29
The next morning Frieda walked into Eva’s kitchen. Her head was still fuzzy from a night of turbulent dreams that still seemed more real than the dreary, hard-edged, unforgiving world around her. Then, quite suddenly, everything seemed to happen at once. Frieda was filling the kettle when Eva came into the kitchen. There was something different about her. Then Frieda noticed that lots of things were different. Her hair was rumpled and her face was flushed and her eyes were both bright and tired and there was a smear of mascara at the corner of one eye and she was wearing a checked shirt that was much too bright and looked strangely familiar.
At the very moment that Frieda recognized it as belonging to Josef – in fact, it was the shirt Josef had been wearing the previous evening – and had started trying to decide what her response was or ought to be, she heard voices. She turned round as the door opened.
‘It’s bloody cold,’ said Jack.
‘It’s, like, about ten degrees colder than London,’ said Chlo?.
Frieda felt a wave of alarm. What could be the bad news that would make them drive all the way here so early in the morning? ‘What’s happened?’ she said.
Jack looked puzzled. ‘Didn’t Josef tell you we were coming?’
‘No, he didn’t.’
‘We thought it would be good to have a day out. We’ve been really curious about this area – well, about you, really – and I went online and saw how close it was.’
‘You should have told me,’ said Frieda.
‘Well, we did,’ said Chlo?. ‘Via Josef. Where is he, by the way?’
Frieda avoided looking at Eva. ‘I think he’s still in bed,’ she said.
‘No,’ said Eva. ‘He’s on his way down.’
And, indeed, before Frieda could say anything Josef came through the door, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and with bare feet. When he saw Jack and Chlo?, he gave a sleepy smile of greeting. As he walked past Eva, Frieda noticed that he touched her shoulder and Eva glanced round at him. Even though it was just a moment, it was the intimate gesture of a couple who knew each other well, who had secrets. Frieda was making another attempt at speaking, at establishing some sort of order, when there were more noises from outside and a knock at the door. Chlo? opened it and Ewan stepped inside. He was wearing a bulky country jacket of the kind worn for shooting small birds. Behind him were his daughters, in hooded waterproofs, looking sullen and resigned. There was a series of complicated introductions. Eva offered coffee to everybody.
‘We were just going for a walk,’ said Ewan, ‘and we thought you might like to come along.’
Frieda looked at Amelia and Charlotte, who were checking their phones.
‘That’s kind of you,’ she said. ‘But these friends of mine have just come down from London so –’
‘That’s perfect,’ said Ewan. ‘They’re welcome as well.’ He raised his voice to include everyone in the room in the conversation. ‘It’s a lovely walk along the river to the pub by the old mill, then back along the railway track.’
‘Sounds great,’ said Jack. ‘This is what you never get in London, people just dropping into each other’s houses.’
Frieda seemed to be experiencing both claustrophobia and agoraphobia at the same time. Her old life, the world of Braxton, her childhood and adolescence, was like an organism that was trying to pull her back in. At the same time, the London world, the life she’d chosen, was unwilling to let her go. She looked across at Josef. Eva was leaning against him, whispering something in his ear.
‘We don’t have to,’ said Jack, in a slightly pathetic voice. ‘If it’s a problem, Chlo? and me can go off somewhere on our own.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Frieda. ‘We can go for a walk.’
‘I’ve got some things to do in the house,’ said Eva, apologetically. ‘And I think Josef needs to finish … you know, the job he’s been doing.’
Frieda looked at Josef, who gave a helpless shrug.
‘Work,’ said Frieda. ‘OK, fine. We’ll head off.’
This turned out to be a complicated process. Eva offered coffee but Ewan said they could get a drink at the Perch. Jack and Chlo? retrieved walking boots and windproof jackets from Jack’s car. Josef hovered in the kitchen.
‘I don’t want to keep you from your work,’ Frieda said, then felt guilty. After all, did she want Josef to be like her, always the onlooker, the one on the edge, observing, assessing, diagnosing? Wasn’t it better to be the way he was, always seeming to swim with the current, to accept what was offered? Anyway, she was the one who had brought him.
