Thursday's Children (20 page)

Immediately, tears welled in Amelia’s eyes while Charlotte nodded again and murmured something indistinct.

‘And you’ll never guess who this is,’ said Ewan, gesturing towards the boy who was with them, a lanky teenager in low-slung tatty jeans and a leather jacket over a grey hoodie.

‘I don’t know your name,’ Frieda said to him, ‘but I know you’re Lewis’s son.’

‘Yeah.’ Even the voice was the same. ‘I’m Max.’ Max. Becky had mentioned him to her. ‘Do you know my dad?’

‘I used to.’

Ewan punched him playfully on the shoulder. ‘Hasn’t your dad ever told you about the mysterious Frieda Klein?’

‘No.’ He had Lewis’s scowl as well, which he turned now on Ewan.

‘Were you a friend of Becky’s too?’

He met Frieda’s eyes. ‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘Though I had no idea. She shouldn’t be dead.’

‘You’re right, she shouldn’t.’

‘I don’t understand why none of us saw it coming.’

‘No one understands,’ said Vanessa, laying a consoling hand on his shoulder. ‘And everyone feels guilty.’

‘We should be going,’ said Ewan, shifting from one muddy foot to the other.

The door opened again and Josef came in, carrying two mugs and a plate. He was singing to himself, just two or three words on a loop, but stopped when he saw everyone, making a comical gesture of surprise. He put the mugs and plate carefully on the table, then made a slight bow towards Ewan and his daughter.

‘I am Josef,’ he said.

‘What were you singing?’ Frieda asked him sharply.

‘Singing?’ He looked confused.

‘When you came in just now.’

‘I not know.’

‘It was one of the Thursday’s Children songs,’ said Eva. ‘It’s been in my head, what with all the talk of that concert recently. And I was singing it when I took the tea up to Josef.’

‘Earworms,’ said Ewan. ‘Irritating little things.’

‘That’s it,’ said Frieda. ‘I remember now.’

And she did. Although she had never listened to their music since leaving Braxton, it was still lodged in her memory. She probably recalled most of the words as well.

‘We still listen to them sometimes, when we’re feeling romantic,’ said Ewan.

‘They
dance
to them,’ said Charlotte. ‘It’s embarrassing!’

Frieda grinned. She remembered the way Ewan danced, throwing his arms around wildly and bounding on the spot.

‘I’ll have you know, young woman,’ said Ewan, ‘that they have a special place in your mother’s and my affections.’

‘Yeah, yeah, you got it together at their concert. We know. We just don’t want a replay.’

‘You might not even exist,’ said Eva, to Amelia, ‘if your mum and dad hadn’t gone to that concert.’

‘I can even tell you the order they played those songs.’ He closed his eyes in concentration. ‘“City Song”, they always started with that. To get the crowd going. “Move In With Me”. “Better Do It.”’

‘“Dylan”,’ said Vanessa. ‘That was always my favourite.’

‘And “Donny’s Funeral”. And they ended with “Tight Fit”. And, of course, they did “Day Off” for an encore.’

‘Dad, this isn’t really very interesting,’ said Amelia.

‘My father plays them as well,’ said Max. ‘He doesn’t ever dance, though.’ He looked so forlorn that Frieda had to stop herself putting out a hand in comfort. She remembered Lewis like that. And then, from nowhere, she found herself thinking of Sandy – or, rather, picturing his face the last time she had seen him. She stared out at Eva’s muddy garden and for a moment lost all sense of what was being said.

‘Frieda?’

‘Yes?’

‘I said, we’re on our way.’ Vanessa was pulling on her thick coat. ‘We must do this again. You should come and have supper with us.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I’ll call you.’

‘Yes.’

‘And we’ll see you at the reunion, of course.’

‘Perhaps. I’ve not entirely decided.’

Ewan kissed her on both cheeks, then turned to Max. ‘Can I drop you off?’

‘No. I’ll walk.’

