A Wayward Game Page 10

  Beneath the bare facts of Diane’s disappearance it is possible to glimpse a netherworld of power and privilege. Is this world so truly corrupt? Is the only choice for those living in it to be corrupted themselves, or to be destroyed?

  Of course, I suppose that most of us should be grateful that we at least have a choice. Diane did not. And that, ultimately, is why I don’t want her to be forgotten.

  I copy and paste my reply, and then send it to Lurker. I sit at my computer for a while, waiting for a reply, but none is forthcoming. I glance at the list of visitors currently online, and find that Lurker’s name is no longer amongst them. I click away from the site with an inexplicable sense of disappointment, and get on with my work for the afternoon.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Frieda hates London; but then, in an increasingly wretched life, there are very few things that Frieda actually likes. I’m not even convinced that she likes me; certainly she neither smiles nor waves as she emerges from the ticket barriers at Paddington Station and sees me waiting for her on the concourse. She tramps through the crowds, carrying her twenty-stone body with the same weary resignation with which she drags her suitcase behind her.

  “Bloody trains,” she grumbles, by way of greeting. Her voice is deep, her accent unmistakeably Welsh. “Delayed for hours, I was. Spent ages sitting just outside Bristol. Nobody bothered to even tell us what the problem was. Bastards! They’re nice enough when they’re after your money, but once they’ve pocketed it they treat you like shit.”

  “Hello, Frieda.” I give her a hug, which she doesn’t return. She smells of travel: of diesel, stale smoke, and sweat.

  “Hello yourself. Let’s have a bite to eat, and then you can take me to my hotel.”

  Food, shelter and sleep are Frieda’s main priorities when it comes to daily life, and I suppose that this is understandable. When you have so little left, the simple demands of survival – the next breath, the next meal – are of paramount importance, and no doubt provide their own consolations. The tacit decision to go on living at least gives one a sense of purpose, and a certain power. One more breath, one more step, something to eat and a safe place to sleep: all you need, all any living creature needs. Forget about everything except surviving.

  Frieda’s eating habits, let it be said, are not conducive to survival. I know from experience that she eats little that is not deep-fried, and so take her to a café just around the corner, where the day’s menu is chalked up on a blackboard behind the counter, and you shout your order at a rather deaf and perpetually gloomy elderly man. Frieda chooses a battered sausage, a large portion of chips, onion rings and a Coke, and then gives a cynical grunt when I ask for salad.

  “You’re as bad as my doctor,” she grumbles. “Always going on about losing weight and eating well. Look, I live in one the poorest parts of the country, in a house that’s about to fall down, and I’ve got no money to repair it. Every time I set foot outside I risk being mugged, or worse. I’ve got no family, no friends, I’m terminally depressed, and you expect me to drink carrot juice and take up jogging? Fuck off!”

  I know by now that appeals to health and longevity fall on deaf ears with Frieda, and so avoid them. We sit down at a Formica-topped table in the corner, and Frieda gives a relieved “Oof!” as she sinks down onto her chair. Her face is perpetually red, her long brown hair frizzy and unkempt. She wears no make-up, and dresses in tracksuit bottoms and loose jumpers. Seeing her in the street, you might mistake her for a bag lady. She wouldn’t care if you did; life has taught her that there are far worse things than other people’s opinions.

  “How are you?” I ask while we’re waiting.

  “No better than normal,” she says, cracking open her Coke and taking a ravenous slurp. “I can’t sleep, I can’t work. All I do is sit and cry and look at old photos. I’ve brought some more for you to see.” She rummages around in her handbag, draws out a large manila envelope, and puts it down on the table. “Nice ones, these. Taken when she was a bit older, some of them.”

  I open the envelope and draw out a photograph of a chubby baby wearing a white smock dress and sitting on a sofa, smiling toothlessly at the camera. Cute, certainly, but indistinguishable from hundreds of other babies. The next photograph shows a slightly older child, of perhaps three or four years, standing on a windswept beach in a coat and wellington boots and grinning impishly, her small hands holding out some seashells as if for the viewer’s inspection. At first glance, she too is unremarkable, her pudgy face and unflattering pudding-bowl haircut the generic stuff of childhood. Then I look more closely, and see, in embryonic form, the slightly lopsided mouth and slightly bulbous nose that would consign the adult woman to simple prettiness rather than beauty, and recognise Diane.

