Frieda Klein 2 - Tuesday's Gone (50 page)

‘What?’

‘How did I stab her?’

‘She died of blood loss from a
laceration to her throat.’

‘I cut her throat.’

‘Yes, and then you took her belt and
tied it around your leg. The doctors say that if you hadn’t done that you would
have bled out in a couple of minutes.’

Frieda gestured to the drink of water.
Karlsson brought it to her lips. It hurt to swallow it.

‘Sleep now,’ he said.
‘It’ll all be fine.’

‘All right,’ Frieda said.
Speaking seemed the hardest thing in the world just now. ‘But one
thing.’

He leaned close to her.
‘What?’

‘I didn’t do
it.’

‘I’ve told you,’ Karlsson
said. ‘You won’t be in trouble. It was pure self-defence.’

‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘I
didn’t. I couldn’t have. Besides …’ Frieda made herself think of
the moments before she had passed out. She tried to separate it from all that had
followed, the oblivion, the nightmares, the fragments of waiting. ‘I heard
something. But I know anyway. It was him.’

Karlsson looked puzzled and then
alarmed.

‘What do you mean
“him”?’

‘You know who I mean.’

‘Don’t say that,’ hissed
Karlsson. ‘Don’t even think it.’

Sandy parked the car near the western gate
of Waterlow Park. On the steep drive up Swains Lane, Frieda had felt as if they were
taking off and leaving London behind them.

‘I think the park’s open this
time,’ Sandy said, with a smile that was full of pain.

Frieda winced as she got out of the car. She
still felt sore, especially when she’d been sitting down.

‘Are you up for this?’ said
Sandy.

Frieda had hated the pain, the treatment,
the medication, the continuing hospital visits, but even worse was the sympathy, the
attention, the concern, the look that came into people’s eyes when they saw her,
the way they worried about the right thing to say. She walked slowly and stiffly through
the gate. A yellow dazzle of daffodils swaying in the wind.

‘It really looks like spring
now,’ said Sandy. ‘For the first time.’

Frieda took his arm to support herself.
‘If you don’t talk about spring and how it represents revival and new life,
I won’t say it’s the cruellest month.’

‘Isn’t April the cruellest
month?’

‘March is pretty cruel as
well.’

‘All right,’ said Sandy.
‘I’ll keep quiet about what a beautiful day this is and how the daffodils
are out and how Waterlow Park has this wonderful position overlooking London. We could
go next door to the cemetery, if that suits your mood more.’

‘You know me,’
said Frieda. ‘I like cemeteries. But this is good for today. I love this park. I
don’t know how Sir Thomas Waterlow earned his money. He probably stole it from
someone or inherited it undeservedly. But he gave this park to London and I’m
grateful to him for it. And I’m grateful to you.’

‘Well, gratitude isn’t exactly
–’

‘Sssh. I know what you’ve gone
through, Sandy, and what you can’t say to me. You’re too much of a
gentleman, aren’t you? You came back here and we met again and it was good. No, it
was lovely. This should have been the time for us to think about our lives, make
decisions, take pleasure in each other. Instead – well, you get to sit beside a hospital
bed day after day, watching me sip thin chicken soup out of a straw or pee into a
bowl.’

‘Thinking you might die.’

‘That, too.’

‘When I thought you were going to die
–’

‘I know.’

They made their way towards the pond. The
park was busy and families were scattered along the path. Children were feeding ducks
and pigeons and squirrels with nuts and stale bread.

‘Look at that,’ said Sandy.

A small boy was throwing peanuts to a large
rat that had emerged on to the grass from beneath a rhododendron bush.

‘If you’re going to feed
pigeons,’ said Frieda. ‘You might as well feed rats too.’

‘Shall we walk up higher?’ said
Sandy. ‘There’s a better view.’

‘In a minute,’ said Frieda.

‘I wanted to come here for symbolic
reasons. I didn’t
expect you to turn up at the wedding. I
thought you’d cut me out of your life. I was very, very happy when I saw
you.’

‘Yes,’ said Frieda. ‘Yes,
I was happy too.’ It felt such a very long time ago.

