by Adele Parks
‘Yeah, right, that,’ he muttered. He didn’t seem to believe it was a possibility.
He was gone all afternoon, but Fiona didn’t mind. She hung out with Seb, helped him with his geography homework and then watched banal YouTube videos with him that she had pretended to appreciate, and did in a way because they made him genuinely giggle. Oli had heard them laughing and eventually joined them on the sofa. The three of them sat closer than they might normally. There was something comforting about the tangy smell of Lynx body spray oozing off one boy, and fried food and pop off the other. From time to time, Fiona surreptitiously turned her head to catch the scent of them.
Mark returned just before supper, which Fiona had prepared, and they all ate together. She didn’t ask him what he’d been doing all afternoon. Where he had been. Both boys trudged back to their separate rooms after they’d cleared their plates, conversation exhausted. Being together they felt obligated to appear hopeful. It was wearying.
‘I’ll come up and turn your lights out later,’ Mark offered. He wanted to tuck them in, maybe kiss their foreheads, like he did when they were younger. Nowadays bedtime was more often about negotiating the relinquishing of phones. Oli didn’t respond at all, Seb shrugged. No one wanted to perform any of the usual bedtime rituals that marked the end of another day when their mum hadn’t come home.
‘The boys just need some space too,’ Fiona comments.
Mark nods. ‘Thanks, Fiona, your being here really helps.’
‘Oh, I’m doing nothing.’ She knows this isn’t true. She’s done the shopping, laundry and cooking; she’s being a surrogate mum but it’s not very English to brag about one’s usefulness in a crisis. Mark raises a small grin, understanding the code. ‘You’ve done everything. Not least simply keeping the conversation going at supper. A supper you made. The boys are a bit calmer around you.’
It hasn’t been discussed but it seems to be tacitly agreed that Fiona will stay on the sofa again tonight. She reaches for a bottle of Merlot that she bought this morning. She’s pretty sure it’s Mark’s favourite. She holds it up. He nods. She pours two large glasses.
Mark sits down in front of the family computer that is on a small desk in the corner of the kitchen, where the boys are encouraged to do their homework. Fiona smiles as she remembers talking to Leigh about this. ‘Is it so you can oversee their homework while you make tea?’ she’d asked.
‘No, it is to minimise the chance that they lose hours watching porn whilst pretending to do homework,’ Leigh had replied with a wink and a grin. Leigh knows the boys inside out. Fiona had often enough witnessed Leigh intuitively understand that whilst one of the boys may appear sulky, they were in fact nervous about something; then she’d offer to run through Seb’s lines for whatever school play he was rehearsing or she’d give Oli a pep talk about the likelihood of him being picked for the football team. Mark was more likely assuming the kids were just being a bit ‘teeny’ and morose. He often demanded that they ‘Turn that frown upside down’. Not that Mark is a bad parent, far from it. On the scale he is somewhere between better-than-most and good. Leigh is excellent. She has also always been an excellent friend too. If Fiona is ever feeling lonely or a bit depressed about a lousy date or the prospect of a long weekend alone, whatever, she never has to admit as much to Leigh. Leigh just seems to sense it and will immediately issue an invitation for Fiona to join them for Sunday lunch or maybe just to stand on the sidelines and watch Oli’s match.
It is unbelievable to think that lovely Leigh has done something so wrong. Something illegal, immoral.
Evil.
Because looking at Mark now, splintered with grief and heartache, it is hard to think of Leigh’s actions as anything less than evil.
This evening, Fiona had explained to Oli that Leigh was a bigamist. Seb is too young to understand it all, but Fiona thought it was fair to bring Oli up to speed. He is not a baby and he’d resent it if they treated him like one. Oli said he felt he was Luke Skywalker discovering Darth Vader was his dad. That seemed about right to Fiona. The whole thing was such a colossal shock.
Fiona doesn’t want to judge. Relationships are a morass of dos and don’ts; broken rules and hearts. Her own acidic experiences prove that. How many times had she discovered she was dating a married man, for instance? Not by design. She would meet someone on an app and they always say they are single at first, then when she started to care (always after sex) they would admit to being married. Fiona remembers chatting about this to Leigh.
