Waiting for Wednesday

and I have a moment?’ she asked.
    Josef seemed puzzled.
‘Moment?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Frieda. ‘Could
you go out of the room?’
    ‘Yes, yes,’ said Josef. ‘I
go to Reuben now anyway. Poker for the guys.’
    He picked the cat off his lap and, holding
it against his broad chest, backed out.
    As Frieda told Chloë, she watched the
succession of emotions on the young girl’s pale face: confusion, shock, distress,
disbelief, anger. When Frieda had finished, there was a silence. Chloë’s eyes
flickered from side to side.
    ‘Is there anything you want to ask
me?’ she said.
    ‘Where is he?’
    ‘At the police station.’
    ‘In a cell?’
    ‘I don’t know. They were going
to take a statement, but they’ll keep him in.’
    ‘He’s only a child.’
    ‘He’s eighteen. He’s an
adult.’
    There was another pause. Frieda saw that
Chloë’s eyes were glistening. ‘Tell me,’ she said.
    ‘You were supposed to look after
him.’
    ‘I think I
was
looking after
him.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘He had to own up to what he
did.’
    ‘Even if it meant ruining his
life.’
    ‘It’s his only hope of
not
ruining his life.’
    ‘In your opinion,’ said Chloë,
bitterly. ‘In your fucking professional opinion. I brought him to you. I brought
him to you so that you could help him.’
    ‘Helping people isn’t simple.
It’s –’
    ‘Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up. I
don’t want to hear you talk about taking responsibility and fucking autonomy.
You’ve betrayed him and you’ve betrayed me. That’s what you’ve
done.’
    ‘He killed his mother.’
    ‘He didn’t mean to!’
    ‘And that will be taken into
account.’
    ‘I’m going.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Back home. Mum might be a head case
and the house might be a slum, but at least she doesn’t send my friends to
prison.’
    ‘Chloë –’
    ‘I’ll never forgive
you.’
    It was finished, she told herself. She had
finished. The feverishness of the last few weeks could abate; the strangeness could
fade, like a violent bruise fades until at last it is just a faint ache, invisible to
anyone else. The Lennox murder wassolved. The Lennox children had
gone to their different kinds of prison. Chloë had gone. Frieda had betrayed her
friendship with Karlsson. The wild quest for a girl she had never known was over and
already it had the quality of a dream. She wondered if she would ever see Fearby again,
with his staring eyes and his silver hair.
    She started clearing up, putting objects
back where they belonged, wiping stains off surfaces, rubbing beeswax polish on to the
little chess table by the window. That afternoon she would go and see Thelma Scott and
dip the bucket down into the dark well of thoughts, but perhaps later on she could play
through an old chess game, let the wooden pieces click their way across the board while
silence settled around her again. She would have to call Sandy too. In her tumult, she
had let him go. The two days in New York seemed distant, unreal. Now at last she let
herself dwell upon the way he’d held her that night and the words he had said.
Remember.
    Remember. Halfway up the stairs, Frieda
stopped dead. Something had come into her mind, setting her heart racing. What was it?
Fearby. Something about Fearby, and his last message to her, before he’d
disappeared out of her life. Frieda sat down on the step and tried to recall exactly
what he’d said in his message. Most of it wasn’t important but he’d
obviously had an idea that seemed worth following up. He’d said he’d looked
over the files of the girls. She remembered that bit clearly enough. Then he’d
said something else. That we’d been thinking about them in the wrong way. Yes, and
that he was going out to take another look.
    Was there anything else? Yes: they
hadn’t heard the engine – what did that mean, for God’s sake? It sounded
like a slightly mad metaphor for the way the mind works. Frieda thought so hard that it
almost hurt. No,that was all, except that he’d said he’d
come round and tell her what he found. So that was all. It didn’t seem much. The
files of the girls. We’d been thinking about them in the wrong way. What had he
meant by that? How could it be the wrong way? Was there some sort of connection
they’d missed? He’d said ‘we’. In what way had Fearby and she
been thinking together about the girls? She thought about the rest of the message. He
was going to take another look. Another. What did that mean? Was he