13
As if in a dream from which she kept expecting to jerk awake, Frieda walked along the high street. It was a cool, dim day, the low sun a blur. People passed her – a jostling group of teenagers, a woman pushing her small and yapping dog in a buggy, an old man weaving from side to side. She didn’t look into their faces: she didn’t want to recognize anyone or be recognized, although, of course, that was unlikely. It had been more than two decades. The bakery where she used to buy baguettes was still there, and the shop selling cheap booze and a strange assortment of DVDs. The only change was that it had once been a different strange assortment of videos.
When Frieda was in London, she often had the feeling of walking over the past: layer upon layer of other people’s histories under her feet. She had always loved the sense of a great city’s buried secrets and the mysterious way they could make themselves felt in fragments of old buildings, in street names, in the hidden rivers that ran under pavements. But in this small town she was walking in her own footsteps. Here, at the bend of the road, her father had come to meet her and taken hold of her small hand in his large, soft, white one; here she had stood at the bus stop with her face in a book. Here a figure had lurked in the shadows and she could feel her teenage heart pounding. She caught her reflection in the window of the newsagent and for an instant thought she saw a fierce young girl, her dark hair in pigtails, but the figure resolved into Dr Frieda Klein, composed and expressionless, walking briskly by.
She turned off the high street, by a tattoo parlour that used to be a second-hand bookshop, into the street where she had first learned to ride a bike. The grass verge was now a pavement; there were street lamps that hadn’t been there before, and the phone box where she used to make secret calls was gone. The bus stop had a new shelter. She paused for an instant beside it, frowning at a memory, then letting it go. Down a smaller, narrower lane leading towards the edge of the town, past a tiny ancient chapel squeezed between two timbered houses. A scrawny expanse of newly planted grass – what had been there before? She blinked and saw a sagging wooden building with a rusted iron railing running in front of it. The lane rose steeply, under trees whose branches sent down damp flurries of leaves when the wind blew. The landscape seemed to darken; the air was full of unshed rain.
The cottage where old Mrs Leonard used to live with all her cats and no heating – she had worn strange turbans and stained slippers and would bang a metal dish in the garden, calling them home in a high-pitched croon, but she must be long dead. The mock-Tudor that had belonged to the Clarkes: there used to be old bikes in the garden, and a small trampoline, but now there was a decorative pond and a small weeping willow. Tracey Ashton’s little house. It was a different colour now, yellowish, a bit queasy-making. There was a satellite dish on its roof. Frieda looked at the empty windows, then away. There was only room for one reunion .
Here, then, at last: a long, low house that seemed to have settled into the earth. Its walls bulged and its roof sagged. Rich red brick, large windows that were all dark except the one at the side, the porch where her father used to leave his boots. Frieda pushed the gate and went into the front garden. The holly tree was gone. There were large iron pots against the path, but the plants in them had withered into futile stumps. There was a single leather glove lying on the grass; Frieda picked it up and straightened it. Perhaps it was her mother’s. Her mother, whom she hadn’t seen for more than two decades. Dr Juliet Klein, the GP in a little Suffolk market town, the wife of a man who had hanged himself in the room whose window she could see from where she stood, the mother to a daughter who had run away from home and never returned until this day. Frieda narrowed her eyes: she would be in her late sixties now, presumably retired. Perhaps she didn’t even live here any more. She stepped forward and knocked hard on the door that was moss-green now, not red.
How long did she wait? The door swung open. Her mother stood before her; she stood before her mother. There was a silence during which the two women stared at each other.
‘Well, well,’ said Juliet Klein at last, in her dry, precise voice. She always sounded slightly mocking, a touch ironic.
‘Hello,’ said Frieda. She realized she didn’t know what to call her mother: Juliet? Mum? ‘Are you going to invite me in?’
Juliet moved aside and Frieda stepped over the threshold and into the hall, which was warm and smelt slightly stale. The tiles had been replaced with wooden boards, but the grandfather clock was still there, a crack running down its glass face. There were photographs – of David and Ivan and their families; of Juliet as a younger woman; none of Frieda or her father – on the walls. There was an unopened bottle of red wine in the middle of the floor that Juliet walked around as if it were a permanent fixture.
‘Is that my glove you’re holding?’ she asked.
‘I found it outside.’
‘I wondered where it was.’ She smiled. ‘What do you think? Do we hug each other and weep?’
‘Maybe not.’
‘That’s probably best. Would you like some coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘I can’t offer you anything else. I wasn’t expecting you. No freshly baked cake, I’m afraid.’
They went together into the kitchen. Frieda blinked. Nothing was the same. The old cooker was gone, and the wooden table, the dresser, the rocking chair. Now everything was stainless steel, state-of-the-art, spotlit, bare and gleamingly efficient, like a laboratory for cooking – except Juliet Klein had never liked cooking and wasn’t even very interested in food. Through the window, she saw the long garden. No swing, no plum tree, no bird table. Everything seemed straightened and neatened. The long washing line had been replaced with a circular device from which hung several pairs of socks and nothing else.
