Frieda Klein 2 - Tuesday's Gone (41 page)

‘Well, well.’ He didn’t
move either. They stared at each other. She saw a tiny pulse jumping in his cheek. So he
was nervous. ‘I’m honoured, Dr Klein.’ He emphasized the
‘Dr’ as if mocking it.

‘May I come in?’

He stood back and she entered a spacious
hallway, with a rug over the wooden floor, a chest to one side with a bowl of spring
flowers on it, a portrait hanging on the wall. She wouldn’t look at that, she
mustn’t – and she steadfastly averted her eyes from it as she followed David into
the living room.

‘I’ve just made a pot of
coffee,’ he said. ‘You told me you’d be here at half past three and I
knew I could reliably set my watch by you. Ever prompt. Some things never
change.’

Frieda squashed her
impulse to refuse coffee, and took a seat while he went into the kitchen, returning
moments later with two mugs.

‘Black, as usual?’

‘Yes.’

She was pleased to see how steady her hands
were as she took a small sip. There was bitterness in her mouth, and the coffee tasted
hard and full of minerals.

‘Still treating the diseases of the
rich?’

‘I’m still working as an
analyst, if that’s what you mean.’

‘I’ve been reading about you in
the paper.’ David slid his eyes across her face to gauge her reaction. Frieda felt
as if someone had jabbed her with something sharp. ‘Very interesting.’

‘I’m here to talk about
Chloë.’

David’s smile thinned into a straight
line. ‘Is this about Olivia’s maintenance money?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve had enough of her
complaints, and of her solicitor’s letters. Who is this Tessa Welles, anyway? She
suddenly appeared out of the blue. I suppose that was your doing.’

‘Olivia needs help. But that’s
not –’

‘What Olivia clearly needs is to pull
herself together. I’m not going to continue supporting her in her life of leisure.
That’s final.’

Frieda said nothing, just looked at him.

‘I know what you’re
thinking.’ He leaned forward. She could see the fine lines round his eyes, the
flecks in his irises, the slightly cruel curve of his lips, the continuing pulse in his
cheek. She could smell him, too – shaving lotion and coffee and something else, some
smell he had had since he was a small boy who used to slap the back of her leg with a
plastic ruler.

‘You live in a
lovely house just outside Cambridge,’ she said. ‘This is a new carpet.
You’re wearing a watch that would pay for Chloë’s first year at
university. There’s a gardener out there, weeding your flowerbed. Nobody’s
asking you to be generous. Just fair.’

‘Olivia was a mistake. She’s a
rude, messy, selfish woman. Actually, I think she’s unhinged. I’m well shot
of her.’

‘You have a daughter with
her.’

‘She’s her mother’s
daughter,’ said David. ‘She talks as if she has contempt for me.’

‘Perhaps she does.’

‘Did you come all this way to insult
me?’ he asked, then added, softly, ‘Freddy?’

The old nickname might once have been used
affectionately, but not now, not for a very long time.

‘She’s a teenager,’ she
said, keeping her voice steady and her face neutral. ‘Life is hard for a teenager
at the best of times. Think: you left her mother for a younger woman, and you left her
as well. You’re holding back money and she’s watching her mother go to
pieces. You rarely see her and sometimes you make arrangements that you then default on.
You go on grand holidays with your new wife and don’t take her. You forget her
birthday. You don’t go to her parents’ evenings. Why shouldn’t she
have contempt for you?’ She held up her hand to stop him interrupting. ‘For
someone like Chloë, feeling anger and contempt is far easier to deal with than
feeling wretchedness and fear, which is what she’s really feeling. Your daughter
needs a father.’

‘Finished?’

‘No. But I want to hear what you have
to say.’

David stood up and went to the window. Even
his back looked angry – yet Frieda had a sudden clear flashback of sitting on those
shoulders, holding on to his head with one
hand, and with the other
reaching down some fruit from the tree at the bottom of their garden. She could almost
feel the cool heaviness of the plum in her hand, its bloom against her fingers. She
blinked away the memory and waited. David turned round.

‘I don’t know how you can sit
here, in this room, and talk to me about what teenagers are like and what parents
feel.’

He wanted to hurt her.

‘You weren’t a parent last time
I looked. How old are you? It won’t be so very long before you’re forty,
will it?’

‘This is about Chloë.’

