11
‘We need to find somewhere to stay,’ said Frieda.
It was the first time she had spoken for a long while. They had driven out of London in silence, Frieda looking out of the window at the landscape flowing past her: places that were both familiar and yet strange, like things seen in a dream. A year and a half ago, she and Sasha had visited the church where her father was buried, but that was because she believed that her deadly stalker, Dean Reeve, had been there. They had not gone to Braxton; she had not been back there since the day she had left, when she was not yet seventeen.
‘So we’re not staying with your mother?’ said Sandy.
‘Why would I stay with my mother?’
‘Will you go and see her?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t made up my mind.’
‘We’ll find somewhere and then tomorrow you can go to the police station.’
‘Tomorrow’s Sunday,’ said Frieda.
‘I don’t think crime stops at weekends.’
‘No.’
‘Are you going to tell me anything before we get there?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you realize how little I know about your past?’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Well, for instance, I know you have an older brother called David, because he’s Olivia’s ex and Chlo?’s father. Isn’t there another brother?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well?’
‘His name’s Ivan.’ Sandy waited, until Frieda added reluctantly, ‘He’s younger than me and he lives with his family in New Zealand.’
‘So you never see him.’
‘I never see him.’
‘And you never see David either, though he lives near Cambridge.’
‘No.’
‘Or your mother.’
‘No.’
‘How long’s it been?’
‘About twenty years.’ It had been twenty-three.
‘Is she so bad?’
Frieda turned towards Sandy. Driving, he could sense rather than see her dark stare on him.
‘I’d rather not talk about it at the moment.’
‘All right.’
‘I need to concentrate.’
‘On what?’
‘Just concentrate.’
She was looking at the fields and hedges, at the oak tree that brought back a flash of memory, remembering the way the sky was so large out here, pocked now with the first pale stars. At the canal glimpsed from the road, like a secret path leading back towards the city, the farmhouse half hidden between trees, the church spire in the distance. A scattering of modern houses, windows lit up in the gathering darkness. Light-industrial units. Pylons marching across the horizon. Like a face long pushed out of the mind, she remembered it all and saw what had altered and what had remained the same.
As she gazed out of the window into the darkening landscape, she remembered faces, too, that she hadn’t seen for decades, young, cruel, anxious, cocky, beseeching. She brought their names to the front of her mind, to make them seem more solid and real, less of a figment of her suddenly surging imagination. It’s so strange, the things you remember, she thought: her first cheap cider, all the words of that poem by Robert Frost, the hairy legs of her biology teacher seen through her beige tights, Sallys Newsagent, whose lack of apostrophe had so irritated her father, one stickily hot sports day and the spring of the turf underfoot, the view from her bedroom window and ice flowers on the panes in winter, blowing on a grass blade held between her thumbs to make it whistle, swollen glands, someone crying. She saw her mother’s face, ironic and unmoved. Something else darted into her mind, swift, fugitive – she couldn’t hold it and it disappeared again.
Braxton lay in a shallow valley so that the whole of it was visible as they approached, the last straggle of lights blinking on the hilltop ahead. Frieda was astonished by how small it was. She’d grown used to the endlessness of London: it was impossible even to say where it began and where it ended. Braxton was defined by the tilted bowl of the valley that contained it, and the river that ran through it. It was surrounded by large fields and clumps of woods, farms and quarries. In the distance, the orange glow of Ipswich illumined the night sky.
‘Stop,’ Frieda said. Sandy braked.
‘What is it?’
‘I’d like to walk the last bit.’
‘It’s dark.’
‘That doesn’t matter. There’s a moon. Then street lamps.’ She smiled. ‘I know the way.’
‘Shall I come with you?’
She swallowed and made an effort to speak gently. ‘I’d prefer to walk there alone. It will only take twenty minutes or so.’
‘Where shall we meet?’
‘Outside the church. You can’t miss it.’
