‘We’ll be in touch via the recruitment agency,’ the woman said, checking as they said their goodbyes that she had the contact details she needed to dispatch her rejection in all available formats. All of a sudden her interest was rekindled: ‘You live on Lime Park Road, do you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘How funny. I know someone who used to live there. She worked here, in the same team, in fact, but she left about eighteen months ago.’
‘Who?’ Christy asked, though she was already making the connection herself – media buyer, a husband she’d met through this agency’s branding partner: who else?
‘Amber Fraser.’
‘I live in her old house,’ Christy said, smiling. ‘Small world, eh?’
‘Not a small house though. I went there a couple of times. It’s stunning.’
Salvation beckoned: might Amber be useful in the form of a little reflected glory? For she would undoubtedly have worked the same magic over colleagues as she plainly had neighbours. ‘I’m not sure it looks so stunning now,’ Christy said truthfully. ‘I don’t have Amber’s taste.’
‘I’m not sure Amber had Amber’s taste,’ the other woman said, and Christy thought she detected the faintest of sneers in her tone. As unobtrusively as she could, she pulled her sleeve over her wrist: it would look weird if this woman saw the bangle and recognized it as her friend’s – almost as if Christy had looted her dead body. ‘You know she used an interior designer, right?’
‘I heard that …’ Christy tailed off, having been about to add ‘from the plumber’ and deciding against it. Tittle-tattling about Lime Park when she was supposed to be interviewing for a job: she must be, as Joe had said, obsessed – obsessed enough to hear herself continue, ‘Where does she live now? No one in Lime Park seems to know.’
‘Me neither. I haven’t seen her since before Christmas; she’s totally dropped off the scene.’ Though this acquaintance expressed neither Caroline’s melancholy nor Imogen’s anxiety at the Frasers’ removal, she was nonetheless considerably more engaged than she had been at any time during their formal interview, her eyes alight with interest, her skin gently flushed. ‘If you see her, tell her Gemma said hello.’
‘Of course.’ Encouraged, Christy went on, ‘You don’t think … ? No, that’s silly.’
‘I don’t think what?’
‘Well … you don’t think something bad has happened to her, do you? It’s just that there seems to be such a mystery about her and her husband leaving. Even our solicitor doesn’t know where they’ve gone. It’s like they’ve vanished into thin air.’
To her surprise, this was met with unrestrained laughter – and not in an altogether pleasant spirit.
‘Oh, believe me,’ Gemma said, ‘bad things don’t happen to Amber.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. If that’s what you think, then don’t waste your energy.’ And she shook her head to show how foolish that would be. ‘Wherever she is now, it will be because she wants to be there.’
And when they parted company at the reception doors, Christy saw that her eyes had gone quite cold.
Two days later she heard officially of her rejection. The successful applicant was younger and cheaper, said the consultant; no doubt she’d said the right things because they were true as opposed to creating a false impression out of desperation.
‘It’s not desperation,’ her mother said on the phone. ‘It’s necessity.’
‘Same thing,’ Christy sighed. However positive she succeeded in remaining, she found that each rejection brought a short period of negative thinking, even apathy.
‘You need to find a voluntary job, get a sense of purpose from something else. Don’t let this plunge you into a gloom.’
‘I won’t.’ We can’t both be in one, Christy thought, Joe’s stricken face and slumped shoulders in mind.
And then there was the ultimate voluntary work, of course, the most vocal advocate of which now continued in her ear with what was starting to sound like the righteousness of a crusade. ‘You really should think about a baby, you know. Dad and I were just saying this morning, with this career break you’re having, the timing is ideal.’
‘We’ve already had this conversation, Mum,’ Christy protested, but with sympathy because she was well aware how ‘ideal’ her situation looked. And how seamlessly redundancy had become ‘career break’, as if it were a lifestyle choice of her own making.
‘I know we have, but the longer it goes on, the more it makes sense to use the time constructively.’
‘The longer it goes on the less we can afford to start a family. Not on one salary.’
