Waiting for Wednesday

FORTY-SEVEN

When Frieda and the Lennox children had arrived at her flat, it was far from the calm place of refuge she had wanted for them. Instead, it felt like a battle zone. Shoes of all shapes and sizes lay in the hall, with coats piled up by the banisters; bags and satchels, spilling their contents, led into the living room. Music was playing loudly. The air was thick with the smell of cooking: onions, garlic, herbs. She had to pause for a moment and take a few deep breaths. She felt as if she had led them all on stage. She heard loud voices, the rattle of glasses, like a party. As she stepped into the living room, Josef and Chloë looked up. She saw the bottle of wine on the table, the glasses, a bowl of nuts.

‘It’s all right,’ said Chloë. ‘Reuben’s making supper. I thought it would be nice for you not to think about it for once. He says it’s his speciality. Oh, hi, Ted!’ She blushed and smiled.

Then the door opened and Reuben peered round, his face flushed and beaming. Drunk, thought Frieda. Drunk as a lord.

‘Hello, Frieda. I thought we all needed a slap-up meal and since you won’t come to me I thought –’ He noticed the Lennoxes bunched in a corner, dazed and scared. ‘Sorry. I didn’t realize. You must be the poor kids whose mother died.’

‘Yes,’ said Judith, faintly. Dora started to snivel.

‘Very tough,’ said Reuben. ‘Very very very tough.’ He lurched a bit. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Thank you.’

‘But for now, I’ve made enough for an army. The more the merrier. And the food is ready.’ He gave a sweeping bow and winked at Judith.

‘I don’t think it’s the right night,’ Frieda said firmly. ‘We need to have a bit of quiet here. I’m sorry.’

His expression curdled. He glared at her and raised his eyebrows, ready to pick a fight.

‘Don’t be mean, Frieda!’ Chloë was indignant. ‘He’s been working for hours on this. You don’t mind, do you, Ted?’ She put a hand on his shoulder and he stared at her with stupefied eyes.

‘Nah. It’s OK,’ he said listlessly. ‘It doesn’t really matter one way or another.’

‘I don’t think –’ began Frieda.

‘Great!’

Josef had already laid the table with unfamiliar plates that Frieda never used. He must have found them at the back of a cupboard. But when he laid them out on the table, it added to her impression that she was a guest in her own house and a stranger in her own life. He filled tumblers with water from a jug. Then Reuben drew a large blue casserole dish from the oven, his hands swathed in two tea-towels. Frieda already knew what it was. Reuben’s speciality, his fallback dish, his comfort food, ever since she had known him, was a particularly hot, spicy and meaty chilli con carne. When he triumphantly lifted the lid, the sight of the meat and the purple kidney beans almost made her gag.

‘This was the meal I used to cook as a student,’ he said, to Chloë. ‘You’ll need to build up a few dishes for when you go to college. And you’re a bit peaky, if I may say so,’ he told Judith. ‘Red meat is what you need!’

‘You didn’t make a salad as well, did you?’ Frieda asked.

Reuben left the room and returned with a fairly small green salad. He ladled the chilli on to the plates and passed them round. When he had finished, he poured wine into the glasses.

Chloë took a mouthful of chilli, flinched and coughed. ‘It’s really hot,’ she said, with a gasp. She took a gulp of water.

‘Water only makes it worse,’ Reuben said. ‘Wine’s better.’

Josef took a large forkful and munched. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Feel it in the chest.’

Frieda toyed with the food. She took a salad leaf in her fingers and put it into her mouth. Ted drank a glass of wine as if it was water and, without asking, poured himself another. Dora simply stared at her plate and then at Frieda with her huge beseeching eyes.

Judith prodded the greasy pile in front of her. ‘It’s very nice, but I think I’m going to go and lie down,’ she said. ‘Can I lie on your bed for a bit?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ve been having revenge fantasies about that bastard Hal Bradshaw,’ said Reuben, loudly and cheerily, as Judith left the room.

