Tuesday's Gone

Twenty

Although she had gone to bed late, Frieda got up early the next morning, vacuumed the house, washed the kitchen floor, laid a fire in the living room for when she returned, showered and left the house shortly after nine. She had been to River View Nursing Home twice before, but both times by car. This time she took the overland train and got out at Gallions Reach, then walked past lines of apartment blocks, light industrial units and a down-at-heel shopping mall until she arrived at the nursing home, which was far from the river. Its windows were covered with metal grilles. She pushed open the front door, went past the Zimmer frames and wheelchairs that seemed as though they hadn’t been moved since her last visit, and went to Reception, where a young woman in a uniform was thumbing through a magazine.

‘Is Daisy here?’ asked Frieda, remembering the woman who had accompanied her last time.

‘Left.’

‘I wondered if I could see June Reeve.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m a doctor,’ said Frieda. ‘I visited her last year. I’d like to talk to her.’

The young woman looked up and Frieda saw a flicker of interest animate her features. But she shook her head. ‘She’s on a ventilator.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘Pneumonia.’

‘Will she recover?’

‘I’m not the one to ask,’ said the young woman.

‘Could I talk to someone about her? The manager, perhaps?’

‘Mrs Lowe’s around,’ said the young woman. ‘You could talk to her.’

Mrs Lowe was about fifty and she had a bright, high voice, a merry face, a brisk and bouncy style of walking. Everything about her was designed to lift the spirits. Frieda found it difficult to stand close to her or even to look at her. But, then, how else did you get through day after day, working somewhere like this?

‘Do you want to pop your head round her door?’ she asked. ‘Poor dear. Come along with me.’ She tucked a friendly arm into Frieda’s. ‘It’s just down here.’

She led the way along the corridor that Frieda remembered so well, past an old man in slipping-down pyjamas, and stopped at a door.

‘She’s not her usual self,’ announced Mrs Lowe, and pushed open the door on to a small, bare room: same bars over the window, same picture of the Bridge of Sighs on the wall, same bookshelf holding only a leather-bound Bible, same vase empty of flowers. Frieda looked for the framed photograph of Dean and saw it had been removed. June Reeve was no longer sitting in the armchair, but lying in bed with an oxygen mask over her mouth. Her skin had a leathery look to it and was the colour of tobacco leaves. Her chest rose and fell unevenly. Her eyes were closed.

‘Not long for this world,’ said Mrs Lowe. She had white, strong teeth.

‘Does she ever speak?’

‘Not now.’

Frieda looked at Dean and Alan’s mother, her small mean mouth and her folds of dying flesh. She had abandoned Alan when he was a baby without caring whether he lived or died; she had helped Dean snatch Joanna and turn her into Terry; and she had never exhibited anything but self-righteousness and self-pity. But she was beyond any kind of reproach now, or hatred. Frieda wondered what she was dreaming of behind her collapsed face.

‘Thank you.’ She turned from the door and waited while Mrs Lowe pulled it shut. ‘Does she ever have visitors?’

‘Not a soul.’ Mrs Lowe beamed.

‘Never?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Her son never visits?’

‘You mean the other son? Dean’s twin.’

‘Alan. Yes.’

‘Never. Not once. You can’t quite blame him, can you? After all, she wasn’t a mother to him, was she? She picked the wrong one to keep, is what I always say.’

‘So she’s been quite alone since Dean killed himself?’

‘Not that she minded. She’s not what I’d call a sociable lady. Never did join in with our fun and games, even before her memory got as bad as it did. Always kept herself to herself. Perhaps it’s just as well. I have to admit that some of our old dears here didn’t take very kindly to having the mother of an evil monster …’ Mrs Lowe’s mouth lost its fixed smile and momentarily twisted in a grimace. ‘Now it’s too late for things like that. Too late for anything. She never did make her peace with the world.’

‘Thank you for your help.’

‘Someone did come once, but they didn’t even go and visit her. They just left her a bag of doughnuts at the front desk.’

‘Doughnuts,’ said Frieda, softly, to herself more than to Mrs Lowe.

‘She was always very partial to doughnuts.’

‘Yes,’ muttered Frieda. ‘I know. Her son, Dean, used to bring them to her.’

‘It must have been someone else, then.’

Frieda waited until she was several streets away from River View Nursing Home before pulling out her mobile and calling the number she had copied on to it that morning. She then walked to Gallions Reach, but travelled only as far as Canning Town where she changed trains for Stratford. It was a foggy day, and in the wet, cold air, the half-built Olympic Village took on a ghostly appearance – scaffolded buildings and segments of domes and towers surfaced from the dank mist, below which Frieda could make out vans and diggers and crowds of men in hard hats.

