by Nicci French
Frieda looked at Amelia and Charlotte, who were checking their phones.
‘That’s kind of you,’ she said. ‘But these friends of mine have just come down from London so –’
‘That’s perfect,’ said Ewan. ‘They’re welcome as well.’ He raised his voice to include everyone in the room in the conversation. ‘It’s a lovely walk along the river to the pub by the old mill, then back along the railway track.’
‘Sounds great,’ said Jack. ‘This is what you never get in London, people just dropping into each other’s houses.’
Frieda seemed to be experiencing both claustrophobia and agoraphobia at the same time. Her old life, the world of Braxton, her childhood and adolescence, was like an organism that was trying to pull her back in. At the same time, the London world, the life she’d chosen, was unwilling to let her go. She looked across at Josef. Eva was leaning against him, whispering something in his ear.
‘We don’t have to,’ said Jack, in a slightly pathetic voice. ‘If it’s a problem, Chloë and me can go off somewhere on our own.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Frieda. ‘We can go for a walk.’
‘I’ve got some things to do in the house,’ said Eva, apologetically. ‘And I think Josef needs to finish … you know, the job he’s been doing.’
Frieda looked at Josef, who gave a helpless shrug.
‘Work,’ said Frieda. ‘OK, fine. We’ll head off.’
This turned out to be a complicated process. Eva offered coffee but Ewan said they could get a drink at the Perch. Jack and Chloë retrieved walking boots and windproof jackets from Jack’s car. Josef hovered in the kitchen.
‘I don’t want to keep you from your work,’ Frieda said, then felt guilty. After all, did she want Josef to be like her, always the onlooker, the one on the edge, observing, assessing, diagnosing? Wasn’t it better to be the way he was, always seeming to swim with the current, to accept what was offered? Anyway, she was the one who had brought him.
It was a sunny morning, but cold, and there was a fierce, steely wind from the east. She thought again of the lost red scarf, but Eva gave her a heavy jacket and a furry hat. As the small group walked out of the house, Frieda looked back at Eva. She felt like a parent leaving two teenagers alone in the house. Ewan led the way over the road to the footpath across the field that sloped down to the river Char. He was with Jack and Chloë, and she could see him talking and pointing but couldn’t hear what he was saying. As they joined the river and turned west, away from Braxton, she found herself at the back with Amelia and Charlotte. She explained to them that Jack had been a student of hers and that Chloë was her niece.
‘Bit weird them getting together, then,’ said Amelia, with a grimace.
Frieda did actually think it was a bit weird but it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss with two Suffolk teenagers she barely knew. ‘I think maybe they’re just having fun.’
Amelia and Charlotte exchanged glances. They clearly considered her too old to have any knowledge about young people having fun. For a time, the path narrowed and they had to walk in single file. Hundreds of years ago, the Char had been a working river. There’d been a brickworks and warehouses further inland. The industry was long gone and the banks had been reclaimed by the woodland and lined with trees, but there were still weirs and locks and concrete embankments. Frieda liked it or, rather, she had a sense of how she would like it if she could walk there alone. It was her kind of nature, the sort of nature that had a history. They passed under an iron bridge and the path widened once more.
‘So you were at school here?’ said Charlotte.
‘That’s right. With your parents, and Maddie and Eva, of course.’
‘And Lewis,’ said Charlotte.
More exchanged glances. Charlotte and Amelia seemed to share a private, sarcastic language that made them impregnable.
‘Yes.’ Amelia pulled a face. ‘And now you’re friends with Max.’
Charlotte snorted.
‘Why do you think that?’
‘I met you with him, so I just assumed. Do you mean you’re not friends?’
‘He’s a bit creepy,’ said Charlotte. ‘He just follows people around like some kind of little stray dog. I know you were together with his dad when you were a teenager, but have you seen what he’s like now?’
‘Yes, I’ve met him.’
‘Well, there we are, then. You look at Lewis and you know what Max is going to be like.’
