by Nicci French
‘Next thing I know you’ll be inviting me to meet your boss. Oh, I forgot – you are the boss, aren’t you?’
‘Do you mind?’
‘Mind?’
‘That people know we’re a couple.’
‘Is that what we are?’ she asked sardonically, though her heart was beating hard.
They had reached the Barbican. He turned and took her by her shoulders. ‘Come on, Frieda. Why is it so hard? Say it out loud.’
‘Say what?’
‘We’re an item, a couple. We make love, make plans, talk to each other about what we did in the day. I think about you all the time. I remember you, what you said, how you felt. God, here I am, a forty-something consultant. My hair’s going grey and I feel like a teenager. Why is it so difficult for you to say it?’
‘I liked it when we were a secret,’ Frieda said. ‘When nobody knew about us except us.’
‘It couldn’t stay a secret for ever.’
‘I know that.’
‘You’re like a wild animal. I’m afraid that if I move suddenly, if I make the wrong sort of sound, you’ll run away.’
‘You should get a Labrador,’ said Frieda. ‘I had one when I was a child. Every time you left her, she howled. She was as grateful every time you came home as if you’d been away for ten years.’
‘I don’t want that,’ said Sandy. ‘I want you.’
She moved closer to him and put her arms under his thick coat and his suit jacket. She could feel the warmth of his body through his thin shirt. His lips were against her hair. ‘I want you, too.’
In silence, they entered the building. In the lift, they turned to each other as the doors shut and kissed so fiercely that she could taste the blood on her lip, pulling apart as they reached his floor. Inside the flat, he took off her coat and let it fall to the floor. He unzipped her dress, lifted her hair and undid the clasp on her necklace, letting the thin silver chain coil into the palm of his hand, then placing it on the small table in the entrance hall. Kneeling on the wooden floor, he pulled off one shoe, then the next. He looked up at her and she tried to smile. Being happy scared her.
‘I’m not from Poland,’ Josef said, yet again, to the only other man in the pub, which was warm and cosy and down-at-heel and which he didn’t really want to leave.
‘I don’t mind. I like Poles. Got nothing against them.’
‘I am from the Ukraine. It is very different. In the summer we -’
‘I drive buses.’
‘Ah.’ Josef nodded. ‘I like buses here. I like to go on the top floor at the front.’
‘Your turn.’
‘I am sorry?’
‘Another one of these, mate.’
He held out his glass. Josef thought he had bought the last round. He put his hand into the pocket of his jacket, which wasn’t going to be thick enough to last him through the winter, and felt the coins there. He wasn’t sure he had enough for another round, but he didn’t want to be rude to his new friend, who was called Ray and was pink and round.
‘I will buy you a beer but perhaps not for me,’ he said at last. ‘I must go now. Tomorrow I start work for a woman.’
Ray gave a conspiratorial smile that disappeared when he saw Josef’s expression.
She loved the feel of the wind on her face. She loved the cool darkness and the way the streets around her were quite empty, only the sound of her footsteps and the rustle of dry leaves disturbing their silence. In the distance, though, she could still hear the rumble of traffic. She walked under the small bridge where, for as long as she had been taking this route, a pair of boots had hung from the parapet, swinging in the wind. At Waterloo Bridge she always paused for a while to gaze at the great buildings massed on either side of the river and listen to the soft, lapping sound of water against the shore. This was where London was on public view. From here, it spread for miles in either direction, dwindling at last into suburbs and then a tamed kind of countryside that Frieda never visited if she could help it. She turned her back to the river. Not far away, her narrow little house was waiting for her, with its dark blue door, the chair by the fire, the bed she had made that morning.
When she arrived home, it was well past three o’clock, but although her body was tired, her brain was teeming with thoughts and images, and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to sleep. A colleague of hers who was a sleep expert had told her that it was often helpful to focus on a tranquil image – a lake or a meadow of long grass, she had suggested – and that was what Frieda did now, lying in her bed with the curtains half open so that she could see the moon. She imagined herself inside the drawing that hung in the rented room where she worked, walking through the warm, dusty colours of its landscape. But instead she found herself imagining the picture that Alan Dekker had talked about, of a ship in a gale, with lashing ropes, everything in frantic motion. That must be how it sometimes felt inside his head, she thought. And then, thinking of Alan, she remembered her ceiling exploding and a body falling through in a shower of dust and plaster. She wondered if her room would be ready for her tomorrow, except, of course, that tomorrow was today, and in about three hours it would be time to get up.
When Josef arrived at the flat, Frieda could barely see him at first behind the huge panel of chipboard he was carrying. He leaned it against a wall in the consulting room and looked up at the hole.
‘I’ve got a patient coming in half an hour,’ Frieda said.
‘This takes ten minutes,’ said Josef. ‘Fifteen, maybe.’
‘Is this to patch the hole up?’
‘Before the hole gets better, it must first get worse. I will make it larger, pull the bits away. Afterwards I can make it strong and good.’ He gestured at the board. ‘This I will use to make a wall here and to give you your room back. I have measured and cut two pieces and it will fit.’