‘But Joe’s a partner now,’ her mother said, and Christy could clearly picture her baffled frown. ‘If a partner in a law firm can’t afford to have a baby then I’d like to know who can.’
‘He’s not with one of the big firms,’ she said patiently, because, as ever, her mother’s questions only echoed her own. ‘You know that, Mum. They’re really struggling in Mergers & Acquisitions and he’s just a salaried partner, he doesn’t get a share of the pot. Anyway, he’d need to be a partner in the Saudi royal family to afford this bloody house.’
‘Christy!’ her mother exclaimed, sounding personally offended (she had, after all, lent her daughter and son-in-law money to buy it). ‘I thought the house was your pride and joy?’
That took Christy aback because she hadn’t realized quite the extent to which that pride and joy had been eroded. Perhaps that was why she still sometimes thought of it as belonging to the Frasers, in spirit if not in name. The Frasers’ en suite, the Frasers’ garden shed, the Frasers’ quartz worktop. The Frasers’ social panache. Her memory of their first Sunday in the house, when their families had descended and she and Joe had been as besotted as new parents, seemed to exist now in a glass jar, miniaturized and fragile, utterly inaccessible.
She pulled herself together. ‘Of course it is. I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. But the fact is, Mum, it’s expensive to run, and starting a family would push us to the brink. I need to be earning again before we can take a step like that.’
‘Well, if the financial situation is really so bad that it’s stopping you from having a family, perhaps you should think about selling up. No house is worth that sacrifice.’
Christy’s recognition of the truth of this took her breath away and it was a long moment before she could reply. ‘It’s not stopping us, it’s delaying us. It has to be me – Joe and me – who want a baby, not you.’
But it frightened her how her mother’s words had stirred her. It was the right time to have a baby, it was the right time in every respect but financial, and yet that was the concern that overrode all others. They were defined by their crippling debt. Emotions, desires, instincts: they couldn’t be allowed to come into it.
On Saturday morning, alone in the kitchen – lately, Joe had established the habit of sleeping till noon at the weekend – and settled with her laptop and coffee, she found that Caroline Sellers had reached out to her a second time:
Hi Christy, it was good to meet properly the other day. I wondered if you would like to come to our book group on Thursday the 18th? 8 p.m. at my place. We’re doing ‘Madame Bovary’.
Only when Christy saw a further email from Caroline sent soon after and requesting she ignore the previous one while containing exactly the same message did she understand that the first included a long trail of correspondence between the regular members of the book group – correspondence that Caroline evidently preferred not to share. Christy probably wouldn’t have noticed it had she not been asked to disregard it, but of course she read it now with relish.
It began with suggestions for the month’s choice of title, Madame Bovary having been proposed by the girl in the bookshop on the Parade and an offer of discounted copies accepted (amazing how these wealthy women rejoiced at a saving of £1). Then came a message to all from Caroline:
I think the new owner of the Frasers’ house h
as been quite upset by how unwelcoming we’ve all seemed and so if everyone agrees I thought we could invite her to our next gathering. She knows nothing and I suggest we keep it that way – for her sake. It’s a good opportunity for us to avoid a certain subject and try to move on.
For her sake? What did that mean? Judging by the replies, everyone else knew what the certain subject was, just as Caroline had admitted in their conversation in Christy’s kitchen (‘we co-ordinated’).
‘Good idea, we got a bit out of control last time,’ Liz wrote, and someone called Mel added, ‘It was starting to feel like a witch hunt, not very healthy!’
‘At least it was behind closed doors, eh?’
‘Can’t fault us on that.’
What was going on in this street? The witch being hunted was Rob, she was clear on that, but what he had done to offend the women remained the $64,000 question. Scrolling down, Christy could find not the scantest suggestion as to the nature of his transgression, which somehow made it both more tantalizing and more threatening. It crossed her mind – indecently briefly, shamefully rare – that it was none of her business, none whatsoever, and she should respect the group’s desire to ‘move on’, not to mention heed Rob’s personal warning.
Then her eye was caught by another familiar name:
‘No one’s heard from Amber, I assume?’