It was a sunny morning, but cold, and there was a fierce, steely wind from the east. She thought again of the lost red scarf, but Eva gave her a heavy jacket and a furry hat. As the small group walked out of the house, Frieda looked back at Eva. She felt like a parent leaving two teenagers alone in the house. Ewan led the way over the road to the footpath across the field that sloped down to the river Char. He was with Jack and Chlo?, and she could see him talking and pointing but couldn’t hear what he was saying. As they joined the river and turned west, away from Braxton, she found herself at the back with Amelia and Charlotte. She explained to them that Jack had been a student of hers and that Chlo? was her niece.
‘Bit weird them getting together, then,’ said Amelia, with a grimace.
Frieda did actually think it was a bit weird but it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss with two Suffolk teenagers she barely knew. ‘I think maybe they’re just having fun.’
Amelia and Charlotte exchanged glances. They clearly considered her too old to have any knowledge about young people having fun. For a time, the path narrowed and they had to walk in single file. Hundreds of years ago, the Char had been a working river. There’d been a brickworks and warehouses further inland. The industry was long gone and the banks had been reclaimed by the woodland and lined with trees, but there were still weirs and locks and concrete embankments. Frieda liked it or, rather, she had a sense of how she would like it if she could walk there alone. It was her kind of nature, the sort of nature that had a history. They passed under an iron bridge and the path widened once more.
‘So you were at school here?’ said Charlotte.
‘That’s right. With your parents, and Maddie and Eva, of course.’
‘And Lewis,’ said Charlotte.
More exchanged glances. Charlotte and Amelia seemed to share a private, sarcastic language that made them impregnable.
‘Yes.’ Amelia pulled a face. ‘And now you’re friends with Max.’
Charlotte snorted.
‘Why do you think that?’
‘I met you with him, so I just assumed. Do you mean you’re not friends?’
‘He’s a bit creepy,’ said Charlotte. ‘He just follows people around like some kind of little stray dog. I know you were together with his dad when you were a teenager, but have you seen what he’s like now?’
‘Yes, I’ve met him.’
‘Well, there we are, then. You look at Lewis and you know what Max is going to be like.’
‘There are worse ways to be,’ said Frieda, thinking of Jeremy and Chas.
The girls didn’t answer. They seemed impassive in a way they hadn’t previously. Maybe it was just the cold.
‘It’s difficult when someone dies suddenly,’ Frieda said. ‘I mean for the people who are left behind. They wonder whether they should have done something.’ She looked at the two girls. There was just a hint of a shrug from Charlotte. ‘Did Becky say anything in the days before it happened?’
‘No,’ said Charlotte. ‘She talked to Mum more than to us – she was always coming to see Mum when she was upset by stuff. It was a bit creepy, but Mum loves all that.’
‘But you were her friends,’ said Frieda. ‘And she’d been through a difficult time. She must have talked about her feelings.’
‘We weren’t really her friends,’ said Charlotte.
‘I must have misunderstood,’ said Frieda. ‘Seeing you at the funeral.’
‘That was organized by the school,’ said Charlotte. ‘It was like an outing. When someone dies like that, everyone pretends they knew them really well, but none of us were affected. Not really, if we’re honest. She’d gone weird.’
Frieda thought of the funeral, the mass sobbing. ‘So you weren’t close friends with her?’
Charlotte gave a soft-shouldered shrug.
‘Not so much.’
‘Are you saying you actually disliked her?’
‘I didn’t care much one way or the other. Becky just thought she was better than other people.’
‘Do you mean she didn’t have any friends?’
‘She used to, but in the end people just got tired of her. She stopped being fun.’
‘So you weren’t friends with Becky and you aren’t friends with Max. Were they friends with each other?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Charlotte.
It didn’t feel like anybody was friends with anybody, except for the two sisters: united against the world.
‘So she was isolated.’
‘In a way,’ said Charlotte. ‘But it was her own choice.’
‘And how long was this going on?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Charlotte. ‘Most of the year.’
There was an electric chime and Charlotte took out her phone, then started sending a text. They walked on for a few minutes without speaking. Ahead, Ewan was standing with Jack and Chlo?, pointing away from the river up the hill. Frieda looked to where he was pointing: the obelisk silhouetted against the grey sky. She turned to Amelia beside her. ‘Do you know what that is?’
‘The witch monument,’ said Amelia, in an unimpressed tone. ‘Dad keeps talking about it. It’s his new hobby – local history.’
