s amazing. But I must say, I feel a bit embarrassed by all of this.
I’ve dealt with my affairs for years by not opening letters or throwing documents
away without looking at them and hoping for the best. And now you know all my most
shameful secrets.’

‘That’s my job,’ said
Harry. ‘Sometimes I feel a financial adviser ought to be like an old-fashioned
priest. Your client, or parishioner, or whatever, has to confess everything, all the
sins and omissions and evasions and then –’

‘And then you can give me
absolution?’ said Olivia.

Harry smiled. ‘I can show that once
you get everything into the open, look at all the figures, it’s not so bad. What
causes problems is when you have secrets, when you don’t face up to
things.’

‘It’s awful, though,’ said
Olivia. ‘You’ve done so much for me and I didn’t … I
can’t …’ She started to blush and covered her confusion by taking an
even deeper gulp of wine.

‘That’s all right,’ said
Harry. ‘I’ve been clear from the start. Frieda is paying for this and,
between you and me, I’m doing it at a reduced rate.’

‘I don’t see how you can make a
living, if you keep doing favours like this.’

‘It’s for my sister. She was
helping Frieda and I’m helping Tessa.’

‘I didn’t know Tessa was such a
friend of Frieda’s.’

‘They only just
met,’ said Harry. ‘But Frieda’s the sort of person you hit it off
with.’

Olivia gave a knowing smile. ‘Yes,
isn’t she?’ she said.

Harry laughed. ‘I’ve got no
ulterior motives,’ he protested. ‘I promise.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Olivia.
‘I believe it. So what do you make of my sister-in-law? You’re intrigued,
aren’t you? Admit it.’

Harry held up his hands. ‘Of course I
admit it. I’ve got to know Frieda and spent time with her but I still don’t
really know what makes her tick.’

‘And you think I do?’

‘I can’t help noticing that you
were married to Frieda’s brother and you had what I take to be a troubled
break-up.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘Yet Frieda has stuck by you instead
of her brother.’

Olivia picked up her glass but put it down
again without drinking from it. ‘Maybe she feels she needs to keep an eye on her
niece. Sometimes I’ve not been the most stable parent in the world.’

‘What about her brother?’

Olivia ran a finger round the rim of her
glass. ‘I’ve never been able to get it to make that sound,’ she said,
then looked drunkenly thoughtful. ‘Frieda has a very complicated relationship with
her family.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Why don’t you ask
her?’

‘I get the impression she
doesn’t like being quizzed about her private life.’

‘She scared me when I first met
her,’ said Olivia. ‘Sometimes she’d look at me or listen to me and
I’d get the feeling she was looking right into me, knowing everything about me,
all the things I didn’t want anyone to know. Like you, when you saw all my papers
and cheque books that I’d kept
hidden. I even used to wonder
whether she had contempt for me. But when David left, I stopped hearing from quite a few
people that I’d thought of as friends, but Frieda was there, admittedly sometimes
being sarcastic or silent the way she can be, but she did things that were necessary. Or
mostly necessary.’

‘Why does she do all this stuff with
the police?’ asked Harry. ‘She’s been attacked, she’s been
written about in the papers. Why does she put herself through it?’

Now Olivia took another gulp of wine and
Harry topped up her glass once more. ‘Thanks. Is this how you normally meet with
your clients? I hope not. Anyway, the thing is, when I decide to do something it’s
because I know I can do it, and it won’t be too demanding and it won’t give
me any grief. The basic way to understand Frieda is to look at me and then think the
opposite. I don’t know why Frieda does these things, and when I hear that
she’s done something, I never understand why. I don’t know why she helps me.
I certainly don’t know why she puts herself through the purgatory of trying to
keep Chloë on the straight and narrow.’ Another gulp of wine. Her voice was
thickening now, as if her tongue was just slightly too large for her mouth. ‘For
example. What was I saying?’ She paused for a moment. ‘Oh, yes. The
newspaper article. I saw that, and if it had been about me I would have crawled into a
hole and pulled the hole in after me. Whereas, Frieda, Frieda, she’s like one of
those animals, a badger or a stoat. If you mess with their den, they become dangerous
and … Well, I’m exaggerating. I’m making her sound feral. But
she’s stubborn and bloody-minded. In a good way. Ninety-nine per cent of the time.
Or ninety-five.’

Harry waited a moment. ‘I think Frieda
has secrets,’ he said. ‘I mean, she’s someone with a hidden grief. Do
you know what I mean?’

Now there was a long
pause. Harry felt that Olivia was suddenly reluctant to meet his eyes. ‘It looks
like you do know what I mean,’ he said. ‘And, as you can tell, I’m
falling for her. I’d like to know.’

Finally she looked round. ‘Well, you
know what happened with her father?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I
don’t.’

After Beth had finished with the
photographs, there were his notes. There were pages and pages of them, and at first it
was hard to make sense of what she was reading. Sometimes they seemed like short
stories, and then they became lists – lists of odd things. Exercises to do to lose
weight; plants and where to get them from. Some things had a neat tick by them, or were
crossed off. There were figures but she couldn’t make any sense of those so after
a while she stopped trying, although she knew that some of the numbers were quite long
and had pound signs in front of them. Bit by bit she realized that she was reading about
different people. They had names, addresses, dates of birth, relatives, jobs.

He had written about her parents and he had
put down all the things they liked and didn’t like, all their hobbies, the
charities they subscribed to and the events they attended. He had even done the same for
her sisters. He had drawn a map of the house and garden, putting in the studio shed at
the end where her mother played her cello sometimes and where her father kept his
paints. She hadn’t grasped how closely he had listened to her and it made her eyes
prick with tears to know that even when he’d seemed aloof he was thinking of her
and looking out for her. He had left this for her, Beth thought, as a gift, and he had
gone to such a lot of trouble – but why? She stared and stared at the
words, until the lights in her eyes flickered and made her dizzy. She knew she had to
find some food, make herself stronger.

