Nicci French - Waiting for Wednesday

‘I’m very sorry,’ said Frieda. ‘But I need to see it. And then I’ll go away.’

He stared at her, then shrugged and led her down the stairs into a basement room, where he opened a metal drawer.

‘This is what you want,’ he said. ‘Don’t put fingerprints on it, and let yourself out when you’ve finished.’

‘Thank you.’

‘By the way, Elaine Kerrigan has confessed to the murder of Ruth Lennox.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t worry. I think Russell Lennox is about to confess as well. And the Kerrigan sons. The whole station will be full of people confessing and we still won’t know.’

And he left.

Frieda pulled on plastic gloves and lifted out the large cog, placing it on the table in the centre of the room. It looked as if it should be in the machinery of a giant clock, but the Lennoxes had had it on their mantelpiece as a sort of sculpture.

She opened Ted’s artbook at the page dated Wednesday, 6 April and put it on the table as well. She stared from cog to drawing so hard that everything began to blur. She stood back. She walked round the table so that she could see the cog from every angle. She squatted on the floor and squinted up at it. Very delicately, she tipped the object, swivelled it, held it so that it flattened out in her view.

And then at last she had it. Viewed at a certain angle, levered back and twisted, the heft object looked like a straight notched line. The same straight and notched line that she could see among the items that Ted had drawn for his mock art A level, on the morning of Wednesday, 6 April.

Frieda’s face became expressionless. At last she gave a small sigh, put the cog back into the metal drawer, which she slid shut, pulled off the gloves and left the room.

Louise Weller and her family lived in Clapham Junction, in a narrow red-brick terraced house set slightly back from the long, straight road, lined with plane trees and regulated by speed humps. The bow windows downstairs had lace curtains, to prevent anyone looking in, and the door was dark blue with a brass knocker in the middle. Frieda rapped on it three times, then stood back. The spring weather had turned cooler, and she felt a few welcome drops of rain on her hot skin.

The door opened and Louise Weller stood in front of her, holding a baby to her chest. Behind her the hall was dark and clean. Frieda could smell drying clothes and detergent. She remembered Karlsson telling her about the sick husband and imagined him lying in one of the rooms upstairs, listening.

‘Yes? Oh – it’s you. What are you doing here?’

‘Can I come in, please?’

‘This is probably not a good time. I’m about to feed Benjy.’

‘It’s not you I’ve come to see.’

‘They don’t need to be disturbed. They need stability now, a bit of peace.’

‘Just for a moment, then,’ said Frieda, politely, and stepped past Louise Weller into the hall. ‘Are they all here?’

‘Where else would they be? It’s a bit cramped, of course.’

‘I mean, all here at the moment.’

‘Yes. But I don’t want them troubled.’

‘I’d like a word with Ted.’

‘Ted? Why? I’m not sure that’s appropriate.’

‘I’ll be brief.’

Louse Weller stared at her, then shrugged. ‘I’ll call him,’ she said stiffly. ‘If he wants to see you. Come through into the drawing room.’

She opened the door beside them and Frieda stepped into the front room with the bow window. It was too hot and had too much furniture in it, too many little tables and straight-backed chairs. There was a doll’s buggy parked by the radiator, with a flaxen-haired blue-eyed doll propped in it. She found it hard to breathe.

‘Frieda?’

‘Dora!’

The girl’s face had a greeny pallor and there was a cold sore at the corner of her mouth. Her hair wasn’t in its usual plaits but hung limply around her face. She was wearing an old-fashioned white blouse and looked, thought Frieda, like a figure in a Victorian melodrama: pitiable, abandoned, acutely distressed.

‘Have you come to take us away?’ Dora asked her.

‘No. I’ve come to see Ted.’

‘Please can we go to yours?’

‘I’m sorry. It’s not possible.’ Frieda hesitated, taking in Dora’s scrawny frame and her pinched, dejected face.

‘Why?’

‘Your aunt is your guardian. She’ll take care of you now.’

‘Please. Please don’t let us stay here.’

‘Sit down,’ said Frieda. She took Dora’s hand, a parcel of bones, between both hers and gazed into the girl’s eyes. ‘I’m so very sorry, Dora,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about your mother, and I’m sorry about your father. I’m sorry you’re here, not with people you love – though I’m sure your aunt loves you in her way.’

‘No,’ whispered Dora. ‘No. She doesn’t. She tells me off about mess and she makes me feel like I’m in her way all the time. I can’t even cry in front of her. She just tuts at me.’

‘One day,’ said Frieda, slowly, feeling her way, ‘one day I hope you’ll be able to make sense of all of this. Now it must just feel like a terrible nightmare. But I want to tell you that these bad days will pass. I’m not telling you that it will cease to be painful, but the pain will become bearable.’

‘When will Dad come back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Her funeral’s next Monday. Will you come to it?’

‘Yes. I’ll be there.’

‘Will you sit with me?’

‘Your aunt –’

‘When Aunt Louise talks about her, she makes this horrible face. As if there’s a bad taste in her mouth. And Ted and Judith are so angry about her. But –’ She stopped.

‘Go on,’ said Frieda.

‘I know she had an affair. I know she did wrong and cheated on Dad. I know she lied to us all. But that’s not how I think of her.’

‘Tell me how you think of her.’

‘When I was ill, she used to sit on my bed and read to me for hours. And in the mornings, when she woke me up, she’d always bring me a cup of tea in my favourite mug and put her hand on my shoulder and wait till I was properly awake. Then she’d kiss me on my forehead. She always had a shower in the morning and she smelt clean and lemony.’

‘That’s a good memory,’ said Frieda. ‘What else do you remember?’

‘When I was being bullied, she was the only person in the world I could talk to about it. She made me feel less ashamed. Once, when it was really bad, she let me stay home from school and she took the day off herself and we spent hours in the garden, dead-heading the roses together. I don’t know why it made me feel better, but it did. She told me about how she was bullied at school. She said I had to go on being who I was, being kind and nice.’

Dora stopped. Tears stood in her eyes.

‘I think she sounds like a lovely mother,’ said Frieda. ‘I wish I’d met her.’

‘I miss her so much I want to die. I want to die .’

‘I know,’ said Frieda. ‘I know, Dora.’

‘So why did she –’

‘Listen to me now. People are very complicated. They can be lots of different people at the same time. They can cause pain and yet still be kind, sympathetic, good. Don’t lose your memories of your mother. That’s who she was to you and that’s real. She loved you. She may have been having an affair but that doesn’t alter the way she felt about her children. Don’t let anyone take her away from you.’

‘Aunt Louise says –’

‘Fuck Aunt Louise!’

Ted was standing in the doorway. His hair was greasy and lank and his face looked mushroomy in its unhealthy pallor; there were violet smudges under his eyes and a prickling rash on his neck. Small sprouts of a young man’s beard were beginning to appear on his chin. He was wearing the same clothes as yesterday. Frieda wondered if he’d even been to bed, let alone slept. As he approached, she could smell sweat and tobacco, a yeasty unwashed aroma.