Waiting for Wednesday

to another country.
She’d had to look it up on a map. She’d had to go to Victoria and get on an
overground train. It had been full of commuters coming into London, but going out it was
almost empty. London, this huge creature, sucked people in. It wouldn’t be until
late afternoon that it blew them out again. As the train crossed the river, Frieda
recognized Battersea, the derelict power station. She even saw, or nearly saw, where
Agnes Flint’s flat must be, just near the huge market. After Clapham Junction and
Wandsworth Common it gradually became vague and nameless for her, a succession of
glimpsed parks, a graveyard, the backs of houses, a shopping centre, a breaker’s
yard, a flash of someone hanging out washing, a child bouncing on a blue trampoline.
Even though the streets had become unfamiliar, she continued to stare out of the window.
She couldn’t stop herself. Houses and buildings didn’t hide from trains the
way they did from cars. You didn’t see their smart façades but the bits behind
that the owners didn’t bother about, that they didn’t think anyone would
really notice: the broken fences, the piles of rubbish, abandoned machinery.
    When she got out of the station, she had to
use the street map to find her way and even that wasn’t simple. She rotated the
map again and again to find which exit she had come out of. Even so, she walked in the
wrong direction and had to look at the map again and orientate herself by seeing wherePeel Way joined Clarence Avenue. She had to walk back past the
station and then through a series of residential streets until she reached Ledbury
Close. Number eight was a pebble-dashed detached house, indistinguishable from its
neighbours, except that it was somehow more cared for – there was more precise attention
to detail. Frieda noticed the new windows, the frames freshly painted in glossy white.
On each side of the front door a purple ceramic pot contained a miniature bush, trimmed
into a spiral. They were so neat, they looked as if they had been done with
scissors.
    Frieda pressed the doorbell. It didn’t
seem to make a sound, so she pressed it again and still heard nothing. She stood there,
feeling irritated and uncertain. Either no one was in or the doorbell was broken and she
was standing there pointlessly, or it wasn’t broken and she was annoying someone
even before she had met them. She wondered whether she should ring the bell again and
possibly make the situation worse or bang on the door with her fist and make it worse
still or just keep waiting and hope for the best. And she wondered why she was even
worrying about something like that. Then she heard a sound from somewhere inside and saw
a blurred shape through the frosted glass of the door. It opened, revealing a large man,
not fat but big so that he seemed to fill the doorway. He was almost completely bald
with messy grey hair around the fringes of his head. His face was flushed with the red
of someone who spent time outside and he was dressed in bulky grey work trousers, a blue
and white checked shirt and heavy dark leather boots that were yellow with dried
mud.
    ‘I wasn’t sure if the bell was
working,’ said Frieda.
    ‘Everyone says that,’ said the
man, his face crinkling around the eyes. ‘It rings at the back of the house. I
have it like that because I spend a lot of time in the garden. I’vebeen out there all morning.’ He gestured up at the blue sky.
‘On a day like this.’ He looked at Frieda questioningly.
    ‘Are you Lawrence Dawes?’
    ‘Yes, I am.’
    ‘My name is Frieda Klein. I’m
here because …’ What was she going to say? ‘I’m here because
I’m trying to find your daughter, Lila.’
    Dawes’s smile faded. He suddenly
seemed older and more frail.
    ‘Lila? You’re looking for my
Lila?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I don’t know where she
is,’ he said. ‘I lost touch with her.’
    He raised his hands helplessly. Frieda saw
his fingernails, dirty from the garden. Was that it? Had she come all the way to Croydon
just for that?
    ‘Can I talk to you about
her?’
    ‘What for?’
    ‘I met someone who used to know
her,’ said Frieda. ‘An old friend of hers called Agnes Flint.’
    Dawes nodded slowly. ‘I remember
Agnes. Lila used to go around with this little gang of girls. She was one of them.
Before things went wrong.’
    ‘Can I come in?’ said
Frieda.
    Dawes seemed to be thinking it over, then
gave a shrug. ‘Come through to the garden. I was just about