Our House

by Louise Candlish

  I felt a deep, guttural lurch remembering the sensation I’d had when waking in the flat with a man who wasn’t my husband in a bed that should have felt new, separate from my marriage, but that in reality I shared with Bram.

  ‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘He’s sure too, he just doesn’t realize it. But when he meets someone himself, he won’t care who I’m with.’

  ‘I thought you said he’d already started shagging around?’

  I flinched at the term. ‘I mean someone he’s really interested in, someone he considers special.’

  ‘I would question whether he’s capable of recognizing that,’ Toby said with a certain significance to his tone and I wondered what was coming next. I broke the silence myself.

  ‘Well, he should be capable of recognizing how special his children are. I’ll talk to him tomorrow and make it clear this can never happen again.’

  ‘If you want my advice, I wouldn’t make a big deal of it,’ Toby said. ‘It was mainly bluster, I’m not injured. He’ll come to his own conclusion that he was out of order.’

  ‘That’s very understanding of you.’ I doubted he would feel so charitable when he’d had the time and solitude to reflect.

  ‘Everyone comes with baggage,’ he said, shrugging.

  ‘I was just thinking the same thing,’ I said. ‘The problem is that some of us have exceeded the weight limit.’

  He smiled, rubbing absently at his sore cheek. ‘All the more interesting to unpack.’

  ‘What, even when you realize there are false bottoms and hidden compartments?’

  He laughed. ‘Especially then.’

  ‘Good, because we can’t stretch this metaphor any further.’

  It was very sweet of him to act as if the evening had not been catastrophically wrecked. Two boys in the rooms above our heads believing him to be an intruder, a jealous ex baying at the door: there were plenty of men out there who would have just walked away.

  VictimFi

  @Tilly-McGovern Stick with Toby, girl!

  @IsabelRickey101 Bram is like one of those abusers who kills his whole family and then gets called a tortured hero.

  @mackenziejane @IsabelRickey101 I know. ‘I’ll burn the house to the ground’. He gives me the creeps.

  Bram, Word document

  In the morning, my head a Catherine wheel of pain, I stumbled into the bathroom and splashed cold water over my face. After leaving Trinity Avenue, I’d gone straight to the Two Brewers, where I drank until every image of the evening had been obliterated. I’d missed Roger and the other guys, but that suited me. I was in no mood for banter with men whose lives were everything mine used to be, everything I’d thrown away.

  Catching sight of myself in the mirror, I recoiled from the creature gaping back at me. I’d aged badly since the last time I’d looked: my skin was puffy and threaded with the crimson veins of a drunk, my eyelids were hooded and blinking madly, general neglect was resulting in the beginnings of a beard and too-long hair. I looked like the old man who lived rough in the park before the so-called Friends of Alder Rise had had him removed.

  (He was probably dead now.)

  For the record, I’m not proud of attacking him. Quite apart from anything else, it was yet another witnessed incident of violence that could come back to haunt me. But what can I say? Either you’ve experienced the onrush of pure anger or you haven’t, the brief feeling of concussion chased by a superhuman energy that can’t be summoned by any other emotion, not even lust. They call it red mist but it’s not red, it’s white. It obscures your reason, it blinds you to consequences, it holds you in its atmosphere – and then it flings you back to the ground.

  Which is when you discover that everyone who might have supported you has scattered in terror.

  I checked myself for wounds beyond the minor bruises of our scuffle in the hallway and, finding none, deduced that there’d been no drunken blackout of my having gone back to the house and killed him.

  Because I wanted to kill him: I state that explicitly. I despised him from the pit of my black heart.

  Turning from my reflection, I vowed to make an appointment with the GP, get some medication. Anti-anxiety, anti-psychotic, anti-breakdown.

  On the kitchen counter, next to a coffee mug I’d used as an ashtray last night, my pay-as-you-go pinged. He knew to use this number now, the one element I’d been able to dictate, for what it was worth. I opened the message with a new sense of surrender:

  Just passing, were you? One word to her about us and she will suffer. Do you understand me?