‘It’s about you thinking, after
everything, you have the right to come here and tell me what to do with my
life.’

‘Just with your daughter. And if I
don’t tell you, who will, until it’s too late?’

‘What do you think she’s going
to do? Slit her wrists?’

She gave him a look so fierce that she could
see he was shaken. ‘I don’t know what she could do. I don’t want to
find out. I want you to help her.’ She took a deep breath and added,
‘Please.’

‘This is what I will do,’ he
said. ‘Because I had already decided to, not because you’ve asked me to. I
will see her every other weekend, from Saturday afternoon, until Sunday afternoon.
Twenty-four hours. All right?’ He picked up his electronic organizer and started
pressing buttons, very business-like. ‘Not next weekend, or the one after, though.
We can start at the beginning of April. You’ll see to it that she
knows?’

‘No. You have to ask her if
that’s what she wants. She’s seventeen. Talk to her. And then
listen.’

He slammed the organizer on the table, so
hard that his mug jumped.

‘And please don’t tell her I
came to see you. She’d feel humiliated. She needs you to want to see
her.’

A door slammed and someone
called his name. Then a pretty young woman entered. She had blonde hair and long legs.
She must have been in her late twenties, though her style was of someone younger –
someone of Chloë’s generation, thought Frieda.

‘Oh,’ she said, in obvious
surprise, laying one hand against her stomach. ‘Sorry.’ She looked
enquiringly at David.

‘This is Frieda,’ he said.

‘You mean –
Frieda
Frieda?’

‘Yes. This is my wife,
Trudy.’

‘I’m just going,’ said
Frieda.

‘Don’t mind me.’ She
picked up the two coffee mugs, making an odd little grimace of distaste as she did so,
and went out of the room.

‘Does Chloë know?’ asked
Frieda.

‘What?’

‘That she’s going to have a
sibling.’

‘How the fuck?’

‘You have to tell her.’

‘I don’t have to do
anything.’

‘You do.’

She walked back to the station. She had
plenty of time before Sasha’s birthday party, and although the day was grey and
foggy, threatening rain, she needed to be outside in the cleansing wind. She felt
polluted, defiled. At first, as she made her way rapidly up the lane lined with bare
trees and muddy fields, she thought she would actually be sick, but gradually her
feelings began to settle, like something sinking back into darkness.

Sasha opened her front door to find a
couple she didn’t know outside. She felt a brief moment of panic. Were these some
old friends she’d forgotten about? The two of them had easy,
cheerful expressions, as if they were both in on a joke. The man put his hand out.

‘I’m Harry Welles, a friend of
Frieda’s.’

A relieved smile broke over Sasha’s
face.

‘Frieda said you were coming.
She’s told me all about you.’

‘I’m a bit worried about what
Frieda might mean by all about me,’ said Harry. ‘I’ve brought my
sister, Tessa, as well. Is that OK?’

‘Great.’ Sasha stepped back.
‘Come in out of the cold. Dump your coats and then join us.’

They went up the stairs together to a small
bedroom, where the bed was already piled with coats and jackets. Harry picked up a
photograph that was on the little table: Sasha and another young woman standing arm in
arm in front of a tent, wearing shorts and hiking boots. ‘Do you think she’s
gay?’ he asked.

Tessa snatched the picture out of his hands
and put it back on the table. ‘Do you fancy her as well?’ she said.

‘I was thinking of you,’ he
said, and she responded with a playful slap. They headed back down to the music and
hubbub of the party. Tessa watched Harry as he entered the main room. He looked at ease,
handsome and full of an amiable curiosity. Of course Frieda liked him.

And there was Frieda, in a corner of the
room holding a glass of what looked like mineral water, wearing a dress the colour of
moss that shimmered slightly when she moved. Tessa noticed how shapely her legs were,
how slim her figure and how upright she stood. She was talking to an older man with grey
hair and a thin, unshaven face. He was wearing a tatty pair of jeans, a gorgeous
patterned shirt, and had a bright cotton scarf wrapped round his neck. A pretentious
abstract artist or another psychotherapist, she thought, as
she and
Harry approached. It looked as if they were having a serious conversation, almost an
argument.

‘Am I interrupting something?’
Harry said.

‘Frieda has problems with her friends
helping her,’ said the man.