‘I’ll walk with you part of the way,’ said Frieda. ‘I need a bit of fresh air.’ She nodded at Josef. ‘I’ll be back shortly.’

‘Is fine,’ Josef said cheerfully. ‘Isn’t it, Eva?’

‘Yes,’ said Eva. ‘Very fine. Time to open the
vino
, I think.’

Frieda and Max walked in silence for a few minutes, until Max suddenly asked: ‘Did you know my dad well?’

‘It was a very long time ago. Until now, I hadn’t seen him for over twenty years.’

‘What was he like?’

She considered. ‘He looked like you. But you probably already know that.’

‘People say so.’

‘He was bright and thoughtful. But you probably know that too.’

‘Not so much.’

‘He took things seriously,’ Frieda added.

‘Was he – did he –you know?’

‘Take drugs?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yes. Like his friends. But maybe he was more susceptible.’

‘He keeps telling me he’s going to stop drinking and smoking and killing himself.’

‘But he doesn’t.’

‘I’ve given up. I used to go on and on at him. I used to beg him and say he had to do it for my sake.’

‘But that didn’t work?’

‘Greg says that in the end you can’t change people, they have to change themselves.’

‘He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.’ A thought struck Frieda. ‘Greg who?’

‘He used to teach at the High, ages ago. He used to teach my dad. I met him at Maddie’s a few times. I was a bit cut up about everything and he was nice to me.’

‘Greg Hollesley.’ Whom she had seen hugging Maddie ever so tenderly at Becky’s funeral.

‘Maybe.’

‘He goes and sees Maddie?’

‘He has friends in the area from when he was teaching
here. I think he comes down because his mum or dad is in a home.’

‘His father,’ said Frieda, recalling what Greg had said to her. ‘That’s right. Did Becky know him?’

‘She met him. I remember her saying she wished there were more teachers like him.’

‘You don’t want too many like him,’ she said.

‘Here’s where I go.’ He gestured to the road leading off to the left. ‘Were you Dad’s girlfriend?’

‘You should ask him questions like that, not me.’

‘That means you were. You’re well out of it.’

‘It’s tough for you, I know.’

‘I really liked Becky.’

‘Did you?’

‘We were friends, proper friends. All the girls were so bitchy.’

‘I’m glad she had you to talk to.’

‘It wasn’t enough, though, was it?’ He glared at her wretchedly.

She walked back slowly, thinking about what Vanessa had said: that her return had unsettled people; about Greg Hollesley in Maddie’s house; about Lewis and his angry, abandoned son. Music from Thursday’s Children ran through her head. She’d never liked them. The night was dark and quiet. Once or twice she thought she heard footsteps but when she turned no one was there. She told herself she was imagining it. When she reached Eva’s house she went round the back. Through the kitchen window she could see Eva and Josef standing close together. Josef seemed to be teaching Eva how to chop vegetables the way
real chefs do. Eva was laughing. Frieda glimpsed her face, years younger and full of a merriment that took her back to the friendship of their teenage years. She turned away and went into her shed, shutting the door softly and pulling down the blinds.

The next morning Frieda walked into Eva’s kitchen. Her head was still fuzzy from a night of turbulent dreams that still seemed more real than the dreary, hard-edged, unforgiving world around her. Then, quite suddenly, everything seemed to happen at once. Frieda was filling the kettle when Eva came into the kitchen. There was something different about her. Then Frieda noticed that lots of things were different. Her hair was rumpled and her face was flushed and her eyes were both bright and tired and there was a smear of mascara at the corner of one eye and she was wearing a checked shirt that was much too bright and looked strangely familiar.

At the very moment that Frieda recognized it as belonging to Josef – in fact, it was the shirt Josef had been wearing the previous evening – and had started trying to decide what her response was or ought to be, she heard voices. She turned round as the door opened.

‘It’s bloody cold,’ said Jack.

‘It’s, like, about ten degrees colder than London,’ said Chloë.