  I understood. I had no idea if I’d have had the guts to go through with my confession to Fi last night, but he was very, very lucky he’d been there when I rolled up. The bastard had wormed his way into her affections, and withholding from her the fact that he’d met me before was a deliberate act of torture. He had my balls in his grip. He planned not only to steal my property, but to help himself to my wife. He had hijacked my life.

  Mike. Toby. Cunt.

  37

  Friday, 13 January 2017

  London, 4.15 p.m.

  ‘This is totally screwed up,’ David Vaughan says in exasperation. He is starting to fray now: any human would, exposed to this sort of strain for long enough. It is Russian roulette in the suburbs, with solicitors holding the gun. ‘This other woman says she’s Fiona Lawson and hasn’t received proceeds of the sale that are rightfully hers. You say you’re Fiona Lawson and never sold the house in the first place.’

  Fi flares up. ‘I don’t “say” I’m Fiona Lawson, I am Fiona Lawson. Look, here’s my driving licence. Is that enough to convince you?’ This man might be claiming her house, but he will not take her identity. Both the Vaughans examine the licence, but there is little discernible alteration to their manner towards her.

  ‘Any chance of getting a phone number for this fake Mrs Lawson from the estate agent?’ Merle says.

  ‘I asked, but Rav says he’s only ever had Mr Lawson’s, which I’m assuming is the same number you have for him.’

  ‘Bram’s phone has been out of service all afternoon,’ Fi says.

  But when they check the number, they find it is not Bram’s official one, the one paid for by his employer and used by Fi to contact him day to day. Blood pulses through her head at the discovery, but when she tries phoning the unfamiliar number, the line rings on and on.

  ‘You didn’t think he’d actually answer?’ David says. ‘She must have been trying it all day.’

  She. Who is this rival, this usurper with whom Bram would share the Lawson fortune? Is it a case of bigamy? He’s married a second wife and together they’ve conspired to steal the house belonging to the first? (He has children with her too, perhaps, half-siblings for Leo and Harry.) Or is it the other extreme and she is merely an actress he hired for the transaction? The ‘Mrs Lawson’ who phoned the solicitor could be anyone; the Vaughans didn’t meet her, the legal process not requiring buyer and seller to be in the same room at the same time. Perhaps he simply photocopied Fi’s passport and submitted it online? The police officers openly acknowledged how faceless the conveyancing process has become, how fraudsters are slithering through loopholes unchallenged.

  And if not to fund a new relationship – new love – then why? Why does Bram need such a sum of money? What could be worth sacrificing both his children’s security and his own relationship with them? A huge debt from a gambling addiction? Drugs?

  She massages her temples, failing to dim the ache. How much easier it was to imagine him as the victim, just like her. Swindled or threatened or brainwashed.

  ‘So we just sit it out, do we?’ Merle says. ‘Still not knowing who is entitled to stay and who has to leave?’

  ‘According to Rav,’ David says, ‘there’s a simple way to settle who legally owns the house and therefore has occupation rights: the Land Registry. There are no physical deeds any more, but if the house has been registered to us, then we are the owners. If it hasn’t been transferred for whatever reaso
n, then the Lawsons’ names will still be registered and they remain the owners. Emma will be able to tell us.’

  The Vaughans’ solicitor, Emma Gilchrist, is finally out of her external meeting and a colleague is alerting her right now to the crisis in Alder Rise.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ David reassures Lucy. ‘There’s no way Emma would have paid out two million pounds without the sale being registered.’

  ‘Really?’ Merle says. ‘It wouldn’t be the only disastrous error in this situation, would it? Look, I’m sick of waiting for solicitors. Can’t we check the Land Registry website?’

  ‘It takes a few days to appear online, apparently,’ David says. ‘We do need Emma or this Graham Jenson character to confirm the exact position. And this might be Emma now . . .’

  As his phone rings, he draws it from his pocket like a firearm. To a person, the others stiffen in their seats, electrified.