  I leaf through the other photos. Diane in pigtails and a school uniform; a prepubescent Diane in a leotard, grinning as she holds up a gymnastics certificate; a teenaged Diane kneeling in a sunlit garden with her arms around the neck of a brown-and-white spaniel. This last photograph surprises me, not least because it also shows a younger Frieda kneeling beside her, smiling beatifically down at both dog and child. Twenty years ago, I see, Frieda was gorgeous: slimmer, prettier, with hair that fell to her shoulders in soft auburn waves.

  “Yeah,” Frieda says, watching me across the table. “I was a pretty little thing myself back then. Back when things like that mattered. You wouldn’t believe it now, would you?”

  It would hardly be politic to answer such a question, and so I shrug noncommittally as I put the photos back in the envelope. “I haven’t seen those before,” I say.

  “No. I keep them all in a big tin beneath the bed. Go through them a bit at a time. Makes it easier. Y’know, I look at her sometimes – at that face and those bright eyes of hers – and I can’t believe she’s gone. Can’t believe it, even though I know it’s true.” She takes a crumpled tissue out of her pocket, and dabs at her eyes. “Where did we go wrong, eh?”

  There were many points, I know, at which Frieda’s and Diane’s lives twisted in unexpected and unfortunate ways. Often it was through no fault of their own. The first calamity to befall them came when Diane was ten, and her father walked out of the family home, leaving no provision for his wife and daughter. A younger and more resilient Frieda struggled on for several years anyway. She took a job in a supermarket, and somehow managed to feed and clothe her daughter, and encouraged her to work hard at school, the better to escape from the slums of South Wales. Then she scraped together the money to pay for Further and Higher Education, all the while harbouring hopes that her daughter would achieve things that she herself had only ever dreamed of, only to find that her timid aspirations were by that time lagging far behind Diane’s own emerging ambitions, and that she was being left behind. Even that didn’t shatter Frieda’s spirit, though. That came later.

  A man in greasy cooks’ whites appears, and puts two plates down on the table without a word before tramping back into the kitchen. Frieda wipes away the last trace of tears, picks up a chip, and puts it into her mouth.

  “Oh, fuck it,” she says. “Feeling sorry for myself won’t do any good, will it? I need to focus. Any news this end?”

  I tell her about my meeting with Mr Walsh. Her ears prick up when I mention his seeing Sallow early on the morning of Diane’s disappearance, and how he didn’t believe Sallow’s explanation for it, but then she sighs.

  “Not enough, is it?” she asks.

  “No, I’m afraid not. Any progress at your end?”

  “Not a bloody thing. I write to my MP every month, and every month I get the same reply. I liaise with the Missing Persons Bureau, even though I’m pretty sure that Diane will never be found. I shame representatives of the Metropolitan Police into meeting me occasionally, but God knows why I bother. They never say anything new, just the same old crap. We can’t reopen the investigation without any new evidence,” Frieda says, mimicking the stiff, officious manner of the bureaucrat. “Nothing I say makes a blind bit of differen
ce. Fuck it, Katherine, you and I and everyone with half a brain knows that bastard Sallow killed Diane. But there isn’t enough evidence to even get him into court, let alone convict him. Look,” she says, pointing her knife at me in a rather threatening manner, “there’s nothing more I can do. The police, politicians – they can’t or won’t help. But you’re a journalist, Katherine. You can dig a bit deeper, ask questions. You’ve got contacts.”

  “I try, Frieda. I’ve always tried. I got sacked for it, if you remember.” For a moment, my mind returns to that dreadful, humiliating day: my editor apologising even as he told me to clear my desk, saying that he had to let me go, that the paper was fighting falling circulation and increased competition and had enough enemies already and couldn’t afford more. “We’re up against some powerful forces, Katherine” – his very words, which could conceivably refer to rival papers or the internet, but spoken in a tone that told me that this man, whom I had thought fearless, was afraid.

