by Nicci French
‘So why are you here?’
There was a long pause.
‘It’s difficult,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how to say it.’
Suddenly Frieda felt that she knew what was coming. She thought of that feeling when you stand on the platform of an underground station when a train is coming. Before you hear anything, before you see the light at the front of the train, you feel a breath of warm air on your face, you see a piece of scrap paper flap around. Frieda knew what Sasha was going to say. She did something she couldn’t ever remember having done before in a therapy session. She stood up, stepped closer to Sasha and put her hand on the young woman’s shoulder.
‘It’s OK,’ she said. Then she sat back down. ‘You can say anything here. Anything.’
At the end of the fifty minutes, Frieda arranged a further session with Sasha. She took down a couple of phone numbers and an email address. She sat in silence for a few minutes. Then she made a phone call. Then another, longer, one; then a third. When she had finished, she put on a short leather jacket and walked briskly out and across to Tottenham Court Road. She hailed a taxi and gave an address that she had jotted down on the back of an envelope. The taxi made its way through the streets north of Oxford Street, then along Bayswater Road and south through Hyde Park. Frieda was looking out of the window but she wasn’t really paying attention. When the taxi drew to a halt, she realized she hadn’t been concentrating and that she had no real idea where she was. It was a part of the city she barely knew. She paid the driver and got out. She was standing outside a small bistro-style restaurant in what was otherwise a largely residential street of white stucco houses. The restaurant had small baskets of flowers hanging from the eaves. In summer people would be eating outside, but it was too cold for that today, even for Londoners.
Frieda stepped inside and was hit by the warmth, the low hum of talk. It was a small place with no more than a dozen tables. A man came over, wearing a striped apron.
‘Madame?’ he said.
‘I’m here to see someone,’ she said, looking around the room. What if he wasn’t there? What if she didn’t recognize him? There he was. She’d seen him at a couple of conferences, and in photographs accompanying an interview in a magazine. He was sitting in the far corner with a woman. They were apparently on their main course and deep in conversation. She walked across the room and stood by the table. He looked round. He was dressed in dark trousers and a beautiful shirt, a black and white pattern that shimmered. He had very short dark hair and was just slightly unshaven.
‘Dr Rundell?’ Frieda said.
He got up from his chair. ‘Yes?’ he said.
‘My name’s Frieda Klein.’
He looked puzzled. ‘Frieda Klein. Yes, I’ve heard of you but…’
‘I’ve just been talking to a patient of yours. Sasha Wells.’
He still looked puzzled, but also wary. ‘What do you mean?’
Frieda had never hit anyone before. Not really. Not with her fist, not using the full weight of a punch. It caught him right on the jaw and he fell backwards, across his own table, bringing it down on top of him with the food and the wine and the water and the bottles of oil and vinegar. Even Frieda, standing over him, panting, her blood humming in her ears, was startled by the havoc she had caused.
As he stepped through the door of the interview room, Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson tried to force his features into a frown.
‘When you get your phone call, it’s traditional to use it for your lawyer,’ he said. ‘Or your mother.’
Frieda glowered up at him. ‘You were the only person I could think of,’ she said. ‘On the spur of the moment.’
‘You mean, in the heat of battle,’ said Karlsson. ‘How’s your hand?’
Frieda held up her right hand. It was wrapped in a bandage but some spots of blood had started to show through.
‘It’s not like in the movies, is it? When you punch someone, they don’t just get up. It damages them and it damages you.’
‘How is he?’ asked Frieda.
‘Nothing’s broken,’ said Karlsson. ‘No thanks to you. But he’s got one hell of a set of bruises and they’re going to look even worse tomorrow and probably even worse the day after.’ He leaned over and took hold of Frieda’s right hand. She flinched slightly. ‘Can you move your fingers?’ She nodded. ‘I’ve seen people shatter their knuckles with a punch like that.’ He gave her hand a little pat, which made her flinch again, and let it go. ‘And have you ever heard the expression about not kicking a man when he’s down? I understand that Dr Rundell is a fellow psychoanalyst. Is this how you settle your professional disagreements?’
