Waiting for Wednesday

hunting people
down and opening up their old wounds. But what else could he do?
    ‘I read about your daughter,’ he
said. ‘It was a tragic case. I wanted to know whether you’d had any warning.
Was she unhappy? Did she have trouble at school?’
    ‘She loved school,’ said the
woman. ‘She had just started the sixth form. She wanted to be a vet.’
    ‘What was her mood like?’
    ‘Are you asking me whether Daisy ran
away from home? The week after she … well, she was going on a school trip.
She’d done a part-time job for six months to pay for it. Youknow, my husband’s at home here. He’s on disability. It broke him. We keep
going over that evening. She was walking over to see her best friend. She always took a
shortcut across the common. If only we’d driven her. We just go over and over
it.’
    ‘You can’t blame
yourself,’ said Fearby.
    ‘Yes, you can.’
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ said
Fearby. ‘But have you got a photograph?’
    ‘I can’t give you one,’
said the woman. ‘We gave some to journalists at the time. And the police. We never
got them back.’
    ‘Just to look at.’
    ‘Wait,’ said the woman.
    He stood on the doorstep and waited. After a
few minutes, there was the sound of the chain being unfastened. The woman handed him a
photograph. He looked at the girl, a young and eager face. He thought, as he always did,
of what was to come, what that face would witness. He noted the dark hair, something
about the eyes. They were like a family, like a gang. He took out his phone.
    ‘Is that all right?’ he
said.
    The woman shrugged. He took a picture with
his phone and handed it back to the woman.
    ‘So what are you going to do?’
said the woman. ‘What are you going to do about our Daisy?’
    ‘I’m going to find out what I
can,’ said Fearby. ‘If I find out anything, anything at all, I’ll let
you know.’
    ‘Will you find Daisy?’
    Fearby paused. ‘No. No, I don’t
think so.’
    ‘Then don’t bother,’ said
the woman, and closed the door.
    Frieda had been interested to meet the
woman who had broken Rajit Singh’s heart, but when Agnes Flint opened thedoor of her flat, she thought she must have come to the wrong door.
The young woman had a smooth, round face, with coarse brown hair swept messily back. She
wore a black sweater and jeans. But she was saved from being nondescript by her large
dark eyes and a slightly ironic expression. Frieda had a sense of being appraised.
    ‘I don’t know what this is
about,’ she said.
    ‘Just give me a minute,’ said
Frieda.
    ‘You’d better come in. I’m
on the top floor.’
    Frieda followed her up the stairs.
    ‘It looks a bit boring from the
outside,’ Agnes said, over her shoulder. ‘But wait till you get
inside.’
    She opened the door and Frieda followed her
in. They were in a living room with large windows on the far side.
    ‘I see what you mean,’ she
said.
    The flat looked over a network of railway
tracks. On the other side was a warehouse and beyond that were some apartment buildings
that marked the south bank of the Thames.
    ‘Some people hate the idea of living
by the railway,’ said Agnes, ‘but I like it. It’s like living next to
a river, with strange things flowing past. And the trains are far enough away. I
don’t get commuters staring in at me while I’m in bed.’
    ‘I like it,’ said Frieda.
‘It’s interesting.’
    ‘Well, that makes two of us.’
There was a pause. ‘So you’ve been talking to poor old Rajit.’
    ‘Why do you call him that?’
    ‘You’ve met him. He wasn’t
much fun when we were together.’
    ‘He was a bit depressed.’
    ‘I’ll say. Has he sent you to
try to plead for him?’
    ‘Didn’t it end well?’
    ‘Does it ever end well?’ There
was a rumble from outsideand a train passed. ‘They’ll be
in Brighton in an hour,’ Agnes said. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question? I
mean, since you’ve come all the way to my flat.’
    ‘Go ahead.’
    ‘What are you doing here? When you
rang up, I was curious. Rajit probably told you that he had difficulty taking no for an
answer. He rang. He came round. He even wrote me letters.’
    ‘What did they say?’
    ‘I threw them away without opening
them. So when you rang, I was kind of curious. I wondered whether he was sending women
on his behalf. Like some kind of carrier pigeon. Are you a friend of his?’
    ‘No. I’ve only met him
twice.’
    ‘So what are you?’
    ‘I’m a
psychotherapist.’
    ‘Did he