Our House

by Louise Candlish

The mist has turned to drizzle and the wipers swing back and forth across the windscreen. ‘And how do I explain that the man I’ve been dating has disappeared?’ Fi asks.

  Merle glances in the rear view. ‘Easy. He made himself scarce when he discovered you’d lost the house. Only interested in your money.’

  ‘I think he might have been married,’ Fi says. ‘He never took me to his place or even told me his full address. My sister was suspicious from the start.’

  ‘Exactly. You’d be happy to have the police track him down, but to be honest it’s the least of your worries given the fact that your ex-husband has just killed someone and stolen your house.’

  The more they look into the details, the better it becomes. It is self-supporting, it has a central strength.

  Then Fi remembers Alison. ‘Oh, Alison.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She saw him. She saw Toby the night we met.’

  In the bar at La Mouette, all those months ago.

  Well, you certainly have a type.

  ‘Alison won’t say anything,’ Merle says. ‘She may not even be questioned. If she is, it was how long ago?’

  ‘September.’

  When it all began. Her new dawn.

  ‘So ages ago. She’d had a few drinks, the place was dark, a total mob scene. It’s not a deal breaker, Fi. If it came to it, she wouldn’t testify against her best friend. I know I wouldn’t.’

  They hit a succession of red lights. The engine turns itself on and off. Stop start, stop start. Question answer, question answer.

  Fi sinks into the seat, wishing herself invisible, an apparition detectable only to the woman next to her. ‘Merle, you’ll really do all this?’

  Red light. The engine stops.

  ‘I really will,’ Merle says.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Come on, Fi, you know why.’ She smiles at her, sideways, wry, a little sad. ‘I didn’t envisage this to be what got you talking to me again, but there you go.’

  Amber light. The engine starts.

  Fi knows why.

  54

  Saturday, 14 January 2017

  London, 8 a.m.

  It has not been easy, co-existing in a close community with a friend and neighbour who betrayed her in the most fundamental of all ways. The knee-jerk desire to punish subsided soon enough, but it left Fi with something bleaker and more enervating: a double bereavement. Bram and Merle. And the fact that life in Alder Rise is so tribal made it all the more painful, because now there were subdivisions of people who knew, people who didn’t, and people who she wasn’t sure knew or not.

  Kent was a particularly painful exercise. She’d thought repeatedly of pulling out, but in the end, she didn’t want to let Leo and Harry down – or the other kids in the group. They were a tribe of their own. Surviving it (half-enjoying it, if she was honest) made her appreciate the importance of appearances in neighbourhood life, of personal sacrifice. The greatest happiness of the greatest number and all that.

  In the days after the playhouse affair, a plea arrived. Handwritten and hand-delivered, pushed through the letterbox with stealth, so as not to make a sound.

  ‘There’s a card for you, Mummy,’ Harry told her. ‘Even though it’s not your birthday.’

  ‘People send cards for other reasons,’ she said.

  She read it just once before destroying it and so can remember only fragments now:

  Crazy and despicable . . .

  I will never forgive myself . . .

  Is there any chance we can be civil, for the sake of the kids . . .?

  I need you to know that I would do anything to repay you . . .

  The word ‘repay’ stuck in her craw. As if Fi had lent her something, given of herself freely. Issued her with a permission slip to sleep with Bram. The evening of your choice, my friend, the venue that works best for you. I’ll make myself scarce.

  In a funny way, she can imagine Bram rewriting the episode that way. He has a knack for repurposing his own misadventures.

  But not Merle. Problem solver extraordinaire, strong and spirited Trinity Avenue wife and mother.

  You name it, she wrote, and I will do it.

  *

  It is only after Merle has stopped the car on the way to Tina’s flat to dispose of the phones that Fi asks why a second time. They are in the car park at Crystal Palace Park and Merle has just returned empty-handed from the boating lake, when it occurs to Fi that she might never see her accomplice again – at least not until they appear in the dock and the witness box respectively.

  ‘I told you,’ Merle says. Not impatient, but focused on the day’s demands. ‘You know why.’