A host of negatives followed. She remembered what the woman at the agency had said: Wherever she is now, it will be because she wants to be there. Well, this was certainly not the position of the group.
‘If she doesn’t want to keep in touch, that’s fine,’ Sophie wrote. ‘I respect that. But if we just had news she’s safe I’d feel a lot happier.’
‘I know,’ Liz replied. ‘Just one text or email would be such a relief.’
Then it was Caroline again: ‘Richard’s going to call Jeremy’s office and talk to one of the other partners, try and find out exactly when he’s due back. It’s his company, he can’t stay away forever.’
‘Look at this,’ Christy said, taking the laptop up to the bedroom, where Joe still languished under the duvet.
But he had no interest in trawling through the thread. ‘I hate it when people do that, just tag you onto a group conversation. This is why we all feel so totally crushed: no one can get through this stuff.’
‘I did.’
‘Yeah, but you don’t get thousands of work mails. You’ve got the time.’
‘Thanks for reminding me,’ said Christy, but not crossly. Plainly he had woken in the doldrums (totally crushed ?). Any minute now he’d be rummaging for his BlackBerry so he could begin checking emails of his own. ‘The point is, Caroline sent it by mistake. She didn’t want me to read it. Look what she says about a witch hunt.’
Joe gave the email a cursory glance. ‘It could be anything, Christy. It’ll be about schools, I bet. One of them had a go at the lollipop lady and now they feel a bit bad. Or something to do with the council – the new recycling bins, maybe.’
‘Bins! Come on, isn’t it obvious it’s about the big secret everyone knows except us? The one that Caroline said was the reason they boycotted our party – to do with Rob? Don’t forget we had a note for him through our door smeared with shit, Joe!’
Joe’s brow knitted with irritation. ‘It was anonymous and I refuse to take an anonymous letter seriously. That kind of thing is outside the rules of society.’
‘Maybe he’s the one outside the rules of society?’ Christy suggested, her exasperation growing. ‘It’s clear to me that he must have done something illegal.’
‘Illegal? Why would you think that? This email, it’s just a load of neighbours gossiping, by the look of it. What did you say was the book they’ve chosen? Madame Bovary, the most famous bored-housewife story of all time! You’re not actually going to this thing, are you?’
‘Of course I am! This is the first time I’ve been invited to anything. And just because they’re women and based at home doesn’t mean they’re bored housewives and a bunch of gossiping crones. “One of them had a go at the lollipop lady”! What kind of patronizing, misogynistic rubbish is that?’
Christy was starting to feel distressed. She was certain the old Joe would have been as curious – and as worried – as she was by this trail of clues regarding a neighbour. He would have been worried because she was worried. In a film plot, such perverse refusal to be interested would be evidence of guilt of some sort, but in the plot of their lives it was because he was exhausted. Seeing him shield his eyes, as if from some atrocity, she could tell he was thinking it would just be easier to go into the office (and that was saying something).
‘Maybe I am getting a bit overinvolved,’ she conceded. They rowed infrequently enough for the flare-up to have shaken her.
‘More than a bit,’ Joe said. ‘This stuff isn’t important, believe me.’
‘Why not believe me?’ she asked, her voice catching. ‘I’m the one in a position to know, I’m living here twenty-four-seven.’
‘Yes and it’s turning you into a crazy woman!’
She blinked, hurt.
‘I wish you could just find a job and put us all out of our misery,’ he added.
There was a taut silence, alarmingly reminiscent of the one that had fallen between Rob and her at the café table that time. But this was Joe, the venue their marital bedroom. She’d just caught herself thinking in terms of ‘the old Joe’; doubtless, he referenced ‘the old Christy’, too. Incredible to think that only a few months ago they’d been trading beams of disbelief over the top of champagne glasses about how wonderful life was, how it was too good to be true. How had they reached this impasse, this cliff edge?
