Very cautiously, she stepped into the
cockpit of the boat and from there on to the path. She was wearing dark clothes – navy
tracksuit trousers and a thick grey hoody – so even if someone was looking, they
probably wouldn’t see her. She was always careful. The important thing was never
to let your guard down or think you were safe. She walked slowly along the track,
feeling her body unstiffen. She had to keep fit and strong, but it was hard when you
were cooped up all day. She did press-ups inside sometimes, and two or three times a day
she did twenty pull-ups, using the rim of the slightly open
hatch as a
bar and counting out loud so that she didn’t cheat. Her arms were strong, but she
didn’t think she would be able to run far or fast. Sometimes when she woke at
night, her chest felt tight and it was hard to breathe. She wanted to call out for help
but she knew she mustn’t.
She walked past the other boats moored to
the side by thick ropes. Most of them were empty from one week to the next, and some
were falling apart, their paint blistering and wood rotting. Some had people on board;
they had plants on their flat roofs, and bikes that lay on their sides with the spokes
whirring when the wind blew. Even in the dark, she knew which boats were inhabited. It
was her job to be vigilant. When they had first come here, it had been exciting, a
mixture of hiding and setting up home. It was their safe place, he had said: no one else
would know they were there, and whatever happened, they could retreat here and wait
until danger had passed. But then he had left, returning only for a few days every
month. At first she had wondered how she would pass her days when she was alone, but it
was surprising how much there was to do. The boat had to be kept clean, for a start, and
that wasn’t easy because it was old and had been long abandoned before
they’d found it. There were damp patches on its sides and water leaked in through
the floor, round the sides of the shower and toilet, and up through the boards in the
kitchen area. The windows were narrow rectangles that no one could see through from the
outside. The doorway was always kept closed, and when she washed her clothes in the tiny
sink with the tablets of soap he bought her, then laid them out over chairs and the
table to dry, the air smelt thick and slightly festering.
Once there had been space, comfort, light
flooding in through large windows, and roses on the lawn. She remembered, as in a dream,
clean sheets and soft clothes. Now she
lived with the dark, enclosed
space; the long winter nights, when it was so cold her breath smoked and ice formed on
the inside of the little windows; the candles guttering secretly when she didn’t
even dare use the dynamo torch he had given her; the fear, an ache in her stomach. Yes,
you could even get used to fear. You could turn fear into something that was strong and
useful and dangerous.
She turned back. The drops of rain were
increasing and she didn’t want to get too wet. The winter had been so cold and so
long. For weeks, the paths had been hard with ice or covered with thick snow. She had
felt like an animal in its burrow, watching flakes fall outside the windows. Waiting,
always waiting.
Sliding back down the hatch, she pulled it
shut after her and locked it. She filled the little tin kettle with just enough water
for one teabag and put it on the stove, turning the knob on and lighting the ring with
one match. But she could tell that they were running out of gas: the flame was weak and
blue. Soon she wouldn’t be able to cook the potatoes that were in the basket under
the outside seat, or fill a hot-water bottle to take the edge off the cold that seemed
to enter her bones. Perhaps he would bring another canister when he came. And surely he
would come soon. She had faith.
‘You’re joking.’ Reuben
sat back in his chair, looking delighted.
Frieda scowled. ‘I’m just going
to spend a few minutes with her.’
‘It’s the thin end of the
wedge.’
‘I don’t think so. Karlsson said
he wanted me to see if I could make sense of what she was saying.’
‘You told me you were never going to
get involved with police work again, under any circumstances.’
‘I know. And I’m not going to.
Don’t look at me like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘As if you know me better than I know
myself. It’s irritating. I hope you don’t look at your patients like
that.’
‘I know you’re
intrigued.’
Frieda was about to protest, but stopped
herself because, of course, Reuben was right. ‘Perhaps I should just have said
no,’ she said slowly. ‘I thought I was going to, and then I heard myself
agreeing.’