It took her fifteen minutes to walk to Leytonstone, where she turned up the long, straight road of Victorian terraced houses shrouded in the grey light to number 108. Frieda didn’t hurry: she was trying to order her thoughts and to prepare what she was going to say. That she must say it she finally had no doubt. She rang at the dark green door, hearing its double chime in the distance, and had the eerie sense of being back in a previous life. She almost expected Alan to answer, standing before her with his sad brown eyes and his apologetic smile.

It was Carrie who came to the door, in a yellow jersey that made her pallor more obvious, and she wasn’t smiling. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said.

Frieda stepped inside, wiping her boots carefully on the doormat and hanging her coat up. ‘Thank you for agreeing to see me.’

‘You didn’t give me much choice. Shall we go through to the kitchen?’

It was the same as it had always been, neat and pleasing, with one half given over to domestic appliances and the other to Alan’s tools. On dozens of shelves, divided into small compartments, were his screws and nuts and bolts, his fuses and washers and keys. Carrie noticed Frieda’s glance and smiled wryly. ‘He didn’t take any of his stuff. I kept thinking he would come back so I didn’t clear it out. Stupid, isn’t it, when he’s obviously not coming back? Only I don’t know how to begin.’

‘There is something you should know.’

‘About Alan? I knew it. You do know where he is.’

‘It’s about Alan, yes. You should sit down.’

Carrie obeyed, looking wary, as if anticipating a blow.

‘This is going to be a shock, and perhaps you won’t believe me, but I am certain that Alan is dead.’

Carrie’s hands flew to her mouth. Her grey eyes stared at Frieda. ‘Dead?’ she whispered. ‘Dead? Alan? My Alan? But … when? When did he die?’

‘On the twenty-fourth of December 2009.’

Carrie’s hands slid away from her mouth, which was working uselessly, mouthing words she couldn’t utter. She leaned forward slightly in her chair and her head lolled to one side. ‘What are you …?’ she said thickly, in a voice that was scarcely recognizable as her own. ‘I was with him after that. I was with him at Christmas. I told you.’

‘I believe that Dean killed Alan on the day your husband went to meet him.’

Frieda paused for a moment, so that Carrie could begin to see the implication of what she was saying. ‘He swapped clothes, strung him up, wrote a suicide note for himself, came home to you, as Alan, and you called the police. You know the rest.’

Carrie said something that Frieda couldn’t make out. The voice came from her belly, low and guttural. Then she sprang up and flung the table over; it caught Frieda on the shin and crashed to the floor in a scream of breaking china and screeching wood on tile.

‘You fuck.’

‘Carrie.’

Frieda grasped Carrie by her wrists and tried to hold her steady, but although she was smaller than Frieda, rage made her strong. Frieda could see the spittle on her chin and the white patches on her cheeks, as if someone had pressed a thumb deep into them.

‘Get off me. Don’t touch me. Don’t come near me. Do you hear?’

Frieda wrapped both arms around Carrie’s body from behind, gripping her fiercely. ‘Carrie,’ she repeated.

Carrie surged in her arms. The back of her head was against Frieda’s mouth. She kicked at Frieda’s leg and, wrenching her head round, tried to bite Frieda’s shoulder. ‘It’s not true,’ she howled, low and hoarse. ‘It’s a lie. You’re lying to me. It’s not true. Alan’s not dead.’

Frieda felt Carrie’s body tense and then go limp. She made a gagging noise and then, as Frieda relaxed her hold, bent forwards and started to vomit on to her kitchen floor. Frieda put a hand on her forehead and held her, then eased her on to the chair that was still standing. Carrie crumpled on to it like a rag doll. Frieda found some kitchen towel and wiped Carrie’s mouth, pushed her hair back from her sweaty face. Then she picked up the fallen table and Carrie laid her head on it and started to weep in retching sobs that sounded as though she might weep up her organs and her heart, turn herself inside out.

Frieda picked up the other chair, then used several squares of kitchen roll to wipe up the vomit and flush it down the next-door lavatory. Returning, she filled a washing-up bowl with hot, soapy water and scrubbed the floor. She boiled the kettle and made a pot of strong tea. She heaped four teaspoons of sugar into a mug and added a big splash of milk. She pushed it in front of Carrie, who lifted her face, swollen with weeping.

‘Just a bit,’ said Frieda. ‘Are you cold?’

Carrie nodded. Frieda ran upstairs and came back with a quilt she’d removed from the bed. ‘Wrap this round you and drink your tea.’

Carrie sat up. She tried to hold the mug but her hands were shaking so badly that Frieda took it from her and held it to her lips, tipping it carefully until Carrie could take small gulps.

At last, Frieda said, ‘Have you understood?’

Carrie wrapped the quilt more tightly around her body so that only her face was showing. She looked like a beaten animal.

‘Carrie?’

She nodded. ‘I’ve understood,’ she whispered.

‘Do you believe me?’

