Waiting for Wednesday

face. It made them
seem younger and more defenceless. Karlsson felt too tall and solid beside them. His
heart swelled in his chest and he stooped down and held them against him. But they
squirmed free. They were excited; their bodies throbbed with impatience. They wanted to
tell him about the flat they were going to live in, which had balconies on both sides
and an orange tree in the courtyard. A fan in every room, because it was very hot in the
summer. They’d got new summer clothes, shorts and dresses and flip-flops. It
hardly ever rained there – the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. There was an
outdoor pool a few streets away and at the weekends they could get a train to the coast.
They would have to wear a uniform to their new school. They already knew some words.
They could say,
Puedo tomar un helado por favor?
And
gracias
and
mi nombre es Mikey, mi nombre es Bella.
    Karlsson smiled and smiled. He wanted them
never to leave and he wanted them to be gone already, because waiting to say goodbye was
the worst thing of all.



TWENTY-EIGHT
    The following morning, when Frieda received
Rajit Singh’s call, she arranged to meet him in her rooms, which stood empty for
so many hours of the week now, the red armchair abandoned. Later in the day she had to
see Joe Franklin, so she could stay on for that, stand for a while at the window that
overlooked the deserted and overgrown building site, sifting through the rubble of her
thoughts. She walked as swiftly as her injured leg would allow through the narrow
streets, the familiar clutter of shops. She had the sensation of following a thread, as
thin as a spider’s, through a dark and twisting labyrinth. She didn’t know
why she couldn’t let go of the story: it had been a fake tale, crudely obvious,
designed to trip her up and make her look foolish and incompetent. She should feel
enraged, humiliated, exposed; instead, she felt troubled and compelled. She woke in the
night and her thoughts, drifting up from the mud of her dreams, snagged on the story.
There was a faint but insistent tug on the thread.
    Singh arrived promptly. He was still wearing
his thick black jacket – in fact, he seemed to be wearing the same clothes that Frieda
had last seen him in. His face sagged with weariness and he sat heavily in the chair
opposite her, as if this were indeed a therapy session.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said.
    ‘What for?’
    ‘For seeing me.’
    ‘I think I was the one who asked you
to contact me.’
    ‘Yeah, but we fucked you over,
didn’t we?’
    ‘Is that how it feels?’
    ‘I don’t know about the others,
but I felt a bit crap about all the coverage.’
    ‘Because you felt what you did was
wrong?’
    ‘It seemed a good idea at the time. I
mean, how can therapists be checked? Teachers have inspectors, but therapists can do
whatever damage they want in the privacy of their little rooms and no one’s to
know. And if patients don’t like it, then the therapist can just turn it back on
them: if you don’t like it, it’s because there’s something wrong with
you, not me. It’s a self-justifying system.’
    ‘That doesn’t sound like you. It
sounds like Hal Bradshaw speaking. Which doesn’t mean it’s wrong. There is a
problem about checking up on therapists.’
    ‘Yeah, well, but when it got all that
attention, it felt wrong. Everyone found it funny, and then when I met you …’
He stopped.
    ‘I didn’t seem quite as crazy as
Bradshaw said I was?’
    Singh shifted in his seat uncomfortably.
‘He said you were a loose cannon. He said you – and people like you – could do a
lot of damage.’
    ‘So he set out to check us?’
    ‘I suppose that’s how he sees
it. But that’s not why I’m here. There’s nothing I can do about that.
You said I should get in touch if there was anything I wanted to say.’
    ‘And there is?’
    ‘Yeah. I guess. I’m, um, how do
I put it? Not in the best place right now. As you noticed. I don’t like my work as
much as I thought I would – I thought it would be more seminars and discussions and
research in groups and stuff, but mostly it’s just me on my own, grubbing away in
the library.’
    ‘Alone.’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘And you’re alone in your
personal life as well?’
    ‘You’re probably wondering why
this has anything to do with the story,’ he said.
    ‘Tell me.’
    Singh looked down at the floor. He seemed to
be pondering something.
    ‘I was in a relationship,’ he
said at last. ‘For a long