‘There are worse ways to be,’ said Frieda, thinking of Jeremy and Chas.
The girls didn’t answer. They seemed impassive in a way they hadn’t previously. Maybe it was just the cold.
‘It’s difficult when someone dies suddenly,’ Frieda said. ‘I mean for the people who are left behind. They wonder whether they should have done something.’ She looked at the two girls. There was just a hint of a shrug from Charlotte. ‘Did Becky say anything in the days before it happened?’
‘No,’ said Charlotte. ‘She talked to Mum more than to us – she was always coming to see Mum when she was upset by stuff. It was a bit creepy, but Mum loves all that.’
‘But you were her friends,’ said Frieda. ‘And she’d been through a difficult time. She must have talked about her feelings.’
‘We weren’t really her friends,’ said Charlotte.
‘I must have misunderstood,’ said Frieda. ‘Seeing you at the funeral.’
‘That was organized by the school,’ said Charlotte. ‘It was like an outing. When someone dies like that, everyone pretends they knew them really well, but none of us were affected. Not really, if we’re honest. She’d gone weird.’
Frieda thought of the funeral, the mass sobbing. ‘So you weren’t close friends with her?’
Charlotte gave a soft-shouldered shrug.
‘Not so much.’
‘Are you saying you actually disliked her?’
‘I didn’t care much one way or the other. Becky just thought she was better than other people.’
‘Do you mean she didn’t have any friends?’
‘She used to, but in the end people just got tired of her. She stopped being fun.’
‘So you weren’t friends with Becky and you aren’t friends with Max. Were they friends with each other?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Charlotte.
It didn’t feel like anybody was friends with anybody, except for the two sisters: united against the world.
‘So she was isolated.’
‘In a way,’ said Charlotte. ‘But it was her own choice.’
‘And how long was this going on?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Charlotte. ‘Most of the year.’
There was an electric chime and Charlotte took out her phone, then started sending a text. They walked on for a few minutes without speaking. Ahead, Ewan was standing with Jack and Chloë, pointing away from the river up the hill. Frieda looked to where he was pointing: the obelisk silhouetted against the grey sky. She turned to Amelia beside her. ‘Do you know what that is?’
‘The witch monument,’ said Amelia, in an unimpressed tone. ‘Dad keeps talking about it. It’s his new hobby – local history.’
‘It’s completely boring,’ said Charlotte. ‘We did local history for GCSE and now Dad’s doing it all over again and there’s only about two things that ever happened in Braxton. They burned a witch, then they built a railway and then they took the railway away again.’
‘Because who wants to come to a place like Braxton?’ said Amelia.
The Perch stood facing an old mill with a large waterwheel. There were tables outside by the water but only one was occupied, by a group of people in thick parkas who were smoking. Ewan led them inside and found two tables by a window. He placed Jack and Chloë next to Amelia and Charlotte. ‘I’m sure you young people have lots to talk about among yourselves,’ he said. ‘Things you don’t want Frieda and me to overhear.’ Charlotte and Amelia rolled their eyes. ‘The funny thing is, when Frieda and I last me
t we were your age. Isn’t that peculiar?’
Charlotte and Amelia rolled their eyes again.
‘When you and Frieda last met, it was yesterday,’ said Charlotte.
‘All right, all right,’ said Ewan, who seemed used to this treatment. ‘You know what I mean.’
He went over to the bar and returned with a tray of drinks and packets of crisps. He sat down next to Frieda at the other table. He had a pint of local ale, which he clinked against Frieda’s tomato juice. He nodded at the young people. ‘They’re better off without us,’ he said.
Frieda wasn’t so sure. Amelia was texting, Charlotte was saying something to Chloë; Jack looked distracted. She should have a word with him later. Ewan pointed out of the window at the mill on the other side of the pool by the weir. ‘That was abandoned when we were at school,’ he said. ‘It was derelict for about twenty years. Now it’s being turned into flats. Riverside properties. That’s what people seem to want.’ Frieda didn’t reply. ‘They’re nice, Jack and Chloë. They speak very highly of you.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Frieda, ‘because they mean a lot to me.’