  Frieda harrumphs. “I know. I know what you’ve done, and how much you’ve given up. But keep on trying, because there’s nothing and no one else.” She sighs and puts down her knife, and another fat tear quivers on her bottom eyelid. “I can’t rest, y’know. Not until there’s some kind of end to this. I’ve got to see this through to the end. If it wasn’t for that, I couldn’t carry on. I’d just die, and be glad of it.”

  I hand her a packet of tissues, and she takes one and blows her nose loudly. Some of the other customers turn and look, and then promptly look away: in London, your misery is your own business.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Moments of weakness. They keep on happening. At the most bloody embarrassing times, too.”

  “Don’t apologise. If anyone has reason to cry, it’s you.”

  “Tears don’t help, though, do they? They just waste time and energy.” She wipes her face again, and turns her attention back to her meal, as if by concentrating on that she can drive away her grief. Conversation stops for a while. I pick at my salad, and think of Frieda’s faith in my ability to drive this case forward. She’s overestimating my importance, of course. I’m a freelancer these days, unprotected by editors and cut off from colleagues. My jobs vary, but they tend toward fluffy pieces about fashion, fitness and celebrity gossip. My income varies from month to month, and is never entirely secure. I am living in a kind of limbo, at the outer edges of my own profession, and have been for quite some time.

  It was different before, of course, when I was working for a national broadsheet and trying to make my name as a serious investigative journalist. I’d worked hard, gained the trust and respect of my editor, and had as a result been awarded a certain amount of freedom. If I was adamant that something warranted a story, I’d generally be allowed to run with it. In the aftermath of Diane’s disappearance, I was allowed to delve into the case, and largely on my own terms. But all of that came grinding to a halt when I wrote the article that led to the threat of legal action by Sallow’s solicitors. The editor backed down and issued an apology, and shortly afterwards I was made redundant. Officially the two events were unrelated, but privately my editor as good as admitted that I was a ritual sacrifice. Even today, this still rankles, and yet I understand his position. He had been intimidated, not only by solicitors but by those higher up at the media corporation, and had been left with very little choice but to let me go. The free press is less free than people think, or want to believe.

  We finish our meals relatively quickly, and walk the short distance to Frieda’s hotel, an inexpensive little fleapit on the corner of Gloucester Terrace and Craven Road. It’s dark by now, and cars and taxis crawl past in a jerky procession. Fierce lights and harsh sounds split the night open, and I find it comforting that, no matter what else happens, things ultimately just carry on as they always have. In the end, nothing is of much significance. The best you can do, perhaps, is just not to care about anything. Good advice, but impossible to follow.

  “So what’s the plan for tomorrow?” I ask Frieda as we walk.

  “Nine o’clock, meeting at Scotland Yard. Nothing new’ll be said, so it’ll be over in half-an-hour or so. I’ll meet you outside at ten, just to be on the safe side. Then we’ll go out to Bucklock Wood. I’ll try not to get upset again.” She frowns. “You know what’s funny? After Diane disappeared, a few months afterwards, I thought: I’m not going to cry anymore. Don’t you dare cry, you stupid bloody woman. You can cry when justice is done, and then they’ll be tears of joy. But those tears just keep on falling. I can’t seem to keep them in.”

  “Let them out, Frieda. It might help.”

  “It doesn’t. Anyway, I’m telling you this now, and I mean it: this time, there really won’t be any more tears. Crying won’t bring her back, or put things to rights. Only action can do that. And I swear I won’t stop, and I won’t rest, until Diane can rest too.” We stop outside her hotel, and she gives a sudden smile that transforms her, taking years off her. “Of course, I have to sleep sometimes. It’ll be an early night for me tonight. See you tomorrow, Katherine. Be on time.”

