by Nicci French
“And you,” said Reuben.
“Maybe. But the fact is that there’s someone out there and he may be targeting you all, because you know me.”
“It could be a she,” said Chloë. “If it’s not Dean.”
“It could. Whoever it is abducted you, held you for a whole weekend, and attacked Reuben.”
Jack ran his hands through his hair. “This isn’t good.”
“I asked the police if you could be protected. I’m afraid it’s not going to happen.”
“Does that mean they don’t think we’re in danger?” asked Olivia.
“It means they don’t have the resources.”
“I protect my family,” said Josef. He banged both fists on the table so that the cutlery jumped. “Friends.”
“I’m a woman,” said Olivia. “I live all alone.”
“I’m coming to that. Josef has a friend called Dritan. He put in new locks for me after I discovered Dean had been in my house.”
“How did that work out?” said Jack, but Frieda ignored him.
“He’ll go to Olivia’s tomorrow, and then here.”
“What about Chloë?” asked Jack. “And what about me?”
“I want Chloë to move back in with Olivia.”
“I’ve only just moved out.”
“And I was hoping you, Jack, could stay there as well.”
“At least you’re a man.” Olivia took hold of a new bottle by its neck and splashed red wine into her glass.
“Excuse me,” said Chloë. “I’m quite good at defending myself, you know. Probably better than Jack.”
“Probably,” said Jack. The two exchanged glances, a brief flash of their old affection animating them.
“Fine,” said Frieda. “We’re going to look out for each other.”
Josef leaned toward her. “Where are you, Frieda?”
“Come and stay with us,” urged Chloë.
“Absolutely not.”
“I send my friend,” said Josef.
“No. Surely you can see that nobody can live with me.”
“What about Karlsson?”
“Karlsson—what about him?”
“He’s your friend.”
Petra Burge had said that as well.
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
“It just is.”
Karlsson and Frieda sat in his small garden in the mild warmth of the late evening. It was twilight, the sky fading, birds singing invisibly. A time for foxes and bats, for secrets and confessions. There was already the faint outline of the moon on the horizon. A bottle of whisky stood on the table between them, a small jug of water, two tumblers. Frieda poured some for each of them. She added a splash of water to hers. Karlsson did the same.
“The end of a beautiful Sunday,” he said.
“When I was little, I hated Sundays,” she said.
“How can anyone hate Sundays?”
“It was a day of silences and boredom and nothing to do and going to church and seeing family you didn’t want to see.”
“At least you grew out of it.”
“It’s a day when people hide from themselves. When they try to forget what they did on Saturday and pretend that next week isn’t going to be the same as last week.”
“Is your week going to be the same as last week?”
“No,” said Frieda. “I’m starting to see patients again. I’ve got two new ones tomorrow.”
“That sounds like a positive sign.”
“I don’t think any signs seem positive just at the moment.”
“I’m sorry I brought the whole thing up,” said Karlsson, looking at his glass ruefully. “But I always quite liked Sunday myself: having brunch, reading the papers, going for walks.”
“Speaking of walks, have you heard from Yvette?” Frieda asked.
“She’s not really a Facebook sort of person. Nor am I.”
Frieda reached into her bag for her wallet to find the little piece of paper she had been carrying around with her. She showed it to Karlsson.
“What’s that?”
“Yvette said I should call if I needed help. She would come from wherever she was.”
“She’d do that,” he said.
“Maybe I could do with her protection. Maybe we all could.”
“So you’ve warned me,” he said, with a small smile.
“Yes.”
“I’ll be vigilant.”
“You have two little children.” She sensed Karlsson stiffen slightly.
“I have,” he said softly. “I’ll be vigilant of them as well. You should be too.” He smiled without humor. “Beware of strangers,” he said.
Frieda laid her glass against her forehead for a moment. “I’ve put everyone in danger,” she said at last. “Everyone who trusts me.” She turned to him and he could see her eyes glowing in the half-light.
“Don’t think of it like that.”
“Those who care about me. Those I care about.”
He didn’t reply.
25
The following afternoon she sat in her consulting room, in the chair that felt almost like a part of her body, and looked at Morgan Rossiter. He looked back at her. Some patients had trouble meeting her eye, especially at the first session, but not this one. He was dressed in a checked shirt, faded blue jeans and scuffed boots. He looked like a builder but he didn’t sound like one. He was a university teacher and he had been referred to her only the previous week.
“Dr. Singh told me that you asked for me personally,” said Frieda. “Why?”
“People have been telling me for years that I should talk to someone. Girlfriends, mostly. But I always said that I could never talk to someone I didn’t respect.”
“Is that an answer to my question?”
“I wouldn’t stay in a hotel without checking it in advance. Why wouldn’t I do that with a therapist?”
“So why were girlfriends telling you that you needed therapy?”
“I’ve had problems at work and a relationship broke up and I went to see my doctor and she was about twelve years old and she only gave me about eight minutes.”
There was a long pause.
