‘You were always naughty.’
‘You gave me away.’
‘I
‘You left me. Why did you leave me?’
‘Our little secret, eh?’
Frieda, sitting on the bed, watched Mrs Reeve intently. Surely she was talking about what she and her son had done, all those years ago.
‘Why me?’
‘You’re a naughty boy. What’s to be done with you, eh?’
‘I’m Alan. I’m not Dean. I’m your other son. Your lost son.’
‘Have you got a doughnut for me?’
‘You have to tell me why you did it. I have to know. Then I’ll leave you in peace.’
‘I like my doughnuts.’
‘You wrapped me in a thin towel and left me out in the street. I could have died. Didn’t you care?’
‘I want to go home now.’
‘What was wrong with me?’
Mrs Reeve patted his head gently. ‘Naughty naughty, Dean. Never mind.’
‘What kind of mother are you?’
‘I’m
‘He’s in trouble, you know, your precious Dean. He’s done something very bad. Wicked.’
‘I don’t know anything.’
‘He’s with the police.’
‘I don’t know anything.’
‘Look at me – at
‘I don’t know anything.’ She started to rock back and forward on her chair, her eyes fixed on Frieda, crooning the words as if they were a lullaby. ‘I don’t know anything. I don’t know anything. I don’t know anything.’
‘Mum,’ said Alan. He took her hand cautiously, screwing up his face, and tried out the word: ‘Mummy?’
‘Naughty. Very naughty.’
‘You never even cared, did you? You never gave me a thought. What kind of person are you?’
Frieda stood and took Alan’s arm. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘This is enough. You need to go home, where you belong.’
‘Yes,’ he said. She saw his face was streaked with tears. ‘You’re right. She’s just a nasty old woman. She’s not my mother. I don’t even hate her. She’s nothing to me, nothing at all.’
They sat in the cab in silence. Alan gazed at his hands and Frieda gazed out at the night. Snow was falling once again, this time settling on the pavements and the roofs and the branches of the plane trees. It would be a white Christmas, she thought, the first in many years. She remembered as a child tobogganing down the hill near her grandmother’s house with her brother. Stinging cheeks and snowflakes in her eyelashes and her open, shouting mouth, the world a white and rushing blur. How long since she had been tobogganing, or built a snowman or hurled a snowball? How long, for that matter, since she had seen her brother or sister? Her parents? Her whole childhood world had disappeared, and in its place she had constructed a world of adult responsibilities, of other people’s pain and need, of order and compartments, well-guarded boundaries.
‘It’s here, on the left,’ Alan was saying to the driver, who brought his cab to a stop. He got out. He didn’t close the door but Frieda didn’t follow.
‘Won’t you come in?’ he said. ‘I don’t know how to say this to her.’
‘To Carrie?’
‘I want you to help her understand.’
‘But, Alan…’
‘You don’t understand what it feels like, what I’ve found out today, what’s been happening to me. It won’t come out right. She’s going to be shocked.’
‘Why do you think that me being there will help?’
‘You’ll make it – I don’t know – professional or something. You can tell her what you told me and it’ll feel more, you know, safe or something.’
‘Are you coming or going?’ the driver asked.
Frieda hesitated. She looked at Alan’s anxious face, the flakes falling through the lamplight on the street and settling in his grey hair; she thought of Karlsson waiting at the station, snarling with frustration. ‘You don’t need me. You need her. Tell her what you know and tell her what you feel. Give her the chance to understand. Then come and see me tomorrow, at eleven o’clock. We’ll talk about it then.’ She turned to the cab driver. ‘Could you take me back to the station, please?’
Chapter Thirty-seven
Frieda had expected the noise to be gone and the station to be dark and deserted, but it wasn’t like that. As she entered, she was assaulted by the clatter, the din of metal chairs being pulled back, doors opening and closing, phones ringing, people shouting in the distance in anger or fear, feet clipping along the corridor. Frieda thought that perhaps a police station was at its busiest round Christmas, when drunk people were drunker, lonely people lonelier, the sad and the mad pushed beyond their endurance, and all the pain and nastiness of life rose to the surface. Someone might always fall through the door with a knife in their chest or a needle hanging off their arm, or a woman with a bruised face might lurch towards the desk saying he hadn’t meant to hurt her.
‘Any luck?’ she asked Karlsson, as he came to the front desk to meet her, although she didn’t really need to ask.
‘Time’s running out,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll have to release them. They’ll have won. No Matthew Faraday, no Kathy Ripon.’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘I’ve no idea. You could talk to them. Isn’t that what you do?’
‘I’m not a witch. I don’t have any magic.’
‘Pity.’
‘I’ll talk to them. Is it official?’
‘Official?’
‘Will you be there? Will it be taped?’
‘How do you want to play it?’
‘I want to see them alone.’
Dean Reeve didn’t look tired. He looked fresher than Frieda had ever seen him, as if he was feeding off the situation, unassailable. Frieda, pulling her chair up at the table, thought he was enjoying himself. He smiled at her.
‘So, they’ve sent you to talk to me. That’s nice. A pretty woman.’
‘Not talk,’ said Frieda. ‘To listen.’
‘What are you going to listen to? This?’
He started to tap his forefinger on the table top, the amiable half-smile still on his face.
‘So you’re a twin,’ said Frieda.
Tap tap-tap tap.
‘An identical twin at that. How do you feel about that?’
Tap tap-tap tap.
‘You didn’t know, did you?’
Tap tap-tap tap.
‘Your mother never told you. How does it feel to know that you’re not unique? To know that there’s someone out there who looks like you, talks like you, thinks like you? All this time you thought there was only one of you.’ He