‘It’s completely boring,’ said Charlotte. ‘We did local history for GCSE and now Dad’s doing it all over again and there’s only about two things that ever happened in Braxton. They burned a witch, then they built a railway and then they took the railway away again.’
‘Because who wants to come to a place like Braxton?’ said Amelia.
The Perch stood facing an old mill with a large waterwheel. There were tables outside by the water but only one was occupied, by a group of people in thick parkas who were smoking. Ewan led them inside and found two tables by a window. He placed Jack and Chlo? next to Amelia and Charlotte. ‘I’m sure you young people have lots to talk about among yourselves,’ he said. ‘Things you don’t want Frieda and me to overhear.’ Charlotte and Amelia rolled their eyes. ‘The funny thing is, when Frieda and I last met we were your age. Isn’t that peculiar?’
Charlotte and Amelia rolled their eyes again.
‘When you and Frieda last met, it was yesterday,’ said Charlotte.
‘All right, all right,’ said Ewan, who seemed used to this treatment. ‘You know what I mean.’
He went over to the bar and returned with a tray of drinks and packets of crisps. He sat down next to Frieda at the other table. He had a pint of local ale, which he clinked against Frieda’s tomato juice. He nodded at the young people. ‘They’re better off without us,’ he said.
Frieda wasn’t so sure. Amelia was texting, Charlotte was saying something to Chlo?; Jack looked distracted. She should have a word with him later. Ewan pointed out of the window at the mill on the other side of the pool by the weir. ‘That was abandoned when we were at school,’ he said. ‘It was derelict for about twenty years. Now it’s being turned into flats. Riverside properties. That’s what people seem to want.’ Frieda didn’t reply. ‘They’re nice, Jack and Chlo?. They speak very highly of you.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Frieda, ‘because they mean a lot to me.’
Ewan took a gulp of his beer, then looked down into the glass. Frieda recognized the sight. She had seen it often in her consulting rooms, as people plucked up the courage to say what they had come to say.
‘It’s been funny, you coming back,’ he said.
‘How so?’
‘It makes you look at yourself, think of the way others see you. And it’s also made me think about the old days. It’s like when you dig up one of those time capsules that’s filled with random objects from the past.’
‘What did it make you think?’
‘I know what you think of me. It’s a bit like the girls. For them I’m this loud sort of Scout master who keeps saying things like, “Let’s go for a walk” or “Let’s go to a museum.” I’m a bit loud and a bit boisterous. But what I’ve been thinking is that when you were going through difficult times back then, some of us were a bit wrapped up in ourselves and maybe we looked the other way.’
‘The other way from what?’
‘I don’t know. But don’t you feel sometimes, looking back on teenage life, that it was a cruel time?’
‘Yes, I do.’ Frieda regarded Ewan with new interest – he had lost much of his cheeriness and seemed muted, thoughtful, much more appealing to her.
‘There’s an episode that haunts me,’ he said. ‘It happened years ago, but I keep thinking about it. I wake in the night and it’s there waiting for me. Once when I was out with Vanessa, she was attacked. There was a group of drunk or stoned teenagers or young men, four of them or maybe five, and first of all they surrounded me and jeered a bit. Said stupid things about the way I looked, about how they bet I couldn’t get it up. You know the kind of thing.’
‘Nasty.’
‘Yes, but that’s not the point. It was just words. But they suddenly lost interest in me and turned on Vanessa. They pushed her around, and then one of them started touching her breasts. I remember her expression – terrified and abject. And do you know what I did? Nothing. I stood there and did absolutely nothing while they touched up my poor wife. Then we just left and went home. What made it worse was that she tried to comfort me. She told me it had been the wisest thing not to get involved and she understood perfectly and it was nothing to feel bad about. I’ve never talked about this to anyone because I feel so ashamed of myself. Even now, all these years later, it’s a taboo subject.’
‘And yet you’re telling me.’
‘Perhaps that’s because in some strange way you’re someone people want to talk to, unburden themselves. I guess that’s your job. But also – well, it sounds stupid. I’d like to make amends. I can’t do anything about letting Vanessa down, but if there’s anything I can do to help you with whatever it is you’re after here, then I’d like to think you could trust me.’
On the way back, along what had once been a railway track and was now a cycle path, Frieda made sure she was walking with Chlo? and Jack.