‘They don’t want to hide it for any length of time. They want you to know, so you understand their level of commitment,’ she’d explained.
‘Or lack of it,’ Leigh had pointed out. Eyes wide.
‘Precisely.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Well, it’s not your fault.’
‘You know what I mean,’ mumbled Leigh.
‘You are so lucky to have Mark. Shall we clone him?’ Fiona had asked with a laugh. She didn’t like to appear mopey.
‘No. Yes. I mean no, we probably shouldn’t try to clone him but yes, I am lucky. I see that. I know that.’ Was Fiona just misremembering things now, filtering? But was Leigh confused, defensive? Fiona recalls her adding, ‘But he came with his drawbacks.’
‘The children?’ Fiona had gasped.
‘No, not the boys. I’d never describe the boys as a drawback. His steadfast insistence that we couldn’t adopt or foster. That was hard.’
‘But you have two anyway,’ Fiona pointed out.
Had Leigh blanched, blinked slowly? Fiona was sure she had. She wasn’t misremembering or rewriting history. ‘Oh yes, two children,’ Leigh had confirmed. Did she momentarily think Fiona knew more than she did?
Leigh has two children, that is two more than Fiona has; she should have counted her blessings. And now it turns out she has two husbands as well. It is unbelievable.
Fiona brings herself back to the here and now. ‘Do you think her parents are to blame?’ she asks Mark.
Mark shakes his head. He admires Fiona’s loyalty but has never been a fan of the therapy woe-is-me culture that allows people to blame mummy and daddy for their own fuckedupness. Fiona clearly sees as much reflected in his face because she tries to explain. ‘I’m just saying, from what she’s told me, her dad was emotionally disinterested – hell, every which way disinterested – and her mum tried too hard to please him. Or to be seen, or something. She was split between their two homes, wasn’t she? After they divorced, she—’
Mark cuts Fiona off impatiently. ‘Look, maybe you’re right. Maybe everything can be explained but nothing can be excused.’ He isn’t ready to unearth any understanding. Mark lets out a deep breath, pulls on a mask that radiates grim determination and taps the keyboard. Fiona abandons the folding of the laundry and plonks herself down on the bench next to him; she is just as curious as to what Mark’s search might throw up. Mark’s fingers quickly fly over the keyboard. Tap, tap, tap. Mark taps in Dan Jansen.
‘He’s a fifty-four-year-old Olympic speed skater?’
‘The police said he was Dutch, that’s unlikely to be how you spell his name,’ Fiona points out.
‘How do you think you spell it?’
‘Dan will be double “a”, maybe. And Jansen could be double “s”. Try that.’
There are a number of Daan Janssens but some are too young, others don’t live in London; it is an unusual enough name to quickly and easily identify the right man.
The real Daan Janssen is just as impressive as an Olympian. Maybe more so. He is CEO in some trading division in the city. Mark clicks through to the company website. His suave, smooth face shines out from the top of the ‘Who We Are’ page and the same image is at the bottom of the mission statement which Fiona and Mark read in full although, having done so, neither of them is really any the wiser about what the company does. Something important, powerful, lucrative. That much is obvious.
Mark cannot take his eyes off the image. The pixel
s begin to separate, dance in front of him as he stares at the blond, chiselled man with green eyes and an easy, confident smile that seems to say sincere, serious but also entertaining, invigorating. It is just a head-and-shoulders shot but somehow the man’s mass and self-assurance radiate off the screen and punch Mark in the face. Mark is shorter, darker, more hirsute. His smile is generally hard won, tighter. ‘She clearly doesn’t have a type,’ he mutters darkly.
Fiona doesn’t know how to respond. If she speculates that the men might have similar personalities – perhaps they are both ambitious, hardworking, courteous? – she is wading into murky waters. If she suggests the contrast is the appeal, she is as good as holding Mark’s head under the water, until he drowns. She stays silent as they trail through Daan’s social media accounts. He has Facebook, Insta and Twitter but it appears that he rarely posts on any of them. When he does, it is with photos of breathtaking scenery taken in far-flung exotic places: mountains, lakes, waterfalls. He – presumably they – obviously travelled a lot.