  ‘No, I mean you and him. You’d known each other for so long. That was the only time, wasn’t it?’

  Now Merle follows. ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

  ‘Who initiated it? Was it him?’

  A pause. ‘No, it was me. That’s the truth. He didn’t invite me over. He wasn’t expecting me. He had no choice but to ask me in.’

  Fi holds her eye. ‘He had a choice about fucking you, though.’

  Merle does not flinch. ‘I’m not sure he did, Fi. I was on a mission.’

  ‘Why? Why would you do that?’ She can’t argue that it was out of character because Merle’s character was not known to her until yesterday, this morning, not truly. ‘You knew how upset I was about what he’d done before. You comforted me, you advised me to give him another chance.’

  ‘I know,’ Merle says, her voice low. ‘There’s no excuse. No justification. I still can’t believe it myself.’

  To her credit, she does not try to diminish it. Sex, adultery, the institution of marriage: their importance is diminished now, to the point of irrelevance – how can it not be? – but Fi still has to know. She still has to understand.

  ‘Was there always an attraction, then?’

  A pause. Merle’s fingers grip the edge of the leather seat. ‘I think there was, yes, but neither of us were ever going to act on it.’

  ‘So why did you act on it that night? If you’d managed not to for years before? What was this mission?’

  Now Merle’s fingers touch her mouth, as if monitoring her own words. The car is sealed and silent; there is the sense that its atmosphere will tolerate nothing but the truth. ‘That evening, I had a babysitter at my place, I was meeting Adrian at La Mouette. A belated wedding anniversary dinner. We hadn’t been getting on that well, I probably told you that at the time. I’d had a few drinks at the bar when he texted and said he couldn’t come. It was one of those quick texts, not even sorry, just “Can’t make it, working late”. I was so angry with him, how casual he was, no thought to the arrangements I’d made with the babysitter, all the hoops you have to jump through just to get the kids sorted and get yourself out the door, let alone dressed up and in the mood for being an adult, a wife. It was like this one cancellation was an accumulation of all the cancellations, all the wrongs. I remember sitting there fuming, literally plotting to divorce him. There was a guy at the bar and I tried flirting with him and he just rejected me, he wasn’t even tempted.’ She flushes at the memory. ‘It was so humiliating. It felt like the most humiliating moment of my life. Like a turning point.’

  Merle takes a breath, stares through the windscreen at the green beyond. ‘So I walked back down to the house and I felt so reckless. I wasn’t in my right mind, that’s the only way I can describe it. Something hormonal was going on, I suppose. I felt like my life was just sliding towards the end, you know, picking up speed, completely unstoppable, and I needed . . . I needed to make something happen to keep myself alive. Even if the only thing I could think of was completely self-destructive. Destructive to you. Both of you. Leo and Harry too, God. So I walked past my door and I went on to yours.’

  Fi absorbs this. If she understands correctly, it was a disposable moment of marital crisis, a rush of mid-life hormones, that set this apocalypse in motion. Would it feel any different if it were something more rec
ognizably momentous? A diagnosis of terminal illness, the loss of a parent, a career-ending degradation? It is impossible not to draw a parallel between Merle’s crime and her own, not least because they have a cause in common: a reaction against humiliation.

  Fat old Mrs Holier-than-thou, I don’t know how Bram stood it all those years. No wonder he played away . . .

  There had still been time to stop it when he said that to her. She could have poured the wine down the sink. Instead, she poured it into him. She killed a man.

  I killed him!

  They sit for a minute in silence.

  ‘Merle?’

  ‘Yes?’

  Fi feels emotion welling like liquid, swallows before she speaks. ‘I want to make it clear that if the police come after me, if there’s some forensic thing I can’t possibly deny, I’ll keep you out of it. You’ve had no part in this at all. You didn’t come to the flat with me this morning. I turned up and asked you to drive me to Tina’s, that’s it. You had no idea what I’d done.’

  Merle shakes her head. ‘It won’t come to that.’

