Our House

by Louise Candlish

  ‘Probably nipped to the pub for a pint,’ I tutted. ‘Did he smell of booze? Oh, don’t answer that, it’s none of my business. I’m sorry, Al, I don’t mean to use you like a private detective.’

  ‘Use away. I enjoy it.’

  ‘How did Rocky get on? Was he in the Waggiest Tail again?’

  ‘Handsomest Hound. And I can’t believe I haven’t told you the news: he came third! It was the last category of the day and our new local celeb presented the rosette!’

  ‘Well done, Rocky. Congratulations!’

  ‘Seriously, it’s the most exciting thing to happen in this house all year,’ Alison said. ‘We’re having champagne tonight, maybe even marital relations.’

  Forgetting Bram, I laughed out loud.

  Oh, my old friend laughter, I miss you.

  Bram, Word document

  I waited until the boys were in bed before turning on the phone. Not a model I was used to, it was clearly several years’ old and, though fully charged, took an age to get through its welcome sequence and display the main screen.

  There was a single text message waiting for me from a number I neither knew nor was in a position to give a name to, and it contained a link to a newspaper article:

  Disqualified drivers face stiffer jail terms

  Banned motorists who continue to drive and then injure or kill in a collision will now face far steeper punishment than in the past following years of campaigning by victims’ groups to close a legal loophole.

  If a disqualified driver causes serious injury, he or she will now face four years in jail, whereas formerly they might only have been fined, while the sentence for causing a death has leapt from two years to ten.

  ‘Disqualified drivers should not be on our roads for good reason,’ the justice secretary said yesterday. ‘Those who choose to defy a ban imposed by a court and go on to destroy innocent lives must face serious consequences for the terrible impact of their actions.’

  The thump of my heart filled my ribcage, my lungs tender as they struggled to inflate. Just as I finished reading, the picture arrived. It was a shot of my black Audi, my blurred head behind the windscreen. The number plate was not quite legible at maximum zoom but obviously decipherable enough on whatever device Wendy had used. With the benefit of enhancing software, police forensics would have no trouble identifying it, or the place it had been captured. What was not in dispute was when: the date and time were stamped on the image.

  It was hardly surprising, now I was presented with it. Like the rest of the world, Wendy had had her phone in her hand, ready to capture something interesting. And what she had captured she had shared with Skullface.

  Though common sense told me not to engage, just as I had not when she had texted, some survival mechanism – or was it suicidal urge? – prompted my fingers to work a response:

  Have you shown this to anyone else?

  Why would I do that? We’re mates, Bram.

  We’re not mates. I don’t even know your name.

  Thought you’d never ask. Mike.

  Mike what?

  No reply.

  Well, Mike, you should assume she’s also got a picture of your Toyota. 2009 registration, was it?

  That’ll rattle him, I thought, until his next text came:

  Since you mention it, the Toyota is no longer in my possession. Nicked by some joyrider.

  Nausea began to surge through my gullet.

  When did that happen?

  Work it out, Bram.

  Four years, I thought. And that was just the beginning – this bastard didn’t know the half of it.

  But the police would certainly know.

  Would Fi bring the boys to visit? Would she ever let them see me again?

  Four years! I couldn’t survive four days.

  23

  ‘Fi’s Story’ > 01:27:12

  Before I tell you about the car, you have to understand something. You have to understand that none of these things looked related. Unlucky things happen all the time; it doesn’t mean you should suspect some larger evil – that would make you one of those conspiracy theorist nut jobs or just plain egocentric. So when Bram told me the car had been stolen, I just thought the car had been stolen.

  I was the one who noticed it was gone. It was the Tuesday after the weekend of the dog show and I’d just got home from work. I needed to pick Harry up from a playdate on the other side of Alder Rise, but I couldn’t find the Audi anywhere on Trinity Avenue. I phoned Bram, who was on his way back from work, his train about to pull into Alder Rise Station.

