Waiting for Wednesday

she was tired. Not a soft,
blurred tiredness but one that was sharp and insistent. Tiredness like a knife, a
millstone grinding. Sharon Gibbs was alive, but Lila was dead. The others were dead.
Bones in the rich soil that fed a garden full of flowers.
    The path broadened out into a wide track.
The river was slow and brown. If she lay down here, would she ever get up? If Sandy were
here, would she tell him? If Sasha were here, would she cry at last? Or sleep? When
would she ever sleep? To sleep was to let go. Let go of the dead, let go of the ghosts,
let go of the self.
    Cranes. Great thistles. A deserted allotment
with crazy little sheds toppling at the edge of the river. A fox, mangy, with a thin,
grubby tail. Swift as a shadow into the shadows. She liked foxes. Foxes, crows, owls. A
bird flitted by and she realized it must be a bat. It was night at last. How long had it
been? Her river was still showing her the way and a moon rose and everyone she knew
stood a long way off. Reuben, Sasha, Olivia, Chloë, Josef, Sandy, Karlsson. Her patients
were reduced to a crouched figure in a chair, asking her to rescue them from themselves.
Dean Reeve stood in a corner;he looked in at a window; she heard his
footsteps when no one was there; and he left behind him the sickly smell of lilies and
death. He was more real than anyone.
    It was hard to know any longer why she put
one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, and kept breathing in
and out, as if her body had the willpower her spirit no longer possessed. She was spent.
Her waters were run dry.
    But then the river widened and the path
opened out and there was a fence, an iron bell hanging in a metal cage. The Wandle had
guided her and now it opened out into its own small estuary and poured itself at last
into the great thoroughfare of the Thames. Frieda was standing on a stone walkway,
looking out at the lights of the city. She wasn’t lost any more, and somewhere in
those pulsing lights lay home.



SIXTY-ONE
    This was not a night for sleep. Thoughts
burned in Frieda’s brain; images pulsed behind her eyes. She sat upright in her
armchair and stared into the empty grate, where she saw the well-tended garden in
Croydon. Now they would be pushing spades into the loamy soil, pulling the house apart.
She remembered the two of them, Dawes and Collier, sitting in the garden. She felt sick
and closed her eyes, but the pictures wouldn’t go away. She thought the stench of
lilies still hung in the air.
    At last she rose and went upstairs. She put
the plug into the bath – Josef’s bath – and turned the taps, poured in bath lotion
until the water foamed. She peeled off her dirty clothes and cleaned her teeth, avoiding
looking at herself in the little mirror over the basin. Her limbs felt heavy and her
skin stung; she was all used up. At last she climbed into the fragrant, scorching water
and let herself sink beneath the surface. Perhaps she could lie here until day, her hair
floating on the surface and her blood pounding in her ears.
    At last she got out. It was still dark but
there was a faint band of light on the horizon. A new day was starting. She dressed and
went downstairs. There were things she needed to do.
    First, she made a phone call, one she should
have made days ago. He didn’t reply at once and when he did his voice was thick
with sleep.
    ‘Sandy?’
    ‘Frieda? What? Are you all
right?’
    ‘I don’t think so. I’m
sorry.’
    ‘Hang on.’ There was a pause.
She imagined him sitting up, turning on the light. ‘Why are you sorry?’
    ‘I’m just sorry. I’m so
sorry. I should have told you.’
    ‘Told me what?’
    ‘Can you come over?’
    ‘Yes. Of course.’
    ‘I mean, now.’
    ‘Yes.’
    That was one of the things she loved about
him – that he would make a decision like that, without hesitation or a flurry of anxious
questions that she wouldn’t be able to answer, knowing she would only ask out of
extreme need. He would get up at once, book a flight, make arrangements with his
colleagues, be with her before the day was out because she had turned to him at
last.
    ‘Thank you,’ she said
simply.
    She made herself a bitterly strong cup of
coffee and fed the cat, watered the plants in her backyard, breathing in the intense
fragrance of hyacinths and herbs. Then she put on her jacket and left the house. It was
a fresh, damp dawn; later it would be warm and bright. The sweetness of spring. The
shops were all still shut, but