Waiting for Wednesday

friend
straight away to stop her playing with me.’
    ‘I didn’t know that,’ said
Frieda.
    ‘Mum knew. She just told me it would
pass. It did. In the end.’
    ‘What would you like to do to
her?’ said Reuben. ‘You’re allowed to do anything. This is fantasy
revenge.’
    ‘I’d just like her to go through
what I went through,’ said Chloë. ‘Then at the end I would appear out of a
puff of smoke and say: “That’s what it was like.”’
    ‘That’s what revenge should be
like,’ said Frieda, softly.
    ‘But you survived,’ said Reuben.
‘What about you, Josef?’
    Josef gave a sad smile. ‘I don’t
say his name. The man with my wife. Him I want to punish.’
    ‘Excellent,’ said Reuben.
‘So what punishments would you like to devise for him? Something
medieval?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said
Josef. ‘If my wife is with him like me, how do you say it? Talk, talk, talk to
him …’
    ‘Nagging,’ said Reuben.
    ‘Yes, the nagging,’
    ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,
Reuben,’ said Frieda. ‘And you, Josef.’
    ‘What’s problem?’ said
Josef.
    ‘Forget it,’ said Frieda.
    ‘What about you, Ted? If you could
track down your mother’s killer? You must think about it.’
    ‘Out. Go home now,’ said
Frieda.
    ‘No.’ Ted said loudly, almost in
a yell. ‘Of course I think about it. If I could find my mother’s killer,
I’d – I’d –’ He gazed around the table, his fist clenched around his
wine glass. ‘I hate him,’ he said softly. ‘What do you do to the
people you hate?’
    ‘It’s OK, Ted,’ said
Chloë. She was trying to hold the hand that was clasping his glass.
    ‘Attaboy,’ said Reuben.
‘Let it out. That’s the way. Now you, Frieda. Who’s going to be the
object of your implacable revenge?’
    Frieda felt a lurch of nausea in her
stomach, rising in her chest. She felt as if she was standing on the edge of a chasm,
with just her heels on the ground, her toes poking into the darkness and the temptation,
always that temptation, to let herself fall forward into the deep darkness towards –
well, towards what?
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m
not good at these sorts of games.’
    ‘Oh, come on, Frieda, this isn’t
Monopoly.’
    But Frieda’s expression hardened with
a kind of anger and Reuben let it go.
    ‘The bath,’ said Josef, trying
to make everything all right in his clumsy way. ‘Is OK?’
    ‘It’s very good, Josef. It was
worth it.’ She didn’t tell him she hadn’t yet used it.
    ‘Finally I help,’ he said. He
was swaying on his feet.
    At last they had left. The soft spring dusk
was darkening to real night. The clouds had blown away and the ghost of a moon was
visible above the rooftops. Inside, an air of anticipation and dread filled the rooms.
Even Chloë’s animation had petered out. Judith, who had come downstairs when she
heard the front door slam, sat in a chair in the living room, her knees drawn up, her
head pressed down on them, her hair wild. If anyone spoke to her and tried to comfort
her, she would simply shake her head vehemently. Dora lay on a camp bed in
Frieda’s study with a mug of cocoa beside her, which had cooled to form a wrinkled
skin on its surface. She was playing a game of Snakes on her phone. Her thin plaits lay
across her face. Frieda sat beside her for a few moments, without speaking. She turned
her head and said, in a voice that sounded almost querulous: ‘I knew about Judith
and that older man.’
    ‘Did you?’
    ‘A few days ago, when Dad was drunk, I
heard him shouting at Aunt Louise about it. Is Judith going to be OK?’
    ‘In time.’
    ‘Did Dad …?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    Frieda went downstairs. Outside on the
patio, Ted was smoking and pacing to and fro, his unkempt head enclosedin his giant pair of headphones. None of them could help the others, or be helped by
them. They were just waiting, while Chloë barged around the house with cups of tea or
firm, encouraging pats on a bowed shoulder.
    Frieda had asked Ted if there was anyone she
should call and he had turned his sullen gaze on her. ‘Like who?’
    ‘Like your aunt.’
    ‘You’ve got to be
joking.’
    ‘Don’t you have other
relatives?’
    ‘You mean like our uncle in the
States? He’s not much use, is he? No, it’s us and it’s Dad, and if
he’s not there, there’s no one at all.’
    She sat with him for a while, relishing the
cool night air. Nothing in her life felt rational or controlled any more: not her house,
which used to