‘If you’re here to charge me,’ said Frieda, ‘just get it over with.’
‘This isn’t my area,’ said Karlsson. ‘But I suppose that in normal circumstances you’d be facing a charge of actual bodily harm and criminal damage. I’m assuming – God knows why – that you’ve got a clean record. So you might get away with a month or so in Holloway.’
‘I’m happy to go to trial,’ said Frieda.
‘Well, sadly, I think you may be denied your day in court. I’ve just been talking to the arresting officer and apparently Dr Rundell is very insistent on not pressing charges. My colleague is not a happy man. He’s not happy at all.’
‘What about the restaurant?’
‘Indeed,’ said Karlsson. ‘I’ve even seen the photographs. You know, in the past when I’ve encountered crime scenes of this kind, when the victim has refused to press charges, it’s usually involved gang intimidation of some kind. Is there something you’re not telling us?’ His attempt to suppress a smile now failed. ‘Drug deal gone wrong?’
‘It’s a private matter.’
‘And even then,’ said Karlsson, ‘I’ve never heard of the victim insisting on paying for all the damage himself.’ He paused. ‘You’re not the kind of person I’d expect to be arrested for brawling in public. And now you don’t seem to be particularly happy that you’ve escaped the sort of thing that most people would be afraid of, you know, like being put on trial and convicted and sent to prison, that sort of thing.’
‘I’m not bothered,’ said Frieda.
‘You’re a hard one,’ he said. Then his expression changed. ‘Is there something I should know about this? Something criminal?’
Frieda shook her head.
‘What’s he been up to, then?’ said Karlsson. ‘Sleeping with his patients?’
Frieda’s expression didn’t change.
‘I can’t condone this,’ said Karlsson. ‘This isn’t Sicily.’
‘I don’t care whether you condone it or not.’
‘You were the one who rang me.’
Frieda’s expression softened. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. And thank you.’
‘I’ve come to say that you can go and, in fact, to give you a lift back – but look,’ he said, a little desperately. ‘What would the world be like if everyone settled things like this?’
Frieda stood up. ‘What is the world like?’ she said.
Chapter Twenty-two
On Tuesday afternoon, Frieda said to Alan, ‘Tell me about your mother.’
‘My mother?’ He shrugged. ‘She was…’ He stopped, frowned, look at the palms of his hands as if he could find the answer there. ‘… a nice woman,’ he finished lamely. ‘She’s dead now.’
‘I mean, your other mother.’
It was as if she had punched him very hard in the stomach. She even heard the whoosh of surprised pain that escaped him, and he bent forward slightly, his face screwed up. ‘What do you mean?’ he managed.
‘Your birth mother, Alan.’
He made a faint and querulous sound.
‘You were adopted, weren’t you?’
‘How did you know?’ he whispered.
‘Not by magic. I just saw the photograph of them in your house.’
‘And?’
‘They both have blue eyes. Yours are brown. It’s ge
netically impossible.’
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘When were you going to tell me?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Never?’
‘It’s not got anything to do with this.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘I was adopted. End of story.’
‘You are longing to have a child of your own, so acutely that you have vivid fantasies about it, and prolonged attacks of acute anxiety. And you think that the fact that you were adopted isn’t relevant?’
Alan shrugged. He lifted his eyes to hers, then dropped them again. Outside, the crane’s arm lifted higher in the hard blue sky. Great gobbets of mud dropped from its serrated jaw. ‘I don’t know,’ he muttered.
‘You want a son who looks exactly like you. You reject the idea of adopting a child. You want your own – with your genes, your red hair and freckles. As if you want to adopt yourself, rescue yourself and look after yourself.’
‘Not that.’ Alan looked as though he would like to jam his fingers into his ears.
‘Is it such a secret?’