  ‘Have you used the car since the weekend? Where did you park it?’

  ‘I haven’t driven for ages. When did you last use it?’

  I cast my mind back. ‘I went to fill up with petrol at Sainsbury’s on Sunday afternoon, then I parked up by the high street.’

  ‘Then that’s where it must still be.’

  ‘It’s not. I’ve walked up and down twice and I can’t see it.’

  ‘I’ll come and help you look,’ Bram offered.

  ‘No, don’t worry.’ I avoided proposals to meet outside the agreed times. ‘I’ll borrow Mum’s car, she’s here with Harry. I’ll have a proper look later when I’ve got more time.’

  But he beat me to it, phoning an hour later to say, ‘You’re right, the car’s nowhere on Trinity Avenue or any of the usual streets.’

  ‘Well, I definitely parked up by the corner, just around from the florists.’

  ‘Then I think it must have been stolen,’ he said.

  ‘Seriously? How can you do that without the key?’

  At the meeting at Merle’s house, the community officer had warned of the ease with which thieves could steal keyless cars, but ours was old enough to use traditional keys to start the ignition.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bram said. ‘I’ll ask the police. Have you got both sets of keys there?’

  I went to check. ‘There’s only one in the dish.’

  ‘What about the other set? Would you mind looking in your bag?’

  I rummaged through my handbag, laptop bag and any likely coat pockets, but there were no car keys.

  ‘Okay,’ Bram said, ‘I’ll say they’ve been mislaid.’

  ‘Of all the cars on the street, it had to be ours! Why didn’t they take the Youngs’ new Range Rover? Do you need me to help with the police?’

  ‘No, I’ll take care of it,’ he said. ‘I’ll handle the insurance claim as well, and let you know when a courtesy car is coming.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I certainly wasn’t going to insist on taking over this most tedious of projects. In spite of the co-operative nature of the bird’s nest, I still kept mental tabs on who did what and since the car was one of Bram’s few areas of sole responsibility, I wasn’t about to relieve him of it.

  More fool me.

  The courtesy car provided by the insurance company arrived on Thursday morning. I huffed a bit when it transpired that the paperwork had to be signed by Bram because the policy was in his name, but in the end we managed to catch him on his way to the station and it wasn’t such a big deal.

  Bram, Word document

  Days went by without any further contact from my tormentor, or tormentors – having thrown her hat into the ring with Mike, Wendy had presumably granted him leadership of their blackmail campaign. But already I knew better than to hold my breath.

  As for the phone he’d given me, I treated it like a grenade. When at Trinity Avenue I kept it in a locked file and when at the flat I wedged it behind a stack of tins in a kitchen cupboard, as if at any time expectant of an armed raid. As if a simple locking mechanism or a barrier of tinned lentils would save me.

  When the next message came, early on Thursday morning, I fully expected it to announce a new figure: either lower because they understood I really didn’t have any money or higher because that was what happened in movies when an opening bid was treated with disrespect.

  Instead, it contained another link, this time to the
site of a national tabloid:

  Take a look at this . . .

  The article was nothing to do with motoring offences or the Silver Road incident, but about a couple in West London whose house had been sold without their knowledge by fraudsters, Russian Mafia or some such, an elaborate scam involving identity theft and a criminally negligent conveyancing solicitor. A man and woman in their sixties were pictured outside a Victorian townhouse, with the caption: ‘The Morrises clung onto their beloved property only because the Land Registry smelled a rat.’

  Mike must have set up the phone to receive notifications when I opened his messages, because his next came a thoughtful fifteen minutes after I’d read the first:

  Interesting, don’t you think?

  Not particularly. What’s it got to do with anything?

  Meet me at the Swan at 6.30 and I’ll enlighten you.

  ‘Enlighten you’ – pompous knob. The Swan was the pub nearest my office. I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was that he knew where I worked, since he seemed to know everything else about me.