‘What Frieda has problems with,’
said Frieda, ‘is that her friends might get arrested while trying to help
her.’

‘Arrested?’ said Harry.

‘Don’t ask,’ said
Frieda.

Harry kissed her, first on one cheek, then,
lingeringly, on the other. She didn’t draw back, but put a hand on his arm,
holding him by her side. She smiled at Tessa, apparently unsurprised to see her, then
introduced them.

‘Reuben McGill, this is Harry and
Tessa Welles.’

‘Brother and sister,’ said
Harry.

‘Well, any fool can see that,’
said Reuben.

‘Really?’

‘Cheekbones,’ said Reuben.
‘And the ears as well. Dead giveaway.’

‘Reuben’s a colleague of
mine,’ said Frieda. She lifted a hand in greeting and an olive-skinned woman, with
dark hair tied in a dramatic bandanna and wearing turquoise eye shadow, came towards
them, swaying slightly. ‘And here’s another colleague. Paz, Harry and
Tessa.’

‘I am already drunk,’ said Paz,
solemnly, forming her words with care. ‘I should have paced myself. But I am a
very bad pacer. My mother used to make me drink a glass of milk before going out to line
my stomach. I hate milk. Sasha says I have to dance.’ She tucked her hand through
Reuben’s arm. ‘Will you dance with me, Reuben? Two people with broken
hearts?’

‘Do I have a broken heart?’

‘Of course.’

‘You’re
probably right. Just a bit broken in many places. Multiple hairline fractures. Is your
heart broken as well?’

‘Mine?’ said Tessa,
startled.

‘You don’t look like someone
with a broken heart. I can usually tell.’

‘How?’

‘Something in the eyes.’

‘Ignore him,’ said Frieda.
‘It’s his chat-up line.’

‘You look beautiful, Frieda,’
said Harry, softly, as though there was no one else in the room but them. Reuben’s
eyebrows went up and Paz giggled. Frieda ignored them. ‘Can I get you a
drink?’

‘I have a drink.’ She raised her
glass of water.

‘A proper drink.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘I’ll get myself one, then.
Tessa?’

‘A glass of wine, please.’

‘I’ll be right back.’

They both watched him as he edged his way
through the crowd. Sasha came up behind them and put her arms round Frieda, kissing her
on the crown of her head. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘What for?’

‘I don’t know. It’s my
birthday and I wanted to say thank you.’

Tessa saw the two women exchange an elusive
smile and felt a shiver of – what was it? Was it envy of their intimacy? Sasha drifted
away, pulled into another group of people. Frieda turned as a young man in an orange
shirt that clashed with his hair claimed her attention. He seemed a bit stoned and his
hair stood up in peaks. He waved his hands around and leaned towards her with burning
eyes, but she stood quite still as she listened. There was a quality of deep
reserve about her, thought Tessa. She was in the room and yet somehow
standing back from it. She gave you her full attention and yet at the same time you felt
she had a core of isolation, of separateness. It made her a kind of magnet.

The party continued. A small, scruffy band
arrived and set up in a corner. The rain stopped and a half-moon sailed between the
clouds that were breaking up. In the little garden at the back of the house, smokers
gathered in small clusters. At one point, Tessa saw Harry standing there with Frieda,
talking to her. He was much taller than she was, and was gazing down at her with an
expression that Tessa – who knew her brother very well – found hard to read.

‘You watch your brother?’

She turned to face a large man with big
brown eyes and a scar on his cheek. He smelt of tobacco and something else that she
found hard to place, wood or resin. ‘Not exactly.’

‘Some vodka.’ He held up the
bottle in his hand. His lips and eyes gleamed. ‘And then we will dance.’

‘I’m not a great one for
dancing.’

‘That’s why the vodka
first.’

‘You are Frieda’s
friend.’

‘Of course.’ He reached for a
small tumbler, poured a couple of fat fingers of vodka and gave it to her. She sipped it
warily while he gazed at her.

And he pulled her into the centre of the
room. The band was playing some plaintive kind of music, not suitable for dancing at
all, but he didn’t seem to mind. He danced entirely without self-consciousness.
Even with her chest stinging from the vodka, Tessa felt awkward. The music speeded up
and so did the man. He was like an acrobat, agile on a tiny spot of carpet. Music seemed
to ripple through him and
people were cheering him on. Soon Tessa
stopped and watched him too.