They were sitting in Reuben’s office
at the clinic, where Frieda worked part-time and on whose board she sat. The Warehouse
had been Reuben’s creation and had made him famous as a therapist. Frieda still
hadn’t got used to the changed appearance of his room. For years – ever since she
had known him when he was her mentor and she a young student – Reuben had worked in
chaos, papers strewn everywhere, piles of books collapsing around his chair, ashtrays
and plant pots overflowing with half-smoked cigarettes. Now everything was in a state of
determined order: there was an
in-tray with a few papers in it, the
books were on their shelves, there wasn’t a cigarette stub in sight. And Reuben
himself had changed as well. Gone was the look of an ageing rock star. Now he was
wearing a plain navy suit over a white shirt, his face was shaved, his greying hair was
no longer down to his collar. He looked trim: a few months ago he had shocked everyone
by joining a gym. Worse still, he went there every morning before work. Frieda had
noticed that his suit trousers had to be held up with a belt. What was more, he ate
green salads at lunch and carried a bottle of water around with him from which every so
often he would ostentatiously drink. She couldn’t help feeling he was playing a
part and that he was pleased with the impression he was creating.
‘There’s another thing,’
she said.
‘Go on.’
‘I had a strange idea – no, to call it
an idea is to make it sound more definite than it actually was. A sensation, perhaps.
When Carrie told me how Alan had changed, and then disappeared out of her
life.’
‘And?’ Reuben spoke after a long
pause.
Frieda frowned. ‘It was as though
I’d walked into a shadow. You know, when you’re suddenly cold, even on a hot
day. It’s probably nothing. Forget I said anything. When’s Josef
back?’
Josef was their friend, a builder from
Ukraine who had quite literally fallen into Frieda’s life just over a year ago
when he had crashed through the ceiling into her consulting room. He had ended up living
with Reuben, when Reuben was going though what he now called, rather proudly, his
depressive breakdown. Josef had become the tenant who paid no rent but mended the boiler
and fitted a new kitchen, made endless pots of tea and poured shots of vodka whenever
there was a crisis. He had never left, until a few weeks ago,
when he
had returned to his homeland to see his wife and children for Christmas.
‘He’s probably snowed in. I
looked up Kiev online the other day. It was about minus thirty. The real answer is: I
don’t know. Maybe never.’
‘Never?’ She was surprised by
the dismay she felt.
‘He said he was coming back. His
things – not that he owns much – are still in his room. His van’s parked in my
drive, with a flat battery so I can’t even move it to make way for my own car. A
couple of young women have knocked at my door asking for him, so they must think
he’s coming back. But he’s been gone for six weeks now. It’s where his
family are, after all. He misses them, in his own way.’
‘I know.’
‘I thought you would have heard from
him.’
‘I did get a postcard recently, but he
sent it weeks ago. He hadn’t put the postcode on.’
‘What did he say?’
Frieda smiled. ‘It said,
“Remember your friend Josef.”’ She stood up. ‘I should go.
They’re sending a car to collect me.’
‘Be careful.’
‘She’s not dangerous.
She’s just disturbed.’
‘I’m not worried about her.
I’m worried about you. Beware of slippery slopes.’
‘Thin ends of wedges, slippery slopes
– you’ll be warning me to look before I leap next.’
‘I’ll remind you of this
conversation.’
Frieda and Karlsson walked together up the
long corridor. An artist had been brought in to brighten up the forbidding stretch of
windowless wall. Every so often they passed a mini-landscape in primary colours, a
painting of a bridge
over a blue river, or a green hill with miniature
figures at its domed summit. At a picture of an oversized bird with feverishly bright
feathers and a cruel turquoise eye, which Frieda thought would disturb the calmest
patient, they went through double doors into another broader corridor. Although it was
the middle of the day, it was eerily quiet. An orderly walked past and his shoes creaked
in the silence. Trolleys and wheelchairs stood by the walls. An old woman came towards
them on a Zimmer frame. She was tiny, like a weak child, and moved with infinite
slowness, rocking back and forward on the rubber-tipped legs of the frame, going almost
nowhere. They stood to one side and let her pass, but she didn’t look up. They
could see her lips moving.
‘It’s just to the left
here.’ Karlsson’s voice sounded too loud and he winced.