‘We’ve missed you,’ said Chlo?. ‘You’re never at home.’
‘It’s just for a bit. How are you both?’
‘There’s so much I want to tell you,’ Chlo? said, ‘but not in front of Jack.’
Jack blushed. Frieda smiled and asked him some questions about his work. She still thought of him as the boy he had been when they first met. Now he was a man to whom people would confess their darkest fears in the hope that he would give them some kind of refuge. They could do worse, she thought.
‘Ewan showed us the Mary Ames monument,’ said Chloe.
‘That’s the spot where she was burned,’ said Frieda.
‘I did it in history once,’ said Chlo?. ‘These women were tried and persecuted and burned for being different, for not being straight or for saying what they thought or being a healer. Don’t you think that someone like Mary Ames just wanted the right to have autonomy?’
‘Maybe,’ said Frieda. ‘Or maybe she just wanted the right to be a witch.’
She let them walk on, and waited until Ewan caught up with her. His face was blotchy with cold.
‘F*ck,’ he said.
‘It was your idea.’
‘It’s what I do. Drag the girls away from their computers – though, of course, they bring their phones with them.’
‘I wanted to say something to you.’
‘Look, I didn’t want to intrude.’
‘Something did happen to me.’
‘On the night of the concert?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘I might not be Sherlock Holmes, but you’ve been interrogating us all about it, Frieda. Of course that’s when it happened.’
‘You’re right.’
‘Do you want to tell me what it was?’
‘No.’
‘Of course.’ He put up his hands. ‘I’m not prying. I’m really not.’
‘I was attacked,’ Frieda said.
Frieda had started to get used to the expression on people’s faces as she told them: shock, bafflement, almost embarrassment, not knowing what to say.
‘In your own house?’
‘Yes.’
‘What a terrible thing. Were you hurt?’
‘Scared rather than hurt.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘I didn’t want to.’
‘Jesus, what kind of friends were we?’
‘Teenage friends.’
Ewan looked troubled. He walked on a few paces, kicking at a small stone. ‘Why are you returning to it now?’ he said at last.
‘It’s unfinished business. I want to find out who did it.’
‘After all these years?’
‘I know. But I have to try.’
‘Revenge?’
‘Call it justice.’
‘How can I help?’
‘I need to work out the timeline for that evening: who was where when.’
‘You really think it was someone you knew?’
‘Yes, I do.’
Ewan nodded slowly. His normally jovial face wore a solemn, almost tragic, expression. ‘If there’s anything I can do …’
‘It’s kind of you.’
He shrugged, embarrassed. ‘It’ll be difficult. I have difficulty remembering what I did last night.’
‘It’s surprising what people remember.’
‘A timeline?’ said Ewan.
‘I’m grateful for anything you can tell me.’
Maddie shook her head. ‘You’re a liar. You just want it not to be your fault.’
Frieda paused. She hardly heard Maddie because she was preparing herself to say what she had come there to say.
‘I know she was raped because twenty-three years ago the same man raped me.’
‘What did you say?’
‘When Becky told me about her experience, I recognized it as my own. The same scenario, the exact same words the rapist said to her. I know that the pattern of her behaviour leading up to her death made it seem clear to you, and to the police, that she killed herself. She didn’t. There is a man out there who preys on vulnerable young women and who raped and killed your daughter.’
‘No. No.’ Maddie looked utterly baffled and disgusted.
‘She wasn’t making it up.’
All of a sudden, Maddie sat down on the carpet. She put her arms round her knees and pulled herself into the smallest shape possible. Frieda remembered her as she’d been in her house in London, a few weeks ago: impeccably presented, carefully smiling, smelling of expensive perfume and smooth with makeup. Now she was dishevelled, unbuttoned and undefended. She, Frieda, had led her to this. If Becky had not told her the story, if Frieda had not encouraged her to go to the police, the girl would still be alive and her mother would not be crouched on the floor, like a pitiful animal, her ordered life in shreds.
Frieda squatted beside her. ‘Do you believe me?’ she asked.
‘She was in a mess. Everyone knew that. It was your doing. That’s what you can’t deal with.’
‘She was troubled, it’s true. But if I’m right, then the man who raped her always picks on young women he knows to be particularly vulnerable. He felt confident she wouldn’t be believed.’
