Josef was suspicious at first. ‘This thing,’ he said. ‘Is for charity?’
‘For you or for her?’ said Frieda.
‘For both.’
‘Karlsson rang me because he thought you could help. I think she’s been left in the lurch. But if she wants any work done, she’ll pay for it.’
Frieda thought he seemed a bit better. At least he smelt clean and he had dressed himself properly; his face was less gaunt, too. Reuben had told her that he was only working from day to day. Building work was still slow. He drove her in Reuben’s car. His old van was still sitting, with its flat battery and its flat tyre, outside the house. The traffic was bad and the journey took almost an hour.
‘The old joke is that it used to be quicker in London when people travelled on horseback,’ said Frieda.
Josef didn’t reply.
‘Except that it’s not really a joke,’ she said. ‘It’s true, I think.’
Josef just looked ahead.
‘If you’re doing a job in a London garden,’ she said, ‘and you cut yourself, you need a tetanus shot. It’s because of the horse shit. In Victorian times, people filled their gardens with it and the bacteria are still active.’
Silence from Josef. Frieda looked across at him. He seemed like someone who’d had the fight knocked out of him. Frieda knew that he hadn’t told Reuben anything about what had happened. When she had first seen him, after his secret return, she had said she was ready to talk to him whenever he felt like it. But perhaps she was going to have to make the first move.
‘Josef,’ she said, ‘something bad happened at home, didn’t it?’
He stared straight ahead, but she saw his hands tighten on the steering wheel.
‘Do you want to tell me?’
‘No.’
‘Because you believe that I’ll think the worse of you?’
‘I know you think the worse.’
‘Is that why you never told us you were here?’
‘You are good woman. Is easy for you. I am bad man.’
‘Josef, everyone’s good and bad. Everyone makes mistakes.’
‘Not you.’
‘That’s not true,’ Frieda said energetically. She hesitated, then said, ‘Last Friday, do you know where I was?’
‘Friday? When we all have dinner with Olivia?’
‘Before then. I was at the funeral of Kathy Ripon. You know, the young woman who was snatched by Dean Reeve and whose body was finally found in the storm drain.’ Josef, negotiating a mini-roundabout, nodded. ‘I was to blame for her death. No, don’t interrupt. I was. I acted hastily, I didn’t think about what I was doing and she died because of it. So. That’s me. What about you?’
He asked abruptly, ‘You think I am good father?’
‘What does that mean? I think you love your sons and miss them. I think you’d do anything for them. I’m sure you’ve made mistakes. But they’re lucky to have you.’
He braked, turned his heavy face to her. ‘They do not have me now. They have him.’
‘Him?’
‘Him. She have new man, they have new papa. They look at him like hero. Suit and tie and cakes on weekend wrapped up in box with ribbons. They look at me like something on bottom of shoe. Shit,’ he supplied. ‘Like shit.’
‘Why?’
Cars backed up behind them and started sounding their horns. Josef moved off again. ‘Because I am shit.’
‘What happened?’
‘She knew about straying.’
‘Straying? You mean, other women?’
Frieda had also known about the other women. Josef loved his wife with a sentimental, unwavering attachment, but she’d been in Kiev and he’d been in London, and for him it had been as if the two worlds were entirely separate: in one, he had a wife whom he loved, in the other, he didn’t.
‘She knew,’ Josef repeated. ‘I go home with my presents and my tender heart, all gladness, and my loneliness gone at last, and she shut the door. Just shut the door, Frieda. My boys see me turned like a dog away.’
‘Did you ever manage to talk about it?’
He shook his head from side to side, slowly. ‘I try. I meet new man. Good job. Toys for my boys. Cars that move with radio. Computer games with shooting and bombs. They not want my cheap little presents, not want me. Is over. All over. Life turned dust. I come back here again.’
‘So you never actually had a proper conversation about it?’
‘What to say, Frieda, what to do? Everything is over. Gone.’
‘To tell her what you feel, to hear what she feels, to work out if things really are over.’
‘I am nothing,’ said Josef. ‘I have no money. I live in faraway land. I am wicked when her back is turned. Why she want me as husband? Why you want me as friend?’
‘I like you,’ said Frieda, simply. ‘And I trust you.’
‘Trust? Me?’
‘Why else would I ask you for help?’
His eyes filled with tears. ‘Truth?’
‘Yes. Listen, we’re going to talk about this more, Josef. But now we’re here. Turn left. This is where Mary Orton lives.’
Josef found a place to park, and they both got out.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, as they walked down Brittany Road.
He stopped. ‘I thank you,’ he said, and put his hand on his heart, making his curious little bow.
They looked up at Mary Orton’s large detached house.
‘Is big house for one woman,’ said Josef.
‘Her husband’s dead,’ said Frieda. ‘Her children left home a long time ago. She probably doesn’t want to leave. Maybe she wants somewhere for the grandchildren to stay.’
Josef looked up at the house and Frieda looked away from it at Josef’s face. She liked that expression, the expression of someone engrossed in something she couldn’t see. ‘What do you think?’ she said.
He pointed up to a window on the second floor.
‘You see a crack there,’ he said. It was like a dark thread running down from the sill. ‘The house move a bit. Not so much.’
‘Is it bad?’ she said.
‘Not so bad,’ said Josef. ‘Is London.’ He held out his flat hands and shifted them about horizontally. ‘Is on clay. You have no rain and then much rain and the houses moved and you know …’ He mimed something, like a tired person flopping down.
‘Settle,’ said Frieda.
‘Settle,’ said Josef. ‘But not so bad.’
The front door opened before they had even approached it. Mary Orton must have noticed the two strangers staring up at her house. Frieda wondered how much time she spent gazing out of the window. She was wearing dark blue corduroy slacks and a checked shirt. Frieda saw that she must once have been beautiful. She was still beautiful, in a way, but her face was more than wrinkled. The flesh looked like brown paper that had been folded and folded and folded again, then flattened out. Frieda introduced herself and Josef.
‘Did the detective tell you that we were coming?’ she said, catching herself talking a bit loudly, as if Mary Orton was slightly deaf and slightly stupid.
She bustled them into the house and through the hall into a large kitchen that looked out on a shockingly large garden. There were two substantial trees at the end and more gardens on the other side and opposite. It was like looking at parkland. While Josef and Frieda were gazing at it through the French windows, Mary Orton busied herself behind them, making tea and getting out two cakes, putting them on plates and cutting slices.
‘A very small piece, please,’ said Frieda. ‘Half that.’
Josef took Frieda’s and ate it as well as his, drank tea and had a slice of the other cake. Mary Orton turned a grateful look on him.
‘If Josef has quite finished,’ said Frieda, ‘he can have a look at what needs doing. He’s very good.’
Josef put his plate into the sink. ‘That is a very nice cake, both of them.’
‘Have some more,’ said Mary Orton. ‘It’s just going to waste.’