She scurried back from it without a moment’s dilemma. ‘I want that as much as you do,’ she said, sitting on the bed. ‘I’m going for everything any of the recruitment guys suggest, I promise you. I’m not being fussy. After the summer, I’ll consider anything – literally: deep-sea oil driller, prison warden, whatever.’
Joe managed a half smile before sighing heavily. ‘It won’t come to that. Look, I think we need a change of scene. This is all getting a bit intense. How about we get out of town for the night?’
Immediately, Christy had an image of that tree-house hotel in the brochure sent to the Frasers: in the photographs there’d been a huge white bed and fluttering organza drapes, a log burner and clusters of tea-lights. It was just a phone call away, but might as well have been a visiting land at the top of the Faraway Tree, so far beyond their means was it. Having during the past weeks experienced countless highs and lows, she now felt the lowest yet: desolation, deep and raw.
‘We can’t afford a night away,’ she said. ‘Not unless we borrow a tent.’ Which wasn’t so bad an idea if the decent weather held.
‘We’ll go to Mum and Dad’s. They’re around this weekend. Or your folks’?’
‘No thanks,’ Christy said, her smile rueful. ‘I can do without being quizzed on how soon we’re going to breed.’
‘What?’ Joe looked at her in a new way then, as if to say, Ah, now I see what this is all about, and then, I don’t have time for this, not now.
Bored housewives, broody women, Madame Bovary, he didn’t have time for any of them, and she was not so egocentric as to not be able to admit a certain sympathy for his position.
‘Let’s do a day trip,’ she suggested. ‘Get the train down to those woods near Chislehurst and go for a big walk.’
His feet poked from beneath the duvet, followed by an arm. ‘OK. But can we please not spend the whole time talking about your bonkers Rear Window plots?’
She swallowed her protests. ‘Fine.’
But if she was prepared to give up discussing them with him, she was not prepared to give them up altogether. She had Yasmin, of course, but there was only so much a co-conspirator 6,500 miles away could contribute. She had the sudden inspiration that she could recruit Steph, who of all her new Lime Park acquaintances had struck her as the most like-minded (she
was also, presumably, as in the dark as Christy). She must be about to go on maternity leave by now, so would be at home all day and in an excellent position to keep tabs on her upstairs neighbour.
But that was unfair: Steph was about to have a baby and would not be interested in the petty secrets of the street (even less so anything that might prove genuinely sinister). Besides, Caroline had confirmed that Rob was at the centre of the unnamed bad feeling, and Steph liked him, didn’t she – just as Joe claimed to.
No, the fact of the matter was that the old guard would not confess their secrets and the new guard had made up its mind that he was ‘one of the good guys’, a man whose only crime was to have forgotten to shave.
She was on her own.
Chapter 16
Amber, 2012
September was a low time – and all the lower for the plunge not having been anticipated. At first I put my mood down to anticlimax, to the hangover after the party, not so much a Sunday slump as a restless ache that persisted day after day after day. I didn’t know then that it was in fact the beginning of an extended period of torment for me, its cause, I was slow to acknowledge, Rob.
Looking back, I see that the signs were present at our first liaison after the party.
‘So what were you up to last week?’ I asked, referring to his unprecedented time off from our arrangement (I was still arrogant then; it was fine for me, the married one, to disappear with my husband without a word of explanation, but his absences were different).
‘Oh, nothing much,’ he said.
‘You’re suddenly very mysterious.’
He shrugged. ‘Come on, you don’t actually want to know what I do when I’m not entertaining you, do you?’
‘Who said anything about entertaining me?’ I teased. ‘Maybe you bore me senseless.’
‘Oh I do, do I?’
‘As a matter of fact, you do – in one sense of the word, anyway.’
It was our standard patter but it was flat, had a going-through-the-motions ennui to it. And though the assignations that followed this one were as physically pleasurable as ever, there were strikingly fewer of them. The established protocol of our affair was that I would send a text to suggest a day (usually the next) and time to meet and he would, invariably, respond yes; suddenly he was responding no as often, pleading work out of town or urgent deadlines, evasive when I asked for specifics.
The Sudden Departure of the Frasers Page 20