Ewan took a gulp of his beer, then looked down into the glass. Frieda recognized the sight. She had seen it often in her consulting rooms, as people plucked up the courage to say what they had come to say.
‘It’s been funny, you coming back,’ he said.
‘How so?’
‘It makes you look at yourself, think of the way others see you. And it’s also made me think about the old days. It’s like when you dig up one of those time capsules that’s filled with random objects from the past.’
‘What did it make you think?’
‘I know what you think of me. It’s a bit like the girls. For them I’m this loud sort of Scout master who keeps saying things like, “Let’s go for a walk” or “Let’s go to a museum.” I’m a bit loud and a bit boisterous. But what I’ve been thinking is that when you were going through difficult times back then, some of us were a bit wrapped up in ourselves and maybe we looked the other way.’
‘The other way from what?’
‘I don’t know. But don’t you feel sometimes, looking back on teenage life, that it was a cruel time?’
‘Yes, I do.’ Frieda regarded Ewan with new interest – he had lost much of his cheeriness and seemed muted, thoughtful, much more appealing to her.
‘There’s an episode that haunts me,’ he said. ‘It happened years ago, but I keep thinking about it. I wake in the night and it’s there waiting for me. Once when I was out with Vanessa, she was attacked. There was a group of drunk or stoned teenagers or young men, four of them or maybe five, and first of all they surrounded me and jeered a bit. Said stupid things about the way I looked, about how they bet I couldn’t get it up. You know the kind of thing.’
‘Nasty.’
‘Yes, but that’s not the point. It was just words. But they suddenly lost interest in me and turned on Vanessa. They pushed her around, and then one of them started touching her breasts. I remember her expression – terrified and abject. And do you know what I did? Nothing. I stood there and did absolutely nothing while they touched up my poor wife. Then we just left and went home. What made it worse was that she tried to comfort me. She told me it had been the wisest thing not to get involved and she understood perfectly and it was nothing to feel bad about. I’ve never talked about this to anyone because I feel so ashamed of myself. Even now, all these years later, it’s a taboo subject.’
‘And yet you’re telling me.’
‘Perhaps that’s because in some strange way you’re someone people want to talk to, unburden themselves. I guess that’s your job. But also – well, it sounds stupid. I’d like to make amends. I can’t do anything about letting Vanessa down, but if there’s anything I can do to help you with whatever it is you’re after here, then I’d like to think you could trust me.’
On the way back, along what had once been a railway track and was now a cycle path, Frieda made sure she was walking with Chloë and Jack.
‘We’ve missed you,’ said Chloë. ‘You’re never at home.’
‘It’s just for a bit. How are you both?’
‘There’s so much I want to tell you,’ Chloë said, ‘but not in front of Jack.’
Jack blushed. Frieda smiled and asked him some questions about his work. She still thought of him as the boy he had been when they first met. Now he was a man to whom people would confess their darkest fears in the hope that he would give them some kind of refuge. They could do worse, she thought.
‘Ewan showed us the Mary Ames monument,’ said Chloe.
‘That’s the spot where she was burned,’ said Frieda.
‘I did it in history once,’ said Chloë. ‘These women were tried and persecuted and burned for being different, for not being straight or for saying what they thought or being a healer. Don’t you think that someone like Mary Ames just wanted the right to have autonomy?’
‘Maybe,’ said Frieda. ‘Or maybe she just wanted the right to be a witch.’
She let them walk on, and waited until Ewan caught up with her. His face was blotchy with cold.
‘Fuck,’ he said.
‘It was your idea.’
‘It’s what I do. Drag the girls away from their computers – though, of course, they bring their phones with them.’
‘I wanted to say something to you.’
‘Look, I didn’t want to intrude.’
