But they didn’t know why or how she had managed to conduct a ten-year affair under the nose of her family. They didn’t know if she’d felt guilty. They didn’t know why she had had to die.
On an impulse, he pushed open the door to Dora’s bedroom. It was very neat and quiet in there. Everything was put away and in its proper place: clothes neatly folded into drawers, paper stacked on the desk, homework books on the shelves above it, her pyjamas folded on the pillow. In the wardrobe, her clothes – the clothes of a girl who didn’t want to become a teenager yet – hung above paired, sensible shoes. It made Karlsson feel sad just to look at the anxious order. A thin spindle of pink caught his eye on the top of the cupboard. He reached up his hand and pulled down a rag doll, then drew in his breath sharply. It had a flat pink face and droopy legs, red cotton hair in plaits, but its stomach had been cut away and the area between its legs snipped open. He held it for several moments, his face grim.
‘Oh!’ Yvette had come into the room. ‘That’s horrible.’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’
‘Do you think she did that herself? Because of what she found out about her mother?’
‘Probably.’
‘Poor little thing.’
‘But I’ll have to ask her.’
‘I think I’ve found something. Look.’ She opened her hand to show a little dial of tablets. Karlsson squinted at them. ‘This was in that long cupboard next to the bathroom – the one full of towels and flannels, body lotion, tampons and all sorts of bits and pieces they didn’t know what to do with.’
‘Well?’
‘The Pill,’ said Yvette. ‘Inside a sock.’
‘Funny place to keep your contraceptives.’
‘Yes. Especially when Ruth Lennox had a coil.’
Karlsson’s mobile rang. He took it out of his pocket and frowned when he saw who was calling. He had had two brief texts and one message from Sadie, asking him to get in touch. He was about to let it go to voicemail again. But then he hesitated: she clearly wasn’t going to give up and he supposed he might as well get it over with.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. I’ve been busy and –’
‘No. You didn’t call me back because you didn’t want to see me again and you thought if you ignored my calls I might just go away.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Isn’t it? I think it is.’
‘I made a mistake, Sadie. I like you a lot and we had a nice evening, but it’s the wrong time for me.’
‘I’m not calling to ask you out, if that’s what you’re worried about. I got the message. But you need to meet me.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘It’s a very good idea. You need to sit down opposite me, look me in the eyes and explain yourself.’
‘Sadie, listen –’
‘No. You listen. You’re behaving like an awkward teenager. You asked me out, we had a nice evening, we made love – that’s what it felt like to me, anyway. And then you crept away, as if you were embarrassed. I deserve more than that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I deserve an explanation. Meet me at the same wine bar at eight o’clock tomorrow. It’ll only take half an hour, less. You can tell me why you behaved like that, then you can go home and I won’t call you again.’
And she ended the call. Karlsson looked down at the mobile in his hand and raised his eyebrows. She was rather impressive, that Sadie.
THIRTY-FOUR
Frieda always felt a little strange when she went south of the river. But going to Croydon was like going to another country. She’d had to look it up on a map. She’d had to go to Victoria and get on an overground train. It had been full of commuters coming into London, but going out it was almost empty. London, this huge creature, sucked people in. It wouldn’t be until late afternoon that it blew them out again. As the train crossed the river, Frieda recognized Battersea, the derelict power station. She even saw, or nearly saw, where Agnes Flint’s flat must be, just near the huge market. After Clapham Junction and Wandsworth Common it gradually became vague and nameless for her, a succession of glimpsed parks, a graveyard, the backs of houses, a shopping centre, a breaker’s yard, a flash of someone hanging out washing, a child bouncing on a blue trampoline. Even though the streets had become unfamiliar, she continued to stare out of the window. She couldn’t stop herself. Houses and buildings didn’t hide from trains the way they did from cars. You didn’t see their smart façades but the bits behind that the owners didn’t bother about, that they didn’t think anyone would really notice: the broken fences, the piles of rubbish, abandoned machinery.
When she got out of the station, she had to use the street map to find her way and even that wasn’t simple. She rotated the map again and again to find which exit she had come out of. Even so, she walked in the wrong direction and had to look at the map again and orientate herself by seeing where Peel Way joined Clarence Avenue. She had to walk back past the station and then through a series of residential streets until she reached Ledbury Close. Number eight was a pebble-dashed detached house, indistinguishable from its neighbours, except that it was somehow more cared for – there was more precise attention to detail. Frieda noticed the new windows, the frames freshly painted in glossy white. On each side of the front door a purple ceramic pot contained a miniature bush, trimmed into a spiral. They were so neat, they looked as if they had been done with scissors.
Frieda pressed the doorbell. It didn’t seem to make a sound, so she pressed it again and still heard nothing. She stood there, feeling irritated and uncertain. Either no one was in or the doorbell was broken and she was standing there pointlessly, or it wasn’t broken and she was annoying someone even before she had met them. She wondered whether she should ring the bell again and possibly make the situation worse or bang on the door with her fist and make it worse still or just keep waiting and hope for the best. And she wondered why she was even worrying about something like that. Then she heard a sound from somewhere inside and saw a blurred shape through the frosted glass of the door. It opened, revealing a large man, not fat but big so that he seemed to fill the doorway. He was almost completely bald with messy grey hair around the fringes of his head. His face was flushed with the red of someone who spent time outside and he was dressed in bulky grey work trousers, a blue and white checked shirt and heavy dark leather boots that were yellow with dried mud.
‘I wasn’t sure if the bell was working,’ said Frieda.
‘Everyone says that,’ said the man, his face crinkling around the eyes. ‘It rings at the back of the house. I have it like that because I spend a lot of time in the garden. I’ve been out there all morning.’ He gestured up at the blue sky. ‘On a day like this.’ He looked at Frieda questioningly.
‘Are you Lawrence Dawes?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘My name is Frieda Klein. I’m here because …’ What was she going to say? ‘I’m here because I’m trying to find your daughter, Lila.’
Dawes’s smile faded. He suddenly seemed older and more frail.
‘Lila? You’re looking for my Lila?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know where she is,’ he said. ‘I lost touch with her.’