Our House

by Louise Candlish

  ‘Where’s the Spirals brief for the agency?’ Clara asked, her degree of panic suggesting it might have been building for some time.

  I frowned. ‘Didn’t you send it to them yesterday?’

  ‘No, they’ve asked for a briefing in person and we scheduled it for this afternoon. But it’s not on the server. I’ve had IT down to look and they can’t find it anywhere.’

  Calling me was her last resort, plainly. I saw exactly what was going on here. In my absence, she’d sensed an opportunity to present the work as her own. (Yes, irritating, but if you’re good at your job, you have no need to feel threatened.)

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s on my hard drive at home. I’ll see if I can get it sent over to you.’

  ‘We really need it this morning, Fi. Early afternoon at the latest. The meeting’s at three.’

  ‘Three?’ A crazy slot to have agreed for a briefing, last thing on a Friday. I did not point out that she was a little slow in noticing the file’s absence – not to mention in rehearsing her presentation. I hadn’t worked on it since Tuesday evening.

  ‘Let me call you back. Meanwhile, have another hunt. I might have used a different file name.’

  ‘What is it?’ Toby asked, glancing up from his own phone.

  ‘Just a presentation I must have forgotten to put on the work server before I left. It’s on my laptop at home. Clara’s only just noticed.’

  ‘Can’t she wait till Monday?’

  ‘No, she’s presenting it today. Not to worry, my neighbour Kirsty’s got keys to the house so I’ll ask her to find it. I’m just trying to think where I left it. Maybe in my bedroom . . .’

  ‘Why not ask Bram?’ Toby suggested. ‘Didn’t you say he was working from home today so he can pick the boys up from school?’

  ‘That’s true.’ I dismissed uneasy thoughts of the last time Bram had been granted access to my bedroom and dialled his number. ‘How weird, it’s saying his phone’s out of service.’

  ‘Really? That’s not very helpful, is it?’

  ‘Let me try Kirsty. Otherwise I might have to head back a bit early.’

  Toby watched with dismay as I scrolled for Kirsty’s number. It was flattering that he wanted me to stay, to eke out our time together. You know, there were many things I was enjoying about the sapling relationship, but the one that sprang to mind there and then was control. Balance. I was the one cutting short the break, I was the one deciding what came first – in this case my duty to my colleagues. And, yes, it did cross my mind that I was also the one who had strayed, but it wasn’t as if we had sworn exclusivity, was it? The point is it was all in glorious contrast to the uncertainty I’d felt during those last couple of years with Bram. It made me optimistic for our future, hopeful that we would be exclusive.

  ‘Kirsty? Hi, darling, are you at home by any chance? Could you do me a favour and use the spare key to pop into my place? What I need is – oh, really? Okay. No problem. I’ll see you later.’ I turned to Toby, frowning. ‘She says Bram asked her for the keys earlier in the week. He’d lost his, apparently. He didn’t tell me that, surprise, surprise.’

  ‘Fool,’ Toby said, with feeling.

  ‘I know. This is the kind of thing that drives me nuts. I know it was him who lost those car keys.’ Remembering the antidepressants, I curtailed further criticism; perhaps the medication had impaired Bram’s memory? (Well, if he was at home that afternoon when I returned, it would be the perfect opportunity to broach the subject.) ‘I’m sorry, but it looks like I’ll have to shoot off early and save the day.’

  ‘Are you sure your laptop’s not at the flat?’ Toby said.

  ‘What difference does it make?’ I’d noticed that since the assault he often asked about the bird’s nest logistics, presumably wary of bumping into the Neanderthal ex again. ‘There’s no need for you to come with me. If you don’t fancy the college tour, we’ve got that table booked for lunch, you could still go? Then head back in time for your drinks thing.’

  He surprised me then by crossing the room to kiss me. ‘At least stay a bit longer,’ he murmured, his fingers in my hair.

  ‘It’s already ten o’clock, I really can’t.’

  ‘Come on, what’s twenty minutes?’

  When I finally made my exit, the taxi waiting to take me to the station, he kissed me again with such feeling the cabbie averted his eyes.

  ‘How long does the train take?’ he asked, finally releasing me.