  ‘Emma, at last!’ David cries. ‘We’ve got a very worrying situation here and we need you to resolve it as quickly as possible . . .’ Catching Fi’s eye, he looks unexpectedly embarrassed and opens the kitchen door to take the rest of the phone call in the garden. Icy air flows into the room like a threat as he treads off down the path towards the playhouse.

  This is it, Fi thinks. My future, Leo’s and Harry’s too: it all comes down to this.

  Geneva, 5.15 p.m.

  He is aching when he reaches Gare Cornavin, his hips and knees, even his shoulders, as inflamed as his feet. His mind, however, is numb: the city’s streets have gifted him the balm of anonymity and, as he draws to a halt to survey the bustle of the station concourse, it is almost as if he has forgotten why he is here.

  A group of young female travellers pass him, faces turned to one particular figure at their centre, and as he watches he is speared with the knowledge that Fi will cope just fine. She will have her women around her.

  The knowledge is clean, painless, absolute.

  He always used to find the way the women of Trinity Avenue talked to one another exhausting. Even when you couldn’t hear what they were saying, you could tell from their body language, their facial expressions, that it was all so intense. They acted like they were discussing genocide or the economic apocalypse and it turned out it was just about little Emily having been moved down a maths set or Felix not making the football first team. The plot of a TV drama or some outrage on The Victim.

  Then, when really terrible things happened, like a sudden death in the family or a destroyed career, and you expected mass hysteria, they were a SWAT team, immaculately organized, focused on resolution.

  ‘They’re the worms that turned,’ Rog said once at the bar in the Two Brewers. ‘Remember the old comedy sketch called that? About women taking over the world? The Two Ronnies with Diana Dors, wasn’t it? It was supposed to be a dystopia.’

  ‘Sounds a bit un-PC,’ Bram said.

  ‘Oh, completely. Wouldn’t be allowed now,’ Rog agreed with pretended regret.

  Funny that he should think of that now, under the departures board at a train station in Geneva, but he’s glad he has because it makes him think things might not be so atrocious in London, even today, the day of discovery. Because it is Fi in charge now and not him. When the dust settles, the boys will be better off without him.

  For the first time since he left Trinity Avenue he feels something closer to peace than turmoil.

  And there’s a train to Lyon leaving at 5.29 p.m.

  38

  ‘Fi’s Story’ > 02:22:12

  This may come as a surprise to you, but there’ve been times when I’ve felt sorry for him, I really have.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not excusing what he’s done – obviously I despise it: he’s stolen from me, he’s stolen his own children’s future – it’s just that a part of me understands how the situation might have become as extreme as it did. You know, an escalation of events, a momentum that couldn’t be halted. A sense of cosmic irresistibility. A problem shared is a problem halved, we all know that, but isn’t it also the case that a problem kept to yourself is a problem multiplied many times over?

  And that’s what he did, I’m convinced – in my calmer moments, anyway. He kept it to himself. Had he confided in someone, anyone, he’d have been dissuaded from his actions. Instead, he’s wanted for fraud and maybe even worse, maybe even—

  No, I won’t say it. I won’t say it until – unless – it’s been proven in a court of law.

  No, honestly, I can’t make any statement about it. I’d get in trouble with the police myself.

  What I will say is that Bram was not the blithe spirit people thought he was. He had his depressive moods, more so than most of us, which stemmed from his father dying so young. Not to criticize his mother – she’s an amazing woman – but parenting a bereaved child isn’t easy when you’re grieving yourself.

  I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that it’s hard sometimes to tell the difference between weakness and strength. Between hero and villain.

  Don’t you think?

  *

  Timing was not on Bram’s side, I admit that. In fact, it couldn’t have been crueller.

  Though I’d intended heeding Toby’s advice and reining in my outrage about the attack, by the time Bram returned the following evening for his regular Wednesday visit with Leo and Harry, there’d been a development he could not have foreseen. I waited for him to come down from putting them to bed, led him into the living room and closed the door – I didn’t want the boys hearing a word of this. As we settled on the sofa, wood burner glowing across the room, I thought how couples up and down the street would be doing the same, precious few caught in a fray like ours.

