Frieda put out a hand and ran a finger over his lips. He shut his eyes and let out a small sigh. ‘Is it really you?’ he whispered. ‘After all this time.’
‘It’s really me.’
When at last they kissed, she felt the warmth of his hand on her back through the thin fabric of her dress. He tasted of champagne. Her cheeks were wet and at first she thought she was crying but then realized that the tears were his, and she wiped them. ‘Where are you staying?’ she said.
‘At my flat. I was going to sell it. But it fell through.’
‘Can we go there?’
‘Yes.’
In the taxi they didn’t speak all the way to the Barbican. They didn’t speak in the lift. When he opened the door of his flat, it was both familiar and a little sad. A bit musty, a bit abandoned.
‘Turn round for me,’ he said.
She turned and he undid the zipper of her shimmering dress, and it fell to the floor. She stood among its green folds like a mermaid. It had been fourteen months, she thought. Fourteen months since he had left. The moon shone through the curtains and in its light she looked at his intent face and his strong body. Then she closed her eyes and lost herself, let herself go.
Forty-four
When Frieda woke, it was four in the morning. His body was warm and smooth against her. She slipped out from under the covers. In the dark she was able to find clothes and pull them on. She picked up her coat and scarf and held her shoes in her hand, so they wouldn’t clatter on the wooden floor. She heard a murmur from the bed. She leaned down and softly kissed the back of his head, the nape of his neck.
As she began to walk, she felt as if she were still asleep. It was dark and still and cool. She walked up Golden Lane, which turned into Clerkenwell Road and she realized she was making her way along what had been London’s city walls. Once, this would have been a walk through gardens and orchards and across streams. That would be what the tourist guides would tell you. But Frieda thought of what must have come after that: the sheds, the rubbish heaps, the jerry-built houses, the squatters, the chancers, as the countryside slowly gave up and died.
She turned to make a circle back towards home. Now it was offices and council estates and small galleries, and the traffic that never stopped and a few stragglers, ending the day or beginning it, on the pavements. Someone approached her and asked if she wanted a cab. She pretended not to hear.
This night, or this morning, the city felt slightly different. Was it the clarity that comes from the cold darkness and the dark stillness? That she had opened herself to someone again? She thought about the night and felt a shiver. She looked around. She had been walking almost unconsciously and needed to orient herself. At this time of day, three, four hundred years ago, it would have been busy, full of carts loaded with food, livestock being driven into city. She looked up and saw the street name, Lamb’s Conduit Street, and smiled at it as if it were echoing her thoughts. It sounded sweet, but by this part of their journey the lambs would have started to stir and become agitated, smelling the stink of the Smithfield slaughterhouses blown up from the river.
She looked around. Again that feeling. Always she walked in London at night because it was there that she felt alone and untouched. Now it was different, and it wasn’t just the thought of Sandy, asleep in his flat. It was something else. She thought of playing Grandmother’s Footsteps as a little girl. You looked round to see if you could catch anyone moving. Every time you looked, the players would be still but closer. Until they got you.
When she arrived home, it was half past five. She took off her clothes. She could smell him on her. She stood in the shower for twenty minutes in the spray of water, trying to lose herself, trying not to think, but she couldn’t stop herself. She realized she had to phone Karlsson. It was still much too early. After she was dry, she sat in her armchair downstairs, tired but fiercely awake, her eyes stinging. She heard birds singing outside. Against all the evidence, spring was coming. Just after seven she got up and made herself coffee and toast. At one minute past eight, she phoned Karlsson.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said.
‘How did you know?’
There was a pause. ‘You do know about mobile phones?’ he said. ‘That your name shows up when you ring me?’
‘You probably don’t want to hear from me.’
‘I always want to hear from you.’
‘I know you were disappointed in my interview with Frank Wyatt.’
‘We all have our off days.’
‘It wasn’t an off day,’ she said.
‘You didn’t get him to confess.’
‘That’s true,’ said Frieda. ‘Are you charging him?’
‘As I said, we’re putting the file together. I’m just trying to tie up some loose ends. I’m going over to the Michelle Doyce flat today. We’re going to have some of the contents boxed up.’
‘When are you doing it?’
‘I’ve got some meetings this morning. Some time in the afternoon.’
‘Can I come? I’d like to see it.’
‘You’ve seen it already, haven’t you?’
‘I saw it from the outside, when we looked at the alley, but I never went in.’
‘All right,’ said Karlsson. ‘You can join us.’
‘Could I see it before they start packing things up?’
‘I’ll meet you there at half past ten.’
The phone rang again.
‘You ran away.’
‘I didn’t run away. I needed to get away. I needed to think.’
‘About how you’d made a mistake.’
‘No, not about that.’
‘So I’ll see you.’
‘Yes, you’ll see me.’
Frieda didn’t go straight to the house. She took the Underground and then the Docklands Light Railway across the Isle of Dogs and under the river to the Cutty Sark. She got out and walked west until she was standing outside the Wyatts’ house. There was a light on inside. She turned towards the river. The tide was high, the water pitching against the Embankment. A tourist boat chugged past. Two children waved at her. She continued walking along the bank, first past the other apartments, then a yacht club, fenced off, the entrance to a wharf with a uniformed man sitting in a booth. Guarding what? Frieda thought. He looked at her suspiciously. He stepped outside and walked towards her. ‘Can I help you?’ he said.
‘Are you always here?’ she asked.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I just wondered.’
‘I’m not always here,’ he said. ‘But someone is. If you want to know.’
‘Thank you,’ said Frieda, and continued westwards, past the railings of a primary school and the site of a warehouse being demolished that was entirely boarded up and inaccessible. And then she reached Howard Street and found herself standing outside the house where it had all started.
‘Yes,’ she said to herself. ‘Yes.’
Frieda stared at Michelle Doyce’s living room, then noticed that Karlsson was looking at her and smiling.
‘What?’ she said.
‘It’s like the sea,’ he said. ‘People can describe it to you, but you have to go and look at it yourself. Quite a collection, isn’t it?’
Frieda was almost dazed by the room, which was somehow both obsessively neat and horribly chaotic. She saw shoes, stones, feathers and bones of birds, newspapers, bottles, silver wrappers folded into squares, glass jars, cigarette butts, dried leaves, dried flowers, little pieces of metal that looked as if they had been salvaged from machines. There were beads and clothes and assorted cups and glasses. Where even to begin?
‘I’d like to see Jasmine Shreeve do one of her programmes here,’ said Karlsson.
‘What do you mean?’
‘That programme where a psychiatrist judges you by looking at your home? This one would give them a bit of a fright.’ His tone changed. ‘Sorry. I know it’s not funny.’