‘Carrie knows, of course. And one friend. I told him once after a few drinks. But why should I talk about it to everyone? It’s private.’
‘Private from your therapist?’
‘I didn’t think it was important.’
‘I don’t believe you, Alan.’
‘I don’t care what you believe. I’m telling you.’
‘I think you know it’s important. It’s so important you can’t bring yourself to mention it or even think about it.’
He shook his head slowly from side to side, like a tired old bull being baited.
‘Some secrets give a form of freedom,’ said Frieda. ‘Your own private space. That’s good. Everyone has to have those kinds of secrets. But some secrets can be dark and oppressive, like a horrible dank cellar you don’t dare go into but you always know is there, full of ugly underground creatures, full of your nightmares. Those are the secrets you need to confront, shine a light on, see what they really are.’
As she spoke, she thought of all the secrets she had been told over the years, all those illicit thoughts, desires, fears that people gave to her for safe keeping. Reuben had felt poisoned by them in the end, but she had always carried them with a sense of privilege, that people allowed her to see their fears, allowed her to be their light.
‘I don’t know,’ said Alan. ‘Maybe there are things it’s best not to dwell on.’
‘Otherwise?’
‘Otherwise you’ll just get upset when there’s nothing to be done anyway.’
‘Do you think that perhaps you’re here, with me, because there are too many things you haven’t dwelled upon and they’ve built up inside you?’
‘I don’t know about that. We just never discussed it,’ said Alan. ‘Somehow I just knew we couldn’t go there. She wanted me to think of her as my mother.’
‘Did you?’
‘She was my mother. Mum and Dad, that was all I knew. That other woman, she has nothing to do with me.’
‘You didn’t know your birth mother?’
‘No.’
‘No memory at all?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Do you know who she was?’
‘No.’
‘You never wanted to know?’
‘Even if I did, it would be no use.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘No one knew.’
‘I don’t understand. You can always find out, you know, Alan. It’s really quite straightforward.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. She made sure of that.’
‘How?’
‘She dumped me. In a little park near a housing estate in Hoxton. The newspaper boy found me. It was winter and very cold and I was wrapped up in a towel.’ He glared at Frieda. ‘Like in a fairy tale. Except that this is real. Why should I care about her?’
‘What a way to start your life,’ said Frieda.
‘I can’t remember it, so it doesn’t matter. It’s just a story.’
‘A story about you.’
‘I never knew her, she never knew me. She doesn’t have a name, a voice, a face. She doesn’t know my name either.’
‘It’s quite hard to go through pregnancy and give birth and then abandon your baby and never be discovered,’ said Frieda.
‘She managed it.’
‘So you were tiny when your parents adopted you. You never knew anything else?’
‘Right. Which is why it doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m feeling now.’
‘Like when you were talking about having your own child, and then about the possibility of adopting.’
‘I told you. I don’t want to adopt. I want my own child, not someone else’s.’
Frieda looked at him steadily. He met her gaze for a few seconds, then dropped his eyes, like a boy who has been caught out in a lie.
‘Our time is up. We’ll meet again on Thursday. I want you to think about this.’
They both stood up. He shook his head slowly from side to side again, in that futile, hapless gesture of his, as though he was trying to clear it.
‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ he said. ‘I’m not cut out for it.’
‘We’ll take it one step at a time.’
‘Through the darkness,’ said Alan, words that caught Frieda off balance so she could only nod at him.
When Frieda returned home, she found a small package on her doormat and at once recognized Sandy’s handwriting on the envelope. She stooped and picked it up very carefully, as if it might explode with any sudden movement. But she didn’t open it immediately. She took it to the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea first, standing at the window while the kettle boiled, looking past her reflection at the darkness outside and the night sky, which was clear and cold.
