by Nicci French
‘And you won’t tell anyone what I say?’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘You promise?’
‘Alan, I’m professionally bound to respect your privacy. Unless you’re confessing to a serious crime. Or planning one.’
‘I’m confessing to bad feelings.’
‘Then tell me what they are.’
Josef thought that what he really ought to do was to put his fingers in his ears. He wasn’t meant to hear this. He was meant not to hear it. But he didn’t. He couldn’t stop himself. He wanted to know. What did it matter, really?
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said the man. ‘I was talking about wanting a child. Wanting a son. So why aren’t I just going to have fertility treatment and taking Viagra? It’s a medical problem, not something to do with my head.’
‘So why aren’t you?’
‘I had this feeling about my son, about this little boy, this boy who looks like me. It was like a hunger. But these attacks I’ve been having, where I’ve been almost collapsing, fainting, making a complete idiot of myself. They’re not about that hunger. They’re about something else as well.’
‘What are they about?’
‘Guilt.’
Another silence.
‘What kind of guilt?’ said Frieda.
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said the man. ‘And I saw it like this. I want this boy. I want him kicking a ball with me. And I’m here wanting him to be with me. But he’s not there wanting me to be with him. Does that make sense?’
‘Not entirely,’ said Frieda. ‘Not yet.’
‘It’s obvious. They don’t ask to be born. We want them. I guess it’s an instinct. But what’s the difference between that and an addiction? You take heroin to stop you wanting heroin. You’ve got an itch for a child and you get a child to stop that itch.’
‘So you think having a child is a selfish act?’
‘Of course it is,’ said the man. ‘It’s not as if you consult the child.’
‘Are you saying you feel guilty because your desire to have a child is selfish?’
‘Yes.’ Long pause. ‘And also…’ He stopped. Josef agreed with Frieda – there was something else going on here. ‘Also, it’s this urgent kind of wanting. Maybe it’s what women feel.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
His voice was a mutter. Josef had to strain to hear him.
‘I’ve heard of women who don’t feel complete until they’ve had a child. It’s like that but even more. I feel – I’ve always felt – as if there’s something missing from me, kind of like a hole in me.’
‘A hole in you? Go on.’
‘And if I had a child it would plug that hole. Does that sound creepy?’
‘No. But I’d like to explore this urgency and hunger more. What would your wife say if you told her that?’
‘She’d wonder what kind of man she’d married. I wonder what kind of man she married.’
‘Maybe a part of a marriage is keeping some things to ourselves.’
‘I had a dream about my son.’
‘You make it sound like he exists.’
‘He did in the dream. He was standing there, like me that age. Red-haired, little school uniform. But he was far away, on the other side of something huge, like the Grand Canyon. Except it was completely dark and incredibly deep. I was standing on the edge looking across at him. I wanted to go to him but I knew that if I stepped forward I’d fall into the darkness. It’s not exactly a happy dream.’
Now Josef thought of his own little sons and he really did feel ashamed. He pushed the joints of his fingers into his mouth and chewed them. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe as a punishment or to take his mind off what he was hearing. He didn’t exactly stop listening to the words but he stopped translating them. He tried to let them become music that just flowed past him. Finally, he could hear that the session was coming to a close. The voices changed in pitch and became more distant. He heard the door open. This was his chance. As quietly as he could, he got up and started to climb up the ladder, gently, to avoid any creaking. Suddenly he heard banging.
‘Is that you?’ said a voice. There was no question about it: it was her voice. ‘Are you in there?’
For a desperate moment, Josef thought of staying silent and maybe she would go away.
‘I know you’re there. Don’t pretend. Get through that hole and come round here now.’
‘I heard nothing,’ said Josef. ‘It’s no problem.’
‘Now.’
‘How long were you there?’ said Frieda, white with anger, when they were face to face.
‘I was asleep,’ said Josef. ‘I was working there, fixing the hole. And I slept.’
‘In my room.’
‘Behind the wall.’
‘Are you completely insane?’ said Frieda. ‘This is private. It’s as private as it’s possible to be. What would he think if he found out?’
