Waiting for Wednesday

waiting for her, and always wondering where he went wrong.
But it’s better to be active. Digging and mending, sowing and picking.’
    ‘I understand.’
    ‘I suppose you do. But don’t go
bringing hope into his life if it comes to nothing.’
    ‘I don’t mean to do
that.’
    ‘Hope’s the thing that will
destroy him. Remember that, and be a bit careful.’
    On the train back, Frieda stared out of the
window but saw nothing. She felt an ache of incompletion, of failure and, above all, of
tiredness.
    She made one last phone call. Then she
would have done everything she could, she told herself, to rescue a girl she’d
never met and to whom she had no connection, yet whose story had sunk its hooks into her
mind.
    ‘Agnes?’ she said, when the woman
answered. ‘This is Frieda Klein.’
    ‘You’ve found
something?’
    ‘Nothing at all. I just wanted to ask
you something.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Apparently Lila knew a man called
Shane. Does that ring a bell?’
    ‘Shane? No. I don’t think so. I
met several of her new friends. Mostly at this grotty pub, the Anchor. They used to hang
out there. Maybe there was someone called Shane but I don’t remember him. I
don’t remember any of their names.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    ‘You’re not going to find her,
are you?’
    ‘No. I don’t think I
am.’
    ‘Poor Lila. I don’t know why you
tried so hard. You tried harder than anyone who knew her. As if your life depended on
it.’
    Frieda was painfully struck by those last
words. For a moment, she was silent. Then she said, ‘Shall we give it one last
try? Together?’
Perhaps Chloë told you that I rang your
house and spoke to her. She said you were OK. But she seemed a bit distracted. There
were lots of noises going on in the background. You may not know that I also rang
Reuben and he said that you were not OK. That everyone’s worried about you but
that no one can really get through to you. What the fuck is going on, Frieda? Or
shall I just fly over and hammer at your door until at last you have to answer me?
Sandy



FORTY-ONE
    ‘I don’t get it.’
    Agnes, dressed in baggy jogging trousers and
a grey hoodie with fraying sleeves, was sitting beside Frieda in a cab. She looked
tired. It was raining, and through the dark, wet windows they could see only the
glimmering lights of cars and the massed shapes of buildings. Frieda thought of how she
could have been in her house now, empty after so many weeks of disruption. She could
have been lying in her new bath, or playing chess, or sitting in her study, drawing and
thinking and looking out into the wet night.
    ‘Get what?’ she asked
mildly.
    ‘I was in bed with a novel and a cup
of tea, all cosy. And then you ring up out of the blue and all of a sudden I’m on
my way to some dingy little pub full of girls off their heads on who-knows-what and men
with tattoos and dead eyes, just because Lila used to hang out there. Why?’
    ‘Why are you going?’
    ‘No. I know why I’m going. Lila
was my mate. If there’s some chance I can find her, I have to. But why are
you
going? Why do you even care?’
    Frieda was tired of asking herself the same
question. She closed her eyes and pressed her cool fingertips against her hot, aching
eyeballs. She could see Ted Lennox’s white face, like a petal on dark water, and
Chloë’s fierce, accusing gaze.
    ‘Anyway, here we are,’ said
Agnes, with a sigh. ‘I certainly never thought I’d set foot in this place
again.’
    Frieda told the cab driver to wait for them,
and they bothstepped out into the rain. They could hear the beat of
music coming from the Anchor, and there was a huddle of smokers around the door. The
tips of their cigarettes glowed and a miasma of smoke hung around them.
    ‘Let’s get this over with. You
want me to look for anyone I think I might have seen hanging out with Lila.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Two years ago.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘Because we need to find someone
called Shane.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Do you think you’re quite right
in the head?’
    They shouldered their way through the
smokers and into the pub, if that was what it was. Frieda rarely went to pubs: she hated
the smell of beer and the jangling music, the lights of the jukebox. Now she felt dozens
of eyes on them as they entered: it didn’t feel like a place where outsiders came
casually for a pint. It was a dark room that stretched back out of view, where crowds of
people, mostly men, were sitting at tables or standing at the bar and in