Tuesday's Gone

Two

‘February,’ said Sasha, sidestepping a puddle, ‘should be abolished.’

She was walking with Frieda along a street lined with modern office blocks, whose height blocked out the sky and made the dark day seem darker. Everything was black and grey and white, like an old photograph: the buildings were monochrome, the sky chilly and blank; all the men and women – but they were mostly men – walking past them, with their slim laptop cases and umbrellas at the ready, wore sober suits and coats. Only the red scarf around Frieda’s neck added a splash of colour to the scene.

Frieda was walking swiftly, and Sasha, although she was the taller, had to make an effort to keep up.

‘And Tuesdays,’ she went on. ‘February is the worst month of the year, much worse than January, and Tuesday is the worst day of the week.’

‘I thought that was supposed to be Monday.’

‘Tuesdays are worse. It’s like …’ Sasha paused, trying to think what it was like. ‘Monday’s like jumping into ice-cold water, but you get a shock of excitement. On Tuesday you’re still in the water but the shock has worn off and you’re just cold.’

Frieda looked round at her, noticing the winter pallor that made her seem frailer than usual, although there was no hiding her unusual beauty, even bundled up in a heavy coat, with her dark blonde hair tied severely back.

‘Bad morning?’

They turned past a wine bar and briefly out on to Cannon Street, into the blur of red buses and taxis. Rain started to spit.

‘Not really. Just a meeting that went on longer than necessary because some people love the sound of their own voices.’ Sasha suddenly stopped and looked around. ‘I hate this part of London,’ she said, not angrily, but as if she’d only just realized where she was. ‘When you suggested a walk, I thought you were going to take me along by the river or to a park. This is just unreal.’

Frieda slowed. They were walking past a tiny patch of fenced-in green, untended and full of nettles and overgrown shrubs.

‘There was a church here,’ she said. ‘It’s long gone, of course, and the graveyard as well. But this tiny bit survived, got forgotten about somehow, among all the offices. It’s a fragment of something.’

Sasha peered over the railings at the litter. ‘And now it’s where people come for a cigarette.’

‘When I was little, seven or eight, my father took me to London.’

Sasha looked at Frieda attentively: this was the first time she had ever mentioned any member of her family or brought up a memory from her childhood. In the year or so since they had known each other, she had told Frieda almost everything about her own life – her relationship with her parents and her feckless younger brother, her love affairs, her friendships, things she kept hidden from view suddenly exposed – but Frieda’s life remained a mystery to her.

The two of them had met just over a year ago. Sasha had gone to Frieda as a patient and she still remembered their single session, when she had told Frieda, in a whisper and barely lifting her eyes to meet Frieda’s steady gaze, how she had slept with her therapist. Her therapist had slept with her. It had been an act of confession: her dirty secret filling the quiet room and Frieda, leaning forward slightly in her red chair, taking away the sting and shame by the quality of her attention. Sasha had left feeling drained but cleansed. Only later had she learned that afterwards Frieda had gone straight from their session to the restaurant where the therapist was sitting with his wife and punched him, creating havoc, smashing glasses and plates. She had ended up in a police cell with a bandaged hand, but the therapist had declined to press charges and insisted on paying for all the damage at the restaurant. Later, Sasha – who was a geneticist by profession – had repaid the debt by surreptitiously arranging a DNA test on a piece of evidence Frieda had lifted from the police station. They had become friends, yet it was a friendship unlike any that Sasha had ever known. Frieda didn’t talk about feelings; she had never once mentioned her ex, Sandy, since he had gone to work in America, and the only time Sasha had asked her about it, Frieda had told her with terrifying politeness that she didn’t want to discuss it. Instead, Frieda talked about a piece of architecture, or a strange fact she had unearthed about London. Every so often she would invite Sasha to an exhibition and sometimes she would call and ask her if she was free for a walk. Sasha would always say yes. She would break a date or leave work in order to follow Frieda through the London streets. She felt that this was Frieda’s way of confiding in her, and that by accompanying her on her rambles, she was perhaps taking some of the edge off her friend’s solitude.

Now she waited for Frieda to continue, knowing better than to press her.

‘We went to Spitalfields Market and he suddenly said we were standing on top of a plague pit, that hundreds of people who had died from the Black Death were lying under our feet. They had done tests on the teeth of some of the corpses that had been excavated.’

‘Couldn’t he have taken you to the zoo?’ said Sasha.

Frieda shook her head. ‘I hate these buildings as well. We could be anywhere. But there are the tiny bits they’ve forgotten to get rid of, the odd space here and there, and the names of the roads: Threadneedle Street, Wardrobe Terrace, Cowcross Street. Memories and ghosts.’

‘It sounds just like therapy.’

Frieda smiled at her. ‘Doesn’t it? Here, there’s something I want to show you.’

They retraced their route to Cannon Street and stopped opposite the station, in front of an iron grid set into the wall.

‘What’s this?’

‘The London Stone.’

Sasha looked at it dubiously: it was an unprepossessing lump of limestone, dull and pockmarked, and reminded her of the kind of uncomfortable rock you perched on at the beach when you were rubbing sand off your feet before pulling your shoes back on. ‘What’s it for?’

‘It’s protecting us.’

Sasha gave a puzzled smile. ‘In what sense?’

Frieda indicated a small sign beside it. ‘“So long as the Stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish.” It’s supposed to be the heart of the city, the point from which the Romans measured the scope of their empire. Some people think it has occult powers. Nobody really knows where it came from – the Druids, the Romans. Maybe it’s an old altar, a sacrificial stone, a mystical centre point.’

‘You believe that?’

‘What I like,’ said Frieda, ‘is that it’s in the side of a shop and that most people walk past without noticing it, and that if it got mislaid, it would never be found because it looks like a completely ordinary piece of rock. And it means what we want it to mean.’

They were silent for a few moments and then Sasha put a gloved hand on Frieda’s shoulder. ‘Tell me, if you were ever in distress, would you confide in anyone?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Would you confide in me?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Well. You could, that’s all.’ She felt constrained, embarrassed by the emotion in her voice. ‘I just wanted you to know.’

‘Thank you.’ Frieda’s voice was neutral.

Sasha dropped her hand, and they turned from the grille. The air had become notably colder, the sky blanker, as if it might snow.

‘I have a patient in half an hour,’ Frieda said.

‘One thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Tomorrow. You must be worried. I hope it goes all right. Will you let me know?’

Frieda gave a shrug. Sasha watched as she walked away, slim and upright, into the swallowing crowds.