Our House

by Louise Candlish

  ‘It seems to me he’s going out of his way to make things nice for you,’ she said. ‘The lilies he left for you were beautiful.’

  This was undeniable. After the Kent weekend, he’d left a huge and stunning bouquet for me, even using my favourite vase. The last time he’d bought me flowers, well, I couldn’t remember; before the betrayal, certainly. He’d been too exposed afterwards, risked being accused of empty symbolism.

  (You’re probably thinking, God, the poor man can’t win, but I think we already know that he found a way.)

  ‘You’re obviously on his mind,’ Mum added. He still loves you, was the subtext.

  I don’t say any of this in order to criticize her. No one could be more grateful to a parent than I am to her. It’s more to try to show you that we were all susceptible to Bram’s charms one way or another. (Alison always said this included Polly, whom she suspected disliked him because she feared an attraction.)

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he was psychopathically charismatic or anything like that. He didn’t set out to use his powers for evil.

  More likely, his powers were no match for the evil he chanced upon.

  *

  I’m bracing myself now, because I know that more than any other scene I’ve described this next one will make you question my intelligence. I mean come on, you’ll think, how could you possibly not have suspected?

  It was a few days after we’d come back from Kent, the first week of November, when in the evening, just before Harry’s bath time, the doorbell rang.

  A fortysomething couple stood on the doorstep, well-mannered and hopeful. ‘Sorry to interrupt your evening,’ the woman began. ‘This is a bit cheeky, but . . .’ And I thought at once it might be a scam, some apparently respectable pair with a broken-down car needing £20 for a taxi. ‘. . . We missed the open house and happened to be passing and wondered if we could have a quick look around now? We’ve been looking in this area for months.’

  ‘Open house?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’ They exchanged looks. ‘This is the one for sale, isn’t it? On the market with Challoner’s?’

  Ah, not a scam, an honest mistake. People like us, after all. ‘No, you must mean number ninety-five,’ I told them. ‘I don’t know which estate agent they’re using.’

  As the couple retreated, apologetic, I felt sheepish for having jumped to conclusions. Until the recent spate of crimes on the street, I’d prided myself on giving strangers the benefit of the doubt.

  Minutes later, Harry was in the bath and Leo was doing his reading homework while balancing on the banister and there was the usual chaos and clamour, so when the bell went again I didn’t bother going back down.

  Later, when I remembered the episode to Merle, she told me, ‘Don’t be silly, there are a thousand possible outcomes to every one of our actions. Say you left Harry in the bath and got involved in a conversation on the doorstep, what if he’d hit his head and slipped under the water? Leo might not have noticed, he might have followed you downstairs or wandered back into his bedroom. That would have been far, far worse.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said.

  And, to be fair, I did look at Challoner’s website a day or two later and there was no listing for Trinity Avenue. On Rightmove, the Reeces’ place was still there, now with an ‘Under Offer’ banner across the photo.

  The only other listing for Trinity Avenue was one of the flats in the block on the corner with Wyndham Gardens. I remember wondering if it was the same one that had been ransacked a few weeks earlier and what would become of the tenants if they were to be given notice. A burglary and then an eviction in the space of a few months.

  I reminded myself that I was one of the lucky ones.

  VictimFi

  @LuluReading I’m sorry, but this #VictimFi is a bit of a f*ckwit. The friend also mentioned estate agent on wknd away.

  @val_shilling @LuluReading That’s so unfair, the neighbour was selling! #easymistaketomake

  @IsabelRickey101 @val_shilling @LuluReading I agree. She’s really brave to admit all this now.

  Bram, Word document

  I could delay no longer in breaking the news to Fi about the car.

  ‘Our insurance claim has been turned down,’ I told her, at our next Friday handover.

  ‘What?’ She flushed with shock. ‘Why?’

  ‘They weren’t a hundred per cent clear about it, you know what they’re like, but it seems to be to do with the keys. Because we couldn’t say exactly where they were, there’s a case that we were negligent.’

  ‘That’s unbelievable! We thought we were going to get, what? Twenty thousand? Even ten would have been something. What now? We’re just supposed to magic up the funds ourselves after years of paying premiums?’

  ‘Or do without.’ I couldn’t have felt more wretched. She’d been right when she’d suggested there was a required period – twenty-eight days in our case – before the adjustor released payment. The policy was in my name and the cheque had been issued to me.

  ‘Those bloody keys. If we’d known, we could have got our stories straight about them,’ she railed. ‘I bet they talked to that detective who questioned me. I made it sound like we had no clue who had them and when, like we just handed them over to the first passing criminal.’ In her eyes, distress hardened into determination. ‘Let’s take it to the ombudsman, shall we?’

  ‘To be honest, Fi, I don’t think there’s much they could do.’

  ‘You don’t want to at least give it a try?’

  ‘I don’t, no. It’s all in the small print, we haven’t got a leg to stand on. And don’t forget there’s always a chance the car will still turn up, in which case we can get it fixed at our own expense. Better than nothing.’

  Fi nodded, still very agitated. ‘When do we have to return the courtesy car?’