‘I will not tell him.’
‘Tell him? Of course you won’t tell him. You don’t know who he is. But what did you think you were doing?’
‘I was asleep and then the voices woke me.’
‘I’m so sorry that we disturbed you.’
‘I try not to listen. I am sorry. I will not do it again. You will tell me the times to work and I will block the hole.’
Frieda took a deep breath. ‘I cannot believe I’ve held a therapy session with a builder in the same room. But all right, that’s fine. Or fairly fine. Just fix the bloody hole.’
‘It will only be a day. Or two days. Or a little bit more. The paint is slow to dry now it is cold.’
‘Do it as quickly as you can.’
‘But there is one thing I don’t understand,’ said Josef.
‘What’s that?’
‘If a man wants to have a child, then you do something about that. You don’t just talk about it. You go out into the world and you try to solve the problem. You see a doctor and you do whatever it is so you have a son.’
‘I thought you were asleep,’ said Frieda, with a look almost of horror.
‘I was sleeping. The noise woke me. I heard some talk. He is a man who needs a son. He made me think of my own sons.’
Frieda’s expression of anger slowly collapsed into a smile. She couldn’t help herself. ‘You want me to discuss my patient with you?’ she said.
‘I thought that it wasn’t good just with words. He needs to change his life. Get a son. If he can.’
‘When you were overhearing, did you hear the bit where I said it was completely secret? That nobody would know what he told me?’
‘But what is the point of just talking, if he doesn’t do anything?’
‘You mean like lying asleep instead of repairing the hole you fell through?’
‘I will fix it. It’s almost done.’
‘I don’t know why I’m talking to you about this,’ said Frieda. ‘But I’ll say it anyway. I can’t sort out Alan’s life, get him a son with red hair. The world’s a messy, unpredictable place. Maybe, just maybe, if I talk to him, as you put it, I can help him to deal with it a little bit better. It’s not much, I know.’
Josef rubbed his eyes. He still didn’t look properly awake. ‘Can I buy you a glass of vodka to say sorry?’ he said.
Frieda looked at her watch. ‘It’s three in the afternoon,’ she said. ‘You can make me a cup of tea to say sorry.’
When Alan left Frieda it was already getting dark. The wind had rain in its tail, and shook dead leaves off the trees in small gusts. The sky was a sullen grey. There were puddles glinting blackly on the pavement. He didn’t know where he was walking. He blundered along the side roads, past unlit houses. He couldn’t go back home, not yet. Not to Carrie’s watching eyes, her solicitous anxiety. He had felt a bit better while he was in the warm, light room. The swarming, lurching sensation inside him had calmed down and he’d just been aware of how tired he was, how heavy with exhaustion. He almost could have slept, sitting on the small grey sofa opposite
her and saying things he could never say to Carrie because Carrie loved him and he didn’t want that to end. He could imagine the expression on his wife’s face, her wince of distress, quickly suppressed. But this woman’s expression didn’t change. There was nothing he could say that would hurt or disgust her. She was like a painting, the way she could be so silent and still. He wasn’t used to that. Most women nodded and murmured, encouraging you along but at the same time stopping you going too far, keeping you on the right track. Well, his mother had been like that at least, and Lizzie and Ruth at work. And Carrie, of course.
Now that he’d left, though, he didn’t feel so good. The troubling feelings were closing in on him again, or rising up in him. He didn’t know where they came from. He wished he could go back to the room, at least until they subsided again – but he didn’t think she’d like that at all. He remembered what she had said about fifty minutes exactly. She was stern, he thought, and he wondered what Carrie would make of her. She’d think Frieda was a tough nut. A tough nut to crack.
There was a small, enclosed green on his left, with three winos at one end of it drinking cider out of cans. Alan stumbled inside and sat on the other bench. The drizzle was gathering strength now: he could feel drops of rain on his head and hear them pattering into the damp leaves that lay in heaps on the ground. He closed his eyes. No, he thought. Carrie couldn’t understand him. Frieda couldn’t, not really. He was alone. That was what was cruellest. Alone and incomplete. At last, he stood up again.
