‘You’re back from your trip already? Why?’
‘It doesn’t matter why, but I need to find Bram urgently, so if you have any idea where he might have gone, you have to tell me.’ Losing the battle, she begins to sob again, sees Lucy’s grimace of concern. ‘He’s taken the boys out of school and I don’t know where they’ve gone and there’s a—’
‘Fi, shush a moment,’ Tina interrupts. ‘They’re here. The boys are here.’
‘Say that again?’ Did she hear correctly over the roar of her own fear, over the thumps of the removals team on the other side of the door?
‘They’re with me, right here, watching TV. I wasn’t supposed to phone you until later to ask about getting them back to you in the morning.’
‘Oh, thank God. They’re staying with you tonight? Is that what Bram’s arranged?’
‘Yes, if that’s all right with you?’
‘Of course, yes, thank you.’
She’s aware of Lucy’s shoulders going slack with relief. This isn’t going to be that story then, the worst, but can go back to being this one, the one about the house. She stands and reaches for the kettle. Tea making can finally get underway.
Fi wipes her eyes with a square of Lucy’s kitchen roll. In spite of her relief, she remains rigid with anxiety. ‘Why aren’t they in school, Tina? Are they okay?’
‘They’re fine. Bram just thought it would be easier for them not to go in. And I doubt he’s far away, so if I were you I’d get out of the house before he sees you.’
What on earth is she talking about? ‘Tina, please listen to me: there’s a crisis here. The house has been completely emptied and Bram’s phone is out of service and there’s a woman who says . . .’ Fi stops, can’t repeat it, it sounds so absurd: who says she’s bought my house.
‘I know all about that.’ Tina’s patience is exaggerated, a sign of impatience in her. ‘It’s supposed to be a surprise, Fi.’
‘What surprise? Will you please tell me what’s going on!’
‘The redecoration. Isn’t it obvious? Poor Bram, he’ll be upset you’ve arrived before it’s finished. Maybe you should go to the flat, ask the decorators not to let on you’ve been there? Or you’re welcome to come over here. Shall I tell the boys you’re home early?’
‘No, no, don’t do that.’ She has to stem this flow of questions, more questions she can’t answer, and try to think. ‘You just carry on with whatever you’ve planned. Thank you. I’ll phone you later. Give my love to the boys.’
She hangs up. ‘She says you’re here to decorate,’ she tells Lucy. ‘There’s no other explanation for all our stuff having been cleared out. Where have you put everything? Why won’t you tell me?’
Abandoning her kettle, Lucy comes to sit next to her. Her movements and breathing are soft, as if she’s making herself as unobjectionable as possible. ‘I’m not decorating, Fi, I think you can see that. I’m moving in. As I understand it, you and your family moved out yesterday. It sounds as if you were out of town, were you?’
‘Yes, I’m not supposed to be back yet, but I needed my laptop.’ The sound she utters is supposed to be laughter but it comes out wrong, broken. ‘Pointless to ask where that is.’
Lucy just smiles, gentle, encouraging. ‘Look, your kids are safe, that’s the main thing, isn’t it? Let’s just catch our breath and think where else your husband might be. What about trying his office?’
‘Yes.’ Fi looks at Lucy, this stranger in her kitchen now guiding her thoughts and actions, and she thinks, What’s the connection, Bram? Why have you lied to Tina? To me? Where have you gone?
Her hands tremble as she takes up the phone once more.
What have you done?
Geneva, 2.30 p.m.
He cannot stay in the room a moment longer; if he does, he will hurl himself at the sealed window – over and over until he slumps to the floor. He’ll go out, find a bar, have a beer. Tomorrow, he’ll move on. He won’t risk staying more than a single night here. He’ll go to the train station and he’ll look at the departures board and take his pick. Cross into France, like he thought he might, to Grenoble or Lyon.
Good, he thinks, a plan. Or at least something better than this, this suffocating limbo.
Pocketing his wallet, he senses the lightness, the absence of counterbalance, the missing items he has carried habitually for as long as he can remember:
House keys.