Frieda felt a wave of alarm. What could be the bad news that would make them drive all the way here so early in the morning? ‘What’s happened?’ she said.

Jack looked puzzled. ‘Didn’t Josef tell you we were coming?’

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘We thought it would be good to have a day out. We’ve been really curious about this area – well, about you, really – and I went online and saw how close it was.’

‘You should have told me,’ said Frieda.

‘Well, we did,’ said Chloë. ‘Via Josef. Where is he, by the way?’

Frieda avoided looking at Eva. ‘I think he’s still in bed,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Eva. ‘He’s on his way down.’

And, indeed, before Frieda could say anything Josef came through the door, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and with bare feet. When he saw Jack and Chloë, he gave a sleepy smile of greeting. As he walked past Eva, Frieda noticed that he touched her shoulder and Eva glanced round at him. Even though it was just a moment, it was the intimate gesture of a couple who knew each other well, who had secrets. Frieda was making another attempt at speaking, at establishing some sort of order, when there were more noises from outside and a knock at the door. Chloë opened it and Ewan stepped inside. He was wearing a bulky country jacket of the kind worn for shooting small birds. Behind him were his daughters, in hooded waterproofs, looking sullen and resigned. There was a series of complicated introductions. Eva offered coffee to everybody.

‘We were just going for a walk,’ said Ewan, ‘and we thought you might like to come along.’

Frieda looked at Amelia and Charlotte, who were checking their phones.

‘That’s kind of you,’ she said. ‘But these friends of mine have just come down from London so –’

‘That’s perfect,’ said Ewan. ‘They’re welcome as well.’ He raised his voice to include everyone in the room in the conversation. ‘It’s a lovely walk along the river to the pub by the old mill, then back along the railway track.’

‘Sounds great,’ said Jack. ‘This is what you never get in London, people just dropping into each other’s houses.’

Frieda seemed to be experiencing both claustrophobia and agoraphobia at the same time. Her old life, the world of Braxton, her childhood and adolescence, was like an organism that was trying to pull her back in. At the same time, the London world, the life she’d chosen, was unwilling to let her go. She looked across at Josef. Eva was leaning against him, whispering something in his ear.

‘We don’t have to,’ said Jack, in a slightly pathetic voice. ‘If it’s a problem, Chloë and me can go off somewhere on our own.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Frieda. ‘We can go for a walk.’

‘I’ve got some things to do in the house,’ said Eva, apologetically. ‘And I think Josef needs to finish … you know, the job he’s been doing.’

Frieda looked at Josef, who gave a helpless shrug.

‘Work,’ said Frieda. ‘OK, fine. We’ll head off.’

This turned out to be a complicated process. Eva offered coffee but Ewan said they could get a drink at the Perch. Jack and Chloë retrieved walking boots and windproof jackets from Jack’s car. Josef hovered in the kitchen.

‘I don’t want to keep you from your work,’ Frieda said, then felt guilty. After all, did she want Josef to be like her, always the onlooker, the one on the edge, observing, assessing, diagnosing? Wasn’t it better to be the way he was, always seeming to swim with the current, to accept
what was offered? Anyway, she was the one who had brought him.

It was a sunny morning, but cold, and there was a fierce, steely wind from the east. She thought again of the lost red scarf, but Eva gave her a heavy jacket and a furry hat. As the small group walked out of the house, Frieda looked back at Eva. She felt like a parent leaving two teenagers alone in the house. Ewan led the way over the road to the footpath across the field that sloped down to the river Char. He was with Jack and Chloë, and she could see him talking and pointing but couldn’t hear what he was saying. As they joined the river and turned west, away from Braxton, she found herself at the back with Amelia and Charlotte. She explained to them that Jack had been a student of hers and that Chloë was her niece.

‘Bit weird them getting together, then,’ said Amelia, with a grimace.

Frieda did actually think it was a bit weird but it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss with two Suffolk teenagers she barely knew. ‘I think maybe they’re just having fun.’