A duck walked along, followed by a line of
extremely small ducklings.

‘Normally, I would say that was very
sweet,’ said Sandy. ‘But I won’t.’ He turned and put his hands
on her shoulders. ‘Frieda, I don’t know how to put this but I know
it’s been appalling beyond words for you and if you ever want to
talk …’

Frieda wrinkled her nose. ‘Do you want
me to say that I’m traumatized?’

‘Anyone would be.’

‘I don’t know. We’ll see.
Right now, what I mainly feel is sad about Mary Orton. When I close my eyes, I can
clearly see her looking up at me. She was looking at me in the last moments of her life
and I suppose she was thinking, But you said you were going to protect me. You said it
would be all right. I can’t think what else I could have done. I told the police.
I dialled the emergency services. I went to her house.’

‘You did all you could.’

‘She had two sons who abandoned her.
She was cheated and she turned to me for help and then she was murdered. Anyway, her two
sons have got her money now so at least someone’s happy.’

‘This isn’t you talking, Frieda.
This isn’t what you’d say to one of your patients.’

‘If I said to my patients what I say
to myself, most of them would go off and kill themselves.’

‘It isn’t what you say to Josef,
when he blames himself for Mary Orton’s death.’

‘No.’ Her face
softened. ‘I tell Josef he did what he could and I should have
listened.’

‘So it’s one rule for everyone
else and a different one for you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Anyone would be affected by what
you’ve been through. But it’s not the being stabbed, the nearly dying, is
it? When you talk about what happened to you, which isn’t often, it’s Mary
Orton you dwell on, and Janet Ferris, even Beth Kersey, who would have killed you –
indeed she almost did. And then there’s Alan Dekker and Kathy Ripon. All the
people who are gone. And it occurs to me that you feel – how can I put this? – too much
about it, or too personally.’ Sandy stopped and looked at Frieda’s fiercely
glowing eyes. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘Wait,’ she said. She turned
away from him, looking out over the park.

When she turned back her face was paler than
ever, her eyes even brighter.

‘I have something to tell
you.’

‘Go on.’

‘I have never said this to
anyone.’ She took a deep breath. ‘When I was fifteen years old, my father
killed himself.’ She held up a hand to stop Sandy saying anything, or coming
closer. ‘He hanged himself in the attic of our house.’

‘I’m so sorry,
Frieda.’

‘I found him. I cut him down but, of
course, he was already dead. He had been very depressed but I thought I could rescue
him. I thought I could make him better. I still have a dream where I get to him in time.
Over and over again.’ Her large eyes stared at him. ‘I didn’t get to
him in
time, though,’ she said. ‘Or to Mary Orton. Or
Janet Ferris. Or Kathy Ripon. Or poor Alan. People who trusted me and I let them
down.’

‘No, my darling.’

‘I feel I carry a curse. You
shouldn’t come too close to me.’

‘You can’t keep me
away.’

‘Oh,’ said Frieda. For one
moment, Sandy thought she would cry. She stepped forward and put one hand against his
cheek, staring at him. ‘What are we going to do, Sandy?’

‘We’re going to give ourselves
time.’

‘Are we?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you’ll still go back to the
States and I’ll still be here?’

‘Yes. But it won’t be the
same.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of Waterlow Park. Because of
our night-time river walk. Because you’ve shown me how water can flow underground
without drying up and disappearing. Because I know you.’

‘Yes,’ said Frieda very softly.
‘You know me.’

‘Hello!’

Sandy and Frieda both looked around. A
little girl was standing next to Frieda, clutching a small bunch of daffodils with her
two hands. She offered them to Frieda, stretching her arms out and standing on tiptoe.
Frieda took them. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said. Even though the movement
hurt her, she bent over so that her face was closer to the child’s.
‘They’re beautiful.’

‘It wasn’t your time,’
said the little girl.

‘What?’ said Frieda. ‘What
do you mean?’

‘It wasn’t your time.’ The
little girl frowned with concentration, as if she was standing in front of her class at
school. ‘It. Wasn’t. Your. Time.’

‘What does that
mean?’

She looked alarmed. Frieda thought she might
run away. Sandy knelt down and spoke to her in a soft voice. ‘What’s your
name?’ he said.