11
‘Fi’s Story’ > 00:42:57
I haven’t said much about the boys, I know. I suppose I’ve been hoping I could keep them out of this. The thing is, I haven’t even broken the news to them yet about the house. My latest lie is that it’s been flooded after all the rain we’ve had, but I can’t expect to fob them off for much longer, especially once this is released and people start talking. Primary schools have grapevines too, pruned with dedication by the parents at the gate, which I’ve avoided since Bram disappeared. (Mum has been doing the school run.) I’ve avoided Alder Rise altogether.
Their names are Leo and Harry and they are eighteen months apart. Leo has just turned nine and Harry will be eight in July. They both have Bram’s dark unruly hair and pale gentle mouth and we all think they’ll have his height too. Being so close in age, Harry follows in Leo’s footsteps even while the prints are fresh. Harry’s Year Three teacher was Leo’s the year before; at swimming lessons, Leo moved from Dolphins to Stingrays the term Harry entered Dolphins. On paper, they look to be taking identical paths.
But they are utterly different in character.
Harry is bold. He makes eye contact with adults and his voice is a foghorn with a single setting. It’s a point of principle to him that he doesn’t seek consolation or comfort. He’ll injure himself, slip down wet steps or crash-land from the magnolia, and he’ll look for the exit through his tears, grimly resisting the outstretched arms, the offers of comfort.
Leo is the crier, the cuddler, the obliger. Inevitable, then, that I sometimes think my bond with him is stronger. He had quite bad allergies as an infant as well, which led to a couple of A & E visits before the right medication was prescribed. We still keep it to hand, in case of a flare-up.
I discussed the new living arrangements with him as we unloaded the dishwasher together. Harry claimed table laying as his chore, but the dishwasher was Leo’s department.
‘What do you think of our new plan?’ I asked him.
‘It’s okay.’
‘You understand how it’s going to work?’
‘Mmm, I think.’
‘Things aren’t going to be that different. We’ll all still live here, it’s just that Dad and I will take it in turns.’
How important was it to see your parents together? If we hadn’t announced it semi-formally as we had, how long before the boys noticed of their own accord that we were never in the same place at the same time? It was possible it might have been some time.
‘Do you have any questions for me?’ I saw him think, looking down at the last of the clean utensils in his hands. He was not the questioner, Harry was the questioner. Leo was the accepter. ‘Anything?’ I prompted. ‘Anything that doesn’t make sense?’
I could see him trying to summon something as he gazed down at his fistful of cutlery. Perhaps he just wanted to please me. I had no idea if he thought of me as being a victim to be supported or as an instigator to be resented. Neither, perhaps.
At last his face cleared. ‘Why do we have so many spoons?’ he said.
He was so happy when I burst out laughing.
Oh, Leo. My Leo. I pray he hasn’t been permanently scarred by all of this, though it’s hard to imagine how he hasn’t.
Bram, Word document
Bless his heart, Harry cried his eyes out when I talked to him about the new set-up and he never cries. He’s the family Stoic.
‘Are you and Mummy still married?’
‘Yes, absolutely. For now.’
‘Then why won’t you be in the house together?’
&n
bsp; ‘It’s a peace process, mate. We will be in the house together, just not long enough to argue. Because arguing’s not very nice for anyone, especially you and Leo.’
‘Will we still go on holiday together?’
‘Probably not for a while. We won’t have as much spare cash.’
‘Mum said we can still go to Theo’s house in Kent at half term. We always do that.’
‘Well, there you go.’
Theo was Rog and Alison’s kid. It was inevitable, I supposed, that Team Fi was assembling, the women, the mothers, closing ranks around her.
‘Will you get a new wife?’ Harry asked. ‘Will she move into the house as well?’
‘Certainly not,’ I said. ‘Mummy’s my wife. We’re not getting divorced.’
I should have said ‘yet’ out loud rather than just mouthing it when he’d already looked away. It was wrong to give him hope, but I couldn’t help it, because I was already suspecting that it was my hope too.