“One important part of therapy,” said Frieda, finally, “is why you’re doing it. Can we start with that?”
Rossiter answered quickly, as if he had come prepared. “When this relationship broke up—it was me that broke it up, by the way—I wondered if I had a problem with commitment. I keep having these relationships. I’m faithful while I’m in them. Most of the time. But then they get to a certain stage and I end them.”
“You also said you were having trouble at work.”
“Just the usual.”
“You’ll have to explain what that means.”
He looked down at the carpet. “I’m forty-two, not publishing enough of any merit, just stuff that enables me to keep tenure, not doing what I thought I’d be doing when I was thirty-two. The usual. Blah blah blah.”
“And in that situation, you went to your GP and said you wanted therapy and that you wanted it with me, specifically.”
“You must have lots of people wanting you as a therapist,” said Rossiter. “I thought you’d have a waiting list.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Now he raised his eyes and looked at her once more. “I thought it would be interesting,” he said. “The notorious Frieda Klein.”
The other new patient was a man in his twenties called Alex Zavou. Six months earlier he had been in a pub just off the Caledonian Road when a fight had started. He had tried to intervene to stop it but a knife had been pulled and a teenage boy had been killed. When he talked about it, his hands trembled and all the color left his face, as if he were still at the scene of the murder.
“I don’t really know why I’m here,” he said. “I don’t see the point of talking about it. I already went on this short series of . . . you know.”
“Cognitive behavioral therapy,” said Frieda.
“Thi
s man tried to give me strategies and plans and exercises that would stop me going over and over it in my mind.” As he said those words, Zavou grabbed his head between his hands. “It didn’t do anything at all. And I got the medication. I just keep going over and over whether it would have been better if I hadn’t done anything or if I’d done something different. I didn’t see the knife. I just remember this boy stumbling against me and looking at me with a really surprised expression, like in a cartoon, his eyes open wide. He just sat down and I saw that the floor was wet with something.” He gazed at Frieda almost pleadingly. “I know you’re going to say that there’s nothing I could have done. The knife cut an artery in his chest. Nothing could have saved him. People keep telling me that. What I want is a drug that will just stop me going over and over it. Or an operation that will cut a bit out of my brain so it’s just gone. What I don’t need to do is to talk about it over and over.”
There was a silence and Frieda let it continue for a long time before she broke it. “As you know,” she said finally, “there is no such drug and no such operation and no quick fix because this is life and we’re actual people.”
“That’s not much of a comfort.”
“I’m not here to be a comfort and I’m not here to be your friend. Do you have close friends?”
“A couple.”
“Do you talk to them about this?”
“A bit.”
“That’s good. But this is going to be different. I’m going to tell you something. This won’t go away. This will never stop being a part of your life, a part of who you are. And that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”
“It’s easy for you to say that,” said Zavou. “Sitting there, you can’t imagine what it’s like to see what I’ve seen.”
For a moment Frieda thought of what she could have said in response but she stayed silent. That wouldn’t be any help.
26
“The trouble,” said Olivia, yanking open the fridge door and peering inside, “is that she’s never here. What kind of protection is that? There’s nothing to eat. How can there be nothing to eat? Where’s my bloody quiche gone?”
“I’ll have something when I get home,” said Frieda.
“There was at least half left. She’s eaten it.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Oh yes it does. Anyway, at least there’s still plenty of wine.” Olivia emerged brandishing a bottle that she banged down on the table between them, among the piles of magazines, the unwashed dishes and the unopened bills. “White good?”
“Just half a glass.”
“All the more for me.”
“I wanted to ask—”
“And when she’s here she’s holed up in her room. Wearing headphones. So she wouldn’t hear if anything was happening.” Olivia’s voice rose. “If, for instance, I was being murdered, she wouldn’t hear me screaming. She’d just go on humming along to whatever it is that’s destroying her eardrums.”
“I can hear now!” came Chloë’s voice from above them.
“There you are. She hasn’t changed since she was tiny. Little pig with big ears, that’s what your brother used to call her.” Olivia poured two large glasses and handed one to Frieda. “Before he fucked off out of our lives, that is, and left me to deal with everything.”
Frieda couldn’t work out if Olivia had already had something to drink, or if she was just more than usually overwrought. She was wearing a purple jumpsuit and high heels, a chunky gold necklace coiled around her neck several times, hooped earrings, and everything about her seemed slightly awry. The varnish on her fingernails was chipped. Her hair was coming loose.
“Can I—” she began.
“Don’t you want to ask me how I am?”
“How are you?”
“Not good. Very, very far from good. For a start, I can’t work out how to get into my own house because of all these new locks and security bolts and codes. It’s like being in a prison.”
“It’s for your own safety.”