Only when she had a mug of tea in her hand and was sitting at the table did she open the package and take out a silver bangle, a small sketchpad with a couple of her drawings in it and a soft-leaded pencil, five hair grips held together by a thin brown hairband. That was all. She shook the envelope, but there was no letter or note. She looked at the paltry objects lying on the table. Was that really all she had left there? How was it possible to leave so little trace?
The phone rang and she picked it up, wishing even as she did so that she had left it to the answering machine.
‘Frieda. You’ve got to help me. I’m at my wit’s end here and her stupid fucking father isn’t any help either.’
‘I’m here, you know,’ said Chloë. ‘Even if you wish I wasn’t.’
Frieda held the receiver slightly away from her ear. ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Which one of you am I meant to be talking to?’
‘You’re talking to me,’ said Olivia, her voice high and shrill. ‘I rang you because I just happen to be at the end of my tether. If someone’s rude enough to pick up the other phone and eavesdrop, then that someone has only got themselves to blame if they hear things they’d prefer not to hear.’
‘Blah blah blah blah,’ jeered Chloë. ‘She wants to gate me for being drunk. I’m sixteen. I was sick. Get over it. She should gate herself.’
‘Chloë, look -’
‘I wouldn’t talk to a dog the way she talks to me.’
‘Nor would I. I like dogs. Dogs don’t shout and nag and feel sorry for themselves.’
‘Your brother just said it was part of growing up,’ said Olivia, ending on a sob. She always called David Frieda’s brother or Chloë’s father when she was more than usually angry with him. ‘He should try a bit of growing up himself. It wasn’t me who ran off with some young tart with dyed hair.’
‘Careful, Olivia,’ said Frieda, sharply.
‘If you try to gate me, I’ll go and stay with him.’
‘I’d love that, except why do you think he wants you? He left you, didn’t he?’
‘You both have to stop this now,’ said Frieda.
‘He didn’t leave me, he left y
ou. I don’t blame him.’
‘I am now going to put the phone down,’ said Frieda, very loudly, and she did.
She got up and poured herself a small glass of white wine, then sat down again. She fingered the objects that Sandy had returned, turning them over in her fingers. The phone rang.
‘Hello,’ came Olivia’s small voice.
‘Hi.’ Frieda waited.
‘I’m not coping very well.’
Frieda took a sip of wine and rolled its coolness in her mouth. She thought of her bath, her book, the fire that was laid, the thinking she needed to do. Outside, it was winter and an ill wind blew through the dark streets. ‘Do you want me to come round?’ she said. ‘Because that would be fine.’
Chapter Twenty-three
The following afternoon, Karlsson called a press conference at which the Faradays faced a bank of photographers and journalists to make an appeal for the return of their son that would reawaken public interest.
Karlsson had spent the morning looking through the statements his team had gathered from hundreds of so-called witnesses and the dwindling reports of possible sightings. He stood to one side. He watched the couple as the lights flashed in their faces – faces that had undergone such a change since Matthew had disappeared. Day by day, he’d seen grief carving new lines, stretching the skin, dulling the light in their eyes. Alec Faraday’s face was still puffy and bruised from his attack, and he moved stiffly because of his broken rib. They both looked thin and strained, and her voice cracked as she talked of their darling boy, but they managed to get through it all right. They said the usual heart-breaking things. They begged the world at large to help in the search and the person in particular to give them back their beloved boy.
It was useless, of course. These shows were largely designed to put pressure on the parents, to see if they were the guilty ones. But they all knew the Faradays couldn’t have done it. Even the papers that had accused him had done a brazen U-turn, turning him into a suffering saint instead. He’d been with a client in the accountant’s office where he worked and had dozens of witnesses. She’d been rushing from her job as a medical receptionist to get to the school on time to collect him. And the notion that whoever it was who had grabbed Matthew would suddenly have a change of heart when he heard them speak and saw their ravaged faces was absurd, not least because the child was almost certainly dead and had been for some time. So it was left to the world to respond – and respond it would, and the deluge of misinformation and false hope that had been mercifully drying up would flood them again.