Friday on My Mind (9 page)

‘Have they been to see you?’

‘The woman. Yes.’

‘I’m sorry. You know, Josef, I’m not good at saying these things …’

Josef held up his hands to stop her. ‘One day we laugh about this.’

Frieda just shook her head and turned away.

Frieda walked along the canal and bought a pay-as-you-go phone from a little shop on Caledonian Road. She made the call, then took the Overground through the East End, crossing and re-crossing the canal, looking into back gardens, breakers’ yards, warehouses, allotments. Then the train plunged underground and after a few minutes re-emerged into the light in a different country: South London. Frieda got out at Peckham Rye and needed the map to steer her through residential streets, past a school and under-arch repair shops until she reached the housing estate she was looking for. Each large building had a name: Bunyan, Blake, and then – the one she was looking for – Morris.

A man was standing on the pavement talking on his phone. He looked as if he should have been on a touchline somewhere. He was dressed in trainers, tracksuit bottoms, a yellow football shirt with the name of a utility company across the chest and a black windcheater. He was tall, with long hair tied up in a ponytail, revealing earrings in both ears. One eyebrow was also pierced. He might have had a moustache and a goatee or he might just not have shaved for a few days. He noticed Frieda and held up his free hand in a gesture that greeted her, apologized, told her to wait. He was making complicated arrangements about a delivery. When he had finished he stowed away his phone.

‘By the time you tell them, it’s quicker to do it all yourself.’

The accent was a mixture of South London and Eastern Europe. He held out his hand and Frieda shook it.

‘This way,’ he said, and led her in through the gateway to the courtyard separating Blake from Morris.

‘Friend of Josef?’ the man said. Frieda nodded. ‘Lev.’

‘Frieda. Are you from Ukraine as well?’

‘Ukraine?’ Lev’s face broke into a smile. ‘I am from Russia. But we are like brother and brother.’

‘Yes. I’ve been reading about it in the papers.’

Lev glanced at Frieda with a frown, as if he suspected he was being made fun of, and Frieda suddenly felt that making any kind of fun of him might be a bad idea. Lev led her up a stairwell, one flight, then another, and up to the third level. He walked along the terrace. Flat after flat was bricked up with large, blue-grey breeze blocks.

‘They really don’t want people to get in,’ said Frieda.

Lev stopped and put his hands on the rail, looking out across the space towards Blake House, like a concerned owner. ‘They are pushing the people out,’ he said, ‘then the bricks.’

‘What’s happening to the place?’

‘The far house is empty. Next year they knock down and build. In two years, three years, this house too.’

He continued along the terrace and stopped in front of a door that had been whitewashed but with only a single coat so that the dark paint underneath showed through. Lev produced a key ring with two keys and a small plastic figurine of a naked lady dangling from it. He detached one of the keys and looked at it. ‘I give you the key,’ he said. ‘And you give me …’ He stopped to think for a moment. ‘Three hundred.’

Frieda took a small wad of twenties from her pocket and counted out fifteen. She handed them to Lev, who put them in his pocket without checking them.

‘For the …’ He waved a hand, searching for the word.

‘The expenses?’ supplied Frieda.

‘Some things to pay, yes.’

He unlocked the door. ‘Welcome,’ he said and stood aside to let her in.

Frieda stepped into the little hallway. There was a smell of damp and piss and something else, a rotting sweet smell. It looked as if the flat had been abandoned quickly. Whatever had been hanging on the wall seemed to have been pulled away, leaving cracked and pitted plaster. She turned a wall switch on and off. Good. There was light at least. She put down her holdall and walked around from one room to another. There was a sofa and a table in a living room, a single bed in a back room and nothing at all in the bathroom or kitchen. No table or chair, no pot or pan.

‘Do you own this?’ asked Frieda.

Lev grimaced. ‘Look after,’ he said.

‘And if someone comes and asks me what I’m doing here?’

‘Nobody come probably.’

‘If someone asks, do I mention your name?’

‘No names.’ Lev bent over a portable electric heater in the corner of the living room. He looked up. ‘When you go out, do not have this switch on,’ he said. ‘Is maybe problem. And maybe not when asleep as well.’

‘OK.’

‘You here just three weeks, four weeks?’

