When she rang the bell on Reuben’s front door it was just after eight. Josef opened the door and Frieda was hit by the smell of coffee and frying bacon.
‘Aren’t you at work?’ she said.
‘This is my work,’ said Josef. ‘And I am staying on site. Come.’
Frieda followed him through to the kitchen. Reuben was sitting at the table, a half-finished breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and fried bread in front of him. He put down the newspaper and looked at Frieda with an expression of concern. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Just tired,’ she said.
She felt self-conscious under the gaze of the two men. She pushed her fingers through her hair, as if she thought there might be something trapped in it she couldn’t see.
‘You look not well,’ said Josef. ‘Sit.’
She sat down at the table. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I haven’t had proper time to sleep.’
‘You want breakfast?’ said Reuben.
‘No, I’m not hungry,’ said Frieda. ‘I’ll just have a bit of yours.’ She took a piece of fried bread from Reuben’s plate and chewed it. Josef put a plate in front of her and, over the next few minutes, filled it with egg, bacon and toast. Frieda glanced across at Reuben. Perhaps the reason she looked ill was that he looked so much better.
‘You make a nice couple,’ she said.
Reuben gulped some coffee. He took a cigarette from the packet lying on the table and lit it. ‘I’ll tell you that living with Josef is a bloody sight better than living with Ingrid,’ he said. ‘And don’t tell me that that’s not a proper way of dealing with my problems.’
‘All right, I won’t.’
‘I’ve been thinking, I might ask Paz out.’
‘Oh no you don’t.’
‘No?’
‘No. Anyway, Paz would say no, if you were stupid enough to put her in the position to do so.’
Josef sat down at the table. He shook a cigarette out from Reuben’s packet. Frieda couldn’t stop herself smiling at the easy intimacy in the way they interacted with each other. Reuben tossed his lighter over and Josef caught it and lit his own cigarette.
‘I’m not here to talk about
‘What’s up?’ said Reuben.
Frieda picked up a piece of bacon and bit into it. When had she last eaten? She looked at Josef. ‘Reuben was my therapist for a while,’ she said. ‘When you’re training you have to be analysed yourself and I used to see Reuben three times a week, sometimes four, and talk about my life. Reuben knows all my secrets. Or, at least, the ones I chose to share with him. That’s why it was difficult for him when I tried to step in and help him. It was like a father being told what to do by his delinquent daughter.’
‘Delinquent?’ said Josef.
‘Naughty,’ said Frieda. ‘Badly behaved. Uppity. Uncontrollable.’
Reuben didn’t reply, but he didn’t look angry either. The room was almost foggy with the smoke. Reuben and an East European builder: Frieda couldn’t remember when she had last been in a room as smoke-filled as this one.
‘When you stop therapy,’ she continued, ‘it’s like leaving home. It takes time to start seeing your parents as ordinary people.’
‘Are you seeing anyone now?’ said Reuben.
‘No. I should be.’
‘This is a boyfriend,’ said Josef.
‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘When therapists ask if you’re seeing someone, they mean a therapist. Boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives come and go. Your therapist is the really important relationship.’
‘You sound angry, Frieda,’ said Reuben.
She shook her head. ‘I want to ask you a question,’ she said. ‘I want to ask you one question and then I’ll go away.’
‘Then ask it,’ he said. ‘Do you want to go somewhere private?’
‘I’m fine here,’ said Frieda. She looked down at her plate. It was almost empty. ‘More than anyone else, you’re the person who taught me that my job is to sort out what’s going on in my patient’s head.’
‘That is undeniably your job.’
‘You can’t change your patient’s life. You just have to change the patient’s attitude to that life.’
‘I hope my teaching was a bit more nuanced than that,’ said Reuben.
‘But what about using a patient as a means of helping someone else?’ said Frieda.
‘Which sounds like a strange thing to do.’
‘But is it wrong?’
There was a delay while Reuben stubbed his cigarette out in a saucer and lit another. ‘I know this isn’t a session,’ he said, ‘but, as you know, when a patient asks you a question, what you normally do is try to suggest that the patient already knows the answer and is afraid of it and is trying to pass the responsibility on to the therapist. So, was it worth walking all the way over to Primrose Hill to hear what you knew I was going to say?’
‘I still needed to hear it said out loud,’ said Frieda. ‘And I got a good breakfast.’
Frieda heard the door open and she looked around. A young woman, a very young woman, came in. She was barefoot and wearing only a man’s dressing-gown many sizes too big for her. She had messy blonde hair and looked as if she had just woken up. She sat down at the table. Reuben caught Frieda’s eye and gave the tiniest of nods towards Josef. The woman held out her hand towards Frieda. ‘I am Sofia,’ she said, in an accent Frieda couldn’t quite place.
Chapter Thirty-nine
‘So, just the usual thing?’ said Alan. ‘You want me to talk.’
‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘I want to talk about something particular today. I want to talk about secrets.’
‘There are plenty of those. It turns out that most of the secrets in my life were secrets I didn’t even know about.’
‘I don’t mean those sorts of secrets. I mean the secrets you
‘What kind of secrets?’
‘Well, for example, what about the secrets you keep from Carrie?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Everyone needs secrets,’ said Frieda. ‘Even in the closest relationship. You need your own space. A locked room, a desk, maybe just a drawer.’
‘You mean a bottom drawer where I keep my porn?’
‘It could be,’ said Frieda. ‘Do you have a bottom drawer where you keep your porn?’
‘No,’ said Alan. ‘I was saying that because it’s a cliche.’
‘Cliches exist because there’s something true about them. If you had a few porn magazines in a drawer somewhere, that wouldn’t be a crime.’
‘I don’t have porn magazines in a drawer or in a box or buried in the garden. I don’t know what you’re trying to get me to say. I’m sorry to disappoint you but I don’t have secrets from Carrie. In fact, I’ve told Carrie that she’s completely free to look in any of my drawers, open my mail, go through my wallet. I’ve got nothing to hide from her.’
‘Let’s not call it a secret, then,’ said Frieda. ‘I’m thinking of another world you can go into. Let’s call it a hobby. Lots of men have hobbies and they have a space where they go and do this hobby. It’s an escape, a refuge. They go to their sheds and build model aeroplanes or Tower Bridge out of matchsticks.’
‘You make it sound stupid.’
‘I’m trying to make it sound harmless. I’m trying to find out where your private space is. Do you have a