Pushing open the door, they entered a ward
of eight beds. The windows looked out on to a patch of garden, which was in need of
tending. The damp uncut grass and the weeds in the borders gave the place an abandoned
air. Several of the patients in the ward seemed to be asleep, just motionless blanketed
humps in their beds, but one was sitting in her chair and crying steadily in a high
pitch, rubbing her small dry hands together. She looked young and would have been pretty
but for the burn marks all over her face. Another, with a homely grey bun and wearing a
Victorian nightdress buttoned up to her neat chin, was doing a jigsaw puzzle. She looked
up and smiled at them coyly. There was a smell of fish and urine in the air. The nurse
at the desk recognized Karlsson and gave him a nod.
‘How is she today?’ he
asked.
‘She’s on her new drug regime
and she had a quieter night. But she wants her things back. She keeps looking for
them.’
The striped curtain had been drawn around
Michelle
Doyce’s bed. Karlsson drew it back slightly and gestured
for Frieda to step inside. Michelle was sitting up in her bed, very straight. She was
wearing a beige hospital gown, and her hair was brushed and tied into two pigtails, like
a schoolgirl. Frieda, looking at her, thought that her face was strangely indeterminate,
as if it lacked a clear outline: she was like a watercolour of diluted layers – her skin
was pink but had a faint tinge of yellow; her hair was neither grey nor brown; her eyes
had a curious opacity; even her gestures were vague, like those of a blind woman who
feared she might knock against something.
‘Hello, Michelle. My name’s
Frieda Klein. Is it all right if I sit here?’ She gestured to the metal-framed
chair by the side of the bed.
‘That’s for my friend.’
Her voice was soft and hoarse, as though it had gone rusty through lack of use.
‘That’s all right, then. I can
stand.’
‘The bed is empty.’
‘Can I sit on it? I don’t want
to crowd you.’
‘Am I in bed?’
‘Yes, you’re in bed.
You’re in hospital.’
‘Yes,’ said Michelle. ‘I
can’t get home.’
‘Where is your home,
Michelle?’
‘Never.’
‘You don’t have a
home?’
‘I try to make it nice. All my things.
Then maybe he won’t go away again. He’ll stay.’
Frieda remembered what Karlsson had told her
about Michelle’s compulsive collecting – her bottles and nail clippings, all
neatly ordered. Perhaps she had been trying to make the drab room in a run-down house in
Deptford into a home, filling it with the only possessions she could lay her hands on –
all the detritus of other people’s lives. Maybe she
had been
trying to fill the emptiness of her days with the comfort of things.
‘Who is it that you want to
stay?’ she asked.
Michelle looked at Frieda blindly, then
abruptly lay down flat in the bed.
‘Sit beside me,’ she said. Her
eyes stared up at the ceiling, where strip lights flickered.
Frieda sat. ‘Do you remember why
you’re here, Michelle, what happened?’
‘I’m going to the
sea.’
‘She keeps going on about the sea, and
the river,’ said Karlsson.
Frieda looked round at him.
‘Don’t talk about Michelle as if she isn’t here,’ she said.
‘Sorry, Michelle, you were saying about the sea.’
The woman who was wailing in the ward gave a
sudden shriek, and then another.
‘Lonely, lonely, lonely,’ said
Michelle. ‘Not for them, though.’
‘For who?’
‘They come to be near again. Like he
did. Admirable.’ The unexpected syllables came out of her mouth like stones. She
looked surprised. ‘That isn’t the right word. Not a patch on it.’
‘The man who was on your
sofa …’
‘Did you meet him?’
‘How did you know him?’
She looked puzzled. ‘Drakes on the
river,’ she said, in her rusty voice. ‘He never left me. Not like the
others.’
She held out her roughened hand; Frieda
hesitated, then took it. Outside the curtains, a nurse was talking in a brisk voice to
the weeping woman.
‘Never left,’ repeated
Michelle.
‘Did he have a
name?’
Michelle stared at her, then down at their
two clasped hands, Frieda’s clean and smooth, the hands of a professional woman,
Michelle’s calloused and scarred, with broken nails.
‘Did you notice his hands?’
Frieda asked, following Michelle’s gaze.
‘I kissed it where it hurt.’
‘His finger?’