‘So you do think I’m vulnerable.’
‘We’re all vulnerable, in one way or another. Poole seems to have had a knack for finding people’s weak points.’
‘Well, he was kind to me. He seemed to like me.’ Frieda didn’t say anything and Jasmine Shreeve stiffened again. ‘You people think there always has to be something under the surface. That there are meanings beneath the meanings we give things. I say he liked me and I can see your eyes gleam. Every word becomes dangerous.’
‘Are you angry with therapists because your own therapy didn’t help you?’
‘What?’
‘Perhaps you feel that we promise answers and only give more questions.’
‘How did you know I had therapy? Who’s been talking about me?’
Jasmine Shreeve didn’t just seem angry, but properly scared. Her voice quivered and she put one hand up to her face in a self-protective gesture that Frieda was familiar with from her patients.
‘Nobody’s been talking about you. It just seemed likely.’
‘What have I said? I’ve said nothing! What else do you know? Go on. Tell me. Don’t just sit there staring at me like that, as if you can see inside me.’
Frieda sat back and paused. ‘Did the therapy help with your drinking?’
‘Not really. I …’ Jasmine stopped. ‘Did you read about it in some vicious blog and store it up to use against me? That’s bloody contemptible.’
Frieda looked at her curiously. ‘Do you really think I would do something like that to you?’
‘It would be a way of getting power over me. How else would you know?’
Frieda thought about that. How did she know? ‘I just felt it.’ She looked around. ‘You’re surrounded by so many things, everything you’ve collected through your life.’ She gestured at the open-plan room. ‘These little bowls, photographs in frames, china figurines, that little chest open to show its contents. Everything’s on view. But there are no wine glasses, no decanters, no bottles. And it’s nearly seven o’clock in the evening and you offered me tea, not a drink. So …’
Jasmine covered her face with her hands. Her voice was raw with emotion. ‘I let you into my house and talk to you openly and all the time you’re spying.’
‘Do you want to tell me about it?’
She raised her face. Her mascara had smudged. She looked older and at the same time more child-like. ‘You’re right. Everything you said. I did something terrible.’
‘What?’
‘I assaulted someone in a shop, a shop assistant, a young woman. Isn’t that awful? And pathetic? I was drunk and she was being a bitch. At least, that was what I thought at the time.’ She stopped. She seemed to have difficulty in getting the words out. ‘I was …’ Her face was flushed with shame. ‘I was sectioned for a while. For my own safety. And then I booked into a clinic and dried out. I haven’t touched a drop since.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I was so ashamed of myself.’
‘Jasmine, why is it so very terrible?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You had an addiction. You overcame it. Why are you so scared that people will find out?’
‘For a start it would be the end of my career. What’s left of it.’
‘Really? Aren’t there lots of people who make a living out of their stories of disgrace and redemption?’
‘That’s different.’
‘Why?’
‘I was a cosy, flirty, wholesome presenter trying to make people’s lives a little bit better. If people knew I was actually an old soak who’d ended up in the bin, screaming and attacking people, how do you think they’d react?’
‘I don’t know. But I can see it’s become an area of dread for you. The dread doesn’t shrink, but gets bigger and darker. Maybe it’s the secrecy that’s the problem.’
‘That’s easy for you to say. I can’t risk it.’
‘Is that what Robert Poole said? That you shouldn’t risk it?’
‘How do you know these things?’
‘Because you talked to him the way you talk to me,’ said Frieda. ‘So Poole understood you had a secret?’
‘He said that nobody must find out. That I could be ruined. He was very sympathetic. He said I could always talk to him about it, though.’ Jasmine stopped and looked at Frieda. ‘But you think he was wrong?’
‘I think giving advice is always complicated. But perhaps you should consider the power this part of your life has over you.’
‘You’re a therapist,’ said Jasmine. ‘Don’t you believe that a problem shared is a problem halved?’
‘Maybe. And maybe if you share a problem with one person, you’re giving that person control over you.’
Back at home, Frieda found an email from Tessa Welles. She couldn’t schedule a meeting for the next couple of weeks, but she was going to the theatre in Islington the following evening and could call in to see Olivia beforehand, around six o’clock. Would that be possible? Frieda rang Olivia, who said it wasn’t just possible, it was essential, the sooner the better, or she’d be going round to David’s house with a knife. She sent a reply to Tessa, copying it to Olivia, and gave Tessa Olivia’s landline and mobile numbers.
There was also a message on her phone from Karlsson, asking her to ring. When she got through to him, he said simply, ‘There’s nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Your favour, remember?’
‘Oh. You mean about Alan Dekker.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you’re with someone and can’t talk.’
‘Yes.’
‘Because you’ve stuck your neck out for me.’
‘Right.’
‘I’m grateful. So he really has disappeared, like Carrie says.’
‘It seems so.’
‘Don’t you find that odd?’
‘This is as far as I’m going, Frieda.’
She put the phone down and went up to her study in the garret where, from the skylight, she could see the lights of London flickering in the February dark. She sat at her desk and made doodles on her sketchpad with her soft-leaded pencil. She was thinking about Robert Poole, and the light touch with which he had picked people’s secrets from their souls. She was also thinking about what she had said to Jasmine about the insidious power of secrets. You hypocrite, she told herself, hatching in her drawing.
When she finally went downstairs again she found another email on her computer, from Sandy. She sat for a long while and then clicked it open.
I was with someone for a while and now I’m not, because she wasn’t you. Please, Frieda, talk to me.
Twenty-nine
‘Think of it as a day out.’
Yvette was driving and Karlsson was sitting beside her. They had left London early that morning, just as it got light, but had got snarled up on the North Circular and were only now on the M1, heading north. It was cold and blustery, and the lowering sky threatened rain.
‘A long day,’ said Yvette, but she didn’t really mind. She was glad to be spending all these hours alone with Karlsson, and also slightly self-conscious and nervous. ‘Manchester and then Cardiff. Eight hours’ driving, if we’re lucky with the traffic.’
‘We’ll get a pub lunch,’ said Karlsson. ‘I thought it was better to see the Orton brothers on the same day. Get a sense of them.’
‘What do you know already?’
‘Let’s see. The older one, Jeremy – he’s in his mid-fifties – is a company accountant for a large pharmaceutical firm. Must be wealthy. Married, with two daughters. He lives in Didsbury and he doesn’t see much of his mother. Once or twice a year, for a day or so. Frieda took against him.’
‘But she takes against lots of people.’