‘We were going to have pancakes,’ said Chloë, ‘but they went wrong.’
‘I’ll make you some toast.’
‘I don’t want to talk to you about stuff, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘That’s all everyone seems to want. For me to talk about my feelings and weep and then you can hug me and tell me everything will be OK in the end.’
‘I’m just going to make toast. Does your father know you’re here and skipping school, Ted?’
‘No. I’m not a child.’
‘I know you’re not.’
‘My dad’s got his mind on other things. Mum was shagging another man.’
‘That’s a painful thing for you to find out.’
‘Do you want to know how I feel about it? Because I’m not going to talk about that. Or anything else.’
There was a knocking at the door, hard and insistent, although Frieda wasn’t expecting anyone.
‘Come inside now,’ she said, to the two of them. ‘I’ll see who’s here.’
Judith stood on the doorstep. She was wearing a man’s shirt over baggy jeans held up by rope, and broken flip-flops. There was a colourful bandanna wrapped round her chestnut curls. Her eyes, set wide in her face, seemed bluer than when Frieda had seen her at that awful interview, and there was vivid orange lipstick on her full mouth, which was turned down sullenly. ‘I’m here for Ted. Is he here?’
‘I’m making toast for him. Do you want some?’
‘OK.’
‘This way.’
Frieda led the girl into the kitchen. She gave a nod to Ted, who nodded back, then raised her hand in half-greeting to Chloë, whom she obviously knew.
‘Louise is clearing out Mum’s clothes.’
‘She can’t do that!’ Ted’s voice was sharp.
‘She is.’
‘Why can’t she fuck off to her own house?’
‘Dora’s shut herself in her room and she’s wailing. And Dad’s shouting.’
‘At you, or at Louise?’
‘Everybody, really. Or nobody.’
‘He’s probably drunk.’
‘Stop it!’ She put her hands up as if to cover her ears.
‘Face it, Judith. Mum was fucking another man and Dad’s a drunk.’
‘Don’t! Don’t be so cruel.’
‘It’s for your own good.’ But he looked ashamed of himself.
‘Will you come back with me?’ his sister asked. ‘It’s better if we’re there together.’
‘Here’s your toast,’ said Frieda. ‘Help yourself to the honey.’
‘Just butter.’
‘I’m very sorry about your mother.’
Judith shrugged her thin shoulders. Her blue eyes glittered in her freckled face.
‘At least you’ve got Ted,’ said Chloë, urgently. ‘At least you two can help each other. Think if you were alone.’
‘You were together when you found out, weren’t you?’ asked Frieda. ‘But since then have you talked about it to each other?’ Neither of them spoke. ‘Have you talked to anyone?’
‘You mean someone like you?’
‘A friend or a relative or someone like me.’
‘She’s dead. Words don’t change that. We’re sad. Words won’t change that.’
‘There’s this woman the police sent,’ said Judith.
‘Oh, yes.’ Ted’s voice was raw with contempt. ‘Her. She nods all the time as if she has some deep understanding of our pain. It’s crap. It makes me want to throw up.’ There were hectic blotches on his cheeks. He tipped himself back on his chair so he was balanced on only one of its legs and spun himself slowly.
‘Mum hated it when he did that.’ Judith waved at her brother. ‘It was like a family thing.’
‘Now I can do it as much as I want and no one will bother about it.’
‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘I agree with your mother about that. It is very irritating. And dangerous.’
‘Can we go home, please? I don’t want to leave Dad on his own with Louise being all sad and disapproving.’ She faltered. There were tears in her eyes and she blinked them away. ‘I think we should go home,’ she repeated.
Ted lowered his chair and stood up, a spindly, scruffy figure. ‘OK, then. Thanks for the toast.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘Bye,’ said Judith.
‘Goodbye.’
‘Can we come again?’ Judith’s voice was suddenly tremulous.
‘Yes.’ Chloë’s voice was loud and energetic. ‘Any time, day or night. We’re here for you – aren’t we, Frieda?’
‘Yes,’ said Frieda, a little wearily.
She trudged upstairs to the bathroom. The bath was there in all its glory. She turned on the taps and they worked. But there was no plug. She looked under the bath and in the cupboard, but it wasn’t there. The plug in the washbasin was too small, and the one in the kitchen was an irritating metal kind that didn’t have a chain but twisted down. She couldn’t have a bath, after all.
Karlsson and Yvette arrived at the Lennox house shortly after Judith had left. The shouting was over, and in its place there was a curdled silence, an air of unease. Russell Lennox was in his study, sitting at his desk and staring blindly out of the window; Dora was in her room, no longer sobbing but lying curled into a ball, her face still wet and swollen from tears. Louise Weller had been cleaning up. She had washed the kitchen floor, vacuumed the stairs, and was just about to make a start on some of her sister’s clothes, when the doorbell rang.
‘We need to look through Mrs Lennox’s things one more time,’ explained Yvette.
‘I was making a start on her clothes.’
‘Perhaps not just yet,’ Karlsson told her. ‘We’ll tell you when you can do that.’
‘Another thing. The family want to know when the funeral can be.’
‘It won’t be long. We should be able to tell you in the next day or so.’
‘It’s not right.’
Karlsson felt an impulse to say something rude back to her but he replied blandly that it was difficult for everybody.
They made their way upstairs, into the bedroom that the Lennoxes had shared for more than twenty years. There were signs of Louise Weller’s work: there were several plastic bags full of shoes, and she seemed to have emptied most of the small amount of makeup Ruth had owned into the waste-paper bin.
‘What are we looking for?’ asked Yvette. ‘They’ve been through all this.’
‘I don’t know. There’s probably nothing. But this is a family full of secrets. What else don’t we know about?’
‘The trouble is, there’s so much,’ said Yvette. ‘She kept everything. Should we look through all those boxes in the loft with her children’s reports in? And what about the various computers? We’ve been through theirs, of course, but each child has a laptop and there are a few old ones that obviously don’t work any more but haven’t been thrown away.’
‘Here’s a woman who for ten years met her lover in their flat. Did she have a key? Or any documents at all that would shed light on this? Did she really never send or receive emails or texts? I’ve taken it for granted that this affair must have something to do with her death but perhaps there’s something else.’
Yvette gave a sarcastic smile. ‘As in, if she was capable of adultery, what else might she have done?’
‘That’s not exactly what I meant.’
Standing in the bedroom, Karlsson thought about how they knew so much about Ruth Lennox and yet didn’t know her at all. They knew what toothpaste she used and which deodorant. What her bra size was and her knickers and her shoes. What books she read and what magazines. They knew what face cream she used, what recipes she turned to, what she put in her shopping trolley week after week, what tea she favoured, what wine she drank, what TV programmes she watched, what box-sets she owned. They were familiar with her handwriting, knew what biros and pencils she wrote with, saw the doodles she made on the sides of pads; they had studied her face in the photographs around the house and in the albums. They had read the postcards she’d received from dozens of friends over dozens of years from dozens of countries. Rifled through Mother’s Day cards and birthday cards and Christmas cards. Checked and double-checked her email, and were sure she’d never used Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.