Waiting for Wednesday (29 page)

They went back to her flat because he didn’t want to be in his, even though it was closer. She apologized for the mess, but he didn’t mind that. He was a bit fuzzy from the wine and he was tired and all he wanted to do was to lose himself for a while.

She took an opened bottle of white wine from the fridge door and poured them each a glass. She looked up at him, expectant, and he leaned down and kissed her. As they undressed, he couldn’t stop thinking what a long time it had
been since he had done this. He closed his eyes and felt her against him, her soft skin, took in the smell of her. Could it really be this easy?

Paul Kerrigan wasn’t exactly drunk, but after three pints and no food since the cheese sandwich he hadn’t finished at lunch, he was blurry, hazy, a bit adrift. Theoretically he was on his way home, but he really didn’t want to go there, to see his wife’s thin, sad face, his sons’ hostile, derisive stares. He was like a stranger in his own house, a hated impostor. So now he walked slowly, feeling the weight of his heavy body with each step he took, the thump of blood in his aching head. He needed to make sense of all that had happened, but this evening everything felt like an effort and thoughts were sludge in his brain.

One month ago, Ruth had been alive and Elaine had known nothing, and his boys had been full of teasing affection for him. Now, each morning when he woke, he had to realize all over again that the old life was over.

He reached the corner of his road and stopped. The pub was disgorging its drinkers on to the pavement in a burst of noise. He didn’t hear the footsteps behind him, or turn in time to see who it was who brought something heavy down on the back of his head, so that he reeled, stumbled, fell in an ungainly heap on to the road. The blow came again, this time on his back. He thought how that would hurt later. And so would his cheek, which had scraped along the tarmac when he fell. He could taste blood, and there was also grit in his mouth. Through the roar in his head, he could hear the pubgoers, like distant static. He wanted to call out for help but his tongue was swollen and it was easier to close his eyes and wait for the footsteps to recede.

At last he struggled to his feet and blundered along the
street to his front door. He couldn’t make his fingers hold the key so he knocked and knocked until Elaine opened it. For a moment she stared at him, as if he was a monster standing in front of her, or a madman. Then her hand flew to her mouth in a cartoonish gesture of horror that he would have found funny in his safe old life.

‘I didn’t do it.’ Russell Lennox’s eyes were bloodshot. He had the sweet, stale smell of alcohol on him. Since the bottles had been found hidden in the garden shed, he seemed to have taken to drink in earnest – almost as if, now the secret was out, he had given himself permission.

‘It would be understandable if …’

‘I didn’t do anything. I was here. Alone.’

‘Can anyone confirm that?’

‘I told you I was.’

‘You seem to have had a fair bit to drink.’

‘Is that illegal?’

‘The man who was having an affair with your wife has been badly beaten up, not ten minutes from your house.’

‘He had it coming to him. But I didn’t do it.’

That was all he’d say, over and over, while Dora peered through the banisters at him, her face small and pale in the darkness.

Frieda lay in bed and tried to sleep. She lay quite straight, staring at the ceiling, and then she turned on to her side, rearranging the pillow, closing her eyes. The cat lay at her feet. She put an image in her mind, of a shallow river running over pebbles, but the water bubbled and the faces rose from the bottom. Thoughts stirred in the mud of her mind. Her body was sore.

It was no good. She could hear Chloë downstairs. She was
talking to someone on Skype and had been for what seemed like hours, sometimes loudly and emphatically, with occasional bursts of laughter. Or was she crying? Frieda looked at the time. It was nearly one o’clock and tomorrow Chloë had school and she herself had a whole day to get through. She sighed and got out of bed, tweaking her curtains back to see the half-moon and then going down the stairs.

Chloë looked up from her computer guiltily. Frieda saw the image of Ted Lennox there, his peaky adolescent face staring out at her. She stepped back, out of range. ‘I didn’t know you were still awake.’

‘I don’t want to be.’

‘I need to talk to Ted.’