Amelia and Charlotte exchanged glances. They clearly considered her too old to have any knowledge about young people having fun. For a time, the path narrowed and they had to walk in single file. Hundreds of years ago, the Char had been a working river. There’d been a brickworks and warehouses further inland. The industry was long gone and the banks had been reclaimed by the woodland and lined with trees, but there were still weirs and locks and concrete embankments. Frieda liked it or, rather, she had a sense of how she would like it if she could walk there alone. It was her kind of nature, the sort of nature that had a history.
They passed under an iron bridge and the path widened once more.

‘So you were at school here?’ said Charlotte.

‘That’s right. With your parents, and Maddie and Eva, of course.’

‘And Lewis,’ said Charlotte.

More exchanged glances. Charlotte and Amelia seemed to share a private, sarcastic language that made them impregnable.

‘Yes.’ Amelia pulled a face. ‘And now you’re friends with Max.’

Charlotte snorted.

‘Why do you think that?’

‘I met you with him, so I just assumed. Do you mean you’re
not
friends?’

‘He’s a bit creepy,’ said Charlotte. ‘He just follows people around like some kind of little stray dog. I know you were together with his dad when you were a teenager, but have you seen what he’s like now?’

‘Yes, I’ve met him.’

‘Well, there we are, then. You look at Lewis and you know what Max is going to be like.’

‘There are worse ways to be,’ said Frieda, thinking of Jeremy and Chas.

The girls didn’t answer. They seemed impassive in a way they hadn’t previously. Maybe it was just the cold.

‘It’s difficult when someone dies suddenly,’ Frieda said. ‘I mean for the people who are left behind. They wonder whether they should have done something.’ She looked at the two girls. There was just a hint of a shrug from Charlotte. ‘Did Becky say anything in the days before it happened?’

‘No,’ said Charlotte. ‘She talked to Mum more than to us – she was always coming to see Mum when she was upset by stuff. It was a bit creepy, but Mum loves all that.’

‘But you were her friends,’ said Frieda. ‘And she’d been through a difficult time. She must have talked about her feelings.’

‘We weren’t really her friends,’ said Charlotte.

‘I must have misunderstood,’ said Frieda. ‘Seeing you at the funeral.’

‘That was organized by the school,’ said Charlotte. ‘It was like an outing. When someone dies like that, everyone pretends they knew them really well, but none of us were affected. Not really, if we’re honest. She’d gone weird.’

Frieda thought of the funeral, the mass sobbing. ‘So you weren’t close friends with her?’

Charlotte gave a soft-shouldered shrug.

‘Not so much.’

‘Are you saying you actually disliked her?’

‘I didn’t care much one way or the other. Becky just thought she was better than other people.’

‘Do you mean she didn’t have
any
friends?’

‘She used to, but in the end people just got tired of her. She stopped being fun.’

‘So you weren’t friends with Becky and you aren’t friends with Max. Were they friends with each other?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Charlotte.

It didn’t feel like anybody was friends with anybody, except for the two sisters: united against the world.

‘So she was isolated.’

‘In a way,’ said Charlotte. ‘But it was her own choice.’

‘And how long was this going on?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Charlotte. ‘Most of the year.’

There was an electric chime and Charlotte took out her phone, then started sending a text. They walked on for a few minutes without speaking. Ahead, Ewan was standing with Jack and Chloë, pointing away from the river up the hill. Frieda looked to where he was pointing: the obelisk silhouetted against the grey sky. She turned to Amelia beside her. ‘Do you know what that is?’

‘The witch monument,’ said Amelia, in an unimpressed tone. ‘Dad keeps talking about it. It’s his new hobby – local history.’

‘It’s completely boring,’ said Charlotte. ‘We did local history for GCSE and now Dad’s doing it all over again and there’s only about two things that ever happened in Braxton. They burned a witch, then they built a railway and then they took the railway away again.’

‘Because who wants to come to a place like Braxton?’ said Amelia.

