Waiting for Wednesday

but it was still locked.
More noise came from the speaker, then more electronic rattling, a click and the door
was unlocked. Frieda walked up some carpeted stairs to a landing with two separate
doors, labelled one and two. Door one opened and a dark-haired woman peered out.
    ‘I’m here to see –’
    ‘I know,’ said the woman.
‘I don’t know what this is about. You’d better come in. Just for a
minute, though.’
    Frieda followed her inside. Yardley was
sitting at a table,reading the evening paper and drinking beer. He
had long curly hair and glasses with square, transparent frames. He was dressed in a
college sweatshirt and dark trousers. His feet were bare. He turned and smiled at
her.
    ‘I hear you’ve been hassling
people,’ he said.
    ‘I think you called on my old friend
Reuben.’
    ‘The famous Reuben McGill,’ he
said. ‘I must say I was a bit disappointed by him. When I met him, he looked like
someone who’d lost his mojo. He didn’t seem to respond to what I was saying
at all.’
    ‘Did you want him to respond?’
said Frieda.
    ‘What rubbish,’ said the woman,
from behind her.
    ‘Oh, sorry,’ said the Ian.
‘I’m not being a proper host. This is my friend, Polly. She thinks I
shouldn’t have let you in. She’s more suspicious than I am. Can I offer you
a drink? A beer? There’s some white wine open in the fridge.’
    ‘No, thanks.’
    ‘Not while you’re on
duty?’
    Frieda began to ask some of the same
questions she’d asked Rajit Singh, but she didn’t get very far because Polly
kept interrupting her, asking what the point of all this was, while Ian just continued
to smile, as if he was enjoying the spectacle. Suddenly he stopped smiling.
    ‘Shall I make things clear?’ he
said. ‘If you’re here out of some faintly pathetic attempt at revenge, then
you’re wasting your time. This was all cleared by the ethics committee in advance
and we were indemnified. I can show you the small print, if you’re interested in
reading it. I know it’s embarrassing when it’s demonstrated that the emperor
has no clothes. If you’re the emperor. Or the empress.’
    ‘As I’ve tried to
explain,’ said Frieda, ‘I’m not here to argue about the experiment,
I’m –’
    ‘Oh, give us a fucking break,’
said Polly.
    ‘If you’ll just let me finish a
sentence, I’ll ask a couple of questions and then I’ll leave.’
    ‘What do you mean, and then
you’ll leave? As if you had any right to be here in the first place! I’ve
got another idea.’ Polly prodded Frieda on the shoulder. It was close to where she
was still bandaged and made her flinch slightly. ‘You’ve been made a fool
of. So deal with it. And just leave, because Ian has nothing to say and you’re
starting to harass him and to get on my nerves.’ She started shoving at Frieda as
if she wanted to push her out of the flat.
    ‘Stop that,’ said Frieda,
raising her hands in defence.
    ‘Time for you to go,’ shouted
Polly, and pushed even harder.
    Frieda put her hand on the woman’s
chest and pressed her back against the wall and held her there. She leaned close so that
their faces were only inches apart and she spoke in a quiet, slow tone. ‘I said
“stop”.’
    Yardley stood up. ‘What the
hell’s going on?’ he said.
    Frieda turned, and as she turned, she took
her hand away, then stepped back. She wasn’t clear what happened next. She felt a
flurry to the side of her. She sensed Polly flying at her and then stumbling over a low
stool and falling heavily across it.
    ‘I can’t believe this,’
said Yardley to Frieda. ‘You come here and you start a fight.’
    Polly started to struggle to her feet but
Frieda stood over her. ‘Don’t you even think about it,’ she said.
‘Just stay where you are.’ Then she turned to Yardley. ‘I think Reuben
understood you pretty well.’
    ‘You’re threatening me,’
he said. ‘You’ve come here to attack me and to threaten me.’
    ‘That hair story had nothing to do
with you, did it?’ said Frieda.
    ‘What hair story?’
    ‘You’re too much of a
narcissist,’ said Frieda. ‘You wanted to impress Reuben and he didn’t
go for it.’
    ‘What the fuck are you talking
about?’
    ‘It’s all right,’ said
Frieda. ‘I’ve got what I came for.’
    And she left.
    Jim Fearby brought out a large map of Great
Britain. There wasn’t room for it on the wall so he laid it out on the floor of
the living room, with objects (a mug, a tin of beans, a book