It was as if it was meant to happen. Call it what you want: fate, destiny, something in the stars. The little boy with red hair and freckles was all on his own. His mother was late again. What did she expect to happen? Now he was looking around him. He was looking at the open gate and at the road beyond. Come on. Come on, my little one. Come through the gate. That’s it. That’s the way. Gently now. Don’t look back. Come to me. Come to me. Now you’re mine.
His mother had a bright blue raincoat and red hair; she was easy to spot. But today she wasn’t at the gates with the other mothers, and most of the children had already left. He didn’t want Mrs Clay to make him wait in the classroom, not again. It wasn’t allowed but he knew the way home and, anyway, he’d meet her before he got there, running along with her hair coming loose because she was late. He sidled towards the gate. Mrs Clay was looking at him, but then she had to blow her nose; she covered her whole wrinkly face with a big white handkerchief, so he slipped out. Nobody saw him go. There was a pound coin lying in the road in a shallow puddle and, glancing round to make sure it wasn’t some kind of joke, he picked it up and rubbed it with the corner of his shirt. If his mother didn’t meet him before then, he would buy sweets at the corner shop or a packet of crisps. He looked up the road but still couldn’t see her.
Chapter Thirteen
For a long time now, Frieda had learned to organize her life so that it was as serene and dependable as a waterwheel, each section dipping through experience and rising up again. So the familiar days went round and round with a sense of defined purpose: her patients came on their allotted days, she saw Reuben, she met friends, she taught chemistry to Chloë, she sat by her fire and read or drew little sketches with a soft pencil in her attic study. Olivia believed that order was a kind of prison that prevented you experiencing things, and that recklessness and chaos were expressions of freedom, but for Frieda, it was order that allowed you the freedom to think, to let thoughts into the space you had created for them, to find a proper name and shape for the ideas and feelings that were lifted up during the days, like silt and weeds, and by naming them, in some sense lay them to rest. Some things wouldn’t rest. They were like muddy clouds in the water, stirring beneath the surface and filling her with unease.
Now there was Sandy. They ate and talked and slept together, and then Frieda went home without staying the night. They were starting, in a way that was complicated, disturbing and exciting, to get entangled with each other, finding out about each other, exploring each other, offering confidences. How far was she going to let him into her life? She tried to imagine it. Did she want to become a couple, wandering around like mountaineers who were tied together?
Last night Sandy had stayed at her house for the first time. Frieda didn’t tell him that nobody else had stayed the night there since she’d bought it. They had seen a film, eaten a late meal in a little Italian restaurant in Soho, and then they had gone back to hers. After all, it was so close, it made sense, she had said, as if it was a casual decision not a momentous step. And now it was Sunday morning. Frieda had woken early, while it was still quite dark. For one moment, before she remembered, she had felt a jolt of alarm at seeing the figure beside her. She had eased herself out of bed, showered and then gone downstairs to light the fire and make herself a cup of coffee. It felt odd, dislocating, to have someone else there to start the day with. When would he go home? What if he didn’t?
When Sandy came downstairs, Frieda was opening the bills and official correspondence that she always left to the weekend.
‘Good morning!’
‘Hi.’ Her tone was abrupt and Sandy raised his eyebrows at her.
‘I can go now,’ he said. ‘Or you can make me a cup of coffee and I’ll go.’
Frieda looked up and smiled grudgingly. ‘Sorry. I’ll make you coffee. Or -’
‘Yes?’
‘Usually on Sunday mornings I go to this place round the corner for breakfast and the papers, and then go to the Columbia Road market to buy flowers, or just to look at them. You can come along, if you’d like.’
‘Yes, I would.’
Frieda usually had the same breakfast on Sunday – a toasted cinnamon bagel and a cup of tea. Sandy ordered a bowl of porridge and a double espresso from Kerry, who was trying to keep a professional expression. When she caught Frieda’s eyes she raised her eyebrows in approval, disregarding Frieda’s scowl. But Number 9 was already filling up and neither Kerry nor Marcus had much time for them; only Katya was at a loose end, wandering between tables. Every so often, she stopped by Frieda and Sandy’s and put her index finger into the bowl of sugar to suck.