‘This is all new,’ she said, feeling her mother’s shrewd eyes on her.
‘Sorry. Did you want me to keep it the way it was?’
‘It was just an observation.’
Frieda looked at her as she made coffee. She was smaller than she remembered, but still very upright, as if standing to attention, and her dark hair was a peppery grey. Her face was pouchy and sallow; her clever brown eyes slightly hooded. She had toothpaste marks around her mouth and was only wearing one earring. The collar of her crisp white shirt was folded in on itself.
‘I don’t know if you take sugar or milk. Help yourself.’
‘Thank you.’ They took seats on opposite sides of the metal counter. ‘Are you still working?’
‘I retired three years ago.’ Juliet Klein took a small sip of coffee; a few drops rolled down her chin but she seemed not to notice.
‘You’re probably wondering why I’m here.’
‘You could say so, Frieda. I had made up my mind never to see you again. I certainly wasn’t going to come looking for you.’
‘I haven’t come to rake things over,’ said Frieda.
‘Why not? You’re a therapist, aren’t you? Why not rake things over? Isn’t that what you do?’
‘I wanted to ask you something.’
Juliet Klein folded her arms, then tapped one hand against her shoulder. She made a sudden violent grimace of disgust, as if she’d put something bitter into her mouth. It was an utterly unfamiliar expression, childish and slightly wild.
‘Yes?’
‘Are you all right?’
‘All right? Oh, yes. I’m fine. What do you want to ask?’
‘The night that I was raped …’
‘Oh, not that again.’
‘The night that I was raped, I was here. In my bedroom. Do you remember?’ Her mother didn’t reply, so Frieda continued. ‘I was supposed to be going to a concert but I had a row with Lewis. I came home, told you I wasn’t going out after all but wanted to be left alone, and then I went upstairs and climbed into bed.’
‘It’s more than twenty years ago. How would I remember?’
‘It’s the kind of thing mothers remember.’
‘You’ve suddenly come down from London, burst in here, for what? To say I wasn’t a good enough mother?’
‘This isn’t about you as a mother or me as a daughter. I want to clarify a few things.’
‘It’s a bit late for that.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that evening, trying to remember it. You were here too. Downstairs. I could hear the TV. Later, I came down and I told you. You remember that?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you didn’t believe me.’
‘We had this out twenty years ago.’
‘Twenty-three years ago. Someone managed to get into my room without anyone noticing them. You were downstairs. Is there nothing you saw or heard?’
‘The police asked me all of this.’
‘I know. But now I’m asking you.’
‘What are you trying to prove? Is this how you’ve spent your adult life, storing up grievances against me?’
‘It’s just a simple question.’
‘I have a simple answer. I don’t know. I didn’t believe anyone raped you, and the police agreed. I think you were an unhappy, angry teenager and you made up a story that got out of control. That’s why you ran away. What I don’t understand is why you’ve come back.’
’You didn’t go out at all, or fall asleep?’
‘You always blamed me for Jacob’s death. Is that what this is about?’
‘No.’ Freda thought, but didn’t say, that in fact she’d always blamed herself.
‘And for recovering from it.’
‘Did you recover?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. I’m not your patient.’
‘I think it was someone I knew.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The rapist. I think I must have known him. It wasn’t just opportunistic. It couldn’t have been. He knew where I was. He knew this house.’
Frieda looked at her mother’s grey, weary face.
‘Sometimes you just have to get on with life. That’s what I’ve been doing.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’m going out in a few minutes. With my bat group.’
‘Bat group?’
‘We look at bats. It’s like birdwatching. But with bats.’
‘I’ll be gone by then. There’s someone else I need to go and see.’
‘Are you married?’ Juliet asked abruptly.
‘No.’
‘No children?’
‘No. Can I look at my old room?’
‘It’s my study now. You know the way.’
It had been twenty-three years. Not a trace of Frieda remained. Just a long narrow room, whose window overlooked the garden. There was a flat roof underneath; perhaps someone could have used that. Or walked in through the door and up the stairs while her mother sat watching television. Standing by her bed. Looking down at her while she slept. She frowned and ran a finger along the windowsill, collecting a thick ridge of dust. The study didn’t feel used: it was too neat and the computer and Anglepoise lamp were unplugged. On the desk there was a large pile of letters addressed to her mother, some handwritten, others utility bills. None had been opened. Frieda leafed through them, looking at the postage dates. They went back over six months.
She went downstairs. Her mother was in the hall, tying a scarf over her hair, fumbling clumsily with the knot, a puckered look on her face. She glanced at Frieda and her eyes seemed to flicker.
‘How are you feeling?’ Frieda asked.
‘It’s a bit late to start sharing feelings.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I am a doctor,’ said Juliet. ‘I don’t need to talk to another. If you count as a doctor.’
‘Doctors make the worst patients,’ said Frieda.
‘Have you got what you came for?’
‘Not really.’
‘You know what you can’t stand? You want to think you’re like your beloved father, but really you’re like me.’