Waiting for Wednesday

where?’
    ‘I was at home one day on my own, ill.
I had a temperature and had the day off school. No one else was there. Mum said
she’d come back from work early and she left me a sandwich by my bed. I
couldn’t read because my head hurt, but I couldn’t sleep either, and I just
lay there listening to sounds in the street. Then there was a clatter and someone pushed
something through the letterbox but I thought it would be junk mail or something. Then
later, when I needed the bathroom, I saw it from the top of the stairs and I went down
and picked it up and saw –’ She gave a small shudder and came to a halt, staring
up at Karlsson.
    ‘You’re saying that someone
pushed this through the letterbox?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Cut up like this?’
    ‘Yes. It scared me. I don’t know
why, but I just had to hide it.’
    ‘And it was done during the day, when
normally no one would have been there?’
    ‘I had the flu,’ she said
defensively.
    Karlsson nodded. He was thinking that on any
ordinary day it would have been Ruth Lennox who found the mutilated doll. A message. A
warning.
    This time Sadie had not put on any makeup
or perfume. She had arrived early and ordered a tomato juice, and greeted Karlsson as if
he was a business colleague. He bent down to kiss her cheek, which she turned away from
him so he kissed her ear instead.
    ‘Get yourself a drink if you want. Then
we can talk.’
    He went and bought himself half a pint of
beer, then took the chair opposite her. ‘I don’t know what there is to
say,’ he began. ‘I behaved like an idiot. I’ve always liked you,
Sadie, and I didn’t want to mess you around.’
    ‘But you did mess me around. If
I’d known you just wanted one quick fuck on your night off, I wouldn’t have
let you near me.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’ There was a
silence and she regarded him coolly. He found himself talking, to fill it and to bring
some warmth back into her unyielding face. ‘The thing is,’ he said,
‘I’ve been a bit wretched.’
    ‘Lots of us are a bit
wretched.’
    ‘I know. It’s not an excuse. My
children – Mikey and Bella, you met them when they were younger – they’ve gone
away with their mother.’
    ‘Gone away – for a holiday, you
mean?’
    ‘No. She’s got this new man –
she’s going to marry him, I guess, so he’s really their step-father – and he
got a job in Madrid and they’ve gone there. The four of them, the happy
family.’ He heard and hated the bitterness in his voice. ‘So they’ve
gone away for two years. I’ll see them, but it won’t be the same. Well, it
hasn’t been the same since they moved out, of course. I kind of lost them then,
but now I feel I’ve really lost them. And now that they’ve gone,
I …’
    He stopped dead. He suddenly found he
couldn’t continue, couldn’t tell Sadie that he didn’t really know what
his life was about any more. That he woke each morning and had to make an effort to face
the world.
    ‘I thought I could fill the gap a
bit,’ he said lamely. ‘Just to get through.’
    ‘Fill the gap with me?’
    ‘I suppose so. I feel detached from
everything, as ifeverything is happening to someone else and
I’m watching it, like in a film. So when I woke that morning and saw you lying
next to me, I just – well, I knew I’d made a mistake and I wasn’t ready for
you or anyone.’
    ‘So that’s it?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You should have thought about it
before.’
    ‘You’re right.’
    ‘I’m a person, me. Someone you
used to call a friend.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘I’m sorry about the way
you’re feeling. It must be hard.’ She stood up, her tomato juice unfinished
on the table.
    ‘Thank you for being honest with me,
in the end. If you ever feel in need of comfort again, call someone else.’
    Frieda arrived back at her house just
before Sasha. She called Josef, who said he would go round to Olivia’s
immediately, put bolts on the front and back door and change all the locks the next
morning. Then she called Karlsson, but only got his voicemail. She didn’t leave a
message – what would she say? ‘I think Dean Reeve was in my sister-in-law’s
house last night’? He wouldn’t believe her. She didn’t even know if
she believed herself, but dread washed through her.
    Sasha arrived just after eight, bearing a
takeaway, steam rising from the bag. She was wearing a loose orange dress and her hair
was soft around her face. Frieda saw that her cheeks were slightly flushed and her