  ‘But if it does, if I’m arrested, will you look out for Leo and Harry? I mean, my parents will take them in, they’ll be the best guardians I could wish for, but will you keep the friendships going? Be there for them too? They’ll need another family that feels like theirs. Not straight away, I know you’ll be busy with the new baby, but later. I could be gone for years.’

  Merle straightens her shaking shoulders, refastens the seatbelt over her swollen body, starts the car. ‘Of course I will.’

  *

  Fi had guessed after the Kent weekend, of course – that flippant excuse for not drinking, and had sought Merle out at the gym the following Sunday. They each had their regular class now: Pilates for Fi, yoga for Merle.

  She’d need to switch to pregnancy yoga soon.

  ‘Fi?’ Merle was startled by her approach. ‘I didn’t think . . .’

  Didn’t think Fi would address her outside of the group, outside of the agreed civilities of child delivery and collection.

  ‘I have a question,’ Fi said.

  Merle waited. Two women arriving for her yoga class greeted her, beating a retreat when they saw her stricken expression.

  ‘Is it Bram’s?’

  Fi saw that Merle was considering denying the pregnancy itself, but decided there was no sense in that. You could deny new life for only so long and in any case in her yoga kit she was starting to show.

  ‘No,’ Merle said, at last. ‘It’s Adrian’s. It’s due in May.’

  ‘You swear that’s the truth?’

  ‘I swear.’

  ‘Then I won’t ask you again,’ Fi said, simply.

  Not even if the baby comes in April, not May? she thought, walking away. Maybe. She would certainly keep an eye on events.

  But all sorts of things could happen before then.

  Lyon, 2 p.m.

  He has made his final move and is settled now in the aparthotel. His new accommodation is not unlike the studio in Baby Deco, as it happens: hardwearing and neutral, designed with a sense that the bare minimum deserves as much respect as deluxe – hell, you might even make a virtue of it. Yes, exactly right for Custer’s last stand and a decent writer’s base, besides: well heated and sound-proofed; there’s a Nespresso machine with a collection of pods and some of those individually-wrapped teabags the French go in for. A fridge for his beers. The reassuring trace of previous smokers’ cigarettes.

  The most important thing is that he has destroyed the information sheet with the WiFi password and he is certain his willpower will not fail him. He would only be tempted to google the collision investigation, the components of his old existence. To email Fi and start explaining about the money, begging her to forgive him, even advising her how to go about reconstructing the family life he has destroyed.

  Unforgivable, that was what Merle called him. Just another unforgivable man.

  It interests him that even with his whole story ready to be told, the emphases and nuances entirely his, he does not expect to devote much of it to her (he’s already decided he’s going to give her a pseudonym). In the end, she hasn’t mattered; she hasn’t played a part. He’s gathered that Fi chose to sweep it all under the carpet for the sake of the children’s friendships (Leo and Robbie are thick as thieves, always have been), for the sake of neighbourhood harmony, for the sake of continuing to live in the house. Not once did she mention Merle to him after they separated and if she could exercise that sort of blank restraint with one guilty party then she probably could with two. And she went off to Kent, didn’t she? No one came back with stab wounds.

  It will be a while before news reaches Merle about the loss of the house, but once it does she certainly won’t be gloating about it. Their liaison in the playhouse had never been about her coveting what Fi had, because she already had all those things herself – more, in fact, since her husband had been faithful, if sometimes a little disinclined to appreciate what he had, in Bram’s opinion. No, for her, that night had been about doing something reckless to force a moment of crisis. To remind your blood that it still has a reason to circulate, even if the body it flows through is ageing faster than you’d prefer. To restore your conviction that you still have something good to give.

  That was the difference between Merle and him. She had faith that she made life better for those around her, whereas he had no faith that he did.

  Or at least what little faith he’d once had, he’d lost.

  55

  Saturday, 14 January 2017

  London, 5.30 p.m.

  The worst moment, she thinks, the most heartbreaking moment of the whole thing, is when she and Merle walk back through the door to the flat – worse, even, than when Harry asks her if she is happy with Daddy’s surprise and faith shines from him in rays. The belief that his father has succeeded, that his mother is pleased.