She buttoned her coat and wrapped her red scarf around her neck. Then she opened the door and stepped out into the windy darkness. Something about the smell – wet soil, fallen leaves, the faintest tang of brine – caught her in the throat and took her back again. She closed the door and waited until Sandy had pulled away and his taillights had been swallowed up in the night, and then she started to walk.
‘What will you have?’
Frieda looked at the menu, with its sashimi and crust coatings and drizzles of oil. And she looked around the dining room with its minimalist black furniture, tasteful abstract paintings, zoned lighting. This didn’t feel like the place where she had grown up. In the 1980s it had felt like the 1950s or 1930s.
By the time she had arrived in the high street, Sandy had arranged everything. He had booked a room in a pub that Frieda had remembered as a smoky, dingy place but now had framed awards by the door and a restaurant. The harassed young woman at the front desk had said that it was almost full but she could get them a table if they could eat immediately. Sandy looked at Frieda, who just shrugged, and they walked straight through without even going up to their room.
‘I’ll have the oysters,’ said Sandy. ‘You know, when in Suffolk.’
‘You know about the norovirus, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Projectile vomiting,’ said Frieda. ‘Without warning.’
‘Yes.’
‘And oysters feed on human sewage. And the norovirus isn’t treatable.’
‘But it doesn’t kill you,’ said Sandy, putting his menu down. ‘And there’s an r in the month, and we’re just a few miles from the sea, and this is oysters we’re talking about. So I’m having oysters, followed by the fish of the day, whatever it is, whatever it’s eaten. What are you having?’
Frieda ordered two starters and a green salad. Sandy poured them both white wine. The oysters and Frieda’s scallops with bacon arrived, and after a few minutes, Sandy looked down at his six empty shells. ‘They didn’t taste of norovirus at all,’ he said.
‘We’ll see,’ said Frieda.
‘So what was it like, walking into Braxton? Did you recognize every tree?’
Frieda shook her head. ‘It wasn’t like that at all. When you left me and I started walking it felt like I was going into a completely strange town. They’ve built a new industrial estate and a petrol station and what looks like a giant housing estate. It could have been anywhere.’
‘It sounds as if they were trampling on your memories.’
‘I don’t mind having my memories trampled on,’ said Frieda. ‘I’ve done quite a bit of trampling and stamping on them myself.’
The fish arrived and Sandy started on it while Frieda ate her risotto. He gestured around the room with his fork. ‘Are these your people?’ he said, in a subdued tone. ‘Can you tell me all about them?’
Frieda glanced around. ‘They’re too young,’ she said. ‘Most of them were children when I left. Anyway, Braxton isn’t some tiny village. It’s a market town.’
After the meal they drank coffee and went upstairs. It was a little room at the back, overlooking the car park.
‘It’s not brilliant,’ said Sandy, ‘but we were lucky to get anything.’
Frieda had a shower and then Sandy had a shower. When he came out of the bathroom, she was lying on the bed, still wrapped in a towel, staring up at the ceiling. She raised her head. ‘It looks as if America has been good for you,’ she said.
‘There was nothing to do there but work and run.’
‘Nothing?’ She smiled. ‘Not in the whole of America?’
He lay down beside her.
‘I’m sorry,’ Frieda said.
‘What about?’
‘All of this. We should have been doing this for real – going away for the weekend, me taking you back to where I grew up. That’s what proper couples do. Instead, we’re here on this … well, what is it?’
‘Something you need to do,’ said Sandy.
Frieda ran her fingers over his shoulder, still smooth and damp from the shower. ‘Sex is still allowed, you know.’ She leaned forward to kiss him. ‘I’m not some damaged, traumatized object that needs to be handled carefully in case it breaks.’
Sandy looked serious, then kissed her and kissed her down her body and took the towel off her. Even when he was inside her, she felt that she was being fierce and longing and he was being careful and kind. Afterwards, they got into bed and lay in the dark and didn’t speak. Frieda was jaggedly awake. She could hear wind and rain outside, in waves against the window. There were voices, laughing, car doors opening, engines starting. She could hear the shallow breathing beside her but she couldn’t tell whether Sandy was awake, like she was, staring into the darkness.