‘I guess. Who else lives here?’

‘Only you.’

‘I mean in the rest of the building.’

‘All kinds. Syria now. Romania. Always the Somalis. They come and they go. Except one very old woman, very old. English from long ago.’

‘Is there anything I need to know?’

Lev looked thoughtful.

‘Lock the door always from inside. They sometimes play the music very loud. The ear muffs is good, not the complaining.’

He held out his hand and shook Frieda’s.

‘When I’m done, what do I do with the key?’

He made a contemptuous gesture. ‘Thrown in the bin.’

‘And if there’s a problem, how do I reach you?’

He zipped up his jacket. ‘If there is a problem, the best is to go away to another place.’

‘Shouldn’t I have your number?’

‘For what?’

Frieda really couldn’t think of any reason why. ‘What about the next rent payment?’

‘There is not rent.’

‘Well, thank you, for all of this.’

He shrugged. ‘No, no, this was a thank-you to my friend Josef.’

Frieda didn’t want to think of what Josef might have done for Lev to have earned a favour like this. She hoped it was only some cheap building work.

‘So,’ he continued, ‘goodbye to you.’ He walked to the front door. ‘And now I think of it, maybe not to use the heater any time. Is not so good. And this is summer, so no need.’ And he left and Frieda was alone.

She paced the flat. She stopped in the living room and looked at a corner where the wallpaper was coming away.
The whole place felt abandoned, desolate, forgotten. It was perfect.

First things first. She took a notepad and pen from her shoulder bag and made a list. Then she left the flat, locking the door after her, and went down the three flights of stairs, through the courtyard and back onto the street. She retraced her footsteps and soon was on the high street. The sky was a flat blue, making everything look slightly garish.

She went into a pound shop, which was crammed with all manner of apparently random objects. There was an entire section devoted to Tupperware, another to water pistols. Paper plates, bath toys, streamers, several fishing rods, mop heads, bath foam, photo frames and patterned cups; plastic flowers, toilet brushes and sink plungers; kitchenware of all kinds. Frieda selected a pack of paper plates, another of plastic forks and knives, washing-up liquid, lavatory paper, a white mug and a small tumbler, a miniature kettle in lurid pink.

She didn’t intend to spend much time in her new home and there was no fridge or cooker, but in the small supermarket a few hundred yards up the road she bought ground coffee, tea bags, a small carton of milk, a box of matches and a bag of tea-lights.

Laden now, she carried everything back to the flat and laid it out on the table. She took a bottle of whisky from the holdall and put it out as well. She had brought very little with her – just a few basic clothes, a book of academic essays about psychotherapeutic practice and an anthology of poetry, toiletries, a drawing pad and some soft-leaded pencils.

She filled the kettle with water that spat unevenly from the tap and plugged it into one of the sockets. Once she had made herself a mug of tea, she sat on the sofa, avoiding the suspicious stain at one end, and looked around her. The sun shone through the dirty window, and lay in blades across the bare floor. So this was freedom, she thought; she had cut all her ties and cast herself off.

Fifteen minutes later, back on the high street, she went into what was labelled a ‘camping’ shop: row upon row of extraordinarily cheap tents, wellington boots, 99-pence T-shirts, footballs, children’s fishing nets, zip-up fleeces and waterproof jackets. She found what she was looking for in the dimly lit back of the shop – a sleeping bag for ten pounds.

She had seen the Primark when she came out of the Underground station. She had never been into one before, although Chloë used to buy half her wardrobe there, triumphantly flourishing her haul of sandals and leggings and stretchy dresses that barely covered her backside. She entered the shop now, blinking in the fluorescent dazzle that made everything seem like an over-lit stage set, and was momentarily startled by the overwhelming abundance of things – shelves and racks and bins of clothes. A mirror blocked her way and she stopped to look at herself. A woman in austere clothes, pale face bare of make-up, hair pulled severely back: she wouldn’t do at all.

Half an hour later she left with a red skirt, a flowery dress, patterned leggings, a natty striped blazer, flip-flops with a little flower between the toes, three T-shirts in
bright colours, two of which had logos on them that she didn’t even bother to read, and a shoulder bag with studs and tassels. She didn’t like any of the clothes and she particularly hated the bag, but perhaps that was the point: they were clothes that represented a self she was not, a role that she must step into.