‘Alan had this habit.’ Carrie’s voice was hoarse from her weeping. ‘He always used to take bits of my food, or drink half of my tea, even when he had his own. I’d be eating a biscuit and he’d lean over and pop it into his mouth, or pick up my sandwich and take a large bite out of the middle of it, the best bit, very casually as if he didn’t even know he was doing it. I’d turn my head, and when I turned back, there’d be his toothmarks in my Jaffa cake or something. It irritated me but it was like a running joke between us. Even when things were at their very worst, even when he’d lost his appetite for anything, he went on nicking my food. I often think that’s what makes a marriage work, not the big obvious things, like sex and children, but all those habits and routines and funny tics, the little things that drive you mad but bring you close.’ She wasn’t looking at Frieda any more, but down at the table, and speaking in a voice so quiet that Frieda had to lean forward to hear it. ‘He took my food because my food was his food. My life and his life hadn’t got any boundaries. We’d kind of merged. The day he left …’ She gulped. Her blotchy face twitched. ‘The day the man I thought was Alan left, we were sitting on the sofa and I’d warmed up two mince pies. We never had Christmas pudding at Christmas. We liked our luxury mince pies from M&S, with cream, it was one of our traditions – and for once he didn’t take any of mine. I made a joke out of it. I held it up to his lips and said, “What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is yours,” or something stupid like that. But he just smiled and said he’d got his own. Later, once he’d gone away, I thought it was a demonstration of his separateness – he wasn’t eating my food because he no longer wanted me. Do you see?’

Frieda nodded but said nothing. She stood up and refilled Carrie’s mug, adding more sugar.

‘He made me one cup of tea,’ Carrie continued, in a dreary voice. ‘That same day. Usually I made the tea but I’d done all the cooking and I asked him to get me a cup. He made a song and dance of it. He put the mug on a tray, with milk in a little jug and sugar in a china bowl, even though I don’t take sugar. I thought he was being funny and romantic. I didn’t get it. He just didn’t know, did he? He didn’t know how I took my tea.’

‘I’m so very sorry, Carrie,’ said Frieda.

‘I slept with him,’ cried Carrie. ‘I had sex with him. For the first time in months and months, because Alan – he couldn’t. It was good.’ Her face contorted as if she would throw up again. ‘It was the best it had ever been. Ever. Do you understand? Do you?’

Frieda nodded again.

‘And it wasn’t Alan. It wasn’t my darling, darling, hopeless Alan. Alan was dead, strung up like some criminal. And I didn’t know and I didn’t grieve and I fucked his foul, murdering brother and I was happy. I was so happy, lying tangled up in the dark with the man who killed Alan and then had sex with me and listened to me crying out in pleasure, oh, and then heard me telling him how it had never been this good before. Argh! This is – I can’t –’

She stood up, her face chalky, and rushed from the room. Frieda could hear her being sick again, then the lavatory flushing and water running. Carrie returned, sat down again and fixed her red-rimmed eyes on Frieda.

‘You are sure?’ she said.

‘Yes, I am. But I don’t have evidence. Not the sort the police would accept.’

‘Can’t you do a DNA test? I’ve got his toothbrush. His comb.’

‘Their DNA was the same,’ said Frieda. ‘Anyway. What matters is what you think.’

‘I believe you.’ She seemed flatly calm now.

‘Carrie, you must hold on to the fact that Alan did not leave you and he always loved you. You loved him and were loyal to him. You’ve got nothing to reproach yourself for.’

‘How could I not know, not feel it? And now I can never make it right. I can never take Alan in my arms again and hold him and comfort him and hug him to me until he feels safe again. I can never be forgiven by him. This is what it will be like until the day I die. Oh, my poor sweet Alan. Nothing ever went right for him, did it? Of course he wouldn’t have left me – how did I not know that?’

Through that dark, wet day, Frieda sat in the kitchen and listened as Carrie talked about Alan, about Dean, about her loneliness and childlessness, about grief and anger, hostility and self-disgust. She heard her talk of hatred – for Dean, of course, but also for her, Frieda, who had sucked Alan into a vortex from which he had never returned, for the police who hadn’t stopped him, for herself – and of her desire for revenge. She heard of Carrie’s early days with Alan, and how she had known on their first date that she would marry him because of the way he had said her name – with flushed shyness, and as if he was uttering some solemn and precious oath. Frieda made numerous cups of tea and, later, a boiled egg that Carrie listlessly poked pieces of toast into. Only when Carrie had called her friend and asked her to come over did she leave, promising to call her the following day, and even then, she didn’t go straight home by cab or train, but walked there through the London streets, winding her way westwards as the day turned to evening and the fog became sleety darkness. Her mind was crowded with thoughts and ghosts: Carrie’s staring white face, Alan’s eyes, which had always reminded her of a spaniel’s, timid and pleading, and the jeering smile of Dean, who had been dead but was now alive again. Somewhere in the world.