Frieda’s expression became fixed. She took a sip of wine but didn’t speak.
‘When I think of some of the things I got up to …’ Olivia continued. ‘At least people weren’t filming me on their mobile phones and putting it on the Internet. That’s the difference. When we were teenagers, you could do things and they were done, gone, in the past. Now they get filmed and sent by phone and put on Facebook. People don’t realize they’re stuck with their actions for ever. It wasn’t like that with us.’
‘That’s not true,’ said Frieda. ‘People got hurt. People got pregnant.’
‘I wasn’t going to get pregnant,’ said Olivia. ‘Mummy put me on the Pill at about the time I learned to walk. I’m not saying I was a complete wild child, it’s just that … When I look at the some of the decisions I made, well, I’d like to see Chloë choose better than that.’ She topped up her wine glass. Frieda held her hand over her own glass. ‘But in some ways, I think Chloë is more mature than I was at her age. Now, I know what you’re going to say.’
‘What am I going to say?’
‘You’re going to say that if I was less mature than Chloë, I must have been a truly epic fuck-up.’
‘That’s not what I was going to say,’ said Frieda.
‘Then what?’
‘I was going to say that it was a good thing to say about your daughter.’
‘We’ll see,’ snorted Olivia. ‘Meanwhile the house is probably being reduced to its constituent parts.’
‘I’m sure you don’t need to worry.’
‘I don’t know what parties you went to,’ said Olivia. ‘I was once at this party. I was up in the parents’ bedroom with Nick Yates and by the time we were finished for the second time the people downstairs had carried the upright piano out into the garden and started to play it, then forgotten about it and it had started to rain. God. Nick Yates.’ A faraway expression came to Olivia’s face. Then the food arrived.
‘I’m so sorry.’ Olivia filled her plate from the different dishes. ‘Try this shrimp, by the way. It’s to die for. I’ve been talking solidly about myself and my problems and my wicked past. I haven’t even asked about how you’re feeling. I know it’s all been so terrible. How are you feeling? Does it still hurt?’
‘It’s not too bad.’
‘Are you still being treated?’
‘Just check-ups,’ said Frieda. ‘From time to time.’
‘It was the most terrible, terrible thing,’ said Olivia. ‘At first I thought we were going to lose you. You know, a couple of days ago I had a nightmare about it. I woke up and I was crying. Literally crying.’
‘I think it was worse for other people than it was for me.’
‘I bet it wasn’t,’ said Olivia. ‘But they say that when really terrible things happen, it stops feeling real, like it’s happening to someone else.’
‘No,’ said Frieda, slowly. ‘It felt like it was happening to me.’
On the way back to the house, Olivia was walking unsteadily and Frieda took her arm.
‘I’m looking for smoke,’ Olivia said. ‘Can you see smoke?’
‘What?’
‘If the house was literally on fire,’ said Olivia, ‘we’d be seeing smoke by now, wouldn’t we? Over the roofs. And there’d be fire engines and sirens.’
As they turned the corner into Olivia’s road, they saw the front door open, people milling around. There was a loud electronic beat, a low throb. There were flashing lights. As they got closer, Frieda saw a group sitting on the front steps smoking. One of them looked up and smiled.
‘It is Frieda, no?’
‘Stefan, right?’
‘Yes,’ he said, as if the idea amused him. ‘Frieda, you like a cigarette?’
Olivia gave an indistinct yell, brushed through the crowd on the steps and ran into the house.
‘No, thanks,’ said Frieda. ‘How has it been?’
Stefan gave a shrug. ‘Okay, I think. A quiet party.’
One of the boys sitting next to him laughed. ‘They were great, him and Josef.’
‘Like how?’ Frieda sat on the step beside them.
‘This gang of kids came. Chloë didn’t know them. They started jostling people. But Josef and Stefan made them go away.’
Frieda glanced at Stefan, who was lighting a new cigarette from the old one. ‘You made them go away?’
‘It was no big thing,’ said Stefan.
‘It was a big thing,’ said one of the other boys. ‘It was a very big thing.’
They laughed, and one said something to Stefan in a language she couldn’t understand, and he said something back, then looked at her.
‘He is learning a funny Russian in his school,’ he said. ‘I am teaching him.’
‘Where’s Josef?’
‘He is with a boy,’ said Stefan. ‘A boy is not well.’
‘What do you mean “not well”? Where are they?’
‘The toilet on the upstairs,’ said Stefan. ‘He was sick. Very sick.’
Frieda ran into the house. The hall was sticky under her feet and there was a smell of smoke and beer. She pushed her way past some girls. There was a group outside the closed door of the bathroom.
‘Is he in there?’ Frieda asked them in general.
Suddenly Chloë was there. She had been crying. Mascara was running down her face. Jack was hovering behind her, his hair sticking up in peaks and his face blotchy.
‘They couldn’t wake him,’ she said.
Frieda tried the door. It was locked. She knocked at it.
‘Josef, it’s me,’ said Frieda. ‘Let me in.’
There was a click and the door opened. He was with a boy who was leaning over the lavatory. Josef turned around with an apologetic smile. ‘He was like this when he come almost,’ he said.
‘Is he responsive?’ said Frieda. Josef looked puzzled. ‘I mean, can he speak? Can he see you?’
‘Yes, yes, fine. Just sick. Very, very sick. Teenage sick.’
Frieda turned to Chloë. ‘He’s all right,’ she said.
Chloë shook her head. ‘Ted’s not all right,’ she said. ‘He’s not. His mother’s dead. She was murdered.’
I tell you what, let’s go away somewhere this summer – somewhere neither of us has ever been. Though I can’t really imagine you anywhere except London. That’s where I met you and that’s the only place I’ve known you. Do you ever go anywhere else? The furthest afield I’ve seen you is Heathrow, which must be your idea of a kind of man-made hell. You hate planes, and you don’t like beaches. But we could get a train to Paris, or go walking in Scotland. You love walking the streets at night – but do you like other kinds of walking, where you have a map and a picnic? I know you – but there are so many things I don’t know about you. That’s what I’ve been thinking. But we’ve got lots of time to find things now haven’t we, Frieda? Call me soon – Sandy xxxxxx
EIGHT
‘Can I have a cup of tea?’ said Billy Hunt. ‘I want a cup of tea and I want a lawyer. Tea with milk and two sugars, and a lawyer sitting next to me for every moment that you’re inter-viewing me.’
Munster turned to Riley. ‘Hear that?’ he said.
Riley left the interview room.
‘And a lawyer,’ said Hunt.
‘Wait.’
They sat in silence until Riley returned. He placed the polystyrene cup on the table in front of Hunt, with two sachets of sugar and a plastic stirrer. Slowly, and with great concentration, Hunt tore the sachets open, tipped their contents into the tea and stirred them. He sipped the tea.