Nicci French - Tuesday's Gone

It took her barely a minute to reach the wedding party. In the main room, the dinner was over, the guests clustered. The air hummed with their talk, and music was playing. Some people were on the wooden dance floor – including a gaggle of children, who were holding hands and giggling, kicking up their legs and knocking into each other. There was a table at the far end on which stood tall vases of flowers and the remains of the feast. Frieda saw a tall, dark-haired woman in a long ivory dress with red flowers in her hair, moving slowly in the arms of a man with ginger hair. That would be her, she thought.

She stood, unnoticed, and watched. It was like an old film, grainy and slightly blurred. A man came past holding a tray of champagne glasses and, seeing her, he offered her one but she shook her head. She could still go away, and for a moment it was as if her life hung suspended in front of her. One move and everything would change.

Now she saw him. He was standing at the far end of the room, his head bent towards an older woman who was talking animatedly. He wore a dark suit and a white shirt that was open at the neck. He looked thinner, she thought, and perhaps older as well, but she couldn’t tell because he was too far away from her and the room lay like a year between them.

Frieda took off her coat and her red scarf and put them on a nearby chair. She did what she always did when she was scared: pulled back her shoulders, lifted her chin and took a deep, steadying breath. She started across the space, and it seemed to her that everything around her slowed: the dancers, the music, her own footfall. Someone brushed against her and apologized. The woman in the ivory dress, Sandy’s younger sister, spun gently by, with his cheekbones and his eyes and the seriousness of his happiness.

Then she was there and she waited until something made him turn his head and there he was, looking at her. He didn’t move, just looked into her eyes and she felt that a hole was opening up inside her, undoing her. He didn’t touch her or smile.

‘You came.’

Frieda made a small gesture with her hands, palms upwards. ‘I found that I had to.’

‘What do we do now?’

‘Can we go outside?’

‘Shall we go into the park?’

‘It closes at dusk,’ Frieda said.

He smiled. ‘That’s the sort of thing you know, isn’t it? Which parks close at night and which don’t.’

‘But there’s a terrace at the back.’

They made their way out. His sister saw them and started to say something, then stopped. Frieda didn’t pick up her coat, and the cold air hit her but she welcomed it. She felt alive again, and it didn’t matter if it was pain or gladness that coursed through her.

Even from there they could look down on the City and behind them they could still hear the music and see the lights of the house.

‘Not a day has gone by,’ said Sandy, ‘when I haven’t thought of you.’

Frieda put out a hand and ran a finger over his lips. He shut his eyes and let out a small sigh. ‘Is it really you?’ he whispered. ‘After all this time.’

‘It’s really me.’

When at last they kissed, she felt the warmth of his hand on her back through the thin fabric of her dress. He tasted of champagne. Her cheeks were wet and at first she thought she was crying but then realized that the tears were his, and she wiped them. ‘Where are you staying?’ she said.

‘At my flat. I was going to sell it. But it fell through.’

‘Can we go there?’

‘Yes.’

In the taxi they didn’t speak all the way to the Barbican. They didn’t speak in the lift. When he opened the door of his flat, it was both familiar and a little sad. A bit musty, a bit abandoned.

‘Turn round for me,’ he said.

She turned and he undid the zipper of her shimmering dress, and it fell to the floor. She stood among its green folds like a mermaid. It had been fourteen months, she thought. Fourteen months since he had left. The moon shone through the curtains and in its light she looked at his intent face and his strong body. Then she closed her eyes and lost herself, let herself go.

When Frieda woke, it was four in the morning. His body was warm and smooth against her. She slipped out from under the covers. In the dark she was able to find clothes and pull them on. She picked up her coat and scarf and held her shoes in her hand, so they wouldn’t clatter on the wooden floor. She heard a murmur from the bed. She leaned down and softly kissed the back of his head, the nape of his neck.

As she began to walk, she felt as if she were still asleep. It was dark and still and cool. She walked up Golden Lane, which turned into Clerkenwell Road and she realized she was making her way along what had been London’s city walls. Once, this would have been a walk through gardens and orchards and across streams. That would be what the tourist guides would tell you. But Frieda thought of what must have come after that: the sheds, the rubbish heaps, the jerry-built houses, the squatters, the chancers, as the countryside slowly gave up and died.

She turned to make a circle back towards home. Now it was offices and council estates and small galleries, and the traffic that never stopped and a few stragglers, ending the day or beginning it, on the pavements. Someone approached her and asked if she wanted a cab. She pretended not to hear.

This night, or this morning, the city felt slightly different. Was it the clarity that comes from the cold darkness and the dark stillness? That she had opened herself to someone again? She thought about the night and felt a shiver. She looked around. She had been walking almost unconsciously and needed to orient herself. At this time of day, three, four hundred years ago, it would have been busy, full of carts loaded with food, livestock being driven into city. She looked up and saw the street name, Lamb’s Conduit Street, and smiled at it as if it were echoing her thoughts. It sounded sweet, but by this part of their journey the lambs would have started to stir and become agitated, smelling the stink of the Smithfield slaughterhouses blown up from the river.

She looked around. Again that feeling. Always she walked in London at night because it was there that she felt alone and untouched. Now it was different, and it wasn’t just the thought of Sandy, asleep in his flat. It was something else. She thought of playing Grandmother’s Footsteps as a little girl. You looked round to see if you could catch anyone moving. Every time you looked, the players would be still but closer. Until they got you.

When she arrived home, it was half past five. She took off her clothes. She could smell him on her. She stood in the shower for twenty minutes in the spray of water, trying to lose herself, trying not to think, but she couldn’t stop herself. She realized she had to phone Karlsson. It was still much too early. After she was dry, she sat in her armchair downstairs, tired but fiercely awake, her eyes stinging. She heard birds singing outside. Against all the evidence, spring was coming. Just after seven she got up and made herself coffee and toast. At one minute past eight, she phoned Karlsson.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said.

‘How did you know?’

There was a pause. ‘You do know about mobile phones?’ he said. ‘That your name shows up when you ring me?’

‘You probably don’t want to hear from me.’

‘I always want to hear from you.’

‘I know you were disappointed in my interview with Frank Wyatt.’

‘We all have our off days.’

‘It wasn’t an off day,’ she said.

‘You didn’t get him to confess.’

‘That’s true,’ said Frieda. ‘Are you charging him?’

‘As I said, we’re putting the file together. I’m just trying to tie up some loose ends. I’m going over to the Michelle Doyce flat today. We’re going to have some of the contents boxed up.’