  We hug, and I watch as she drags her suitcase up the steps and into the grimy lobby. Brave words; a brave woman, for all her tears. But I wonder if she can stay true to those promises. Everyone, I think, gives up eventually. Sometimes, you aren’t left with a great deal of choice.

  But for tonight, Frieda will take refuge in her dreams. She’ll lie down on her lumpy hotel bed and close her eyes, and in her mind she’ll be with Diane, in that comforting imaginary world where time means nothing and death is but a deception. I know a great deal about that world, too. In fact, I’d say I was almost a permanent resident there.

  I make my way back to Spitalfields. It’s late, and I undress quickly and get into bed, taking refuge in the darkness and silence. At these quiet times, I can almost imagine that Diane never died at all, or that time never moved on from when we were together. In this nebulous otherworld, she is lying beside me still. Her soft arms slide around me, and I feel her lips upon mine. I remember how passionately she made love, even as she feared what the world would think of that passion.

  Becoming lovers was easy, as simple and natural as breathing or sleeping. Drunken nights, loneliness, a longing for company and affection and excitement – the simple alchemy behind a thousand student flings, a thousand nights of reckless delight in narrow student beds. Diane’s lips felt soft and gentle against mine, her hands searching as they slid up my back and to my shoulders before slipping down to my breasts. We explored each other’s bodies with the curiosity of teenagers who had only recently become used to our own flesh. It was almost innocent; we had, as yet, little knowledge of the curious twists and turns that sexuality can take, and what we did in that narrow bed was the simple expression of an instinct. And yet it gave us greater joy than we had ever felt before. The feeling of Diane’s hands and lips on my body took me into a world of pure pleasure, a glorious place where only the present exists, and there is no room for either fear or regret. I knew that this was what I did for her, too, when I saw how she reacted to my inexpert caresses. We stroked and kissed and pleasured each other until we both came, and then we fell asleep like children, our bodies crammed together in the single bed.

  The next morning there was not regret, exactly, but anxiety.

  “I don’t know what my mother would say about this,” Diane told me, turning her head to one side on the pillow. Her hair was messy from sleep or the lack of it, and her face bare of make-up. I remember thinking how beautiful she looked, and how young.

  “You don’t have to tell her,” I said.

  “Someday I’ll have to. At least, I will if this actually means something, if it isn’t just fun.”

  “It isn’t. Not for me, anyway.”

  “I know.” She bit her lip. “I’m not a lesbian, you know. I never even thought I was bisexual or anything.”

  “Neither did I, until I met you.”

  “Why should we have this effect on each other, then?”
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br />   “Why does anyone have an effect on anyone?” I slipped my arms around her, and kissed her. “You can’t really analyse it, Diane. Sometimes, someone just gets to you like that, and that’s all there is to it. I don’t think gender has much to do with it. I don’t think that past experiences or some assumed sexual identity have much to do with it, either. It’s just the way it is. That’s the way I see it, anyway.”

  “Not everyone will see it that way, Katherine.”

  “We can’t help the way people see us. There’s no point worrying about it.”

  “That’s one of the things I admire about you. You just don’t care what people think of you.” She kissed me again, and her hand slipped over my hip. “When I’m with you, I don’t really care either.” Her hand moved lower, between my legs, and she began to stroke me there, softly. “At the moment, I don’t care at all. All I care about is this.”

  I lie awake, remembering, for a long time. I remember her as she was, and all the things we did together, and how I dared to think that it would last forever. At last, with midnight past and sleep impossible, my hand slides down my body and my fingers begin to caress my clitoris. At first my body feels numb, as numb as emotions can sometimes be. But gradually my senses reawaken and begin to tingle, and I imagine lying here in this bed with Diane, or with Neil, or with both or neither of them, until I cry out into the night as I come, and dreams and reality alike are swept away on a tide of sensation.

  ~

  Going back to places you once knew can be a haunting experience. The place itself, you find, has changed in a thousand small ways: shops have closed and others have opened, buildings have been demolished and others constructed, and trees have been planted or cut down. Other things have changed little, or not at all. And so you wander through this known and unknown landscape like a ghost, belonging to it and yet cut off from it entirely.