Nicci French - Tuesday's Gone

‘David,’ she said. She didn’t smile, or step forward to hug him or even shake his hand. She simply watched him.

‘Well, well.’ He didn’t move either. They stared at each other. She saw a tiny pulse jumping in his cheek. So he was nervous. ‘I’m honoured, Dr Klein.’ He emphasized the ‘Dr’ as if mocking it.

‘May I come in?’

He stood back and she entered a spacious hallway, with a rug over the wooden floor, a chest to one side with a bowl of spring flowers on it, a portrait hanging on the wall. She wouldn’t look at that, she mustn’t – and she steadfastly averted her eyes from it as she followed David into the living room.

‘I’ve just made a pot of coffee,’ he said. ‘You told me you’d be here at half past three and I knew I could reliably set my watch by you. Ever prompt. Some things never change.’

Frieda squashed her impulse to refuse coffee, and took a seat while he went into the kitchen, returning moments later with two mugs.

‘Black, as usual?’

‘Yes.’

She was pleased to see how steady her hands were as she took a small sip. There was bitterness in her mouth, and the coffee tasted hard and full of minerals.

‘Still treating the diseases of the rich?’

‘I’m still working as an analyst, if that’s what you mean.’

‘I’ve been reading about you in the paper.’ David slid his eyes across her face to gauge her reaction. Frieda felt as if someone had jabbed her with something sharp. ‘Very interesting.’

‘I’m here to talk about Chloë.’

David’s smile thinned into a straight line. ‘Is this about Olivia’s maintenance money?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve had enough of her complaints, and of her solicitor’s letters. Who is this Tessa Welles, anyway? She suddenly appeared out of the blue. I suppose that was your doing.’

‘Olivia needs help. But that’s not –’

‘What Olivia clearly needs is to pull herself together. I’m not going to continue supporting her in her life of leisure. That’s final.’

Frieda said nothing, just looked at him.

‘I know what you’re thinking.’ He leaned forward. She could see the fine lines round his eyes, the flecks in his irises, the slightly cruel curve of his lips, the continuing pulse in his cheek. She could smell him, too – shaving lotion and coffee and something else, some smell he had had since he was a small boy who used to slap the back of her leg with a plastic ruler.

‘You live in a lovely house just outside Cambridge,’ she said. ‘This is a new carpet. You’re wearing a watch that would pay for Chloë’s first year at university. There’s a gardener out there, weeding your flowerbed. Nobody’s asking you to be generous. Just fair.’

‘Olivia was a mistake. She’s a rude, messy, selfish woman. Actually, I think she’s unhinged. I’m well shot of her.’

‘You have a daughter with her.’

‘She’s her mother’s daughter,’ said David. ‘She talks as if she has contempt for me.’

‘Perhaps she does.’

‘Did you come all this way to insult me?’ he asked, then added, softly, ‘Freddy?’

The old nickname might once have been used affectionately, but not now, not for a very long time.

‘She’s a teenager,’ she said, keeping her voice steady and her face neutral. ‘Life is hard for a teenager at the best of times. Think: you left her mother for a younger woman, and you left her as well. You’re holding back money and she’s watching her mother go to pieces. You rarely see her and sometimes you make arrangements that you then default on. You go on grand holidays with your new wife and don’t take her. You forget her birthday. You don’t go to her parents’ evenings. Why shouldn’t she have contempt for you?’ She held up her hand to stop him interrupting. ‘For someone like Chloë, feeling anger and contempt is far easier to deal with than feeling wretchedness and fear, which is what she’s really feeling. Your daughter needs a father.’

‘Finished?’

‘No. But I want to hear what you have to say.’

David stood up and went to the window. Even his back looked angry – yet Frieda had a sudden clear flashback of sitting on those shoulders, holding on to his head with one hand, and with the other reaching down some fruit from the tree at the bottom of their garden. She could almost feel the cool heaviness of the plum in her hand, its bloom against her fingers. She blinked away the memory and waited. David turned round.

‘I don’t know how you can sit here, in this room, and talk to me about what teenagers are like and what parents feel.’

He wanted to hurt her.

‘You weren’t a parent last time I looked. How old are you? It won’t be so very long before you’re forty, will it?’

‘This is about Chloë.’

‘It’s about you thinking, after everything, you have the right to come here and tell me what to do with my life.’

‘Just with your daughter. And if I don’t tell you, who will, until it’s too late?’

‘What do you think she’s going to do? Slit her wrists?’

She gave him a look so fierce that she could see he was shaken. ‘I don’t know what she could do. I don’t want to find out. I want you to help her.’ She took a deep breath and added, ‘Please.’

‘This is what I will do,’ he said. ‘Because I had already decided to, not because you’ve asked me to. I will see her every other weekend, from Saturday afternoon, until Sunday afternoon. Twenty-four hours. All right?’ He picked up his electronic organizer and started pressing buttons, very business-like. ‘Not next weekend, or the one after, though. We can start at the beginning of April. You’ll see to it that she knows?’

‘No. You have to ask her if that’s what she wants. She’s seventeen. Talk to her. And then listen.’

He slammed the organizer on the table, so hard that his mug jumped.

‘And please don’t tell her I came to see you. She’d feel humiliated. She needs you to want to see her.’

A door slammed and someone called his name. Then a pretty young woman entered. She had blonde hair and long legs. She must have been in her late twenties, though her style was of someone younger – someone of Chloë’s generation, thought Frieda.

‘Oh,’ she said, in obvious surprise, laying one hand against her stomach. ‘Sorry.’ She looked enquiringly at David.

‘This is Frieda,’ he said.

‘You mean – Frieda Frieda?’

‘Yes. This is my wife, Trudy.’

‘I’m just going,’ said Frieda.

‘Don’t mind me.’ She picked up the two coffee mugs, making an odd little grimace of distaste as she did so, and went out of the room.

‘Does Chloë know?’ asked Frieda.

‘What?’

‘That she’s going to have a sibling.’

‘How the fuck?’

‘You have to tell her.’

‘I don’t have to do anything.’

‘You do.’

She walked back to the station. She had plenty of time before Sasha’s birthday party, and although the day was grey and foggy, threatening rain, she needed to be outside in the cleansing wind. She felt polluted, defiled. At first, as she made her way rapidly up the lane lined with bare trees and muddy fields, she thought she would actually be sick, but gradually her feelings began to settle, like something sinking back into darkness.

Sasha opened her front door to find a couple she didn’t know outside. She felt a brief moment of panic. Were these some old friends she’d forgotten about? The two of them had easy, cheerful expressions, as if they were both in on a joke. The man put his hand out.

‘I’m Harry Welles, a friend of Frieda’s.’

A relieved smile broke over Sasha’s face.

‘Frieda said you were coming. She’s told me all about you.’