‘Is who?’
‘Is me, Josef.’
‘Josef?’
‘Is cold.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘Very cold.’
Frieda’s first impulse was to tell him to go away, then to slam the door. What was he doing coming around like this? Then she felt something she had felt ever since she was a girl. She imagined someone looking at her, judging her, commenting on her. What would she be saying? ‘Look at that Frieda. She rings him up, asks him a favour and he does it straight away, no questions asked. Then he comes to her, cold, lonely, and she just shuts the door against him.’ Sometimes Frieda wished the imaginary person would just go away.
‘You’d better come in,’ she said.
Frieda drew the chain off the bolt and opened the door. Biting wind and darkness gusted into her house and Josef fell in with them.
‘How did you know where I live?’ she asked suspiciously, before he lifted his face to her. She drew in her breath sharply. ‘What’s happened to you?’
Josef didn’t answer immediately. He crouched down and started trying to untie his laces, which were fused in a complicated sodden knot.
‘Josef?’
‘I mustn’t put dirt in your nice house.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘There.’ He pulled off one thick boot, whose sole was coming loose. His socks were red and patterned with reindeer. Then he started work on the next. Frieda examined his face. The left cheek was puffy and bruised and there was a gash on his forehead. The next boot was off now; he lined it up neatly with its pair and put them against the wall, then straightened.
‘This way,’ said Frieda, and led him into her kitchen. ‘Sit down.’
‘You are cooking?’
‘Not you, too.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I was, kind of.’ She ran cold water over a folded hand towel and gave it to him. ‘Press this against your cheek, and let me look at your head. I’m going to wash it first. It’ll sting.’
As she wiped away the blood, Josef just stared ahead of him. In his eyes she saw something fierce. What was he thinking? He smelt of sweat and whisky but didn’t seem altogether drunk.
‘What happened?’
‘There were some men.’
‘Have you been in a fight?’
‘They shout at me, they push me. I push back.’
‘Push?’ said Frieda. ‘Josef, you can’t do this. One day someone will pull a knife.’
‘They called me a fucking Pole.’
‘It’s not worth it,’ said Frieda. ‘It’s never worth it.’
Josef looked around. ‘London,’ he said. ‘It’s not all like your lovely house. Now, we can drink vodka together.’
‘I don’t have any vodka.’
‘Whisky? Beer?’
‘I can give you some tea before you go.’ She looked at the cut, still oozing blood. ‘I’ll put a plaster on that. I think you’ll get away without having stitches. You might have a small scar.’
‘We give help to each other,’ he said. ‘You are my friend.’
Frieda thought of arguing with that but it felt too complicated.
He knew the cat wasn’t really a cat. It was a witch pretending to be a cat. It was grey, not black like they usually are in books, and it had lumps of fur hanging from it, which normal cats didn’t have. Its eyes were yellow and they stared at him without blinking. It had a rough tongue and claws that pricked him. Sometimes it pretended to be asleep but then one yellow eye would open and it had been watching him all the time. When Matthew was lying on his mattress, it would climb onto his naked back and dig its claws into his skin, and its greasy grey fur would make him itch. It laughed at him.
When the cat was there, Matthew couldn’t look out of the window. It was hard to look out anyway because his legs shook too much and his eyes hurt in the light that came from behind the blind, the light from another world. That was because he was turning into something else. He was turning into Simon. There were red marks on his skin. And spots inside his mouth that stung when he drank water. Half of him was Matthew and the other half was Simon. He had eaten the food that was pushed into his mouth. Cold baked beans and floppy fat chips like worms.
If he pressed his head against the floor just by his mattress, he could hear sounds. Little bangs. Bad voices. Something humming. For a moment it reminded him of before, when he was whole, and his mummy – when she was still his mummy before he let go of her hand – cleaned the house and made things safe for him.
Today, when he looked out of the bottom corner of the window, the world had changed again and it was white and shining and it should have been beautiful but his head hurt too and beauty was only cruel.
Chapter Twenty
The shabby little train was almost empty. It creaked and rattled its way through the hidden parts of London – the backs of terraced houses with their soggy winter gardens, the dark-stained walls of abandoned factories, nettles and rosebay willowherb sprouting from cracks in the brickwork, glimpses of a canal. Frieda saw the hunched figure of a man in a thick coat, holding a fishing rod out over the brown, oily water. Lighted windows flashed past and occasionally Frieda glimpsed a person framed there: a young man watching television, an old woman reading a book. From a bridge, she looked down at a high street, Christmas lights looped round lamp- posts, people moving along the road carrying bags or tugging children, cars spraying water from their wheels. London unwound like a film.
She got out at Leytonstone. It was dusk and everything looked grey and slightly blurred. The orange street- lights shimmered on the wet pavements. Buses swayed past. The road where Alan lived was long and straight, a corridor of late-Victorian terraces lined with stout plane trees that must have been planted at the same time as the houses were built. Alan lived at number 108, at the far end. As she walked, slowing slightly to put off the moment she had to face him, she glanced into the bay windows of other houses, seeing the large downstairs rooms, the views through to the back gardens, lying dormant in winter.
Frieda had steeled herself for this. Even so, there was a tightness in her chest as she pushed open the gate and rang at the dark green door. In the distance, she could hear a jaunty double chime. She was cold and she was tired. She allowed herself to think of her own house, the fire she would light later on, once this was over with. Then she heard footsteps and the door swung open.
‘Yes?’
The woman in front of her was short, stockily built. She stood with her legs slightly apart and her feet planted firmly on the ground, as if she was prepared to do battle. Her hair was brown and cut short. She had large and rather beautiful grey eyes, pale smooth skin with a mole just above her mouth, a firm jaw. She wore jeans, a grey flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows, and no makeup. She was looking at Frieda through narrowed eyes. The line of her mouth was grim.
‘I’m Frieda. I think Alan’s expecting me.’
‘He is. Come in.’
‘You must be Carrie.’
She stepped into the hall; something pressed against her calf and she looked down. A large cat was winding itself around her leg, a purr rumbling in its throat. She bent down and ran a finger along its thrumming spine.