  *

  All day I reiterated the vow that I would not go. I even asked Nick in digital if he was getting the 6.35 p.m. train that we’d caught together a couple of times lately. He was. (I’d started doing this, establishing a network of informants as to my public transport usage. Too little too late, I know.) Then, at 6.20 p.m., with the inevitability of a sunset, I messaged him an excuse and headed to the pub.

  I asked the barman for a Coke. I would have preferred a pint but was damned if I was going to make any concession to male bonding. The day I shared a drink with Mike was the day I was discharged from hospital following a lobotomy. It was disconcerting how deep my hatred for him was, how rich and complicated, as if there’d been a whole lifetime of hostilities between us, not a few weeks.

  The Coke, served at room temperature, was sweet enough to make me wince.

  ‘You read the article?’ Mike was at my side. No greeting this time, like I wasn’t worth the extra seconds it would cost him. He had the bruised eyes of the hungover (it took one to know one) and a nasty shaving rash. It was impossible to judge from his clothing – jeans, nondescript grey shirt – whether he’d been in an office all day or at home passed out on the floor.

  ‘I skimmed it,’ I muttered.

  ‘Bram, my friend, I’m very sorry to hear you didn’t take it more seriously than that.’

  Already, I was getting used to his persona, which evidently included expressing dismay at my inadequacies, as if I were an apprentice taken on against his better judgement and, lo and behold, proving to be not quite up to scratch.

  ‘No one could take it seriously,’ I said, terror and loathing preventing me from making the connections I guessed I was expected to make. ‘It’s just sensationalist pap. Pandering to homeowners’ fears. Do you own your own place, Mike? Where do you live? I don’t think you’ve told me.’

  He ignored the questions, of course, taking a moment to order himself a pint. He was polite to the point of obsequiousness to the barman. ‘It happens more often than you think,’ he said, turning back my way. ‘What with all these cheap online legal services, there’s hardly any face to face in the house-buying process. Things slip through the net.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘It happens once in a blue moon, otherwise it wouldn’t be news. These people are professional criminals.’

  Again, he ignored the comment entirely. ‘How much is your house worth, Bram?’

  ‘What? No idea.’ I kept both my gaze and tone dead flat, giving him nothing.

  ‘Two mil, would you say? Two and a half?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t know. It’s not even mine.’

  ‘Fuck off, I know it is. You own it fifty-fifty with your wife, Fiona Claire Lawson. Date of birth 18th January 1974.’

  This, presumably, had been ascertained the same way all his other information had.

  ‘My soon-to-be ex-wife,’ I corrected him. ‘We’re divorcing and she’s getting the house in the settlement. It’s already been agreed.’

  There was a long pause. Did he believe me?

  ‘We’d better get on with it then,’ he said, cheerfully.

  Even though I’d anticipated them, his words stole my breath from me, and the contempt in my reaction was pure bluster: ‘Get on with what, you dickhead?’

  The insult didn’t register. ‘Selling the house, of course. What’s the time frame on the divorce?’

  ‘That’s none of your business. None of this is. And if you think I’m selling my house, you’re insane.’ I’d raised my voice, attracted glances, and he allowed the energy to dissipate before speaking again.

  ‘How much have you got left to pay on your mortgage, Bram?’

  I glowered at him. ‘What, you haven’t found that out yourself?’

  ‘I could, but it would be so much more efficient if you just told me. Let’s say half a million. More? No. Less? Closer to 400K? Good. So if the place is worth two million, that’s well over one and a half million profit after fees. There’s a house on your street on the market at the moment, did you know?’

  I didn’t. Fi would, of course.

  ‘Two point four, it’s on at. Punchy. Just a couple along from you, actually. They haven’t got your pretty little tree out front, but it’s still a very desirable family home. Big conservatory. Chrome fittings in the master bathroom. Nice little cellar that could be converted into a den. They use it for the laundry at the moment.’

  I gaped. ‘You mean you’ve been there?’