‘Who’s he?’ asked Chloë, looking anxiously at Ted.

‘He’s the bastard that conned me and Frieda and set us up to public ridicule. I keep imagining different scenarios. Like I’m walking past a lake and I see Bradshaw drowning and I just watch him as he sinks below the surface. Or I come across the scene of a car accident and Bradshaw is lying on the road and I just stand and watch him bleed out. I know what you’re going to say, Frieda.’

‘I’m going to tell you to be quiet right now.’

‘You’re going to tell me that fantasies like that aren’t very healthy. They’re not therapeutic.’ He stressed the last word as if there was something disgusting about it. ‘So what do you think?’

‘I think it might be a better revenge fantasy if you rescued Bradshaw from drowning. Or staunched his bleeding. And I think you’ve had too much wine and this is not the night.’

‘That’s not much fun,’ said Reuben.

‘No,’ chimed in Ted. His cheeks were blotchy and his eyes bright. ‘Not fun at all. Revenge should be bloody.’

‘A dish served cold,’ announced Chloë. ‘We’re doing it for GCSE.’

‘Staunched?’ said Josef. ‘Served cold?’ He was drunk too, decided Frieda.

‘I’ve been planning a real revenge with Josef,’ said Reuben.

Frieda looked at Josef, who had just taken a mouthful. He made an effort to chew and swallow it.

‘Not the planning so much,’ Josef said. ‘The talking.’

‘There are things builders know how to do,’ Reuben continued, apparently unaware of the tangible air of distress in the room. ‘Josef can gain entry. You hide shrimps inside the curtain rails and behind the radiators. When they start to rot, the smell will be staggering. Bradshaw won’t be able to live in his own house. Then there’s more subtle things you can do. You can loosen a water-pipe connector beneath the floorboards, just a little, just so there’s a drip of water. That can cause some serious damage.’

‘That’s awesome,’ said Ted, in a loud, harsh voice. His eyes glittered dangerously.

‘This is just a fantasy you’re talking about,’ said Frieda. ‘Right?’

‘Or I could do worse than that,’ said Reuben. ‘I could tamper with the brakes on his car – with Josef’s help, of course. Or torch his office. Or threaten his wife.’

‘You’d go to prison. Josef would be sent to prison and then deported.’

Reuben opened another bottle of wine and started to fill the glasses again.

‘I’m going to take Dora to her bed,’ said Frieda. ‘And when I come back, I think you should go. You and Josef are going home.’

‘I’m having a second helping,’ said Reuben. ‘More, Ted?

‘Reuben, you’ve gone far enough.’

But a few minutes later, when she came back into the room, Reuben began again. She knew him in this mood – petulant and dangerous, like a sore-headed bull.

‘I think you’re being pious about this, Frieda. I’m an advocate for revenge. I think it’s healthy. I want to go round the table and everyone has got to say the person that they would like to take revenge on. And what the revenge would be. I’ve already named Hal Bradshaw. I’d like him to be tied to a mountain top naked for all eternity and then every day a vulture would come and eat his liver.’ He grinned wolfishly. ‘Or something.’

‘But what about when it had finished?’ said Chloë.

‘It would grow back every day. What about you?’

Chloë looked at Reuben, suddenly serious. ‘When I was nine, there was a girl called Cath Winstanley. In year four and the first half of year five, she spent the whole of every day trying to stop people talking to me or playing with me. And when a new girl arrived, Cath would become her friend straight away to stop her playing with me.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Frieda.

‘Mum knew. She just told me it would pass. It did. In the end.’

‘What would you like to do to her?’ said Reuben. ‘You’re allowed to do anything. This is fantasy revenge.’

‘I’d just like her to go through what I went through,’ said Chloë. ‘Then at the end I would appear out of a puff of smoke and say: “That’s what it was like.”’

‘That’s what revenge should be like,’ said Frieda, softly.

‘But you survived,’ said Reuben. ‘What about you, Josef?’

