Waiting for Wednesday

it was no longer possible to make out the
inscriptions carved there; but some were new and shiny and had flowers on them, dates of
the dearly beloved and the sorely missed.
    ‘Crowds of the dead,’ said
Frieda, more to herself than to Sasha.
    ‘Why are we here?’
    ‘I’ll show you.’
    She stopped in front of a carved stone and
pointed. Sasha, leaning forward, made out the name: Jacob Klein 1943–1988, much missed
husband and father.
    ‘Is this your father?’ she
asked, thinking about Frieda as ateenager, finding him dead, trying to
imagine the history of pain that lay behind the simple stone.
    Frieda nodded, not taking her eyes off it.
‘Yes. That’s my father.’ She took a small step backwards and said:
‘Look at the engraving there, above his name.’
    ‘It’s very nice,’ said
Sasha, lamely, after examining the symmetrical pattern. ‘Did you choose
it?’
    ‘No.’ She reached into her bag
and pulled out a piece of thick paper, holding it in front of her, gazing from drawing
to engraving and back again. ‘What do you see?’
    ‘It’s the same,’ said
Sasha.
    ‘It is, isn’t it? Exactly the
same.’
    ‘Did you do it?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Then?’
    ‘Someone sent it to me. This
morning.’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘They pushed it through my door in the
early hours.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘That’s the question.’
Frieda was talking to herself now, rather than Sasha.
    ‘Are you going to tell me what’s
going on?’
    ‘Dean did it.’
    ‘Dean? Dean Reeve?’
    Sasha knew about Dean Reeve, the man who had
abducted a little boy and dragged Frieda unwillingly into the outside world, away from
the safety of her consulting room and the strange secrets of the mind. She had even
helped Frieda by doing a DNA test that established Dean’s wife Terry was in fact
the little girl Joanna, who had disappeared into thin air more than two decades
previously. Frieda had become convinced that Dean Reeve, whom the police accepted as
dead, was still alive. He had becomeFrieda’s invisible stalker.
The dead man who watched over her and would never let her go.
    ‘Yes, Dean Reeve. I recognize his
handwriting – I saw it once on a statement he made at the police station. But even if I
didn’t, I’d know it was him. He wants me to understand that he has found out
about my family. He knows about the death of my father. He was here, where we are now,
where my father is.’
    ‘Your father is buried in a
churchyard, but I thought you were Jewish,’ Sasha said.
    They were in a small café overlooking the
sea. The tide was low and long-legged sea-birds picked their delicate way over the
shining mudflats. Far out, a container ship, as big as a town, was moving across the
horizon. There was no one else in the café and no one out on the shingle. Sasha felt as
though she’d been taken to the edge of the world.
    ‘Did you?’
    ‘Yes. Aren’t you?’
    ‘No.’ Frieda hesitated, then,
making an obvious effort, said: ‘My grandfather was Jewish, but not my
grandmother, so his children were no longer Jewish and neither, of course, am I. My
mother,’ she added drily, ‘is most definitely not Jewish.’
    ‘Is she still alive?’
    ‘Unless my brothers forgot to tell me,
yes.’
    Sasha blinked and leaned forward.
    ‘Brothers?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You’ve got more than
one?’
    ‘I’ve got two.’
    ‘You’ve only ever mentioned
David. I never knew there was another.’
    ‘It wasn’t relevant,’ Frieda
said.
    ‘Relevant? A brother?’
    ‘You know about David because
he’s Olivia’s ex and Chloë’s father.’
    ‘I see,’ murmured Sasha, knowing
better than to press her and thinking that in the last few hours she had learned more
about Frieda than in the whole course of their friendship.
    She pierced her poached egg and watched the
yolk well up, then ooze on to the plate. ‘What are you going to do?’ she
asked.
    ‘I haven’t decided. Anyway,
haven’t you heard? He’s dead.’
    Frieda hardly spoke on the way back. When
Sasha asked her what she was thinking about, she couldn’t answer. ‘I
don’t know,’ Frieda said. ‘Nothing really.’
    ‘You wouldn’t take that as an
answer from one of your patients.’
    ‘I’ve never been a very good
patient.’
    After Sasha had driven away, Frieda let
herself into her house. Inside, she fastened the chain and slid the bolt across the
front door. She walked upstairs to her bedroom. She took off her jacket and tossed it on
to the bed. She would have a