  ‘Tomorrow. I’m sorry. I’ll come over and take care of it.’

  ‘So soon? This is crap timing with Christmas coming up – money’s getting so tight. And it’s all going to be so much more of a pain in the dark and cold, schlepping around on packed buses with the boys.’

  ‘They won’t mind,’ I said. ‘Kids just accept whatever grown-ups say is normal. The main thing is they have two parents who love them and are there for them. It’s not about money or presents or new cars.’ While this didn’t sound at all like me, it benefited from being exactly the sort of thing Fi might say herself.

  ‘That’s true,’ she said, reaching for a sense of humility. ‘We have our home. We have our health.’

  I tried to agree, but struggled to yield any intelligible sound.

  She gave me a concerned look. ‘How long have you been sitting on this, Bram? Have you been worrying about telling me?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Is that why you bought the flowers? There’s absolutely no need to shield me from this sort of thing. Where the kids and the house are concerned, we’re still a team, remember?’

  The fierce loyalty in her expression was almost too much to contend with; I had a ghastly kaleidoscopic flash of Mike, of Wendy, of Rav, of the couples who had viewed her beloved house.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  *

  No offers yet, I take it?

  No. Three second viewings booked for Saturday.

  Why not sooner?

  Not my days at the house, so too risky. I have no control over Fi’s schedule.

  Just make sure the place is looking its best, eh?

  No, I thought I’d get all the neighbourhood dogs in to piss on the walls.

  You’re a funny man, Bram. Bet you make Leo and Harry laugh, do you?

  I turned off the phone. It was my policy now, whenever he mentioned the boys.

  35

  Bram, Word document

  I was starting to loathe my time at the flat, to associate it with booze-drenched, dread-filled solitude and with ugly, inescapable meetings – not all of them with Mike and Wendy. There was also
one other, a few days after the open day, that I would have preferred to shirk.

  When the buzzer went at about 8 p.m., my natural thought was that it was the police.

  This is it, Bram, you knew it was coming.

  There was a shocking moment of regression to childhood, a flood of that half-resentful, half-grateful feeling you get when a parent collars you for some dishonesty. At least I don’t have to lie any more, you think. At least I don’t have to hide.

  Before I went to answer, I turned down the volume of the music, too sorry to interrupt my task to turn it off completely. I know it will sound crazy, but I’d been compiling the playlists I would take when I had to disappear. Yes, I know I should have been devoting my time to strategizing some twist-in-the-tale defeat of Mike and Wendy, but I’d found that small, mechanical jobs, especially those that allowed me to sink into memory, were the only way my sanity could be salvaged from one day to the next.

  ‘Hello,’ I said into the intercom. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Bram?’ The voice was female, low and indignant.

  An arresting officer wouldn’t call me Bram, I reasoned. It must be Wendy, she and Mike come to harass me about the second viewings of the house on Saturday. Slightly, marginally, better than the police.

  ‘Bram? What’s the matter? Buzz me in!’

  Not Wendy, I realized. Saskia? The absence of any follow-up text or visit to my desk since our weekend liaison had encouraged me to assume she’d done the sensible thing and quit while she was ahead.

  Then I registered who this actually was. ‘Ah. Come up.’

  I waited at the door, exhausted and confused. Constance from the playhouse. Her arrival reminded me that I’d not responded to a voicemail from her some time earlier – when? Last week, perhaps. I admit I considered her small fry in the context of the circling sharks, our original encounter, so catastrophic at the time, now almost quaintly sinful in the light of intervening events.

  ‘Sorry about the delay,’ I said from the doorway, when she appeared from the lift. ‘I thought you were someone else.’

  ‘How many of us are there? Don’t answer that, I’m not interested.’ There was no kiss or touch, of course, I wouldn’t have expected that, but nor did I expect the current of hostility flowing from her. My brain was too bruised to register a reaction either way. If my night with Saskia had proved anything, it was that consolation and indifference were the same to me now.

  ‘We need to talk.’ Reading reluctance in my frown, she snapped, ‘If you can spare me the time?’

  ‘Of course I can.’ I paused the music, then immediately wished I hadn’t. Silence, unbearable to me at the best of times these days, felt dangerously exposing. It was going to be a strain to focus on this.

  ‘What was that song you were just playing?’ she asked.

  ‘Portishead. You remember, “Sour Times”?’

  ‘How appropriate.’ Her hair was pulled tightly back, her skin glowing in a faintly sickly way, as if she was being overtaken by fever right in front of me. ‘Is it all right if I sit down?’

  ‘Sorry. Over here.’ I cleared one of the chairs of its jumble of dry cleaning. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘Water, please.’

  I got myself a beer, delivered her glass of water, and waited. I noticed she was wearing the same dress she’d worn that evening in the playhouse, this time with opaque black tights and high-heeled ankle boots. I didn’t know her well enough to know if that was a deliberate allusion; all I knew was that if I never had any dealings with women again it would be a good thing. For me and them.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll get straight to the point. I’m pregnant, Bram.’

  I stared, appalled.