  ‘I’ll change at Clapham Junction for Alder Rise, so I should be able to get the file to Clara by one-ish, which will be in good time for the briefing. I suppose I should be grateful she’s only spotted it now and not earlier. It’s been a great few days, Toby. Really. Let’s do it again.’

  ‘Definitely,’ he agreed. ‘Text me that you’re home safely.’

  Really, it was sweet how dejected he looked.

  *

  The gods were on my side and my train connections were smooth, getting me into Alder Rise Station before 12.30 p.m. I texted Bram to say I was coming, but the message was undelivered, thanks to the out-of-service line. Not ideal if the school needed to get hold of him, but it didn’t matter, I was back in Alder Rise, back in charge.

  I turned into Trinity Avenue with a smile on my face. The sunlight was unusually rich and golden for January. Lovely, truly lovely. Focusing on the van about halfway down, I thought, I must be mistaken, but it looks exactly as if someone is moving into my house . . .

  VictimFi

  @Leah_Walker Here we go . . .

  47

  Friday, 13 January 2017

  London, 7 p.m.

  They are no longer in her house (correction: the Vaughans’ house), but in Merle’s. They’ve finally spoken to Graham Jenson and informed him of the situation, though Fi became too distressed to reason effectively and when Merle put the call on speakerphone, her accusations about identity theft and fraud sounded wild even to Fi.

  ‘I’ve been through this with the buyers’ solicitor and with Mrs Lawson herself,’ Jenson said, ‘and I’ve explained there has been no error on our part. Beyond that, I cannot discuss this. I have to respect client confidentiality.’ He has, however, agreed to a meeting on Monday morning.

  They’ve spent the last hour ringing the hospitals of South London and beyond and drawn blank after blank, which is, they repeat to each other, good news, good news.

  And now they’ve come into the living room at the front with large drinks. It’s a bit of a mess, as Merle’s place usually is. There are pine needles by the skirting board, the loose ends of Christmas that never got vacuumed away, and Fi stoops to collect one, pressing its point into the flesh of her index finger. It feels crucial that she see a bubble of her own blood, just one drop, to prove that she is still alive and this is really happening, but the needle bends before it can puncture the skin.

  She has not been in this room since the meeting with the community officer back in September, when those forensic pens were handed out (she should have used hers to mark the house itself). They thought they were being so clever, the ladies of Trinity Avenue, to inform themselves about cybercrime, to pledge to protect one another from invaders and scammers. It hadn’t occurred to them that the enemy might be within. ‘You don’t seem very interested in this,’ she’d complained to Bram when he’d dismissed poor Carys’s suffering. Irony wasn’t strong enough a word.

  ‘Should I get Alison to come over? Rog can stay with the kids,’ Merle suggests, but Fi thinks not. She doesn’t have the energy to explain her catastrophe an additional time, or to hear poor Alison’s apologies – for she has confessed to Merle she saw Bram moving their things out yesterday, that he spun her the same redecorating line he did Tina. He’s taken them all in, every last one of them.

  It is hard enough talking to Tina again, which she does next. ‘So you agreed with Bram you’d keep Leo and Harry tonight as well?’ This is helpful. She’s in no condition to see the boys, must sustain herself on the hope that their sleep tonight
is innocent. ‘Things are a bit behind schedule here.’

  ‘But you’re pleased?’ Tina says, eagerly. ‘Is Bram there with you?’

  ‘I’m not sure where he is right now,’ Fi says, truthfully.

  ‘When are we coming home?’ Leo asks, when she has a word with him.

  ‘Probably tomorrow.’

  ‘Will we be back in time for swimming?’

  ‘No, I think it’s been cancelled. You and Harry just have a nice lazy morning.’

  Already she is thinking, One lie at a time.

  ‘I feel really terrible,’ she tells Merle. ‘The vodka isn’t working.’

  ‘You’re exhausted,’ Merle says, and she too looks bone-tired. ‘It’s been like a hundred days rolled into one. Sleep will help.’

  Fi chuckles mirthlessly. ‘There’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep tonight.’

  ‘I can help you there.’ Merle has a few sleeping pills, she remembers, and fetches them from upstairs. ‘They’re from last year when I had a bout of insomnia, but they’re still in date. You might need them over the next few weeks. Take them, just in case.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They become aware of squealing brakes in the street, of a car parking with much noisy revving and a door crunching shut.