‘Ginny.’

‘That’s a nice name. Ginny, why
did you say that?’

‘’Cause he told me
to.’

‘Who?’ said Sandy.

‘The man.’

Sandy looked up at Frieda, then back at the
little girl. ‘Can you point to him?’

She looked around. ‘No,’ she
said.

‘What did he say?’

‘He said, “Give that woman these
flowers and say …”’ She paused. ‘I forgot.’

‘Ginny!’ a voice called.
‘Ginny!’

The little girl ran back along the path to
her mother.

‘Well, what was that about?’
said Sandy.

‘He’s watching me,’ said
Frieda, in a voice hardly louder than a whisper.

‘Who?’

‘Dean,’ she said. ‘Dean
Reeve. He’s here. He’s been here all along. I’ve felt him. It was him.
I know it was.’ She turned to Sandy with a fierce expression. ‘I
couldn’t have cut Beth’s throat. I couldn’t have ripped her belt off
to tie it round my leg. He saved me. Dean Reeve saved my life.’

She waited for him to tell her she was
paranoid, crazy, but he didn’t. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Because he wants to be the person who
has the power to destroy me.’

‘What are we going to do?’

She shrugged. ‘What can I
do?’

‘I said “we”.’

‘I know. Thank
you.’

Sandy put his arms around her and she leaned
against him. For a moment they didn’t speak.

‘So, shall we walk up the hill
together?’

Frieda shook her head. ‘We should
leave now,’ she said. ‘It’s getting dark. The day’s
gone.’

There was no sign that anything was wrong. It was just an ordinary terraced house on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon in April. It had a long, narrow garden, like all the other houses in the road. The one to its left had been neglected for many years. It was overgrown with nettles and brambles; at the far end there was a plastic sandpit full of sludgy water and a child-sized goal that had been tipped over. The garden on the other side was paved and gravelled, with plants in terracotta pots and chairs that the owners folded up in winter and stored in their shed, a barbecue under a black tarpaulin that would be wheeled into the centre of the patio for the summer months.

But this particular garden had a lawn, just cut for the first time this year. White blossom shone on an old, twisted apple. The roses and shrubs in the borders had been pruned back so hard that they were like sticks. There were ranks of orange tulips near the kitchen door. There was a single trainer with its laces still done up under the window, empty flower pots, a bird table with a few seeds scattered on its flat surface, a couple of empty beer bottles by the boot-scraper.

The cat walked up the garden, taking its time and pausing by the door, head lifted as if waiting for something. Then it deftly inserted itself through the cat flap and entered the kitchen, with its tiled floor, its table – big enough for six or more people – and its Welsh dresser, which was really too large for the room and was cluttered with china and odds-and-ends: tubes of dried-out glue, bills in their envelopes, a cookery book opened at a recipe for monkfish with preserved lemon, a balled pair of socks, a five-pound note, a small hairbrush. Pans hung from a steel rail above the cooker. There was a basket of vegetables near the sink, a dozen more cookery books on a small shelf, a vase of flowers that were beginning to droop on the windowsill, a school textbook open spine-down on the table. On the wall was a whiteboard with a ‘to-do’ list in red felt pen. There was a half-eaten piece of toast, cold, on a plate on one of the surfaces, and a cup of tea beside it.

The cat dipped its head delicately into its bowl on the floor and ate one or two granules of dried cat food, wiped its paw over the side of its face, then continued through the house, out of the kitchen, whose door was always open, past the little lavatory to the left, up the two steps. It sidestepped a broken glass bowl and walked around the leather shoulder-bag lying in the hallway. The bag was upended, its contents scattered over the oak floorboards. Lipstick and face-powder, an opened pack of tissues, car keys, a hairbrush, a small blue diary with a pen attached to it, a packet of paracetamol, a spiral-bound notebook. A bit further on, a black wallet splayed open, a few membership cards dotted around it (AA, British Museum). A framed print from an old Van Gogh exhibition was tipped to one side on the cream wall, and on the floor, its frame cracked, lay a large family portrait: a man, a woman, three children, with broad smiles.