She moved closer to him and put her arms under his thick coat and his suit jacket. She could feel the warmth of his body through his thin shirt. His lips were against her hair. ‘I want you, too.’
In silence, they entered the building. In the lift, they turned to each other as the doors shut and kissed so fiercely that she could taste the blood on her lip, pulling apart as they reached his floor. Inside the flat, he took off her coat and let it fall to the floor. He unzipped her dress, lifted her hair and undid the clasp on her necklace, letting the thin silver chain coil into the palm of his hand, then placing it on the small table in the entrance hall. Kneeling on the wooden floor, he pulled off one shoe, then the next. He looked up at her and she tried to smile. Being happy scared her.
‘I’m not from Poland,’ Josef said, yet again, to the only other man in the pub, which was warm and cosy and down-at-heel and which he didn’t really want to leave.
‘I don’t mind. I like Poles. Got nothing against them.’
‘I am from the Ukraine. It is very different. In the summer we -’
‘I drive buses.’
‘Ah.’ Josef nodded. ‘I like buses here. I like to go on the top floor at the front.’
‘Your turn.’
‘I am sorry?’
‘Another one of these, mate.’
He held out his glass. Josef thought he had bought the last round. He put his hand into the pocket of his jacket, which wasn’t going to be thick enough to last him through the winter, and felt the coins there. He wasn’t sure he had enough for another round, but he didn’t want to be rude to his new friend, who was called Ray and was pink and round.
‘I will buy you a beer but perhaps not for me,’ he said at last. ‘I must go now. Tomorrow I start work for a woman.’
Ray gave a conspiratorial smile that disappeared when he saw Josef’s expression.
She loved the feel of the wind on her face. She loved the cool darkness and the way the streets around her were quite empty, only the sound of her footsteps and the rustle of dry leaves disturbing their silence. In the distance, though, she could still hear the rumble of traffic. She walked under the small bridge where, for as long as she had been taking this route, a pair of boots had hung from the parapet, swinging in the wind. At Waterloo Bridge she always paused for a while to gaze at the great buildings massed on either side of the river and listen to the soft, lapping sound of water against the shore. This was where London was on public view. From here, it spread for miles in either direction, dwindling at last into suburbs and then a tamed kind of countryside that Frieda never visited if she could help it. She turned her back to the river. Not far away, her narrow little house was waiting for her, with its dark blue door, the chair by the fire, the bed she had made that morning.
When she arrived home, it was well past three o’clock, but although her body was tired, her brain was teeming with thoughts and images, and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to sleep. A colleague of hers who was a sleep expert had told her that it was often helpful to focus on a tranquil image – a lake or a meadow of long grass, she had suggested – and that was what Frieda did now, lying in her bed with the curtains half open so that she could see the moon. She imagined herself inside the drawing that hung in the rented room where she worked, walking through the warm, dusty colours of its landscape. But instead she found herself imagining the picture that Alan Dekker had talked about, of a ship in a gale, with lashing ropes, everything in frantic motion. That must be how it sometimes felt inside his head, she thought. And then, thinking of Alan, she remembered her ceiling exploding and a body falling through in a shower of dust and plaster. She wondered if her room would be ready for her tomorrow, except, of course, that tomorrow was today, and in about three hours it would be time to get up.
When Josef arrived at the flat, Frieda could barely see him at first behind the huge panel of chipboard he was carrying. He leaned it against a wall in the consulting room and looked up at the hole.
‘I’ve got a patient coming in half an hour,’ Frieda said.
‘This takes ten minutes,’ said Josef. ‘Fifteen, maybe.’
‘Is this to patch the hole up?’
‘Before the hole gets better, it must first get worse. I will make it larger, pull the bits away. Afterwards I can make it strong and good.’ He gestured at the board. ‘This I will use to make a wall here and to give you your room back. I have measured and cut two pieces and it will fit.’
Frieda had so many questions and reservations about this process that she didn’t know which to express first. ‘How will you get in and out?’ she asked lamely.
‘Through the hole,’ said Josef. ‘I put the ladder down and then afterwards I will pull it up.’
He walked out and returned a couple of minutes later with two bags, one of tools and the other with different-sized pieces of wood. With amazing speed he wedged the first board into place and then Frieda heard various bangs coming from the side she couldn’t see. She peered round into the tiny end of the room, now half blocked in by the board. ‘What’s this going to look like when you’ve finished?’ she said.
Josef gave a rap at the board to check its solidity. He seemed satisfied. ‘The hole, filled in,’ he said. ‘Then the boarding goes away. Then one afternoon, the ceiling, papered and painted. And if you want it, the rest of the room painted. Same afternoon.’ He looked around. ‘Painted a proper colour.’
‘This is the proper colour.’
‘You choose. Boring colour, if you like. The people upstairs, they pay for it. I mix in with what they’re paying.’
‘I’m not sure that’s right,’ said Frieda.
Josef shrugged. ‘They make me work somewhere dangerous where you fall through the floor. They can pay for it a little bit.’
‘I’m not convinced about this,’ said Frieda.
‘I get the second board now and then you have your room back. Just a bit smaller for a while.’
‘All right.’
Frieda looked at her watch. Soon she would be sitting in this diminished room, hearing Alan’s grim dreams and his waking sadness.
Chapter Eleven
‘Honestly, Alan, I don’t know why you have to be so secretive all of a sudden.’
It was after supper and Carrie had been flicking through the channels with the remote control, but now she turned the television off and turned to him, folding her arms. She’d been snappy and thin-skinned all evening. Alan had been waiting for this conversation.
‘I’m not being secretive.’
‘You’re not telling me anything that goes on in there. I was the one who encouraged you to go and now you’re shutting me out.’
‘It’s not like that.’ Alan tried to think of how Frieda had put it earlier that day. ‘It’s a safe place,’ he said. ‘Where I can say anything.’
‘Aren’t you safe here? Can’t you say anything to me?’
‘It’s not the same. She’s a stranger.’
‘So you can say things to a stranger that you can’t say to your own wife?’
‘Yes,’ said Alan.
‘What kind of things? Oh, sorry, I forgot. You can’t tell me, can you, because they’re secret?’ She wasn’t used to being sarcastic. Her cheeks were flushed.
‘It’s nothing bad. They’re not secret like that. I’m not telling her I’m having an affair, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘If that’s what you want.’ Carrie’s voice was tight and high. She shrugged and turned the television back on.
‘Don’t be like this.’
‘Like what?’
