Waiting for Wednesday

mud of her mind. Her body was sore.
    It was no good. She could hear Chloë
downstairs. She wastalking to someone on Skype and had been for what
seemed like hours, sometimes loudly and emphatically, with occasional bursts of
laughter. Or was she crying? Frieda looked at the time. It was nearly one o’clock
and tomorrow Chloë had school and she herself had a whole day to get through. She sighed
and got out of bed, tweaking her curtains back to see the half-moon and then going down
the stairs.
    Chloë looked up from her computer guiltily.
Frieda saw the image of Ted Lennox there, his peaky adolescent face staring out at her.
She stepped back, out of range. ‘I didn’t know you were still
awake.’
    ‘I don’t want to be.’
    ‘I need to talk to Ted.’
    ‘You were talking rather loudly. And I
think it’s time for you to go to bed.’
    ‘I’m not sleepy.’
    ‘Go to bed, Chloë. You have classes
tomorrow.’ Frieda stepped forward so that she could see Ted and Ted could see her.
He looked dreadful. ‘You too, Ted.’
    ‘Can I have some tea first? With just
a small amount of milk,’ Chloë asked.
    ‘This isn’t a hotel.’
    ‘Sorry.’ Chloë didn’t
sound sorry. She grimaced into her computer screen and raised her eyebrows dramatically
at Ted.
    ‘Take your things up with you. And
don’t touch anything in my study.’
    She returned to her room but for a long
while she didn’t get into her bed. Instead, she stood at the window, gazing out at
the night.



THIRTY-TWO
    When Karlsson woke, he wasn’t sure
where he was. He shifted in the bed and felt the warmth, saw the edge of a shoulder and
thought, she’s come back. And then he remembered and felt a lurch, and it was as
if the colour had leached out of the world. He fumbled for his watch and found it still
on his wrist. It was twenty to six. He lay back in the bed. There was a murmur of
something he couldn’t make out from Sadie beside him. Wasn’t this what he
had been wanting? Something uncomplicated, easy, affectionate, pleasurable? An ache
started in his head and spread through his body. He felt an immense, disabling
tiredness. Very cautiously, he edged himself out of the bed and started to dress.
    ‘You don’t have to run
away,’ said Sadie, from behind him.
    She had pulled herself up and was leaning on
one elbow. Her face was puffy from sleep. ‘I could make you some breakfast,’
she said. She looked kind and concerned.
    ‘I’ve really got to go,’
said Karlsson. ‘I need to get back and get changed and go into work. I’ve
really got to rush.’
    ‘I can get you a tea or a
coffee.’
    ‘That’s all right.’
    Karlsson felt a sudden sense of panic, so
that he was almost choking. He pulled his trousers on and fastened them. It all seemed
to be taking a long time and he sensedSadie watching him, a character
in an unfunny farce. He pushed his shoes on. They felt too small for his feet. He picked
up his jacket and turned to her. She was lying in the same position.
    ‘Sadie, I’m sorry,
I …’ He couldn’t think what else to say.
    ‘Yes, all right.’ She turned
away from him and twisted the duvet around her so that he could see only the back of her
head. He saw her bra draped over the end of the bed. He thought of her putting it on
yesterday morning and then taking it off last night. He had an impulse to sit down, pull
the duvet back and tell Sadie everything, explain what he was feeling, why this was all
wrong, why they were wrong for each other and why he was wrong for anyone. But that
wouldn’t be fair on her. He’d already done enough.
    He came out on to the quiet street. There
was a hum of traffic but the main sound was birdsong all around him, with a blue sky and
early-morning sunshine. It felt wrong. It should have been raining and grey and
cold.
    Frieda sat at her kitchen table while Josef
boiled the kettle, ground coffee, washed up the remains of Chloë’s breakfast. A
good thing about Josef – and she had to hang on to the good things, in the middle of
everything else – was that she didn’t have to make conversation. So she could just
sit at the table and stare in front of her. Finally he put the mug of coffee in front of
her and sat down with his own mug.
    ‘Is difficult to help,’ he
began. ‘There is a Ukrainian joke about three people helping old lady across the
road. And a person say, why take three people? And they say because the old lady not
want to cross the road.’ He took a sip from his coffee.