  ‘Did he paint the right colours? Did it dry in time? Were you really surprised?’

  She can do nothing but hug him, tell him everything is lovely, that the only thing that matters is her being with him and his brother because she’s missed them, and the two of them haven’t got a fraudster for one parent and a murderer for the other.

  She extracted them with relative ease from Tina’s, not staying long enough to be tempted to blurt the news about Bram’s departure and suspected embezzlement. She feared the more complex strain of being with her own parents for the rest of the day, not least for the fact that, if Merle’s plan is to work, they would be called upon to vouch for her state of mind in the aftermath of a crime.

  But, as it turns out, the effects of severe trauma are the same whatever their origins. Losing your mind because you’ve killed someone does not differ vastly from losing your mind because your husband has stolen your home and absconded. If anything, the managing of her parents’ bewilderment and anger about the house sale is a welcome focus, their fiercely protective stance regarding the boys a reminder of how the authorities will be expecting her to present herself. It is agreed that Leo and Harry should remain in Kingston for the time being, a fib about delays with the decorating used to explain the impossibility of a return home. They’ve never been to the flat and it would be unsettling to take them there now.

  (To put it mildly.)

  As Merle has instructed, she showers, puts both the clothes she wore yesterday and those from her break with Toby through the wash, then changes into the jeans and jumper Merle has lent her. At 4 p.m., as agreed, Merle phones and Fi announces to her parents that she needs to go to the flat. ‘Merle thinks Bram’s probably stored some of our stuff there and I think she might be right. I need to find all our mortgage and banking paperwork so I can start to talk to a lawyer.’

  The reappearance of Merle in Fi’s life is met with raised eyebrows but no special interrogation: extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, is the message. Whatever – whoever – helps her untangle this unholy mess. Her mother agrees to drive Fi t
o the flat, a journey lengthened painfully by rain and Saturday traffic, and when they pull up at Baby Deco, Merle is already waiting outside.

  ‘Shall I come in and help?’ her mother asks, turning off the engine.

  ‘No, no, you go back to the boys. Thank you, Mum. Thank you so much.’ Fi wants to say more, she wants to say, ‘Take care of Leo and Harry, because I might be arrested in a few hours.’

  ‘It will all work out fine,’ Merle says as they wait for the lift; no need now to skulk in unlit stairways. ‘Adrian’s just back from skiing, he’s with the kids at home. I’ve filled him in – on Bram and the house, I mean. He’s completely appalled, as you can imagine. And Alison has given me a recommendation for a lawyer, by the way. She and Rog think we shouldn’t deal directly with this Jenson character because his loyalty will be to his client, not us.’

  Us. We. It’s still evident in Merle’s words, in her manner: the unconditional fidelity.

  ‘Seeing them hasn’t . . . hasn’t changed your mind? About helping me?’ Fi speaks in gulps. ‘I’d understand if it had.’ Who, even the most guilt-stricken, would want to get embroiled in this? ‘You’ve already helped me enough, Merle. You need to concentrate on yourself and the baby.’

  ‘Here’s the lift,’ Merle says, firmly.

  Inside the flat, nothing has changed from the scene they abandoned that morning, except the smell, which has grown richer, more fetid. It must be the vomit . . . unless he is starting to decompose: is that possible?

  Fi eyes the body as if for the first time. It’s not the way she’s read a decaying corpse is supposed to make you feel, that profound sense of the departed, an empty vessel, the soul stolen.

  Maybe because he didn’t have a soul.

  Merle strides forward, thinking aloud. ‘What would we do first if we were just finding him now? One of us needs to check his pulse. Best it’s me – you’re still very distressed after what happened yesterday with the house.’ She touches his neck and wrist with her fingertips. ‘I don’t think anyone would expect us to try CPR or anything, would they? I think I’d be sick if I had to put my mouth on his.’

  Fi hangs back, avoiding looking at his face. ‘Is he cold?’ she asks, shivering.