  ‘It’s not yours.’ She raised her chin, gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘That’s not what this is about, don’t worry.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’ My skull ached terribly; I tried to think if there were any Nurofen in the flat. ‘What is this about then?’

  She took a sip of her water, her hand trembling. ‘It’s about the fact that I’ll start to show soon and I don’t need you putting two and two together and making five. Or anyone else.’

  Her husband, she meant.

  ‘He still doesn’t know about us?’ I said.

  ‘No. It was a mistake, a one-off act of insanity. There’s nothing to be gained from telling him now.’ She eyed the four walls, her expression dismal. ‘I don’t need to tell you that.’

  There was a damning edge to this last comment reminiscent of nobody so much as Fi, and I felt annoyance rise. I wanted to hiss at her, Is this really your biggest problem? Try being blackmailed. Try facing a death by dangerous driving charge. Try losing your partner and children and everything you love . . .

  But maybe she thought she was – if I were to get it into my head to challenge the new baby’s paternity. To her, I was a threat. I was her Mike.

  ‘So I can count on you to keep quiet?’ she demanded.

  ‘I’ve kept quiet this long. There’s no reason for that to change.’

  ‘And to deal with any questions?’

  I caught something then and looked more searchingly at her. If not from her husband, she could only mean from Fi. Was she saying . . .? There was a silence, a suspended moment that emitted its own energy, caused her eyes to meet mine with new pleading.

  ‘When is it due?’ I asked, quietly.

  ‘May. Don’t insult me by counting the months.’

  Of course I did count, in silent torment. It was only one month out. But I couldn’t allow myself to think about another man raising my child, unaware of the true paternity or of the existence of two half-brothers. I couldn’t allow it to be true. And, terrible as it sounds, it paled into insignificance now. A child had died at my hand and there wasn’t space in my head to think about an unborn one.

  ‘Well, congratulations, then,’ I said, at last, and watched as tension left her chest. I resisted the urge to touch her hot face, to take her restless hands in mine. ‘That’s great news.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She stood, cast another glance around the bland, claustrophobic space. ‘You need to sort yourself out, Bram. You’re obviously in a bad way.’

  ‘Am I? Wow, I had no idea.’

  Like Fi, she reacted spikily to sarcasm, lecturing me even as she made for the door. ‘Seriously, you don’t want to be one of those sad ageing leopards who can never change their spots, do you? People run out of forgiveness, you know, and then you’re just another unforgivable man.’

  These last words sounded scripted, but that wasn’t to say they didn’t ring true. That wasn’t to say they didn’t burn. I closed my eyes, no longer able to cope with her, and when I opened them she was gone, the door closing behind her.

  ‘Thanks for the advice,’ I said.

  ‘Fi’s Story’ > 02:05:03

  What with everything going on at Trinity Avenue – not just the Ropers’ burglary and our car theft, the yellow police signs everywhere, but also the interactions with Bram that were about to come to a head – the flat was becoming a bit of a sanctuary.

  There was time to breathe there, to relax. I’d got into the habit of lighting a scented candle the moment I walked through the door, putting on Classic FM or the sort of arts documentary I couldn’t hope to follow with the kids running in and out yelling about Pokémon and Chelsea FC and whatever the latest grievance was between the two of them. Unless I had a guest, I aimed for no alcohol, brewing a herbal tea and treating myself to a bar of chocolate with some witty artisanal twist, like cardamom or sea salt or lavender. Maybe sanctuary isn’t the right word. Maybe it was more of a retreat.

  Once or twice, I even caught myself thinking I should bring the boys here for a sleepover, but of course I was only here so that they could be there.

  As for Bram, what few traces he left of himself, none pointed to any female guest – or friendship of any kind, actually.

  36

  Bram, Word document

  And then, at last, the
police came. Not to the flat, but to my office in Croydon. A detective arrived the next Tuesday morning – thank God he was plainclothes and not in uniform. I handled it okay. I must have done, because it was a while before it was followed up.

  I commandeered a small, windowless meeting room just off reception for our chat. On the table was an array of our new semi-rigid neck collars with adjustable Velcro strapping and I pushed them to the side without commenting.

  No wisecracks. Don’t antagonize him.

  ‘So, Mr Lawson, you are the joint owner with Mrs Fiona Lawson of a black Audi A3?’ he asked, quoting the reg. He was in his forties, pale-haired and thick-necked, his experience of human fallibility unsettlingly underplayed as he searched my face for liar’s tics.

  Don’t think like that, just answer his questions!

  ‘Yes, at least I was. It was stolen back in early October. Is this about the insurance claim?’

  Make him think that’s your only concern.

  ‘No, nothing to do with that,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, hang on, are you the officer who spoke to Fi a few weeks ago?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘She said something about the keys having been stolen? I have to say I think they’re far more likely to be down the side of the sofa.’

  ‘If you do find them there, let me know.’ His manner was affable, as if he was here to pass the time in small talk.

  ‘The thing is, the insurance claim is all settled now,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t sure if they’d been in touch with you.’

  Not a question; it doesn’t bother you either way since they’ve already paid out the cheque.

  ‘Do you remember where you were on Friday sixteenth September, Mr Lawson?’ he asked.