Blue Monday

‘Five minutes,’ he said.

‘Five minutes what?’ asked Frieda.

‘You stay here,’ he said. ‘I come back in five minutes.’

Frieda made two phone calls cancelling sessions for later that day. Then, as she sat down to finish her notes, there was another knock on the door. It took her a moment to recognize the man standing there now that he was clean, smelling of soap and dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of trainers with no socks. His dark brown hair was swept back off his face. He held his hand out. ‘My name is Josef Morozov.’

Almost as if she were in a dream, Frieda gave his hand a shake and introduced herself, although for a moment she thought he was going to lift her knuckles to his lips and kiss them.

In his other hand he was holding a packet of chocolate biscuits. ‘You like biscuits?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘We have to talk. Do you have tea?’

‘We definitely need to talk.’

‘We need tea. I make tea for you.’

Frieda kept almost nothing in the little flat where she saw patients but she did occasionally make herself tea and coffee. So she took him through and watched him while he pottered around her kitchen. With her having to tell him where everything was, it took longer than if she had done it herself. They each took a mug and walked through to the consulting room.

‘You could have died,’ Frieda said. ‘Are you OK?’

He held up his left arm and looked at it as if it belonged to someone else. There was a livid red scar running down the inside. ‘I fell from a ladder,’ he said, ‘and through a window. And once I broke my leg when a…’ He gestured vaguely. ‘It ran on me. With a wall behind me. This was nothing.’

He sipped his tea and looked out of the window at the demolition. ‘That is a big job,’ he said.

‘Shall we talk about the big job in here?’

Josef turned and looked at the rubble on the floor, then up at the hole. ‘It is bad,’ he said.

‘This is where I work,’ said Frieda.

‘You cannot work here,’ said Josef.

‘So what am I going to do?’ said Frieda. ‘By which I mean, what are you going to do?’

Josef looked up at the hole again, then gave a melancholy smile. ‘I am to blame,’ he said. ‘But the person who built that floor, he is the one who is really to blame.’

‘I’m not so bothered about your floor,’ said Frieda. ‘What matters to me is my ceiling.’

‘It’s not my floor. I am doing the work while the people are at their house in the country. This is their town flat. You work every day?’

‘Every day. Except weekends.’

He turned to her and put the hand that wasn’t holding the mug on his heart, in a gesture that had a certain theatrical flourish. He even gave a slight bow. ‘I will fix everything for you.’

‘When?’

‘It will be better than it was before I fell through the hole.’

‘You didn’t fall through the hole. You made the hole.’

He frowned thoughtfully. ‘When do you need to work here?’

‘I’d like to work here tomorrow, but I guess that’s out of the question.’

Josef looked around. Then he smiled. ‘I put a partition here,’ he said. ‘I work behind it. You have your office. When you’re not here, I put new paper up. Paint it. I’ll paint it a proper colour.’

‘This is a proper colour.’

‘You give me a key and the partition will be up tomorrow and you will have your office again. Just a smaller office.’

He held his hand out. Frieda pondered just a moment. She was giving her key to a man she had never met before. But what else was she going to do? Find another builder? What was the worst that could happen? Never ask that question. She opened a drawer, found a spare key and gave it to Josef. ‘You’re Ukrainian?’ she said.

‘Not Polish.’

The best ones are the shy ones, with their anxious smiles and their wobbling bottom lips. The ones who miss their mother and who sit on the steps in the cold, damp weather until their teacher comes and makes them stand up, run around. You need them eager to please, obedient. You can mould.

There’s a little boy who is sitting on the small wooden seesaw, waiting for someone to climb on to the high other end. But no one comes and he goes on sitting there. At first, he is smiling and hopeful, then bit by bit his smile freezes on his face. He glances around. He sees the other children looking at him and deciding not to join him. He tries to call another boy over but the other boy ignores him.

He’s a possibility. You have to know what you’re looking for but you have to be careful as well. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. Time isn’t a problem.

Chapter Ten

‘That was interesting,’ said Sandy.

They were walking hand in hand through the City towards his flat, just a few hundred yards away. On either side of them, imposing buildings rose up and towered over them, their height almost obscuring the sky. Banks and financial institutions and august law firms with their names above the doors. The smell of money. The streets were clean and deserted. Traffic lights changed from red to green and back, but only the occasional cab passed through them.

They had been to a leaving party for a doctor who worked with Sandy, and whom Frieda had also known for several years. They had arrived separately, but halfway through the evening, Sandy had come up to where Frieda was standing in a group and placed his hand on her back. She had turned towards him and he had bent his head and kissed her on the cheek, too near her mouth and too lingering for it to be a greeting between acquaintances. It was a clear statement, and of course he had meant everyone to notice it. When she had turned back to the people she had been talking to, she saw how interest brightened their glances, though nobody said anything. Now they had left together, aware of all the eyes following them, the speculation they were leaving behind. Frieda and Sandy, Sandy and Frieda – did you know, did you guess?

‘Next thing I know you’ll be inviting me to meet your boss. Oh, I forgot – you are the boss, aren’t you?’

‘Do you mind?’

‘Mind?’

‘That people know we’re a couple.’

‘Is that what we are?’ she asked sardonically, though her heart was beating hard.

They had reached the Barbican. He turned and took her by her shoulders. ‘Come on, Frieda. Why is it so hard? Say it out loud.’

‘Say what?’

‘We’re an item, a couple. We make love, make plans, talk to each other about what we did in the day. I think about you all the time. I remember you, what you said, how you felt. God, here I am, a forty-something consultant. My hair’s going grey and I feel like a teenager. Why is it so difficult for you to say it?’

‘I liked it when we were a secret,’ Frieda said. ‘When nobody knew about us except us.’

‘It couldn’t stay a secret for ever.’

‘I know that.’

‘You’re like a wild animal. I’m afraid that if I move suddenly, if I make the wrong sort of sound, you’ll run away.’

‘You should get a Labrador,’ said Frieda. ‘I had one when I was a child. Every time you left her, she howled. She was as grateful every time you came home as if you’d been away for ten years.’

‘I don’t want that,’ said Sandy. ‘I want you.’