Which, if it’s true, may prompt you to ask why I destroyed my marriage in the first place. I suppose because I didn’t know how much I wanted it until after I’d destroyed it. I suppose I must have had a death wish.
Hence the suicide note.
12
‘Fi’s Story’ > 00:46:21
So, back to the bird’s nest.
The first Friday handover was casual to the point of anticlimax, especially as the main event appeared to all intents and purposes to be Bram moving back in. As if we were reuniting, not separating. The sight of his clothes draped on the gingham-covered armchair in the spare bedroom was not so different from the times when he’d slept there after a night out, not wanting to disturb me with his snoring.
‘Can we camp out in the playhouse tonight?’ Harry suggested, the new favourite way to mark a special occasion (they sometimes lit a campfire), and I saw the quick look Bram sent my way.
‘It’s a bit wet out there,’ I said. There’d been rain for days and by now the drains had overflowed, the lawn become spongy. Streams ran down the slide and puddled at its foot, and when the boys took off their shoes after playing outside their socks squelched on the kitchen floor.
‘Maybe we can put up a tent inside?’ Bram said, and my departure was lost in the outbreak of excitement that this provoked. Still, that was the point of this set-up, wasn’t it? For the boys to scarcely notice who was there and who was not. Continuity.
I walked slowly through the park to Baby Deco. At dusk, with its windows alight, it was seductive, a white and gold confection against the pink-blushed sky. But when I let myself into the lobby, I found it all much smaller and blander than I had remembered from the viewing. The lift was claustrophobic, the corridor narrow, and I had the peculiar feeling of being an intruder, here without permission or purpose. There was the chemical smell of just-dried emulsion, far removed from the Trinity Avenue aroma of muddy trainers and leftover bolognese.
As for the unit itself, the space was so small, more like a hotel room than a flat. You could see everything it contained without turning your head: bed (three-quarters, not a full double), coffee table, shelving unit, two snug little armchairs. No dining space, only a short breakfast bar with the pair of cheap stools Bram had picked up at IKEA.
The shower ran cold and the fridge’s purr grew into a jet engine as the hours passed, but I did not phone Bram for instruction. Except in the event of an emergency, we’d agreed on a single text each night after the boys were tucked up in bed. Nothing more.
At least I had no trouble working the TV – it was an old one of ours, the small screen suiting the compact space. With an old episode of Modern Family to entertain me (the aptness did not pass me by) and a bowl of ravioli on my lap, I downgraded my earlier disquiet to the temporary flatness you feel in one of those corporate serviced apartments.
‘It will take a bit of getting used to,’ Rowan had warned. ‘You’ll wonder what on earth you’re doing on your own, how you can possibly spend a day there without the kids to run around after. Just go with your feelings. Don’t be hard on yourself for finding it strange. What you’re feeling is natural.’
Was this how Bram had felt these previous few nights, not to mention during his month of banishment to his mother’s? Isolated from the pack, a solo pilot forced into a holding pattern.
I added my toiletries to the few he had assembled in the shower room, using the shelf he’d left free. As agreed, he had put his bedding in the washing machine and, as agreed, I hung it to dry on the small clotheshorse in the kitchen.
Yes, I did wonder if it was going to be difficult to co-exist in this way, to scrupulously separate all those mundane elements we’d shared for so long (we each had our designated kitchen cupboard space for groceries, like students!). There would be times when it felt petty, beneath us somehow, and others when it struck me as deeply, profoundly sad. But I didn’t allow myself to think about that on the first night. I certainly didn’t allow myself to cry. I just cleaned my teeth, washed my face, changed into pyjamas, pottered as if in a hotel room. When I got into bed, I fell asleep straight away, though I’d expected to lie awake all night.
The next day, I FaceTimed the boys in the lull between their swimming lesson and the birthday party they were attending at a city farm. They were bickering about who had been the first to pick llamas as his favourite animal, because it was against the law that they should choose the same. That second night, I went to visit my parents in Kingston and told myself that it was too late to head back to Alder Rise on the train, that I should save the taxi fare and stay over.