‘You were talking rather loudly. And I think it’s time for you to go to bed.’

‘I’m not sleepy.’

‘Go to bed, Chloë. You have classes tomorrow.’ Frieda stepped forward so that she could see Ted and Ted could see her. He looked dreadful. ‘You too, Ted.’

‘Can I have some tea first? With just a small amount of milk,’ Chloë asked.

‘This isn’t a hotel.’

‘Sorry.’ Chloë didn’t sound sorry. She grimaced into her computer screen and raised her eyebrows dramatically at Ted.

‘Take your things up with you. And don’t touch anything in my study.’

She returned to her room but for a long while she didn’t get into her bed. Instead, she stood at the window, gazing out at the night.

THIRTY-TWO

When Karlsson woke, he wasn’t sure where he was. He shifted in the bed and felt the warmth, saw the edge of a shoulder and thought, she’s come back. And then he remembered and felt a lurch, and it was as if the colour had leached out of the world. He fumbled for his watch and found it still on his wrist. It was twenty to six. He lay back in the bed. There was a murmur of something he couldn’t make out from Sadie beside him. Wasn’t this what he had been wanting? Something uncomplicated, easy, affectionate, pleasurable? An ache started in his head and spread through his body. He felt an immense, disabling tiredness. Very cautiously, he edged himself out of the bed and started to dress.

‘You don’t have to run away,’ said Sadie, from behind him.

She had pulled herself up and was leaning on one elbow. Her face was puffy from sleep. ‘I could make you some breakfast,’ she said. She looked kind and concerned.

‘I’ve really got to go,’ said Karlsson. ‘I need to get back and get changed and go into work. I’ve really got to rush.’

‘I can get you a tea or a coffee.’

‘That’s all right.’

Karlsson felt a sudden sense of panic, so that he was almost choking. He pulled his trousers on and fastened them. It all seemed to be taking a long time and he sensed
Sadie watching him, a character in an unfunny farce. He pushed his shoes on. They felt too small for his feet. He picked up his jacket and turned to her. She was lying in the same position.

‘Sadie, I’m sorry, I …’ He couldn’t think what else to say.

‘Yes, all right.’ She turned away from him and twisted the duvet around her so that he could see only the back of her head. He saw her bra draped over the end of the bed. He thought of her putting it on yesterday morning and then taking it off last night. He had an impulse to sit down, pull the duvet back and tell Sadie everything, explain what he was feeling, why this was all wrong, why they were wrong for each other and why he was wrong for anyone. But that wouldn’t be fair on her. He’d already done enough.

He came out on to the quiet street. There was a hum of traffic but the main sound was birdsong all around him, with a blue sky and early-morning sunshine. It felt wrong. It should have been raining and grey and cold.

Frieda sat at her kitchen table while Josef boiled the kettle, ground coffee, washed up the remains of Chloë’s breakfast. A good thing about Josef – and she had to hang on to the good things, in the middle of everything else – was that she didn’t have to make conversation. So she could just sit at the table and stare in front of her. Finally he put the mug of coffee in front of her and sat down with his own mug.

‘Is difficult to help,’ he began. ‘There is a Ukrainian joke about three people helping old lady across the road. And a person say, why take three people? And they say because the old lady not want to cross the road.’ He took a sip from his coffee. ‘Is funny in Ukrainian.’

‘So where are we?’ said Frieda.

‘It is finished today, even if I kill myself to finish it. This evening you will have a bath in your own beautiful bath.’

‘Good,’ said Frieda.

‘And Chloë? She is staying here?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Frieda. ‘I need to find out what’s going on. We’ll see.’

Josef looked at Frieda with a concerned expression. ‘You are not angry,’ he said. ‘You should be angry.’

‘What do you mean?’

Josef gestured around him. ‘I tried to make you better with your new bath but it is difficult to help. And I make things worse for you.’

‘It wasn’t your fault –’

‘Stop. The bath didn’t come, then came and went away again. And the electricity stopped.’