‘Something did happen to me.’
‘On the night of the concert?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘I might not be Sherlock Holmes, but you’ve been interrogating us all about it, Frieda. Of course that’s when it happened.’
‘You’re right.’
‘Do you want to tell me what it was?’
‘No.’
‘Of course.’ He put up his hands. ‘I’m not prying. I’m really not.’
‘I was attacked,’ Frieda said.
Frieda had started to get used to the expression on people’s faces as she told them: shock, bafflement, almost embarrassment, not knowing what to say.
‘In your own house?’
‘Yes.’
‘What a terrible thing. Were you hurt?’
‘Scared rather than hurt.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘I didn’t want to.’
‘Jesus, what kind of friends were we?’
‘Teenage friends.’
Ewan looked troubled. He walked on a few paces, kicking at a small stone. ‘Why are you returning to it now?’ he said at last.
‘It’s unfinished business. I want to find out who did it.’
‘After all these years?’
‘I know. But I have to try.’
‘Revenge?’
‘Call it justice.’
‘How can I help?’
‘I need to work out the timeline for that evening: who was where when.’
‘You really think it was someone you knew?’
‘Yes, I do.’
Ewan nodded slowly. His normally jovial face wore a solemn, almost tragic, expression. ‘If there’s anything I can do …’
‘It’s kind of you.’
He shrugged, embarrassed. ‘It’ll be difficult. I have difficulty remembering what I did last night.’
‘It’s surprising what people remember.’
‘A timeline?’ said Ewan.
‘I’m grateful for anything you can tell me.’
His face flushed. ‘You’re welcome.’
Chas was having lunch with Jeremy, in a London club that felt more like an eighteenth-century house. They met three or four times every year, sometimes with their wives, sometimes like this: the two of them over a good meal with a bottle of burgundy and a fire crackling in the little fireplace.
‘So she’s speaking to everyone,’ said Chas.
‘You, me, Ewan, Vanessa, even Lewis Temple. She’s staying with Eva.’
‘What doe
s she want?’
‘I was hoping you could tell me.’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Jeremy. ‘She came to see me and asked me about the concert we all went to. It was twenty-three years ago! What does she expect?’
‘But why is she asking?’
‘God knows.’
‘She’s stirring things up,’ said Chas. ‘You don’t live in the area any more. It’s not the same for you.’
Jeremy nodded. ‘I said I’d get back in touch with her,’ he said. ‘But I haven’t yet. I went to her house but there was no one there.’
‘She still looks good, doesn’t she?’ said Chas.
Jeremy swilled the wine round in his glass moodily. ‘She’s ageing better than my wife, I must admit. She’s a bit intimidating, though. But, then, she always was. God, I was obsessed with her.’
‘She cast a spell.’
‘That was how it felt.’
‘‘Do you remember being interviewed by the police?’ asked Chas.
‘Of course I do. I was bloody terrified.’
‘She wants to know where we all were.’
‘We were all at the concert, weren’t we?’
‘That’s right,’ said Chas. ‘Suddenly everyone seems sure they were at the concert.’
Jeremy hesitated for a moment and gave a nervous smile. ‘Well, then.’ He lifted his hand for the bill.
‘It’s just a bit disconcerting,’ said Chas. ‘Having her come back. It’s like someone returning from the dead.’
‘That sounds like a guilty conscience talking.’
Chas gave his bland smile. ‘Everyone has something to feel guilty about.’
30
‘We’ve got rid of our warts,’ said Chloë, as they walked down the high street. ‘Haven’t we, Jack?’
Jack was seized by a fit of coughing.
‘I’ve got to go and see someone who lives up this road,’ said Frieda. ‘What are your plans? When are you leaving?’
‘We’ve hardly arrived.’
‘We don’t want to get in your way,’ said Jack.
‘Yes, we do. Is it an old school friend?’
‘Someone I knew at school, at any rate.’
‘Can we come with you?’
‘No.’