  ‘What’s that shouting?’ Merle goes to the window. ‘I think it might be someone at your place, Fi. It’d bloody better be him.’

  It won’t be, Fi thinks, but she shows willing and follows Merle to the front door. She’s glad she does: swallowing the night air, feeling the sharp chill penetrate her lungs, she gets the bodily pain she’s been craving. It’s dark in the street, a night frost forming on the car windscreens, and as they peer out to the left, across the Hamiltons’ front garden towards hers (correction: the Vaughans’), a male voice carries through the stillness, brittle and hostile:

  ‘Where the fuck is Bram? I’m not leaving without an answer!’

  David Vaughan steps into view on the front path. ‘Now who are you, exactly?’

  ‘Never mind that, I need to speak to him right now!’

  ‘Join the queue,’ David says, with a bitter laugh.

  It takes a moment for Fi to recognize the second figure, the other voice. ‘It’s Toby,’ she tells Merle, confused. ‘The guy I’ve been seeing. We’ve just been away together. I said I’d text when I got back – he must have been worried and come to see if I’m all right.’ Unless she did text him, sent him an SOS during those befuddled hours in the house? It’s possible: whole chunks are inaccessible to her. These have been both the heaviest hours of her life and the most slippery.

  ‘I’ll go and get him,’ Merle says. ‘You wait here in the warmth.’

  She hurries out into the cold, coatless, leaving Fi on the doorstep. ‘Hello, can I help? Bram isn’t here, but Fi is, if you want to come in?’

  As Toby turns on his heel, David withdraws, his gratitude palpable even from this distance. He’s done with today, that is clear.

  When Toby comes striding into Merle’s hallway, Fi falls against him like a collision. She doesn’t care if it’s wrong to show her need for his comfort, for some uncomplicated masculine strength.

  ‘Toby, it’s so awful, the worst possible thing! I’ve lost my house.’

  ‘We don’t know that for sure, darling,’ Merle says, fingers patting Fi’s upper arm.

  ‘We do know. The Land Registry has transferred the title deeds. I’ve lost it.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Toby growls and disentangles himself from her. He scopes the hallway, the succession of doors that lead from it, as if expecting to find Bram cowering in the shadows.

  ‘He’s vanished,’ Fi says. ‘The boys are fine though, thank God. That’s the main thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it is,’ Merle says, soothingly. ‘No one’s died. It’s a mess, someone somewhere has made an epic cock-up, but we’ll get it fixed. Would you like a drink, Toby? Vodka?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Merle delivers the drink, tops up Fi, and the two of them tell him what they know about the house sale: Bram’s open house; the woman purporting to be Mrs Lawson who has complained that the Vaughans’ payment has not yet reached her; the erroneous transfer that Graham Jenson denies but that may end up giving Fi time to register her claim on the money; the scramble to mitigate the crisis that will resume after the weekend.

  ‘So the money’s not in any of your accounts?’ Toby asks Fi.

  ‘No, I checked straight away. Not a penny. The solicitor won’t disclose the details for the account he did use, but it’s possible it was Bram’s individual account. I don’t have access to that.’

  ‘At least the mortgage and all the seller’s fees were paid separately,’ Merle reminds her. ‘There’ve been no errors there, which is something.’

  Fi shudders. Insane though the suggestion is, this could be worse. She could have lost the house and been left with a huge debt.

  ‘This is stating the obvious,’ Merle says, ‘but you don’t think Bram could be at the flat? You know what they say about hiding in plain sight and it’s not like the police are bursting down doors at this stage. It was hard enough getting them to come here and take the preliminary report,’ she tells Toby.

  ‘He’s definitely not at the flat,’ Toby says. ‘I went there before I came here.’

  ‘You did?’ Fi says, surprised.

  ‘He might have been there but not answering?’ Merle suggests. There is something about her grave, gentle authority that is making Toby seem a little crude. Fi can tell that Merle is taken aback by his anger. She didn’t know Fi has such a firebrand for a new partner.

  ‘I got a neighbour to let me into the building,’ he says, ‘and I went up to try the door. There was no answer and the lights were out. He’s definitely not there.’

  ‘I’ll go over in a while,’ Fi says. ‘I might have to sleep there tonight.’