Maddie lifted her head. ‘You say it happened to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘How can you know? How can you possibly know? It was twenty years ago. More than twenty years.’
‘I know,’ said Frieda, ‘that it was the same man.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ She clambered to her feet. ‘If you’d told me, I would have believed her.’
‘I should have told you.’
‘And then maybe she wouldn’t be dead.’ She stared around at all the dying flowers. ‘This just makes everything worse. Now I have to live for the rest of my life with the fact that I didn’t believe her.’
‘He knew that no one would believe her because she was going through such a rough time. That’s the point.’
‘Who is he?’
‘I don’t know. But he isn’t a stranger. He knew me. He knew Becky.’ Frieda hesitated, then added, ‘And I feel certain that he knew Sarah May.’
‘Sarah May? Did it happen to her?’
‘I think so.’
‘Someone we know? Someone I know?’
‘It must be.’
Maddie’s head seemed to wobble slightly and her eyes had a glazed look. Suddenly she picked up a vase of lilies and threw it against the wall, where it shattered. Flowers and glass lay on the floor. She picked up another vase, this one full of tight pink roses, water slopping over the brim. But Frieda took it from her and put it back on the surface.
‘Bastard,’ Maddie said. ‘Bastard. Evil, stinking bastard. My little Becky. My darling daughter. What have I done? Why can’t I tell her I’m sorry?’
‘Maddie –’
‘Don’t you talk to me in that calm voice. You don’t understand. You’ll never understand. You’re not a mother. You’re just a machine. You don’t know what it feels like here.’ And she punched herself hard in the chest. ‘You should have told me. If you knew Becky was in danger, you could have saved her. I’ll never, ever forgive you. I still think you’re making it up. It’s mad. You’re mad.’
‘Listen to me. I believe that whoever raped Becky found out that she was going to the police and that was why he killed her. We need to work out who knew about it.’
‘It was you who told her to go to the police. You did it.’
‘Did she tell you she was going?’
‘Of course. I was still her mother, even if she felt I’d let her down.’ Her face crumpled. Tears rolled down her cheeks, into her mouth, on to her neck. ‘I let her down,’ she whispered. ‘That’s the last thing she felt about me, that I let her down.’
‘Did you tell anyone else?’
‘I can’t think. I can’t remember anything. We have to go to the police ourselves.’ She clutched Frieda’s sleeve. ‘We have to go right now.’
‘I’ve already spoken to them.’
‘Without telling me?’
‘Yes.’
‘I always thought you were a stuck-up f*cking bitch. She was my daughter. Mine. Not yours. How dare you?’
She seemed to be stretching out for another vase. Frieda took hold of her hand and held it. ‘I need your help.’
‘How?’
‘First of all, and this is important, you mustn’t talk to anyone about what I’ve told you. If it’s someone you know …’
Maddie snatched her hand away and took a step backwards. ‘You’re just sick. And you spread sickness. If I hadn’t asked you for help, everything would be all right.’
‘I want you to think very hard about what happened to Becky in the last few weeks of her life, and talk to me about it, not anyone else. I particularly want you to try to remember who you told about Becky going to the police.’
‘I never told anyone Becky had claimed to have been raped.’ She heard her words and her face twisted; she was swinging wildly between rage and despair. ‘Was she really raped?’ she whispered to herself. ‘My little girl? Raped and murdered. It can’t be true.’
‘You’re sure you never told anyone?’
‘I didn’t want to. I thought it was best to keep it quiet.’
‘But you might have confided in someone.’
‘I can’t remember. I don’t feel very well. You have to go now.’
‘You have my number and I want you to call me when you’ve thought things over.’
‘Just leave.’
‘Can I ask one more thing?’
‘What?’
‘It might seem intrusive.’
‘What?’
‘I saw Greg Hollesley at the funeral and I wondered …’
Maddie’s face turned a flaming red. ‘Get out of my house. Out of my life. Out of this town. We don’t want you here. We never did.’
When Frieda reached her mother’s house, Chlo? was in the kitchen, making tea in a very angry, noisy manner, banging mugs down and slamming cupboard doors shut.
‘Not a success, then?’
‘She called Mum a slut. I can be rude about my mother, but no one else is allowed to be.’
‘I’ll talk to her.’