‘All those times she said she had to work away for a week, do you think they were real?’ asked Mark. ‘Or do you think she was with him?’
‘I was just wondering the same thing about that trip she had with her mother last year. You know, when the two of them supposedly met up in Dubai to celebrate Pamela’s seventieth birthday,’ sighs Fiona. ‘Did that happen or was it another lie? I remember thinking at the time ten days in Dubai seemed a lot. There are only so many glitzy malls you can trail through and Pamela isn’t a sunbather. Maybe Leigh spent a bit of time with her mum and then the rest with him.’
‘I’ll need to talk to Pamela and check the dates,’ mutters Mark grimly.
Fiona flashes him a smile that she hopes is sympathetic and supportive. ‘At least there are no pictures of beaming faces, his or hers.’ Although on four or five of the photos there are two shadows dripping across the scene. A man and a woman holding hands. Mark flinched when he first saw the shadows. He obviously recognised Leigh’s as easily as Wendy would know Peter Pan’s.
Kai Janssen has social media accounts too. Ones where she displays photos of artfully arranged books, cups of coffee, cocktails and flowers. Her hands, legs or feet are often in shot but never her face. She’s been very careful not to risk being recognised, no doubt aware that the six degrees of separation that are supposedly between everyone are often pinched to just two or three degrees on social media. Mark slowly and systematically clicks on the profiles of everyone who follows or has even liked her comments. ‘Should I reach out to each of these people?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know. To what end?’
‘I just want to know about her life. Her other life. I need to understand it.’
‘But would these people even respond? The few men who have liked her posts are likely to be couple friends – you know, Daan’s friends, really. They are unlikely to want to talk to you. And women are generally reluctant to interact with men they don’t know who approach them through Instagram.’
Mark sighs again, deeply, as though there is a storm inside him that needs to escape.
‘I could do it for you,’ Fiona offers.
‘Will you?’ He brightens.
‘Yeah, leave it with me. The women at least are more likely to respond to me.’
Fiona starts to tap on her phone while Mark continues to search for information about Daan. It doesn’t take long to find details of where the other husband’s office is and where he lives. People are unaware what information telephone directories and electoral rolls hold.
‘I’m going to visit him,’ he announces firmly.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘I have to. I need to see her home, to know this is real.’
Fiona wants to put her arms around Mark and give him a friendly hug the way she had on countless other occasions, but she stops herself. Obviously, the gesture would just be intended to reassure but it seems a weird thing to do if Leigh isn’t in the vicinity. Loaded. Open to misinterpretation. ‘It is real, Mark. I’m sorry but it is,’ she says, carefully. ‘And honestly, I think we both know you are too angry to meet up with him. It might, you know, end badly.’
Mark turns red; it isn’t clear to Fiona if it is embarrassment or a deepening fury. She knows a lot about the Fletchers’ lives. She knows about the time Mark held a guy up against a wall by the scruff of his jacket, legs dangling, even though the guy was taller than Mark. The incident had happened at one of those children’s adventure parks, a place with trampolines, rope ladders and ball pits. A family place. The guy had lifted Seb off a rocking horse so that his own son could have a go. Seb had just got on the horse after queuing for it for twenty minutes, and when Oli – protective of his younger brother – pointed out that was unfair, the guy had yelled at him. He made both boys cry. They were very young. Leigh had been there and from her account, the guy did sound like a prick.
‘Mark was terrifying,’ Leigh had laughed, not really afraid. ‘I thought this bloke was going to pee himself.’
‘What did Mark say?’ Fiona had wanted to know.
‘I don’t think it was what he said, it was how he said it. He was all quiet and threatening, proper psycho.’