  Merle intervenes. ‘Fi, I really think you should stay here. You’ve had enough to contend with for one day. Alison’s keeping Robbie and Daisy for a sleepover so they won’t be back till tomorrow. We’ll be on our own, we can ring around the hospitals again in the morning, make a proper list for Monday, discuss how you’re going to handle this with the boys. Then you can go to Tina’s when you’re calm and rested.’

  ‘Who’s Tina?’ Toby asks.

  ‘Bram’s mother.’

  ‘You think he might be there, Fi? Let’s go!’

  ‘No, he definitely isn’t,’ Fi tells him. ‘She’s convinced he’s here.’ Talk of the boys focuses her. ‘I’ll wait till the morning to see them, you’re right, Merle. And I’ll need to go on my own, Toby. No offence, but the boys don’t know you and now isn’t the time for them to meet new people. They’ll need their family.’

  ‘Fi, when you do see them, I wouldn’t say anything about Bram being missing,’ Merle says. ‘While we still don’t know all the facts, you don’t want to upset them.’

  ‘You know something we don’t, Merle?’ Toby says, his mistrust of her unconcealed.

  ‘Of course not,’ Merle says, evenly. ‘But he’s their father, they’ll be distressed to think something might have happened to him.’

  ‘I won’t say anything to them,’ Fi promises. ‘Or Tina. But I think I will sleep at the flat tonight. Find some fresh clothes, see if Bram left any of our stuff there.’

  ‘Right.’ Toby is on his feet in a bid to take charge. Already he has the keys to his Toyota in his hand. ‘I’ll drop you there.’

  Merle eyes his empty vodka glass.

  ‘I’ve only had this one,’ he tells her. ‘I’ll be fine to drive.’

  Merle tails them to the door. ‘Phone me if you need anything,’ she says to Fi. She squeezes her and then says a second time, with feeling, ‘Anything.’

  Lyon, 8 p.m.

  He goes straight from the station in Lyon to the first bar he sees and orders a beer. He’s not the only traveller in the place and the mood is impersonal, but that’s fine, he’s not loo
king to make friends. The beer comes quickly, the bill with it. Retrieving his first euros from his wallet, he notices the folded sheet Mike posted through the door at Trinity Avenue and feels oddly comforted to have it in his possession.

  He’s aware that something has changed during the train journey, the passing from one realm into another. A shoot is pushing through him, but it is not looking for the light, it is looking for the darkest part of him. This bad shoot makes him feel calmer, which is ironic.

  He needs an alternative adjective to ‘ironic’, he thinks, a deeper, more emphatic one. What would Fi choose? ‘Twisted’, maybe. No, not ‘twisted’. ‘Destined’. ‘Doomed’.

  He snaps shut the wallet, downs the beer and leaves.

  48

  ‘Fi’s Story’ > 02:53:34

  There’s no need to pity me, honestly. I don’t want that. I’m not the worst punished by this – or the most bereft. Yes, I have lost my home and my children have lost contact with their father, yes, we are suffering, but the bottom line is that another family is mourning a child. Little Ellie Rutherford, who died in that car accident in Thornton Heath, an accident that Bram may or may not have been involved in.

  The police certainly think he was. A week or so before he went missing, they found our car in a back street in Streatham. There were no signs of theft or misuse, no forensic matches with any of their joyrider suspects, and so they returned their attention to the owners of the vehicle, specifically the one whose driving ban meant he had good reason to leave the scene of an accident, whether directly involved or not. They’d interviewed him before – not that he’d thought to tell me that – and had a sense that he was withholding something, perhaps to do with the missing key, but the security footage at Alder Rise Station from the morning of 16 September clearly identified him among the waiting commuters on the platform and they put his name to one side. Other leads were more plausible. But now they talked to his employer’s HR department about his attendance at the sales conference and were told he’d only disclosed his driving disqualification after that date. The very next working day, in fact: quite some coincidence. They decided to re-interview him as soon as he returned from ‘holiday’, which he obviously never did. Then, about a week after he disappeared, they were sent an anonymous tip, a photo of our car on Silver Road, taken the same day as the collision, a dark-haired male visible at the wheel. Facial recognition technology confirmed a match for Bram.