Josef gave a sad smile. ‘I don’t say his name. The man with my wife. Him I want to punish.’

‘Excellent,’ said Reuben. ‘So what punishments would you like to devise for him? Something medieval?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Josef. ‘If my wife is with him like me, how do you say it? Talk, talk, talk to him …’

‘Nagging,’ said Reuben.

‘Yes, the nagging,’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Reuben,’ said Frieda. ‘And you, Josef.’

‘What’s problem?’ said Josef.

‘Forget it,’ said Frieda.

‘What about you, Ted? If you could track down your mother’s killer? You must think about it.’

‘Out. Go home now,’ said Frieda.

‘No.’ Ted said loudly, almost in a yell. ‘Of course I think about it. If I could find my mother’s killer, I’d – I’d –’ He gazed around the table, his fist clenched around his wine glass. ‘I hate him,’ he said softly. ‘What do you do to the people you hate?’

‘It’s OK, Ted,’ said Chloë. She was trying to hold the hand that was clasping his glass.

‘Attaboy,’ said Reuben. ‘Let it out. That’s the way. Now you, Frieda. Who’s going to be the object of your implacable revenge?’

Frieda felt a lurch of nausea in her stomach, rising in her chest. She felt as if she was standing on the edge of a chasm, with just her heels on the ground, her toes poking into the darkness and the temptation, always that temptation, to let herself fall forward into the deep darkness towards – well, towards what?

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not good at these sorts of games.’

‘Oh, come on, Frieda, this isn’t Monopoly.’

But Frieda’s expression hardened with a kind of anger and Reuben let it go.

‘The bath,’ said Josef, trying to make everything all right in his clumsy way. ‘Is OK?’

‘It’s very good, Josef. It was worth it.’ She didn’t tell him she hadn’t yet used it.

‘Finally I help,’ he said. He was swaying on his feet.

At last they had left. The soft spring dusk was darkening to real night. The clouds had blown away and the ghost of a moon was visible above the rooftops. Inside, an air of anticipation and dread filled the rooms. Even Chloë’s animation had petered out. Judith, who had come downstairs when she heard the front door slam, sat in a chair in the living room, her knees drawn up, her head pressed down on them, her hair wild. If anyone spoke to her and tried to comfort her, she would simply shake her head vehemently. Dora lay on a camp bed in Frieda’s study with a mug of cocoa beside her, which had cooled to form a wrinkled skin on its surface. She was playing a game of Snakes on her phone. Her thin plaits lay across her face. Frieda sat beside her for a few moments, without speaking. She turned her head and said, in a voice that sounded almost querulous: ‘I knew about Judith and that older man.’

‘Did you?’

‘A few days ago, when Dad was drunk, I heard him shouting at Aunt Louise about it. Is Judith going to be OK?’

‘In time.’

‘Did Dad …?’

‘I don’t know.’

Frieda went downstairs. Outside on the patio, Ted was smoking and pacing to and fro, his unkempt head enclosed in his giant pair of headphones. None of them could help the others, or be helped by them. They were just waiting, while Chloë barged around the house with cups of tea or firm, encouraging pats on a bowed shoulder.

Frieda had asked Ted if there was anyone she should call and he had turned his sullen gaze on her. ‘Like who?’

‘Like your aunt.’

‘You’ve got to be joking.’

‘Don’t you have other relatives?’

‘You mean like our uncle in the States? He’s not much use, is he? No, it’s us and it’s Dad, and if he’s not there, there’s no one at all.’

She sat with him for a while, relishing the cool night air. Nothing in her life felt rational or controlled any more: not her house, which used to be her refuge from the violent mess of the world, not her relationship with these young people, who had turned to her as if she knew answers that didn’t exist, not her creeping involvement with the police again, not her unshakeable preoccupation with the shadowy world of the missing girl Lila. Above all, not her sense that she was following a voice that only she could hear, an echo of an echo of an echo. And Dean Reeve, keeping watch. She thought of Sandy, only halfway through his day, and wished that this day was over.