‘Ignore him,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s his chat-up line.’
‘You look beautiful, Frieda,’ said Harry, softly, as though there was no one else in the room but them. Reuben’s eyebrows went up and Paz giggled. Frieda ignored them. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘I have a drink.’ She raised her glass of water.
‘A proper drink.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘I’ll get myself one, then. Tessa?’
‘A glass of wine, please.’
‘I’ll be right back.’
They both watched him as he edged his way through the crowd. Sasha came up behind them and put her arms round Frieda, kissing her on the crown of her head. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know. It’s my birthday and I wanted to say thank you.’
Tessa saw the two women exchange an elusive smile and felt a shiver of – what was it? Was it envy of their intimacy? Sasha drifted away, pulled into another group of people. Frieda turned as a young man in an orange shirt that clashed with his hair claimed her attention. He seemed a bit stoned and his hair stood up in peaks. He waved his hands around and leaned towards her with burning eyes, but she stood quite still as she listened. There was a quality of deep reserve about her, thought Tessa. She was in the room and yet somehow standing back from it. She gave you her full attention and yet at the same time you felt she had a core of isolation, of separateness. It made her a kind of magnet.
The party continued. A small, scruffy band arrived and set up in a corner. The rain stopped and a half-moon sailed between the clouds that were breaking up. In the little garden at the back of the house, smokers gathered in small clusters. At one point, Tessa saw Harry standing there with Frieda, talking to her. He was much taller than she was, and was gazing down at her with an expression that Tessa – who knew her brother very well – found hard to read.
‘You watch your brother?’
She turned to face a large man with big brown eyes and a scar on his cheek. He smelt of tobacco and something else that she found hard to place, wood or resin. ‘Not exactly.’
‘Some vodka.’ He held up the bottle in his hand. His lips and eyes gleamed. ‘And then we will dance.’
‘I’m not a great one for dancing.’
‘That’s why the vodka first.’
‘You are Frieda’s friend.’
‘Of course.’ He reached for a small tumbler, poured a couple of fat fingers of vodka and gave it to her. She sipped it warily while he gazed at her.
And he pulled her into the centre of the room. The band was playing some plaintive kind of music, not suitable for dancing at all, but he didn’t seem to mind. He danced entirely without self-consciousness. Even with her chest stinging from the vodka, Tessa felt awkward. The music speeded up and so did the man. He was like an acrobat, agile on a tiny spot of carpet. Music seemed to ripple through him and people were cheering him on. Soon Tessa stopped and watched him too.
‘Who is he?’ Harry was beside her.
‘A friend of Frieda’s.’
‘For a recluse, she seems to know a lot of people.’
A young girl had joined the man now, her bright yellow plaits swinging wildly.
‘Where’s she got to?’
‘She was talking to Sasha and a man wearing high-heeled boots and a tiara so I came to see how you were doing. She’ll be back.’
‘Everything all right?’
‘Very all right.’
‘Harry,’ she said, with a note of warning.
‘I’m just having some fun.’
Frieda tried to escape from the party without anyone noticing her, as she always did. She hated the ritual of farewells, hovering at the door. After she had collected her coat, Josef accosted her clumsily on the stairs.
‘Frieda,’ he began, then stopped. ‘I forget … no, yes, I finish with Mary Orton and she give me something …’
‘I’m going to have a talk with you,’ said Frieda, ‘when you’re sober. What if you’d been arrested for punching that photographer?’
‘But I think it might be important.’
‘What if he’d had a journalist with him? Then Karlsson wouldn’t have been able to pull strings and you’d have been back in Ukraine.’
Josef looked crestfallen. ‘Frieda …’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to rush.’
It was only half past nine. She took the Underground from Clapham North all the way to Archway. She walked up Highgate Hill, past the stone cat, safe behind its grille. She was glad she had only drunk water. She wanted a clear head. As she reached Waterlow Park she stood and looked through the locked gates. The clouds had gone and the moon was bright on the grass, which glistened slightly, still wet from the earlier rain. Suddenly she looked round. Had she heard something? A step? A cough? Or did she feel someone looking at her? There was a group of teenagers on the other side of the road. A couple, arm in arm, walked past her.
It took her barely a minute to reach the wedding party. In the main room, the dinner was over, the guests clustered. The air hummed with their talk, and music was playing. Some people were on the wooden dance floor – including a gaggle of children, who were holding hands and giggling, kicking up their legs and knocking into each other. There was a table at the far end on which stood tall vases of flowers and the remains of the feast. Frieda saw a tall, dark-haired woman in a long ivory dress with red flowers in her hair, moving slowly in the arms of a man with ginger hair. That would be her, she thought.
She stood, unnoticed, and watched. It was like an old film, grainy and slightly blurred. A man came past holding a tray of champagne glasses and, seeing her, he offered her one but she shook her head. She could still go away, and for a moment it was as if her life hung suspended in front of her. One move and everything would change.
Now she saw him. He was standing at the far end of the room, his head bent towards an older woman who was talking animatedly. He wore a dark suit and a white shirt that was open at the neck. He looked thinner, she thought, and perhaps older as well, but she couldn’t tell because he was too far away from her and the room lay like a year between them.
Frieda took off her coat and her red scarf and put them on a nearby chair. She did what she always did when she was scared: pulled back her shoulders, lifted her chin and took a deep, steadying breath. She started across the space, and it seemed to her that everything around her slowed: the dancers, the music, her own footfall. Someone brushed against her and apologized. The woman in the ivory dress, Sandy’s younger sister, spun gently by, with his cheekbones and his eyes and the seriousness of his happiness.
Then she was there and she waited until something made him turn his head and there he was, looking at her. He didn’t move, just looked into her eyes and she felt that a hole was opening up inside her, undoing her. He didn’t touch her or smile.
‘You came.’
Frieda made a small gesture with her hands, palms upwards. ‘I found that I had to.’
‘What do we do now?’
‘Can we go outside?’
‘Shall we go into the park?’
‘It closes at dusk,’ Frieda said.
He smiled. ‘That’s the sort of thing you know, isn’t it? Which parks close at night and which don’t.’
‘But there’s a terrace at the back.’
They made their way out. His sister saw them and started to say something, then stopped. Frieda didn’t pick up her coat, and the cold air hit her but she welcomed it. She felt alive again, and it didn’t matter if it was pain or gladness that coursed through her.
Even from there they could look down on the City and behind them they could still hear the music and see the lights of the house.
‘Not a day has gone by,’ said Sandy, ‘when I haven’t thought of you.’