25
They drove to Chas’s house in Chas’s car, which purred expensively along the Suffolk lanes and smelt of leather and money. She thought of Josef’s old van with its rattling windows and wheezing engine and, for a moment, let the old homesickness for her London life fill her. Then she pushed it aside and glanced across at Chas, who looked like his car.
His house was on the seafront. It was a grand, red-brick, symmetrical Georgian building, with windows reaching almost to the floor, and an imposing porch. He led Frieda through the echoing hall and into the huge kitchen. Through the double doors, she could see a garden whose wrought-iron gate at the far end led on to the shingle beach. It was covered with yards of decking and copper bowls full of shrubs, and to one side was a built-in barbecue, an elaborate affair that could have fed thirty guests. Frieda took a seat. On the other side of the window was an abstract bronze sculpture that looked, she thought, like a vagina: was that its point? Beyond the wall and the gate lay the sea, which today was flat and grey, fading into the flat grey sky
‘The house was a wreck when we bought it. Stuck in the fifties. We gutted it and started from scratch.’
He waited for Frieda to say how beautiful it now was. She said nothing. He offered her wine but she asked for a glass of water. He put it in front of her, then took off his suit jacket and hung it on his chair, carefully smoothing out creases. His shirt was pale blue and beautifully ironed.
‘I’m sorry you can’t meet my wife. She works part-time for an events company down the coast. Keeping her hand in.’ He spoke of it with amusement, as if it were her hobby. ‘And, of course, my kids are at school.’
‘How many do you have?’
‘Three. And you?’
‘None.’
‘Are you married?’
‘No.’
He raised his eyebrows so they appeared above the thick frames of his glasses. His eyes were still that strange pale blue, with tiny pupils. Then he said, ‘So, you’re back.’
She was getting tired of people saying that to her. ‘For the time being.’
There was a shimmer of hostility in the air. She was sure that Chas could feel it too. It had always been there and time hadn’t changed it. Chas liked power over people. As she sat in his spectacular kitchen, she found herself wondering yet again why, as a teenager, she had spent so much of her time with a group of people very few of whom she had actually liked. Chas she had disliked and had resisted. However hard he had tried to win her over through flattery, complicity, exclusion, derision, she had been unmoving, and he had never forgiven her for that.
‘Why are you here?’
‘Various reasons. My mother’s dying.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, in his uninflected voice, with no hint of sincerity in it. ‘What are the other various reasons?’
‘I’ve been thinking about the past.’
‘That’s what I heard.’
‘Who from?’
‘You forget how quickly word gets around in Braxton.’
‘This isn’t Braxton.’
‘It isn’t London.’
‘Why did you stay here?’
‘Not everyone needs to run away.’
His voice was so neutral that it took Frieda a few seconds to understand he was insulting her. She was oddly cheered by his rudeness: it made her job much easier.
‘We were never really friends, were we, Chas?’
‘Perhaps we’re too alike.’
‘I don’t think I’m like you at all.’
‘I remember you vividly. When you disappeared, you left a hole. A Frieda-shaped hole.’
‘We were an odd group. I even can’t work out why we were a group.’
‘Is that why you’re back?’ His eyebrows went up again, over the top of those glasses. ‘To work out why we all hung out together when we were kids?’
‘When I look back on it, I think you wanted to control us.’
‘Golly, Frieda.’ He made the babyish word sound obscene. ‘You’re the same as you were twenty-three years ago. Really, it amazes me how little people actually change. But that’s your line of work, isn’t it? Helping people to change?’
‘Ewan idolized you. Vanessa looked up to you. Eva was scared of you. Sarah fancied you. I’ve only just learned that she died.’
‘She killed herself. It was very sad. For those of us who were still her friends.’
‘Yes. Then Jeremy – well, you didn’t have that much to do with him, did you?’
‘Your posh boyfriend? Not so much.’
‘And Lewis …’
‘Lewis was a druggy loser.’
‘He was a young man who took drugs.’
‘Look at him now.’
‘He’s not rich and successful, with an enormous house on the beach. But he didn’t let you push him around, did he?’
‘You’re assuming I agree with the notion that I pushed anyone around.’ Chas folded his arms. ‘Let’s face it, Frieda. Some people are leaders and some people are followers. It’s true in the playground and it’s true in the workplace. The followers want their leader. They like being told what to do. They need it.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Why do you think I’ve done well?’
‘Because you’re a leader?’
‘Right.’ He took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt, then laid them on the table between them. ‘But you still haven’t explained why you’re back. Thinking about the past is a very vague notion.’
‘Something happened before I went.’
‘Something happened?’
‘There was an incident, at our house one night.’ She sounded like a police officer: an incident. ‘Someone broke in, or tried to break in.’
‘I remember that. I was interviewed.’
‘You all were.’
‘A prank?’
‘That’s one way of describing it.’
‘So you’ve come back because twenty-three years ago someone tried to break into your house and you want to know who it was.’ He stared at her with his pale blue eyes.
‘Do you remember that concert?’ asked Frieda. ‘Thursday’s Children.’
‘Do I remember! It was the biggest thing ever to happen to Braxton. They’re still talking about it.’
‘Did you go?’
‘Of course I went. I was right at the front. Don’t you remember?’
‘I wasn’t there.’
‘Weren’t you?’
‘No.’
‘I remember.’ A smile broke over his face. ‘You had the mother of all rows with Lewis, didn’t you? It was almost as loud as the concert.’
‘I went home.’
‘So you missed the event of the decade.’
‘I did. Who did you go with?’
‘Who? You’re asking me who I went to a concert with twenty-three years ago?’
‘It was the event of the decade, after all.’
He pinched the top of his nose and closed his eyes. ‘I can definitely remember Sarah being there, and some other girl, dancing away and wiggling their bums.’ He suddenly sounded sixteen again, lewd and sniggery. ‘And Vanessa and Ewan, of course, because that was the historic moment when they officially got together, never again to part. Snogging away to “Bring Me Luck”.’ He frowned. ‘I can’t remember anyone else.’
‘Jeremy? Lewis?’
‘I remember thinking it was odd that Lewis wasn’t there, since he was such a fan. Jeremy was probably with the kids from his school. Though, come to think of it, we had a kind of scuffle with them, I seem to remember, or at least Ewan did. He was always hopeless when he was pissed. And Jeremy definitely wasn’t involved in that. But, of course, there were hundreds of people. He could have been anywhere.’
‘Lewis says he was at the concert.’
‘Memory plays tricks, doesn’t it?’ He smiled. ‘At our age.’
‘Nothing else about the concert you remember?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘What time did you leave?’
‘I have no idea. How would I remember that, after so many years?’
Frieda looked at the sea. The tide was going out and the wet pebbles glistened on the shore. ‘Did you know Becky?’ she asked.
‘I was at the funeral an hour ago. Remember?’
‘How did you know her? Through Maddie?’
‘Why are you asking all these questions, Frieda?’
‘I was just wondering.’
‘I’m just wondering why you’re suddenly so interested in all of us, after so many years.’
‘I’ve taken up enough of your time. I should be going.’
‘You’ll be wanting a lift.’
‘No. I’ll walk.’
‘It’s miles!’
‘I’ll walk to the main road and get a bus.’
‘It’s no trouble to drive you.’
‘I’d prefer to walk. Thank you.’
‘Very well.’ He stood up and picked up his jacket. ‘So, I’ll see you at the reunion .’
‘You probably will.’