Frieda had so many questions and reservations about this process that she didn’t know which to express first. ‘How will you get in and out?’ she asked lamely.
‘Through the hole,’ said Josef. ‘I put the ladder down and then afterwards I will pull it up.’
He walked out and returned a couple of minutes later with two bags, one of tools and the other with different-sized pieces of wood. With amazing speed he wedged the first board into place and then Frieda heard various bangs coming from the side she couldn’t see. She peered round into the tiny end of the room, now half blocked in by the board. ‘What’s this going to look like when you’ve finished?’ she said.
Josef gave a rap at the board to check its solidity. He seemed satisfied. ‘The hole, filled in,’ he said. ‘Then the boarding goes away. Then one afternoon, the ceiling, papered and painted. And if you want it, the rest of the room painted. Same afternoon.’ He looked around. ‘Painted a proper colour.’
‘This is the proper colour.’
‘You choose. Boring colour, if you like. The people upstairs, they pay for it. I mix in with what they’re paying.’
‘I’m not sure that’s right,’ said Frieda.
Josef shrugged. ‘They make me work somewhere dangerous where you fall through the floor. They can pay for it a little bit.’
‘I’m not convinced about this,’ said Frieda.
‘I get the second board now and then you have your room back. Just a bit smaller for a while.’
‘All right.’
Frieda looked at her watch. Soon she would be sitting in this diminished room, hearing Alan’s grim dreams and his waking sadness.
Chapter Eleven
‘Honestly, Alan, I don’t know why you have to be so secretive all of a sudden.’
It was after supper and Carrie had been flicking through the channels with the remote control, but now she turned the television off and turned to him, folding her arms. She’d been snappy and thin-skinned all evening. Alan had been waiting for this conversation.
‘I’m not being secretive.’
‘You’re not telling me anything that goes on in there. I was the one w
ho encouraged you to go and now you’re shutting me out.’
‘It’s not like that.’ Alan tried to think of how Frieda had put it earlier that day. ‘It’s a safe place,’ he said. ‘Where I can say anything.’
‘Aren’t you safe here? Can’t you say anything to me?’
‘It’s not the same. She’s a stranger.’
‘So you can say things to a stranger that you can’t say to your own wife?’
‘Yes,’ said Alan.
‘What kind of things? Oh, sorry, I forgot. You can’t tell me, can you, because they’re secret?’ She wasn’t used to being sarcastic. Her cheeks were flushed.
‘It’s nothing bad. They’re not secret like that. I’m not telling her I’m having an affair, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘If that’s what you want.’ Carrie’s voice was tight and high. She shrugged and turned the television back on.
‘Don’t be like this.’
‘Like what?’
‘Hurt. As if I’ve done something to offend you.’
‘I’m not offended,’ she said, in the same clipped voice.
He took the remote out of her hand and turned off the television again. ‘If you really want to know, what we talked about today was us not managing to have a baby.’
She turned to face him. ‘Is that why you’re not well?’
‘I don’t know why,’ he said. ‘I’m just telling you what we talked about today.’
‘It’s me who can’t have the baby too.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m the one who’s been prodded and poked and who has to wait for my period every month.’
‘I know.’
‘And it’s not as if…’ She stopped.
‘It’s not as if it’s your fault,’ Alan finished for her wearily. ‘My fault. I’m the one with a low sperm count. And I’m the one who’s impotent.’
‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘It’s all right. It’s true, after all.’
‘I didn’t mean it. It’s not a question of fault. Don’t look like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘As if you’re about to cry.’
‘What’s so wrong with crying?’ Alan asked, surprising himself. ‘Why shouldn’t I cry? Why shouldn’t you?’
‘I do, if you want to know. When I’m by myself.’
He picked up her hand and fiddled with the wedding ring on her finger. ‘You have secrets from me too.’
‘We should have talked about it more. But I keep thinking it will still be all right. Lots of women wait for years. And if it doesn’t happen, maybe we can adopt. I’m still quite young.’
‘I wanted my own son,’ said Alan, softly, almost as if he was speaking to himself. ‘That’s what I was talking about today. Not having a child, it doesn’t just make me sad, it makes me feel wrong, like a botched piece of work. As if I’m unfinished inside – and then all these things rush in to fill the emptiness.’ He stopped. ‘It sounds stupid.’
‘No,’ said Carrie, although she wanted to cry out: What about me? My son, my daughter? I would have been a good mother. ‘Go on.’
‘It’s not fair. Not fair on you either. I’ve let you down and I can’t put it right. You must wish you’d never met me.’
‘No.’ Though of course there’d been times when she had thought how much easier it would have been with a different kind of man, confident and with sperm that could swim right up her, like salmon up a river. She winced. The two things seemed to go together, but she knew that wasn’t right. It wasn’t Alan’s fault.