And there was that time when a neighbour complained about the boys playing football in their own back garden, he said they were annoying and too noisy. He called them brats. Mark tore a strip off the neighbour. Even though he was elderly. He just snapped. ‘Where the hell do you think they should be, if not in their own garden? Hanging around the corner shop? Drinking in the rec?’ He’s never spoken to the neighbour since.
Fiona has witnessed his fierce over-protectiveness first hand. Once, when they were all on a day trip to Bath, Leigh bumped a car as she was parking, a tiny bump, no damage done. She was full of apologies but the other driver called her ‘a silly careless cow’. Mark was out of the passenger seat in seconds; he threw the guy against the car bonnet like he was in an episode of The Wire.
‘I’ll go and see him,’ offers Fiona.
‘You? Why?’
‘Well, first because, like you, I am curious but, unlike you, I’m not furious.’
‘Hey, that rhymes. You are a poet and you don’t know it.’ Mark treats Fiona to a tired grin. It strikes her that hard-won smiles have their charm.
‘I can report back. We can’t risk you going over there and losing it but maybe we do need to know more about him. I said before, one or other of you is a suspect.’
‘Well, I haven’t hurt her.’
‘I know that, silly.’
It was an uncompromisingly childish word, designed to beguile and pacify. Mark used it on the children when they were much younger. Still, he appreciates it. Some part of him wants to be infantilised. It is too much. Too tragic.
‘How will you make contact?’
‘I’ll call on him, tell him the truth, I’m a friend of Leigh’s and I want …’
‘Want what?’
‘I want to get to know Kai.’
22
Oli
Oli sits at the top of the stairs in the dark and listens to his dad and Fiona talk in the kitchen. He often does this, listen in on adults. It’s not because he’s sneaky. It’s because they are. Normally, there is not much to hear. Normally, his parents talk about what to watch on TV or whether there is enough milk for breakfast. Tonight, obviously there is a lot more being said. There was on Sunday too. His parents really went at it. He was surprised at the time and also he wasn’t. Not really. His dad really downplayed the scale of the row to the police. You can’t blame him for that, though. He’d be mad to admit to what was really said. Considering everything.
He is glad she has gone. Bye bye, skank. Who needs a fucking mother, anyway? He’s nearly sixteen, he’s three inches taller than her already.
What a day! Fuck. He is buzzing. There is a weird energy running through him. Like he’s nervous, anxious but also like he’s just won a match or something, scored a hat-trick. He
can’t believe his life at the moment. For ages he’s been just the same as everyone else really; thinking about exams, his hair, football, his mates, who he should ask to the prom – all that normal stuff, and that was OK, but now this! He can’t get his head around it. The police are investigating his mother’s disappearance. Bad. No matter how chill he wants to appear about it, he knows that is very bad. But then GCSEs have been cancelled! Good, no matter how shit he is feeling about everything else. That is a result! It looks like they are going to work out grades on coursework or something, which is pretty neat for him because his mum – he catches himself – Leigh helped him on quite a bit of that.
Oli has lots of friends and is popular at school, with everyone except the teachers, that is, who think he’s lazy, disorganised and not trying hard enough. This might all be true, he doesn’t know. He just thinks exams suck, he’s crap at them. He had started to think they were probably right, the teachers. Most likely he would struggle to get to a good sixth form and eventually a good university, or even a shit one, come to that. So why bother?
He remembers saying that to Leigh, quite often. She actually never calls him lazy, or disorganised. She just says things like, ‘There’s a knack to exams, we just have to work on developing that.’ She made it sound easy, and as though they were in it together. When he was getting into knots with some impossible homework and close to losing it, she’d say, ‘Maybe we should find a different way of looking at this problem?’ She’d let him dictate his thoughts into his phone and then help him write up what he’d recorded as a structured essay. It sort of worked with the way he thought about stuff.
Thinking about her being this thoughtful and patient, makes his stomach spasm.
So yeah, his coursework was OK. He might get some seven and eight grades now. Even in the non-science subjects. Leigh always said he was a seven and eight sort of kid. She didn’t agree with the teachers. She said he’d find his own success, his own way. It was a pretty good thing to hear.