Nicci French: Blue Monday

‘Charming,’ said one of the officers, and returned to filling out the incident report on something that really hadn’t been much of an incident at all.

As Frieda walked on, she heard the words of her mother in her ear. It wouldn’t have hurt to say hello, would it? Well, what did she know? That was one of the reasons why she did these walks. So that she didn’t have to talk, didn’t have to be on show, be looked at and appraised. It was a time for thinking, or not thinking. Just walking and walking during those nights when sleep wouldn’t come and when she could get the mess out of her head. Sleep was meant to do that, but it didn’t do it for her even when it came in little snatches. She crossed Gray’s Inn Road – more buses and taxis – and walked down an alley, so small that it was like it had been forgotten about.

As she turned into King’s Cross Road, she saw that she was approaching two teenage boys. They were dressed in hoodies and baggy jeans. One of them said something to her that she couldn’t properly make out. She stared at him and he looked away.

Stupid, she said to herself. That was stupid. It was one of the main rules about walking in London: you don’t make eye contact. It’s a challenge. This time he had backed down, but you only needed one.

Almost without thinking, Frieda took a path that wound off the main road, then back and then off it again. For most people who worked there or drove through it, this was just an ugly and unremarkable part of London, office blocks, flats, a railway cutting. But Frieda was walking along the course of an old river. She had always been drawn to it. Once it had flowed through fields and orchards down to the Thames. It had been a place for people to sit by, to fish in. What would they have thought, men and women sitting on a summer evening, dangling their feet in the water, if they had seen its future? It had become a rubbish dump, a sewer, a ditch clogged with shit and dead animals and everything else that people couldn’t be bothered to do anything with. Finally it had been built over and forgotten about. How could a river be forgotten about? When she walked this way, Frieda always stopped by a grating where you could still hear the river flowing deep below, like an echo of something. And when you had left that behind, you could still walk between the banks rising on either side. Even the occasional street name hinted at the wharves where barges had been unloaded and before that the rises, the grass slopes where people sat and just watched the crystal water flow down into the Thames. That was London. Things built on things built on things built on things, each in their turn forgotten about but each somehow leaving a trace, if only a rush of water heard through a grating.

Was it a curse that the city covered so much of its past, or was it the only way a city could survive? Once she’d had a dream of a London where buildings and bridges and roads were demolished and excavated so that the ancient rivers flowing to the Thames could be opened up to the sky once more. But what would be the point? They were probably happier the way they were, secret, unnoticed, mysterious.

When Frieda reached the Thames, she leaned over as she always did. Most times you couldn’t see where the stream flowed out of its pitiful little pipe, and this morning it was far too dark. She couldn’t even hear the sound of its splash. Down here on the river, the southerly wind was fierce but it was strangely warm. It felt wrong on a dark November morning. She looked at her watch. It wasn’t yet four. Which way? East End or West End? She chose West, crossed the river and headed upstream. Now, finally, she was tired, and the remainder of the walk was a blur: a bridge, government buildings, parks, grand squares, across Oxford Street, and by the time she felt the familiar cobblestones under her feet of the mews where she lived it was still so dark that she had to scrape around on her front door with her key to find the lock.

Carrie saw him from a distance, walking across the grass towards her in the fading light, his feet stirring the piles of damp brown leaves, his shoulders slightly hunched and his hands thrust deep into his pockets. He didn’t see her. His eyes were fixed on the ground in front of him and he moved slowly and heavily, like a man just woken from sleep, still sluggish and wrapped up in his dreams. Or nightmares, she thought, as she watched her husband. He looked up and his face cleared; his steps quickened slightly.

‘Thanks for coming.’

She put an arm through his. ‘What’s up, Alan?’

‘I just had to get away from work. I couldn’t stay there any longer.’

‘Did something happen?’

He shrugged at her, ducked his head. He looked like a boy still, she thought, although his hair was prematurely grey. He had a child’s shyness and rawness; you could see his emotions on his face. He often seemed slightly at a loss and people wanted to protect him, especially women. She wanted to protect him, except when she wanted protecting herself and then her tenderness was replaced by a weary kind of irritation.

‘Mondays are always bad.’ She made her voice light and brisk. ‘Especially Mondays in November when it’s starting to drizzle.’

‘I had to see you.’

She pulled him along the path. They had walked this route so many times before that their feet seemed to steer them. The light was fading. They passed the playground. She averted her eyes, as she always did nowadays, but it was empty except for a few pigeons pecking around the rubberized Tarmac. On to the main path and past the bandstand. Once, years ago, they had had a picnic there. She didn’t know why she remembered it so clearly. It had been spring and one of the first warm days of the year, and they had eaten pork pies and drunk warm beer from the bottle and watched children run around on the grass in front of them, tripping over their own shadows. She remembered lying on her back with her head in his lap and he’d stroked her hair from her face and told her she meant the world to him. He wasn’t a man of many words, so perhaps that was why she held such things in her memory.

They went over the brow of the hill towards the ponds. Occasionally they took bread for the ducks, although that was really something for little kids to do. Anyway, the ducks were being chased away by Canada geese that puffed their chests and stretched their necks and ran at you.

‘A dog,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we should get a dog.’

‘You’ve never said that before.’

‘A cocker spaniel. Not too big but not too small and yappy either. Do you want to talk about what you’re feeling?’

‘If you want a dog, let’s get one. How about as a Christmas present to each other?’ He was trying to work himself up into enthusiasm for it.

‘Just like that?’

‘A cocker spaniel, you say. Fine.’

‘It was just an idea.’

‘We can give him a name. Do you think it should be a him? Billy. Freddie. Joe.’

‘That isn’t what I meant. I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘Sorry, it’s my fault. I’m not…’ He stopped. He couldn’t quite think of what it was he wasn’t.

‘I wish you’d tell me what happened.’

‘It’s not like that. I can’t explain.’

Now they found themselves back at the children’s playground as if they were drawn to it. The swings and the seesaw were empty. Alan halted. He took his arm out of hers and gripped the railings with both hands. He stood like that for some moments, very still. He put one hand flat against his chest.

‘Aren’t you feeling well?’ Carrie said.

‘I feel odd.’

‘What kind of odd?’

‘I don’t know. Odd. Like a storm’s coming.’

‘What storm?’