In another situation, she might have said something sardonic, but she was aware of Carrie’s eyes fixed on her, of the peculiar dynamic between them. Carrie spoke for her, drily: ‘He’s building a shed in the garden.’
‘I thought I was organized,’ said Frieda. ‘This is on a different scale.’
‘The gardening things are all in there.’ Carrie nodded towards a narrow door next to the window, presumably meant for a pantry. ‘But he hasn’t done much gardening recently. I’ll look for him. He might be asleep. He’s tired all the time.’ She hesitated, then said abruptly, ‘I don’t want him upset.’
Frieda didn’t answer. There were too many things she could have said, but nothing that would have prevented Carrie from seeing her as a threat.
Frieda listened to Carrie as she went up the stairs. Her voice, curt when she spoke to Frieda, was tender, like a mother’s, when she called her husband. A few moments later, she heard them come down the stairs, Carrie’s footsteps light and firm, Alan’s slower and heavier, as though he was putting his whole sagging weight onto each step. When he came into the room, rubbing his fists into his eyes, she saw how tired and defeated he looked.
She stood up, dislodging the cat. ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’
‘I don’t know if I was asleep,’ he said. He seemed bewildered. Frieda noticed how Carrie put her hand against his back to guide him into the room and took her place behind his chair like a guard. He bent down and picked Gretel up, held her against his broad chest and put his face into her fur.
‘I needed to see you,’ Frieda said.
‘Shall I go?’ asked Carrie.
‘This isn’t a therapy session.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Alan. ‘You can stay if you want to.’
Carrie bustled around the kitchen, filling the kettle, opening and closing cupboards.
‘You know why I’m here,’ said Frieda at last.
As he stroked the cat on his lap, Frieda was reminded of the way he rubbed his hands up and down his trousers when he was in her room, as if he could never keep entirely still. She took a deep breath.
‘During our sessions I was struck by resemblances to the case of a boy who has disappeared. He’s called Matthew Faraday. So I talked to the police about it.’
Behind her, Carrie clattered angrily with cutlery, then banged her mug down in front of her. Tea slopped over the brim.
‘I was wrong. I’m very sorry to have caused you extra distress.’
‘Well,’ said Alan, slowly, drawing out the word. He didn’t seem to have anything to add to it.
‘I know that I said to you that in my room you were safe and could say anything,’ continued Frieda. Carrie’s presence made her self-conscious. Instead of talking to Alan she was reciting the words she had rehearsed in advance, and they sounded stilted and insincere. ‘There were these coincidences between your fantasies and what was going on in the outside world and so I felt I had no choice.’
‘So you’re not really sorry,’ said Carrie.
Frieda turned towards her. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘You think you acted right in the circumstances. You feel justified. In my book, that’s not being sorry. You know when people say to you, I’m sorry if, because they can’t bring themselves to say I’m sorry that … That’s what you’re doing. You’re apologizing without really apologizing.’
‘I don’t want to do that,’ said Frieda, carefully. She was impressed by Carrie’s pugnacity and touched by her fierce protectiveness towards Alan. ‘I was wrong. I made a mistake. I brought the police into your life in a way that must have been shocking and very painful to you both.’
‘Alan needs help, not being accused of things. Taking that poor little boy! Look at him! Can you imagine him doing such a thing?’
Frieda had no trouble in imagining anybody doing anything.
‘I don’t blame you,’ he said. ‘I keep thinking maybe they’re right.’
‘Who’s right?’ said Carrie.
‘Dr Klein. That detective. Maybe I did grab him.’
‘Don’t talk like that.’
‘Maybe I’m going mad. I feel a bit mad.’
‘Tell him he’s not,’ urged Carrie. There was a wobble in her voice.
‘It’s like being in a nightmare, all out of control,’ said Alan. ‘I’m handed from one crappy doctor to another. Finally I meet someone I trust. She makes me say things I didn’t even know I was thinking, and then reports me to the police for saying them. Who turn up and want to know what I was doing on the day that little boy went missing. I just wanted to sleep at night. I just wanted peace.’
‘Alan,’ said Frieda. ‘Listen to me now. Many people feel they’re going mad.’
‘That doesn’t mean I’m not.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
He smiled suddenly, his face breaking into a grin that made him look suddenly younger. ‘Why does it make me feel better not worse when you say that?’
‘I wanted to come and tell you what I did and to say sorry. But also I’ll quite understand if you don’t want to come back to see me. I can refer you to someone else.’
‘Not someone else.’
‘Do you mean you want to carry on?’
‘Will you be able to help me?’
‘I don’t know.’
Alan sat in silence for a moment. ‘I can’t think of anything else that wouldn’t be worse,’ he said.
‘Alan!’ said Carrie, as if he had betrayed her. Suddenly Frieda felt for the other woman. Patients very often talked to Frieda about their partners and about their family but she wasn’t used to meeting them, to getting involved.
She stood up, taking her trench coat from the back of the chair and putting it on. ‘You need to talk about it,’ she said.
‘We don’t need to talk about it,’ said Alan. ‘I’ll see you on Tuesday.’
‘If you’re sure.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I’ll let myself out.’
Frieda closed the kitchen door on them and stood on the other side, feeling like a spy. She could hear the rise and fall of their voices. She couldn’t make out whether they were arguing. She peered more closely at the photographs of Alan and his parents. He was chubby and solemn and had the same anxious smile, the same look of dismay. One portrait of the parents looked as if it had been taken by a high-street photographer. Probably for an anniversary. They were wearing their best clothes. The colours were almost garish. Frieda smiled and then her smile froze. She looked more closely at the picture. She muttered something to herself, a sort of reminder.
Hansel accompanied her to the door and watched her leave with his golden, unblinking eyes.
‘Why the fucking fuck did you leave him?’
‘I didn’t say I’d left him. I said it was over.’
‘Oh, come on, Frieda.’ Olivia was striding around her living room, stumbling in her heels, trampling over clothes and objects, a very full glass of red wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The wine kept slopping over the rim of the glass and spreading small drops in her wake and the cigarette’s ash grew longer until it, too, scattered to the floor, to be ground into the grubby carpet by Olivia’s emphatic heel. She was wearing a gold, glittery cardigan, too tight for her and stretched open across her breasts, a pair of blue jogging pants with a stripe down the legs, and summer sandals with stiletto heels. Frieda wondered if she was having a slow, garrulous nervous breakdown. Sometimes it seemed that half the people around her were in states of collapse. ‘He wouldn’t have left you in a million years,’ Olivia was saying. ‘So why?’