Free Thursday's Children by Nicci French Page B

half in love with the place.
    ‘For someone else,’ said Sandy, firmly. ‘It would take years, and it’s not what I want to be doing with my time.’
    ‘What do you want to be doing with your time?’ asked Frieda, a little later, sitting in a café a few streets away, eating a hot buttered teacake and looking at the increasing rain outside, the leaves blown past the window like yellow rags.
    ‘Not plastering walls.’
    ‘Do you know how to plaster walls?’
    ‘I want to spend time with you.’
    ‘I suppose we could plaster the walls together,’ she said doubtfully.
    ‘No. Other things need our attention.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Like you, Frieda.’
    She winced. ‘That makes me sound like an emergency.’
    They walked to the next property, which was between King’s Cross and Islington. Although it was only mid-afternoon, the light was beginning to fail. There were still weeks to go before the shortest day of the year, and Frieda thought of her own house waiting for her, the shutters she would close against the dying day and the fire she would light. They passed a busker, his hair wet and an open violin case containing just a few coins on the ground beside him. He wasn’t playing anything, but as they approached he passed his bow across the strings half-heartedly. Frieda threw in several more coins and he gave a small salute.
    The property they were viewing – they’d unconsciously started to adopt estate-agent vocabulary – was tall and narrow, a green front door and steep stairs with a worn carpet. The flat was on the two top floors. The agent fumbled with the keys to open the door and Frieda and Sandy walked swiftly through the rooms; the owners would be coming back in a quarter of an hour and, anyway, they’d seen too much of other people’s homes for one day. There was a living room with two big windows, a narrow kitchen leading off it. A study, just big enough for a desk and chair, that looked out over someone else’s wet garden with a silver birch tree and a green bench in it. And upstairs, a bedroomwith a roof terrace. Sandy and Frieda pushed open the warped door and stepped out on to it, the rain blowing in gusts against their faces. They gazed out across rooftops, cranes and spires, the glittering lights of the great city dissolving into a streaming grey sky.
    ‘That’s St Pancras.’ Frieda pointed.
    ‘This will do just fine,’ said Sandy. ‘We can drink coffee up here in the mornings. Now let’s go home.’



10
     
    The phone rang. It was Josef. ‘Are you there?’
    ‘Of course I’m here,’ said Frieda. ‘I answered the phone.’
    ‘You are going out this evening?’
    ‘What?’ said Frieda. ‘No, I don’t think –’
    ‘Good,’ said Josef. ‘We bring food.’
    ‘We?’ Frieda began, but the phone had already gone dead.
    An hour later the bell rang. Frieda opened the door and Josef and Reuben were standing on the step. Both of them pushed past her. Frieda saw that they were carrying shopping bags. There was a smell of garlic, vinegar, a clink of bottles.
    ‘You’re going to have to stop doing this,’ said Frieda. ‘We’re grown-ups now. We make arrangements days ahead of time.’
    Josef laid the bags on the table and turned towards her. Frieda saw that he was wearing a dark jacket and a tie. He stepped forward and hugged her.
    ‘Hey.’
    Josef and Reuben looked around and saw Sandy coming down the stairs.
    ‘You are welcome back,’ Josef said. He stepped forward and hugged Sandy and Reuben hugged Sandy, then Frieda. She felt a sudden nostalgia for the days when men shook hands. Middle-aged men seemed to have turned into schoolgirls. Reuben produced a bottle of vodka from one of thebags and Josef disappeared into the kitchen, returning with four shot glasses.
    Frieda gave a helpless shrug to Sandy. ‘He knows my kitchen better than I do,’ she said.
    Josef filled the glasses and handed them round. Reuben looked at Josef. ‘Say something.’
    ‘No,’ said Josef.