‘It all came pouring out of me, things I didn’t even know I’d been thinking. She’s quite a scary woman, but somehow you can talk to her as well. After a bit, it wasn’t even like talking to a person. It was like walking around in a house I’d never been into before, finding things, picking them up and looking at them, letting myself just wander around inside myself. And then I found myself saying this thing…’ He stopped, passed his hand across his forehead. He was suddenly feeling a bit sick, a bit out of breath.
‘What?’ asked Carrie. ‘What thing?’
‘I have this picture in my mind – it sounds daft. It seems so real, as if I’m looking at it or remembering it or something, not just imagining it. Almost as if it’s happening to me.’
‘What’s happening? What picture, Alan?’
‘Me and my son together. A little five-year-old, with bright red hair and freckles and a big grin. I can see him plain as day.’
‘You see him?’
‘And I’m teaching him to play football.’ He gestured towards the small back garden that he’d been neglecting recently. ‘He’s doing really well, controlling the ball, and I feel so proud of him. Proud of myself, too, being a proper dad, doing what dads do with their sons.’ His chest was tight, as though he’d run a long distance. ‘You’re standing at the window looking at us.’
Carrie didn’t speak. Tears were running down her cheeks.
‘Recently I haven’t been able to get the picture out of my mind – sometimes I don’t want to, but sometimes I think I’ll go mad with it. She said, did I think it was me as a boy that I’m seeing, or the boy inside me or something, and wanting to rescue him in some way? But it’s not like that. I’m seeing my son. Our son.’
‘Oh, God.’
‘The one we’re waiting for.’
It’s always like this. There comes a moment when you just know. It’s as simple as that. After all these months of watching, of waiting for the tug on the line and the bait to be taken, of being patient and careful, of wondering if this one is possible or that one, of never giving up or getting downhearted, then suddenly it happens. You just have to be ready for it.
He’s small and skinny, maybe young for his age, though it’s hard to tell. He hangs back from his classmates at first; his eyes dart around, to see where he’ll be wanted. He’s wearing jeans that are a bit too big for him and a thick jacket that’s almost down to his knees. He comes closer. He has round brown eyes and round copper-coloured freckles. He’s wearing a grey woolly hat with a bobble on it, but then he pulls it off and his hair is a flaming red. It’s a sign, it’s a gift, it’s perfect.
So now it’s just a question of time. You’ve got to get it right. There’ll never be another as perfect as this.
Chapter Twelve
Josef liked this way of working. The clients were away and would only visit maybe every two weeks. He could live in the flat most of the time. He could eat there, if he wanted. In the past he had worked mainly as part of a team, and that was mainly good too, all the people with their specialities – the plasterer, the carpenter, the electrician – a version of a family that argued and fought and tried to get along with each other. But this was almost a holiday. He could work when he liked, even in the middle of the night, when it was dark outside and as quiet as it ever got. And in the day, sometimes, for example on a day like this, when it was about two in the afternoon and his eyes got heavy, he would put his tools down and lie back. He closed his eyes and thought at first about the problem of the hole and how far it needed widening to clear out the damaged wood and cracked plaster and then, for no reason at all, he started to think of his wife, Vera, and of the boys. He hadn’t seen them since the summer. He wondered what they were doing now, and then they faded as if they had walked into a mist, but slowly, so there wasn’t a clear moment when he couldn’t see them – and then he was asleep, dreaming dreams he wouldn’t remember when he woke, because he never remembered his dreams.
At first he thought the voice was part of his dream. It was the voice of a man, and before he could make out the meaning of the words he could feel their sadness, a raw sadness that sounded strange coming from a man. This was followed by a silence and another voice spoke and this one he knew. It was the voice of the woman downstairs, the doctor. Josef raised his hand and felt the roughness of the chipboard on his fingers. He saw the glow of the hole in the ceiling above him and slowly, dully, realized wher
e he was: on the floor in her room. As he heard the two voices – the man’s quavering, the woman’s clear and calm – he felt a growing sense of alarm. He was listening to a confession, something that nobody else was meant to hear. He looked up at the ladder. If he tried to climb it, he would be heard. Better just to lie where he was and hope it would be over soon.
‘My wife was angry with me,’ the man said. ‘It was as if she was jealous. She wanted me to tell her what I’d told you.’
‘And did you?’ said Frieda.
‘Kind of,’ said the man. ‘I told her a version of it. But then, as I was telling her, it made me feel that I hadn’t really told you properly.’
‘What didn’t you say?’
There was a long pause. Josef could hear the beat of his heart. He smelt the alcohol on his own breath. How could they not hear him or smell him?
‘Can I really say anything here?’ said the man. ‘I’m asking because I realized when I was talking to Carrie that there’s always some kind of limit on what I can say. I mean, I can only say the sort of things to her that husbands are supposed to say to their wives, and when I’m out with a friend, I can only say the sort of things that friends are meant to say to each other.’
‘This is the place where you’re allowed to say anything. There are no limits.’
‘You’ll just think this is stupid…’
‘I don’t care whether it’s stupid or not.’