She strode into the living room where Juliet sat in her usual armchair, gazing vacantly at a manic cartoon on the TV. Frieda turned it off.
‘I was watching that.’
‘You were rude about Olivia to Chlo?.’
‘Who’s Olivia and who’s Chlo??’
‘Olivia was married to David.’
‘Oh, her.’
‘And Chlo? is your granddaughter. As you know.’
‘I’ve got a brain tumour. Maybe I’ve forgotten.’
‘She’s your granddaughter and she’s not got a particularly easy life –’
‘Because her mother’s a slut. Yes.’
‘Stop now! Just because you’re dying it doesn’t mean you have a licence to be cruel to everyone.’
‘She’s got a tattoo and a nose ring and one of those horrible love bites on her neck that she doesn’t even bother to hide. What makes her think she can come here with her lover-boy and pretend to care about me? She called me “Gran”.’
‘What is she supposed to call you?’ Frieda looked carefully at her mother. Perhaps the brain tumour had made her so hectic with rage. Then something caught her eye through the window.
‘What’s Jack doing in your garden?’
‘Weeding,’ said Juliet, triumphantly.
‘Why?’
‘I told him to. He is a gardener, after all.’
‘No, he isn’t. He must be freezing out there.’
‘I preferred that man from the council.’
‘Josef.’
‘I never really had any time for women.’
Chlo? came in with three mugs of tea, which she set down on the small table. Frieda could see that she had been crying.
‘I never had time for cosy girl talk,’ continued Juliet, with a kind of relish. ‘Why aren’t you in New Zealand?’ This was addressed to Chlo?.
‘What?’
‘It’s Ivan who lives in New Zealand. Chlo?’s father is David.’
‘I hated being married,’ said Juliet. ‘That’s my advice to you, young woman. With my dying breath. Don’t marry and don’t have children. And if you do marry, don’t marry a man who is depressed day in and day out, week in and week out, so that you feel you’re being sucked into a black hole and will never escape. Everyone else felt sorry for him. Poor, adorable Jacob.’
‘What’s she talking about?’ whispered Chlo?, to Frieda, urgently. ‘Can we go?’
‘Wait.’
‘What did King Lear say about serpents?’
‘I don’t know,’ stammered Chlo?.
‘Of course you don’t. You failed your exams, didn’t you? You see, I do know some things about you. David said he was disappointed in you.’
Frieda laid a hand on Chlo?’s arm and stooped down towards Juliet. ‘Is this how you want your granddaughter to remember you?’ she said. ‘As a spiteful old woman?’
‘I don’t care about being remembered.’
They collected Jack from the garden. His shoes were clogged with mud and his face pale with cold. Frieda saw with satisfaction that he had pulled up several plants along with the weeds. ‘You didn’t have to,’ she said.
‘She’s quite scary.’
‘Some of that’s her brain tumour. The rest is her. Come on, Josef’s collecting us in his van at the bottom of the road.’
‘Where are we going?’ asked Chlo?. She still looked dazed. ‘What about Jack’s car?’
‘You can pick that up later. I thought you might want to go to the coast.’
‘It’s quite cold and it’s getting dark.’
‘That’s when the sea is at its best.’
Frieda directed Josef until they were driving along the side of a broad and widening estuary where boats were tipped on the mud of a low tide. In the dying light, all colour seemed to have leached away. Eventually they turned into a gravel drive and drew up outside a long white building that stood alone, looking out on to the estuary as it flowed into the grey-brown sea.
‘Sea View Nursing Home,’ read Jack, from the sign. ‘Well, that’s true anyway.’
‘Why are we here?’ asked Chlo?. ‘I’ve had enough of old people for one day.’
‘I thought you could go for a walk along the coastal path and I’ll come and join you when I’m done here.’
‘Who are you visiting?’
‘The father of someone I used to know.’
‘This day,’ said Chlo?, ‘hasn’t really turned out the way I was expecting.’
‘There’s a lovely little inn a couple of miles away, and after this I’ll buy us all a meal there.’
‘That sounds better.’
Frieda turned from them and went up to the main entrance. She was struck by how hot and clean and over-lit it was, and how quiet, almost as if nobody was there at all. Her footsteps rang out. She walked up to the reception desk and pressed a bell.
A woman came out of a side door, carrying a mug. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I was hoping I could see Mr May.’