She crawled out of the hatchway, her cheeks
scraping against the metal rim of the opening. She hadn’t been out for a while and
her body felt stiff, as though it had hardened into crookedness. She made herself jog up
and down on the spot for a while, feeling how pain knifed in her chest and bounced up
and down in her skull. Like those tennis balls she used to bounce on her tennis racket,
counting up, trying to beat her record. When was that? She could almost see her fat
child’s knees and the yellow sun, like a yolk, in the sky, but now everything was
dim and dark and ragged, and the water was oily and when she walked, her body slid about
on the muddy path.

She reached a boat she knew was inhabited.
She wasn’t being careful enough, but perhaps it didn’t matter so much any
more, because he was gone and everything was over, except the thing she had to do in his
name. In his name. Like a disciple.

The lights were off and the boat felt
deserted. There were bikes chained to the top, and when she scrambled on to the deck,
the chains rattled and she lay quite still for a moment, flat against the icy wet wood,
but nobody came. She pulled at the hatch and it creaked open, and she lowered her body
into the snug interior. It was much, much nicer than hers. It was warm, neat, there was
a good smell to it, of clean bodies and fresh food. You could call it a home. You
couldn’t call hers a home. It was a hole. A dank ghastly pit. There was still
enough light outside to see the shapes of things, and she found the small fridge and
pulled it open. Milk. She took that out. Spreadable butter. Two wholemeal rolls. And
there was half a chicken under shrink wrapping. Half a chicken. Golden
skin. Plump thighs. Her mouth filled with saliva and she lifted the wrapping, tore off
a piece of meat, stuffed it into her mouth and swallowed it almost without chewing.
Blood roared in her head and she thought she might be sick. She tore another piece and
pushed that in too. Her gashed lip hurt and her throat hurt and her stomach
shrieked.

There was a sudden sound from the front of
the boat, through the little closed door, and she froze, though fear coursed and
thundered through her body. Someone was humming. Someone was there. A few feet away.
Probably sitting on the toilet or something. They’d come out, find her with her
mouth full of chicken. Call the police. Everything would be over. Finished. Wrecked.

She grabbed the chicken and the milk, pushed
the tub of butter into her pocket, held the plastic bag with the rolls in her teeth and
tried to clamber one-handed through the hatch. Her shoelace got caught in the corner and
she yanked her foot hard. The humming stopped. She hauled herself into the air and
stumbled across the wooden roof, then leaped on to the path, dropping the chicken into
the mud. She picked it up and ran, her breath in sobs, the plastic bag still clenched
between her teeth.
Please please please please.
She pushed her way through a
thick, overgrown hedge beside the path, feeling the nettles brush her hands and, when
she crouched down, her neck and face. A shape was standing on the deck of the boat,
staring out. It lifted a torch and swung the beam around. She could see it bob across
the water, the shattered buildings on the other side, the path, the hedge. She felt it
in her eyes so she shut them and didn’t breathe.

The light went off. The shape disappeared.
She waited. Her ankle throbbed. She took the bag of bread out of her mouth and laid it
in front of her. She could smell the
chicken, which made her feel both
sick and excited. She didn’t know how long she waited, but at last she crept back
on to the path and hobbled towards her boat, clutching her booty.

She’d done it. Now she had food and
she could make herself strong again, enough to see her through. After that, it
didn’t matter. She would have kept her promise to him. She chewed another piece of
muddy chicken, grit in her mouth. His trusty soldier, his servant, his beloved.

Frieda caught the fast train from
King’s Cross. It took less than fifty minutes, speeding her out of London and into
Cambridge before she had time to change her mind. She stared out of the window, watching
London as it blurred into meadows and waterways and the back gardens of houses facing a
road she couldn’t see. There were newborn lambs in some of the fields, and banks
of daffodils. She tried to concentrate on the landscape rushing past and not think about
what lay ahead. Her mouth was dry and her heart beat faster than usual, and when she
arrived in Cambridge, she went first to the Ladies to check how she looked. The face
that stared back at her from the tarnished mirror above the chipped basin was quite
composed. She was wearing a dark grey suit and had tied her hair back severely; she
appeared professional, competent, unyielding.

She had wanted to meet somewhere public,
preferably his office among the computers and strangers, but he’d told her he
would be working from home that day: if she wanted to see him, that was where she had to
come. His territory and his terms. She had never been there and he had had to give her
the address. She had no idea what to expect – whether his house would be in town or out
of it, large or small, old or new. It was out, about ten minutes by cab, into leafy
semi-countryside, or tastefully rural suburbia; large, though not as large as some of
the houses in the village; and moderately old, with a red-tiled roof, gabled windows, a
porch over the front door, a willow tree in the drive whose branches fell
almost to the gravel. It was nice, Frieda admitted to herself. Of
course it was. He’d always had good taste or, at least, he’d always had the
same kind of taste as her. However far you run from your family and try to expunge them
from your life, they follow you.

The man who opened the door when Frieda rang
was noticeably her brother. He was slim, dark-haired, although his hair was turning
silver at the temples, dark-eyed, with high cheekbones and a way of holding his
shoulders back that was her way, too. But, of course, he was older than he had been at
their last meeting, and his face had tightened into an expression that was both angry
and ironically amused. She hoped she didn’t look like that. He had dressed in a
grey shirt and dark trousers, and she had the horrible feeling that he, too, had
carefully chosen his clothes for this visit, and had chosen almost identically to her.
They were almost like twins, she thought, and shuddered, remembering Alan and Dean.

‘David,’ she said. She
didn’t smile, or step forward to hug him or even shake his hand. She simply
watched him.