‘Now that
was
irritating.’

‘You need help and I make it worse for you and now Chloë is here. I saw upstairs and there is her things everywhere in your study.’

‘Is there? Oh, God, I haven’t been up there. Is it bad?’

‘Is bad. There is girl things and clothes all over your things. Apple cores too. Wet towels. Mugs growing things inside. But I am saying, you should be angry. You should be hitting out. Fighting, no?’

‘I’m not angry, Josef. Or maybe I’m too tired to be angry.’ She relapsed into silence. ‘But that bath had better be done by this evening or else –’

A ringtone went off and it took Frieda a moment to realize it was her own. It came from her jacket, which was draped over a chair. She fumbled through the pockets until she found it. She heard a woman’s voice: ‘Is that Frieda Klein?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is Agnes Flint. You left a message.’

As soon as Jim Fearby saw the photograph, he sensed he could cross her off his list. Clare Boyle was – had been – a round-faced girl, with frizzy blonde hair. Her mother had sat him down and brought him tea and cake, then had produced a handful of photographs from a drawer. Valerie Boyle settled down in the armchair opposite and talked about how her daughter had always been difficult.

‘Did she ever run away?’ Fearby asked.

‘She got in with the wrong crowd,’ Valerie said. ‘Sometimes she’d stay out all night. Sometimes even for a few days. When I got upset she just flared up. There was nothing I could do.’

Fearby put his notebook down. Really, he could leave now, but he had to stay long enough to be polite. He looked at Valerie Boyle. He felt he could classify these mothers by now. Some of them had grief like a chronic illness; they were grey with it, had fine lines scratched in their faces, a deadness in the eyes as if there was nothing worth looking at. Then there were women like this one. Valerie Boyle had a quavering quality, a sense of flinching from a blow that might come at any moment, as if she were in the middle of an embarrassing scene that might turn nasty.

‘Was there trouble at home?’ Fearby asked.

‘No, no,’ she said quickly. ‘She had some problems with her dad. He could turn a bit violent. But, like I said, she was difficult. Then she just disappeared. The police never did that much.’

Fearby wondered if it had just been violence, or whether it had been sex as well. And the woman in front of him; had she stood by and watched it happen? In the end there would
have been nothing for the girl to do but escape. She was probably somewhere in London, one of the thousands of young people who’d had to escape, one way or another. Perhaps she was with one of the ‘wrong crowd’ her mother had talked about. Fearby silently wished her luck.

But when Fearby drove up to the little estate just outside Stafford, he knew he was on to something. The group of houses was just a few minutes’ drive out of town but also semi-rural, surrounded by scrubby open spaces, playing fields, some woods. He saw signs for footpaths. This was more like it. Daisy Logan’s mother was unwilling to let him in; she talked through the barely open door with the chain still attached. Fearby explained that he was a journalist, that he wanted to find out what had happened to her daughter, that he would only be a minute, but she was immovable. She said she didn’t want to talk about it. It had been seven years. The police had given up. They’d put it behind them.

‘Just a couple of minutes,’ said Fearby. ‘One minute.’

‘What is it you want?’

Fearby got a glimpse of haunted dark eyes. He was used to it by now, but sometimes he felt the odd pang, that he was hunting people down and opening up their old wounds. But what else could he do?

‘I read about your daughter,’ he said. ‘It was a tragic case. I wanted to know whether you’d had any warning. Was she unhappy? Did she have trouble at school?’

‘She loved school,’ said the woman. ‘She had just started the sixth form. She wanted to be a vet.’

‘What was her mood like?’

‘Are you asking me whether Daisy ran away from home? The week after she … well, she was going on a school trip. She’d done a part-time job for six months to pay for it. You
know, my husband’s at home here. He’s on disability. It broke him. We keep going over that evening. She was walking over to see her best friend. She always took a shortcut across the common. If only we’d driven her. We just go over and over it.’