Waiting for Wednesday Read Online Free PDF

brother?’
    ‘You know about David because
he’s Olivia’s ex and Chloë’s father.’
    ‘I see,’ murmured Sasha, knowing
better than to press her and thinking that in the last few hours she had learned more
about Frieda than in the whole course of their friendship.
    She pierced her poached egg and watched the
yolk well up, then ooze on to the plate. ‘What are you going to do?’ she
asked.
    ‘I haven’t decided. Anyway,
haven’t you heard? He’s dead.’
    Frieda hardly spoke on the way back. When
Sasha asked her what she was thinking about, she couldn’t answer. ‘I
don’t know,’ Frieda said. ‘Nothing really.’
    ‘You wouldn’t take that as an
answer from one of your patients.’
    ‘I’ve never been a very good
patient.’
    After Sasha had driven away, Frieda let
herself into her house. Inside, she fastened the chain and slid the bolt across the
front door. She walked upstairs to her bedroom. She took off her jacket and tossed it on
to the bed. She would have a long, hot bath and then she would go up to her little study
in the garret room and do a drawing: concentrate, yet think of nothing. Shethought of the graveyard, the desolate coastline. She pulled her
sweater over her head. She started to undo the buttons of her shirt but then she
stopped. She had heard something. She wasn’t sure whether the noise was inside or
a much louder noise outside and far away. She stayed completely still. She didn’t
even breathe. She heard the noise again, a small scraping sound. It was inside the house
and close by, on the same floor. She could feel its vibration. She thought of the front
door downstairs, with its bolt and chain. She tried to time it in her head, the
scrambling downstairs, the fumbling with the chain. No, she couldn’t make it work.
She thought of the mobile phone in her pocket. Even if she could whisper a message into
it, what good would that do? It would take ten minutes, fifteen minutes, to get here,
and then there was the locked, bolted door.
    Frieda felt her pulse race. She made herself
breathe slowly, one breath after another. She counted slowly to ten. She looked around
the room for a hiding place but it was no good. She had made too much noise as she came
in. She picked up a hairbrush from her dressing-table. It was hopelessly flimsy. She
felt in the pocket of her jacket and found a pen. She held it tightly in her fist. At
least it was sharp. It seemed like the worst thing in the world, but she edged out of
her bedroom on to the landing. It would take just a few seconds. If she could get down
the stairs without them creaking, then …
    There was another scraping sound, louder
now, and something else, a sort of whistle. It came from across the landing, in the
bathroom. The whistling continued. Frieda listened for a few seconds, then stepped
closer and pushed at the door of the bathroom so that it swung open. At first she had a
sudden sensation of being in the wrong room or the wrong house. Nothing was where it was
supposed to be. There was exposed plaster and pipes and a huge space. The room seemed
larger than she’d remembered. And in the corner a figure was bent over, pulling at
something to get it loose.
    ‘Josef,’ she said weakly.
‘What’s going on?’
    Josef was her friend – a builder from the
Ukraine who had entered her life in an unlikely way, falling through her ceiling when
she was with a patient. But he had not taken no for an answer, and had a fanatical
devotion to her. Now he started, then smiled a bit warily. ‘Frieda,’ he
said. ‘I did not hear.’
    ‘What are you doing here? How did you get
in?’
    ‘I have the key you give
me.’
    ‘But that key was for feeding the cat
when I was away, not for this.’ She gestured. ‘And what is this?’
    Josef stood up. He was holding a huge
wrench.
    ‘Frieda. You have been not well. I
look at you and see you being sad and in pain and it is difficult.’ Frieda started
to speak but Josef interrupted her. ‘No, no,