The Perch stood facing an old mill with a large waterwheel. There were tables outside by the water but only one was occupied, by a group of people in thick parkas who were smoking. Ewan led them inside and found two tables by a window. He placed Jack and Chloë next to Amelia and Charlotte. ‘I’m sure you young people have lots to talk about among yourselves,’ he said. ‘Things you don’t want Frieda and me to overhear.’ Charlotte and Amelia rolled their eyes. ‘The funny thing is, when Frieda and I last met we were your age. Isn’t that peculiar?’

Charlotte and Amelia rolled their eyes again.

‘When you and Frieda last met, it was yesterday,’ said Charlotte.

‘All right, all right,’ said Ewan, who seemed used to this treatment. ‘You know what I mean.’

He went over to the bar and returned with a tray of drinks and packets of crisps. He sat down next to Frieda at the other table. He had a pint of local ale, which he clinked against Frieda’s tomato juice. He nodded at the young people. ‘They’re better off without us,’ he said.

Frieda wasn’t so sure. Amelia was texting, Charlotte was saying something to Chloë; Jack looked distracted. She should have a word with him later. Ewan pointed out of the window at the mill on the other side of the pool by the weir. ‘That was abandoned when we were at school,’ he said. ‘It was derelict for about twenty years. Now it’s being turned into flats. Riverside properties. That’s what people seem to want.’ Frieda didn’t reply. ‘They’re nice, Jack and Chloë. They speak very highly of you.’

‘I’m glad,’ said Frieda, ‘because they mean a lot to me.’

Ewan took a gulp of his beer, then looked down into the glass. Frieda recognized the sight. She had seen it often in her consulting rooms, as people plucked up the courage to say what they had come to say.

‘It’s been funny, you coming back,’ he said.

‘How so?’

‘It makes you look at yourself, think of the way others see you. And it’s also made me think about the old days. It’s like when you dig up one of those time capsules that’s filled with random objects from the past.’

‘What did it make you think?’

‘I know what you think of me. It’s a bit like the girls. For them I’m this loud sort of Scout master who keeps saying things like, “Let’s go for a walk” or “Let’s go to a museum.”
I’m a bit loud and a bit boisterous. But what I’ve been thinking is that when you were going through difficult times back then, some of us were a bit wrapped up in ourselves and maybe we looked the other way.’

‘The other way from what?’

‘I don’t know. But don’t you feel sometimes, looking back on teenage life, that it was a cruel time?’

‘Yes, I do.’ Frieda regarded Ewan with new interest – he had lost much of his cheeriness and seemed muted, thoughtful, much more appealing to her.

‘There’s an episode that haunts me,’ he said. ‘It happened years ago, but I keep thinking about it. I wake in the night and it’s there waiting for me. Once when I was out with Vanessa, she was attacked. There was a group of drunk or stoned teenagers or young men, four of them or maybe five, and first of all they surrounded me and jeered a bit. Said stupid things about the way I looked, about how they bet I couldn’t get it up. You know the kind of thing.’

‘Nasty.’

‘Yes, but that’s not the point. It was just words. But they suddenly lost interest in me and turned on Vanessa. They pushed her around, and then one of them started touching her breasts. I remember her expression – terrified and abject. And do you know what I did? Nothing. I stood there and did absolutely nothing while they touched up my poor wife. Then we just left and went home. What made it worse was that she tried to comfort me. She told me it had been the wisest thing not to get involved and she understood perfectly and it was nothing to feel bad about. I’ve never talked about this to anyone because I feel so ashamed of myself. Even now, all these years later, it’s a taboo subject.’

‘And yet you’re telling me.’

‘Perhaps that’s because in some strange way you’re someone people want to talk to, unburden themselves. I guess that’s your job. But also – well, it sounds stupid. I’d like to make amends. I can’t do anything about letting Vanessa down, but if there’s anything I can do to help you with whatever it is you’re after here, then I’d like to think you could trust me.’