There was always a stack of newspapers by the counter. Frieda collected several of them and put them in a pile between them. She had the sudden alarming sense that they had been transformed over the past few days into a settled couple – one who went to functions together, who spent the night together, who rose on Sunday morning to read the papers in companionable silence. She took a large bite of bagel and then a gulp of her tea. Was it such a bad thing?
This was often the only time during the week that Frieda read the papers from cover to cover, and for the past few weeks she had been so caught up by Sandy that perhaps she had let her world shrink to her work and to him. She said as much to him now. ‘Although maybe it doesn’t matter, to be cut off from what’s happening in the world every so often. It’s not as if I can do anything about it. Like not knowing if shares have risen by a point or not matters. Or -’ she picked up one of the papers lying open and pointed to a headline ‘- that someone I don’t know has done something terrible to someone else I don’t know. Or a celebrity I haven’t heard of has broken up with another celebrity I haven’t heard of.’
‘That’s my guilty pleasure,’ said Sandy. ‘I… Hang on, what’s up?’
Frieda wasn’t paying attention. She was suddenly absorbed in a news story she was reading.
Sandy leaned over and read the headline: ‘Little Mattie Still Missing: Mum’s Tearful Plea’. ‘You must have heard about it. It’s only just happened. It was all over the papers yesterday.’
‘No,’ murmured Frieda.
‘Think of what the parents must be going through.’
Frieda looked at the photograph across three columns of a young boy with bright red hair and freckles, a lopsided grin on his face, and his blue eyes looking sideways towards whoever was behind the camera. ‘Friday,’ she said.
‘He’ll probably be dead by now. I feel sorry for the poor
bloody teacher who let him go. She’s become a hate figure.’
Frieda didn’t really hear what he was saying. She was scanning the story about Matthew Faraday who had slipped out of his Islington primary school unnoticed on Friday afternoon and been last seen going towards the sweetshop a hundred yards or so away. She picked up another paper and read the same story again, a bit more colourfully written, with a sidebar by a profiling expert. She picked up each paper in turn – it seemed every angle had been covered. There were pieces about the parents’ agony, the police investigation, the primary school, the reactions of the community, the safety of our children today.
‘What a strange thing,’ Frieda said, as if to herself.
It was raining and there weren’t many people in the flower market. Frieda was glad of the rain. She liked the feel of it in her hair and she welcomed the street’s emptiness. She and Sandy walked past stalls selling great bunches of flowers and plants. It was only the middle of November but already they were selling things for Christmas – cyclamen, sprigs of holly, hyacinths in ceramic bowls, wreaths for front doors and even bunches of mistletoe. Frieda ignored all of these. She loathed Christmas, and she loathed the run-up to Christmas, the frenzied shoppers, the tat in the shops, the lights that were put up too early in the streets, the Christmas songs that belted out from overheated shops day after day, the catalogues that poured through her door and into her bin, and above all the insistence on the value of family. Frieda did not value her family and they did not value Frieda. A great gulf lay between them, impassable.
The wind was flapping the awnings of the stalls. Frieda stopped to buy a large bunch of bronze chrysanthemums. Alan Dekker had dreamed of a son with red hair. Red-haired Matthew Faraday had vanished. Eerie, but meaningless. She pushed her face into the damp fragrance of the flowers and took a deep breath. End of story.
She couldn’t help pondering it, though. And that night – a wild and windy night that clattered bin lids along streets, bent trees into strange shapes, sped clouds in dark masses through the skies – she insisted to Sandy that she needed to spend some time alone, and went for a walk, and found her feet took her to Islington, past the grand houses and civilized squares to the poorer pockets. It didn’t take her long to get there, just fifteen minutes or so, and eventually she found herself standing looking at the bank of flowers already stacked up outside the primary school where Matthew had last been seen. Some of the flowers were already dying inside their cellophane wrappers and she caught a sweet whiff of decay.