‘Robbie? Is he expecting you?’
‘No.’
‘It’s quite late for visiting.’
‘I won’t stay long.’
‘I’m sure it will be all right. He doesn’t get many visitors, poor lamb. But now he’s had two in one week! What did you say your name was?’
‘I didn’t, but it’s Dr Frieda Klein.’
‘Are you family?’
‘I used to live round here, many years ago. I was a friend of his daughter’s.’
They walked up the broad stairs and along the landing until they came to a door that the woman pushed open.
‘Robbie,’ she said, putting her head into the room. ‘Robbie, there’s a lady here to see you. That’s right. Her name is Frieda.’
Robert May had a round pink face and a smooth bald head. He was wearing a soft green jersey and baggy trousers, with slippers on his feet, and had a blanket across his lap and a book of crossword puzzles on the table beside him. He looked very cosy.
He examined her in mild puzzlement. ‘I don’t think we’ve met.’
‘It was many years ago. I hope you don’t mind me coming like this, out of the blue. I was a friend of Sarah’s.’
He gazed at her with his blurred blue eyes. ‘You knew my Sarah.’
‘I only just found out that she’d died.’
He gave a sad chuckle. ‘You’re a bit late with your condolences, dear.’
‘I know. But I am sorry. Truly sorry.’ Frieda pulled a chair from the side of the bed and dragged it across so she was opposite him. ‘I liked her a lot,’ she said. ‘I went riding with her a few times.’
He smiled. Everything about him was soft and muted, as if he’d been rubbed away by time and grief. ‘Sarah loved horses. Whenever I see one, I think of her.’
‘You never married again after your wife died?’
‘No. I was sixty-one when Sarah … did that. To be honest, I had all the stuffing knocked out of me.’
‘Because she killed herself?’
‘She must have known that by killing herself she would be killing me too.’
‘Did you have no warning?’
‘She got very sad sometimes. Weepy. About her mother, problems at school. But she was a teenager. I thought it would pass.’
‘Were there people she talked to – apart from yourself, I mean?’
If Robert May was surprised by any of Frieda’s questions, he didn’t show it. He passed his fingers slowly across the gleaming dome of his head, then said, ‘She had friends, of course. That girl with red hair.’
‘Eva.’
‘Eva, yes. She was nice. And there were others. I forget their names. Mr Hollesley was very good to her as well. Took an extra interest. He came to our house quite a few times to help her with her work. He told me he thought she would go far, with that extra bit of support.’ He smiled to himself, not bitterly but sorrowfully. ‘Go far,’ he murmured. ‘And now my girl’s buried in the churchyard a few miles from where she was born, next to her mother.’
‘Did you ever think,’ asked Frieda, not knowing how to put it less bluntly, ‘that she might not have killed herself?’
‘That’s what the man asked.’
‘The man?’ Frieda remembered what the woman at Reception had said about two visitors in one week.
‘Just the day before yesterday someone was here asking about my Sarah.’ He gave his soft chuckle. ‘I’m quite in demand.’
‘Who was he?’
‘I’m not quite sure. I think he was from Social Services or something. Just checking up on me. I told him he’d arrived a bit late in the day. He was very nice.’
‘But he didn’t tell you his name?’
‘He might have done but I can’t remember.’
‘What did he look like?’
He didn’t seem put out by the questioning. ‘I’m not very good at noticing things like that. Average. Not thin and not fat, not small and not tall. Short, greyish hair. Nice brown eyes. They reminded me of Sarah’s eyes. He said I might have another visitor, and here you are.’
So Dean had got here before her. Dean, with his nice brown eyes. Sweat prickled on her forehead. He wanted her to know he had been here.
When she got up to go, Robert May stopped her. ‘One thing you can do for me, if you’d be so kind.’
‘Of course.’
‘Their graves. I never get there now.’
‘You’d like me to visit them?’
‘Would you?’
‘I’d be glad to.’
‘Put some flowers there. Tell them they’re from me. I don’t want them to go thinking I’ve forgotten.’
Later, after Jack and Chlo? had gone, Frieda went away to the shed with her phone. It took an hour and a half of being moved from person to person and waiting in virtual queues, but finally she was put through to someone who could help her. No, they couldn’t tell her if her voicemail had been accessed. But, yes, she could change her password.