If you had told me then that in a few months’ time I’d be moving back in with Mum and Dad semi-permanently, I would have thought you had lost your mind.
Bram, Word document
I surprised myself by liking the flat from the off, and not only because it was an escape from my mother’s place. Perhaps it was the knowledge that I would soon be back home for my rotation, but I didn’t feel lonely. I enjoyed its silent welcome, the fact that it demanded nothing of me. To my knowledge, the address had been distributed to no one but the utilities companies and it was a good feeling in 2016 to be uncontactable, off-grid.
It didn’t hurt that the car was back on Trinity Avenue and I could push that particular item of fucked-upness from my mind.
I was on my best behaviour now, ready to toe the line – however, wherever Fi chose to draw it. Okay, maybe later, when things got truly hellish, I indulged in the fantasy that we might get back together, that she’d save me from myself, once and for all, but for now I gained pleasure simply from knowing that the flat was something only the two of us shared. Even though it was the very space that facilitated our separation, I liked that we were the only people to breathe its air. In the beginning, at least, it felt like somewhere only we knew.
‘Fi’s Story’ > 00:51:18
The house had century-old sash windows, with beautiful watery imperfections in the original glass. The flat had state-of-the-art double glazing that I seem to remember was self-cleaning – not that I ever thought to notice.
The house had cornicing and ceiling roses and geometric floor tiles in rust and beige and a beautiful cobalt blue. The flat had cheap skirting and that laminate flooring that glows orange in artificial light.
The house had tall French doors leading to a stone terrace with weathered teak steamer chairs and potted Japanese maples. The flat had a balcony overlooking a busy approach road to the park that was disliked by locals for its constant congestion.
But none of it mattered. This was not a situation for direct comparison, it was a question of horses for courses.
Houses for spouses, as Alison put it.
*
The second Friday, I invited Polly to come and keep me company. I’d been up to Milton Keynes for a meeting and had spent the homeward journey of signal failures and delays dreaming of my first glass of Prosecco (Prosecco was the elixir of the female community of Trinity Avenue; some among us wept when the newspapers warned o
f a shortage).
‘I don’t understand,’ she said, when we met at the main doors. ‘How on earth can you afford a flat here on top of the expenses of the house?’
‘Well, you know how being incredibly old means we don’t have a huge mortgage? At least not huge by current crazy standards.’ Old grievances on my sister’s part that I had bought a house back when prices were real-world had been laid to rest when our parents helped her with the deposit for her flat in Guildford, but there was still the occasional gripe.
As the lift delivered us to the second floor, it occurred to me there was no security camera. What happened if you got stuck? Who answered when the emergency button was used? There was no caretaker or concierge and I’d yet to make eye contact with any of the neighbours. Those I’d seen were young professionals, uninterested in interacting with a middle-aged crone like me.
I opened our door with the same sense of trepidation I’d felt the previous weekend and let Polly sweep in ahead of me.
‘It’s really cute, Fi. Wait, you’ve got a balcony as well?’
‘Yes, but it doesn’t get the sun and the road’s so noisy. Bram thinks there was some sort of affordable housing remit and this is one of those units.’
She laughed in scornful amusement. ‘So they’ve rented it to a couple who can already afford a massive house on Trinity Avenue? Hmm. Social housing policy at its most penetrating.’
‘Maybe Bram didn’t tell them that,’ I admitted. This was an element of doing things differently that I hadn’t anticipated: you weren’t quite sure if you were selling it to other people or apologizing for it.
She’d explored the flat’s remaining features in the time it took me to pour drinks and we settled in the two stiff little armchairs as if about to have an interview filmed. The upholstery, an insipid puddle-grey, was rough to the touch.
‘So how’s he handling it all?’ Polly asked.
‘Pretty well. In fact, I’d say he’s been almost, I don’t know . . .’
‘What?’
Our House Page 6