  ‘Anyone can arrange to view a house that’s for sale, Bram. Estate agents are the last of the egalitarians, eh?’

  I couldn’t bear his pomposity, his look of pride when he used a word of more than three syllables. As for the idea of him strolling past our gate – our ‘pretty little tree’ – and walking through one of our neighbours’ into a house like ours, probably with children like ours, it caused a molten fury at the deepest core of me. Had he arranged the viewing for last Saturday, then stalked me up Trinity Avenue to the park? I leant forwards, my breath hot. ‘Keep away from my family, do you understand?’

  ‘Calm down,’ Mike said, palm raised between us. ‘No one said anything about your family.’

  Yet, was the implication.

  ‘Look,’ I growled, ‘you don’t seem to realize, these house prices, they’re meaningless. It’s Monopoly money. They’re people’s homes, that’s all.’

  ‘Valuable homes. Easy enough to sell up and move somewhere cheaper. You could start from scratch at your age, two decent salaries like yours.’

  ‘We’re not together, aren’t you hearing a single word I’m saying?’ I released the Coke glass before it shattered in my grip. ‘What pathetic delusion do you have here? That you’ll do what those criminals did and steal my house right under my nose?’

  ‘Now he comprehends.’

  It was laughable; he couldn’t expect me to take him seriously. He was a fantasist, mentally ill. ‘You said yourself it’s jointly owned. How are you going to get around that, huh? Unless you’ve also got incriminating pictures of my wife? Well, I’d be interested to see those because she’s completely, one-hundred-per-cent clean.’

  ‘Great, so she won’t suspect anything’s going on then.’

  ‘Except when you ask her to sign a pile of legal contracts,’ I scoffed.

  He inhaled, taking a moment to choose his words, and it was then that I saw it. Had the context been different, I would have been pleased with the speed of my deduction, but instead I was only sickened.

  ‘Wendy,’ I said.

  He smirked. ‘From what I’ve seen of your wife on social media, their looks aren’t a million miles apart. Got a bit of a type, have you, mate? Bit of a cliché, the shapely blonde, if you ask me.’

  The muscles in my throat and stomach convulsed with the sensations of seasickness. ‘It’s not a matter of looking the part. You’re talking about serious fraud. Theft. You’re talking about being locked
up for life. Seriously, you’re both fucking idiots if you think that could work.’ Fucking idiots who’d struck up a miraculously fast and trusting friendship . . .

  Something in his expression – a secrecy, a smugness – caused another sudden deduction: Wendy had spoken of identifying my face in profile and yet the image I’d been texted had not been taken from the side. It had been taken from the front and from quite a distance away. He had taken it, not she.

  My pulse began to throb wildly. ‘She didn’t see anything that day, did she? You took that photo. I saw you at the time, holding up your phone, I remember now. I thought you were calling for help. Why did you take it? I don’t understand. You didn’t know me from Adam.’

  He shrugged. ‘Just covering my back in case you decided to stick some story on me.’

  But I hadn’t. Instead, I’d fled, never expecting to encounter him again, never expecting him to investigate me and decide he’d hit pay dirt.

  ‘Wendy wasn’t even there, was she? She made up that business of standing at the window. You told her exactly what to say to me.’

  ‘Get you, Sherlock.’

  My face was flushed with rage, I could feel the heat beating under the skin. ‘You’re in this together, the two of you. You have been from the start.’

  ‘No, no, the three of us, Bram,’ he said, as if generously including me in a treat.

  ‘Who is she? Your wife? Girlfriend? She slept with me, did you know that?’

  His expression turned unpleasantly lascivious. ‘What two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home is nothing to do with me. She probably just felt like a shag, fancied her chances in the fleshpots of Alder Rise, eh.’

  She must have followed me from the station to the pub. What the hell was going on here?

  ‘Why did she bother?’ I demanded. ‘Why didn’t you just approach me yourself straight away? Why send her as your special reconnaissance agent?’