“Right. Because some homicidal maniac is out there. I lie awake all night, thinking I can hear footsteps on the other side of my bedroom door. I don’t sleep well at the best of times, but now I don’t get a wink. Not a single wink. And then I’ve got Chloë with me again.” She lifted her eyes toward the ceiling and dropped her voice to a theatrical whisper. “She’s so bloody judgemental. She thinks I drink too much, she thinks I’m too messy. She criticizes my lifestyle—well, that’s being a kettle, or a pot, whichever. She keeps going on about you. Saint Frieda. We shout at each other. It’s like having a belligerent teenager back in the house.”
“How are things working out with Jack?”
“He’s not much help. He leaves early and gets back late. I hardly see him.”
“Yes, but—”
“And I’m menopausal, Frieda. Menopausal. That means I break out in sweats and I cry all the time and I’m all washed up, Frieda. All washed up,” she repeated, with a gloomy relish. “I’ll never meet anyone now, will I? Kieran was nice but he left in the end.”
“I thought it was you who left him.”
“They all leave in the end. This is who I am: the unemployed, middle-aged, divorced, lonely Olivia Klein.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I was such a pretty girl,” she said, almost dreamily. “I thought it would all be wonderful. Life.”
She poured herself another hefty glass of wine.
“I’m sorry about it all.”
“Oh, well.” Olivia spoke drearily.
“You say you’re lonely.”
“You’ve been talking to Chloë.”
“No.”
“She’s been telling you about my dates.”
“No, she hasn’t.”
“It’s because I’m scared.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to be all alone in this house. So I make sure I have company from time to time. It makes me feel safer.”
“You’re saying that it makes you feel safer to invite men you don’t know very well back here?”
“Don’t you go all stern on me. I can see where Chloë gets it from, not that she can talk. It’s my life. I can do what I want and I’m not hurting anyone.”
“I’m not being stern, Olivia. I just want you to be careful.”
“It’s like a bad dream.” Olivia put out a hand and held on to Frieda’s arm.
“I’m sorry. Can you tell me their names?”
“Names?”
“The men you’ve been dating.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Just as a precaution.” She sounded like a police officer, she thought.
“Oh, God. Oh dear. OK. There’s Bobby.”
“Bobby who?” asked Frieda.
“I don’t know. He told me. It’ll come back to me.”
“How did you meet him?”
“I met him in a bar.” Olivia’s cheeks were flushed but she glared defiantly at Frieda.
“What does he do?”
“Something with the Inland Revenue.” Olivia snorted. Then she held up a hand. “Astley, that’s his last name. Robert Astley.”
“How many times have you met him?”
Olivia floated her hands in the air.
“A few. I’m seeing him on Thursday as a matter of fact.”
“Any others in the past few weeks?”
“What is this? An interrogation? There was a man called Dick. I don’t know his last name either. I only saw him once. He was a bit of a creep, as a matter of fact. And Dominic. I met him on the singles site but it turned out he wasn’t single after all. Dominic Gordon, if you want to know. Then Oliver. Ollie. I’ve only met him twice. He’s quite sweet. Younger than me, though he doesn’t know that. Or he probably does, actually. Who am I kidding?”
“How did you meet?”
“He came to the door to find out if I was interested in having the house valued and I invited him in for coffee.”
“So he’s an estate agent?”
<
br /> “Yes. I suppose so.”
“All right.”
“You’re not really thinking it’s any of them?”
“I want you to be careful, Olivia. Don’t immediately trust people.”
“I’m scared.” She gave a dramatically loud sob. “I just want all of this to go away. And what am I going to eat?”
“Shall I make us something?”
“Would you? I can’t face it.”
“Why don’t you go and have a bath and I’ll put something simple together?”
She made a rudimentary Greek salad and heated up some rolls she found in the small freezer. Then she set about clearing the kitchen, washing dishes, scouring pans, wiping surfaces, gathering scattered papers and magazines and books and putting them into a pile. Chloë came in while she was doing it. “You shouldn’t be clearing up her mess. I’ll do it later.”
“I don’t mind.”
“How does she seem to you?”
“Are you worried about her?”
“She’s always a bit all over the place,” said Chloë. “But does it seem worse than usual?”
“Maybe.”
“When I was little, I used to be scared. I never knew what I might find. One day she’d be affectionate, all over me, then lying in bed crying because some man or other had broken her heart. Or drunk. Or on a purge and stone-cold sober and grim with it.”
“I know.”
“That’s why it was so important you were around.”
“I’m still around,” said Frieda.
“Yeah. But I’m meant to be a grown-up now.”
“And you are a grown-up. That doesn’t mean you don’t need people any more.”
Chloë was rubbing at a small knot of wood on the table.
“It’s hard moving back.”
“I hope it won’t be for long.”
“It’s all awful, isn’t it? The things that have happened.”
“Yes. For you especially.”
“Me and Alexei and Reuben.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He looks so ill, Frieda.”
“It’s partly the treatment, of course.”
“Do you ever wish things wouldn’t change?”
“Is that what you wish?”
“I didn’t know it would be this hard.”
“Being an adult?”
“I guess. Sometimes I wish I was still doing my A levels and you were helping me with my bloody chemistry and I was with Jack.”