Waiting for Wednesday

to walk. I’m not saying I was a complete wild child, it’s just
that … When I look at the some of the decisions I made, well, I’d like
to see Chloë choose better than that.’ She topped up her wine glass. Frieda held
her hand over her own glass. ‘But in some ways, I think Chloë is more mature than
I was at her age. Now, I know what you’re going to say.’
    ‘What am I going to say?’
    ‘You’re going to say that if I
was less mature than Chloë, I must have been a truly epic fuck-up.’
    ‘That’s not whatI was going to say,’ said Frieda.
    ‘Then what?’
    ‘I was going to say that it was a good
thing to say about your daughter.’
    ‘We’ll see,’ snorted
Olivia. ‘Meanwhile the house is probably being reduced to its constituent
parts.’
    ‘I’m sure you don’t need
to worry.’
    ‘I don’t know what parties you
went to,’ said Olivia. ‘I was once at this party. I was up in the
parents’ bedroom with Nick Yates and by the time we were finished for the second
time the people downstairs had carried the upright piano out into the garden and started
to play it, then forgotten about it and it had started to rain. God. Nick Yates.’
A faraway expression came to Olivia’s face. Then the food arrived.
    ‘I’m so sorry.’ Olivia
filled her plate from the different dishes. ‘Try this shrimp, by the way.
It’s to die for. I’ve been talking solidly about myself and my problems and
my wicked past. I haven’t even asked about how you’re feeling. I know
it’s all been so terrible. How are you feeling? Does it still hurt?’
    ‘It’s not too bad.’
    ‘Are you still being
treated?’
    ‘Just check-ups,’ said Frieda.
‘From time to time.’
    ‘It was the most terrible, terrible
thing,’ said Olivia. ‘At first I thought we were going to lose you. You
know, a couple of days ago I had a nightmare about it. I woke up and I was crying.
Literally crying.’
    ‘I think it was worse for other people
than it was for me.’
    ‘I bet it wasn’t,’ said
Olivia. ‘But they say that when really terrible things happen, it stops feeling
real, like it’s happening to someone else.’
    ‘No,’ said Frieda, slowly.
‘It felt like it was happening to me.’
    On the way back to the house, Olivia was
walking unsteadily and Frieda took her arm.
    ‘I’m looking for smoke,’
Olivia said. ‘Can you see smoke?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘If the house was literally on
fire,’ said Olivia, ‘we’d be seeing smoke by now, wouldn’t we?
Over the roofs. And there’d be fire engines and sirens.’
    As they turned the corner into
Olivia’s road, they saw the front door open, people milling around. There was a
loud electronic beat, a low throb. There were flashing lights. As they got closer,
Frieda saw a group sitting on the front steps smoking. One of them looked up and
smiled.
    ‘It is Frieda, no?’
    ‘Stefan, right?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said, as if the idea
amused him. ‘Frieda, you like a cigarette?’
    Olivia gave an indistinct yell, brushed
through the crowd on the steps and ran into the house.
    ‘No, thanks,’ said Frieda.
‘How has it been?’
    Stefan gave a shrug. ‘Okay, I think. A
quiet party.’
    One of the boys sitting next to him laughed.
‘They were great, him and Josef.’
    ‘Like how?’ Frieda sat on the
step beside them.
    ‘This gang of kids came. Chloë
didn’t know them. They started jostling people. But Josef and Stefan made them go
away.’
    Frieda glanced at Stefan, who was lighting a
new cigarette from the old one. ‘You made them go away?’
    ‘It was no big thing,’ said
Stefan.
    ‘It was a big thing,’ said one
of the other boys. ‘It was a very big thing.’
    They laughed, and one said something to
Stefan in a language she couldn’t understand, and he said something back, then
looked at her.
    ‘He is learning a funny Russian in his
school,’ he said. ‘I am teaching him.’
    ‘Where’s Josef?’
    ‘He is with a boy,’ said Stefan.
‘A boy is not well.’
    ‘What do you mean “not
well”? Where are they?’
    ‘The toilet on the upstairs,’
said Stefan. ‘He was sick. Very sick.’
    Frieda ran into the house. The hall was
sticky under her feet and there was a smell of smoke and beer. She pushed her way past
some girls. There was a group outside the closed door of the bathroom.
    ‘Is he in there?’ Frieda asked
them in general.
    Suddenly Chloë was there. She had been
crying. Mascara was running down her face. Jack was hovering behind