  ‘About what happened last night,’ he began. As Toby had predicted, he was bashful, full of remorse. ‘I’m really—’

  ‘I know.’ I shrugged off his apologies. ‘Toby doesn’t want to escalate it. You’re very lucky, he could have gone to the police. But he understands why you lost it like that.’

  Bram gaped, apparently stunned by this revelation. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Just that he appreciates the value of what you chose to throw away.’ A good wife, an attractive woman. I paused, enjoying his confusion. ‘Besides, what he and I do or say is none of your business, we agreed that.’

  ‘O-kaay.’ He extended the vowels, buying himself a second or two as he tried to guess what was coming, if not a postmortem of the previous evening’s crime.

  I produced an opened envelope from my cardigan pocket. ‘This came in the post today, Bram.’

  He took it from me. ‘It’s addressed to me.’

  ‘I know, but I thought it might be to do with the insurance claim, with any luck a reversal of their decision, so I opened it on your behalf.’ In fact, the document was a DVLA form inviting Bram to reapply for his driving licence following a disqualification in February. ‘A driving ban, Bram? Months ago, when we were still together. You went to court, you stood in front of a magistrate, and you didn’t say a word about it!’

  ‘It’s a criminal act to open someone else’s post,’ he said, sourly.

  ‘It’s a criminal act to drive while disqualified!’

  ‘What?’ He frowned at the document. ‘That’s not what this says.’ The faintest of shrugs, all he could muster of the famous Bram bluff and swagger.

  ‘No, but it’s what I’m saying. Don’t deny it, you’ve driven regularly since then, I’ve seen you with my own eyes. For Christ’s sake, Bram, a ban is bad enough – especially in your line of work, you’re lucky you haven’t lost your job – but if you’d been involved in an accident these last few months you’d have got in serious trouble. What were you thinking? How do you get yourself into these situations? Why can’t you just follow the rules like the rest of us?’

  I’d grown strident, disliked the sound of myself in this righteous mood. Never had I felt more like a parent than at that moment: his parent. ‘Well?’ I wanted to hear it from his own mouth, I wanted to watch him
confess.

  Having chased each other’s gaze around the room, we now connected properly and he narrowed his eyes at me as if he no longer trusted me (he no longer trusted me!). ‘Fine, so I made a few quick trips when I shouldn’t have, but not as many as you think. And then the car was stolen and—’

  ‘And you were spared further temptation thanks to someone behaving even more criminally than you,’ I finished for him. ‘So, on these “few quick trips”, did you have the boys in the car?’

  ‘Maybe once or twice, just a short journey to swimming or something, but they were never at risk, I swear.’

  I wanted to slap the idiot. ‘You involved them in an illegal act, Bram, of course they were at risk! I honestly don’t know where we go from here. It was a big thing for me to get past what happened when we split up and when I did it was in good faith that you wouldn’t put me through more distress. But not only have you just assaulted a friend of mine, you’ve also been lying to me this whole time!’

  A tremor started around his mouth. The noise in his throat was not quite human as he reached, yet again, for his excuses. ‘I know, you’re right, but I didn’t want to jeopardize my chance to stay with the kids. Please, Fi, I’m sorry, I really am. I know I’ve screwed up and you’re probably thinking the bird’s nest isn’t working out—’

  ‘How can I think anything else when one of us is a liar!’

  ‘But it’s good for Leo and Harry, isn’t it? You’ve got to admit that. They’re far happier than they would have been if we’d split up.’

  We both froze, each as startled as the other.

  ‘We have split up,’ I said, at last.

  He shook his head. ‘I know. A Freudian slip.’

  ‘Is this why the insurance company didn’t pay out?’ I demanded. ‘Because you didn’t tell them about the ban?’

  ‘I did tell them, of course I did.’

  ‘So, as usual, it’s just me you’ve cheated.’

  To my horror, his face began to collapse in that awful spasming way it had once before and this time he began sobbing, repeating over and over how sorry he was.