There was still one more thing she had to do.

‘How do you want it?’

‘Short.’

‘How short? A bob, perhaps? With a choppy fringe?’

‘No. Just short.’ She glanced around her and pointed a finger at a picture. ‘Like that, perhaps.’

‘The urchin look?’

‘Whatever.’

The girl standing at her shoulder examined her critically in the big mirror. Frieda hated sitting in hairdressers, in the bright lights, seeing the endless duplications of her face. She lay back, her neck on the dented rim of the sink, and closed her eyes. Tepid water sluiced over her hair and trickled down her neck. The girl’s fingers were on her scalp, too intimate. Frieda could smell the tobacco smoke on her, and the sweet perfume overlying that. When she sat up again, she kept her eyes closed. She felt the blades of the scissors snickering their way through her hair and cold against her neck, and imagined the locks lying in damp clumps on the floor. She had not had short hair since she was a young girl, and rarely had it professionally cut – Sasha or Chloë or Olivia just trimmed it every so often. She thought of them now, each in their separate lives. Everything seemed very far away: the world on the other side of the river, the streets she walked at night, her
little house in the mews, her red armchair in the consulting room, her old and known self.

She opened her eyes and a woman stared back at her. Short dark hair whose tiny tendrils framed a face that seemed thinner and perhaps younger; large dark eyes. Strained, alert, unfamiliar. Herself and not herself; Frieda who was no longer Frieda. As she left the salon and stepped out onto the unknown street, she took the thickly framed spectacles she had bought from her bag and put them on. They were plain glass, yet the world looked quite different to her.

She walked over the road to a mini-supermarket. In the stationery section she found a small notebook with a picture of a horse on the cover and a small box of pens. She bought them and walked further along the road, past a betting shop and a showroom with second-hand office furniture. On the corner was a shop with a large, bright orange sign: ‘Shabba Travel Ltd. Cheap Tickets Worldwide. Money Transfer. Internet Café’. Taped to the window was a printout of the current conversion rate for the taka. She stepped inside. Frieda hadn’t realized that travel agents still existed, but it didn’t look like any travel agent she remembered. There were no posters on the walls, no brochures. And it didn’t look like a café either. There was an array of tables, each with its own computer terminal. On the left side of the room there was a laminated counter behind which was a wall of box files and a man talking on the phone. He was sweating, even though the day was cool, and his blue T-shirt was tight on him, as if it were two sizes too small. When he noticed Frieda, he looked at her suspiciously.

‘Can I use one of these?’ she said.

‘It’s fifty p for fifteen minutes,’ he said. ‘One twenty for an hour.’

She put two coins onto the counter. ‘Which one do I use?’

He just waved vaguely at the room and continued talking. Only one table was occupied. Two young men were sitting at one of the terminals, one of them tapping at a keyboard, the other leaning across him, offering him loud advice. She sat at a terminal at the back, and turned the screen so that it faced away from everyone except her. She went straight to Google and typed in her own name. She looked down the list that appeared and felt a sudden tremor. The first item she saw was ‘Frieda Klein obituary’. It didn’t seem like a good omen. She clicked on a link that really did refer to her and saw the familiar photograph of her that the newspapers had used before:

COP DOC LINKED TO MURDER
INVESTIGATION GOES ON THE RUN

 

POLICE APPEAL FOR WITNESSES AS
FRIEDA KLEIN GOES ON RUN

Frieda had hoped that a psychotherapist failing to appear for a police interview might be a fairly minor news story, but she was wrong. The story appeared on site after site, always with the same photograph. One link was to a local TV news report. She clicked through and saw a blonde female newscaster mentioning her name. As she felt around the edge of the terminal to lower the volume, she suddenly caught her breath. The newscaster cut to
DCI Hussein standing on the pavement at the entrance to the police station. Frieda’s photograph appeared once more and a number for members of the public to call. Then the report changed to footage of a royal visit to a London primary school. Frieda just stared for a few seconds at a group of very small children performing a folk dance in their playground. She got up.

‘You need to switch it off.’

‘What?’

She looked around. The man had finished his phone call and was leaning on the counter. Frieda switched the terminal off.