The Sudden Departure of the Frasers

by Louise Candlish

  Taken off guard, I impressed myself by not even flinching. An expectant moment passed between us that I told myself meant nothing, gave nothing away. ‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ I told him.

  Looking back, I think we should have ended it then, that morning, when we were up in the tree house in that secret suite, immune from earthly promises. When we were as high as we were ever going to go.

  For there was only one way to go now.

  Chapter 21

  Christy, August 2013

  ‘You’ve got one as well,’ Christy said.

  It was the first thing her eye went to when she stepped into the room, a small square space with painted panelling and a shuttered sash overlooking the side return.

  ‘My sanctuary,’ Liz had said, explaining that it was the only downstairs territory her sons had not ‘marked’. Indeed, there was an air of feminine defiance about its contents, all pink glass bowls and decorative silver knick-knacks. On a vintage sideboard, next to a jug of sweet-smelling stocks, stood the hourglass bottle.

  ‘What, the room scent? Pretty, isn’t it?’ Liz said, sipping her Lady Grey. She’d served the tea in bone china painted with polka dots and daisies, the first time Christy had used a cup and saucer in about a decade. Having seated her guest on a rose-coloured velvet chaise longue under the window, Liz perched on an adjacent armchair upholstered in a gold fabric printed with butterflies and birds. Of the Lime Park Road women, she was the first to have returned from her August break. Lacking a husband and therefore the holiday home that apparently came with one, she had instead taken the boys to her parents’ place in Cheshire, where they remained to give her ‘a few days’ grace’, as she put it.

  ‘Caroline has one,’ Christy said, tracing the curved glass with her fingers, ‘and I remember seeing one in Felicity’s flat before she moved.’

  ‘I should think the whole street has one,’ Liz said. ‘Amber gave us them. It was her signature gift when she came over for dinner or, I imagine in the case of Felicity, when she wanted to say sorry for the building noise. You can only get them from Liberty, apparently.’

  Of course Amber Fraser would have a signature gift that you could only get from Liberty. Christy could not imagine what hers was: supermarket tulips, perhaps, the Sainsbury’s stickers removed in an attempt to make them look like she’d bought them from the florist on the Parade; or some sort of biscuit offered less out of consideration for her hostess than for herself (unless their children had baked, the women of Lime Park Road never offered sweet treats).

  ‘She had a few things she liked to give. There was a particular candle, as well – amber-scented, of course – and a little book from the fifties, I’ve got it somewhere …’ Liz put down her cup and extracted from the bookshelf a small pink hardback with curved corners; the title, in silver lettering, was The Art of Being a Well Dressed Wife. ‘Of course, I told her that as far as that was concerned it was a case of closing the stable doors after the horse had bolted, but she said to me, “No, Liz. We’re thinking ahead.”’ Liz chuckled. ‘We used to call her little gifts “Amberbilia”.’

  Christy thought of her own Amberbilia, not just the bangle and the key ring and the blue Moroccan bowl, but also the sun-loungers and other objects she’d liberated from the garden shed: a French grey enamel watering can that now took pride of place in the Davenports’ hallway; a pale green linen sunhat that Christy had taken to wearing in the garden.

  ‘She was obviously very generous,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, she was. I guess it helps to have plenty of cash. But then again I’ve known wealthy people who are shockingly tight-fisted – my ex-husband, for one.’

  Remembering Liz’s tears at the book group, Christy did not pursue this. Besides, she had not finished with their previous subject. ‘The way Caroline talks about Amber, it’s like she was some sort of divine being.’

  Liz smiled. ‘She certainly had her worshippers. I was happy to be one myself, in fact.’

  Christy waited for the customary gush of compliments, the established phrases of glorification, but instead Liz narrowed her gaze with revisionist care: ‘You know, I always thought there was something not quite right about Amber, charismatic though she was.’

  Christy’s eyes flew open in astonishment. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, she had this recklessness about her. She kept it under control of course, everyone took it to be nothing more than a delightful free spirit, but I sensed it sometimes and it was almost a self-destructive force.’

  ‘Caroline said she had a bad-girl past,’ said Christy, by nature wary of those who spoke of sensing others’ forces.

  ‘Yes, she told us a bit about that. She’d done a lot of drugs. She still drank, but that’s pretty much compulsory on this street. She was certainly not the worst on that score.’

  Christy thought briefly of Joe, of the wine that was demanded almost faster than it could be supplied.

  ‘Jeremy was very good for her,’ Liz continued. ‘She’d made an excellent choice there. In other hands, she might have missed her chance for rehabilitation.’

  Drugs, self-destructive, rehabilitation: these were not terms Christy had heard applied to Amber Fraser before.

  But Liz’s thoughts had moved on. ‘You know, I’m going back to work when the school term starts. With Rupert going into Reception, it’s the right time.’ She placed her polka-dot cup aside, as if formally renouncing such domestic baubles.

  ‘What will you be doing?’ asked Christy.

  ‘I used to be a management consultant,’ Liz said, to Christy’s surprise. (Somehow, she had expected holistic therapy or soap-making.) ‘But I need flexible hours now, so I’ve taken a part-time role in the finance department at the council. I’ll be earning about a tenth of my salary before I had the boys. Seriously, Christy, take my advice and make as much money as you can before you start a family.’

  ‘I’ll try.’ Christy thought of the mounting number of bank statements in which the ‘Income’ column failed to contain a single penny’s contribution from her.

  ‘You’re covered in dog hair,’ Liz exclaimed as her guest stood to leave, and she used her hand briskly to dust the back of Christy’s trousers as if she were a child.

  ‘You don’t have a dog,’ Christy said stupidly.

  ‘I know, but I always invite the neighbours’ in, and even the dogs that aren’t supposed to moult still do, don’t you find?’

  Dogs: another Lime Park specialism in which Christy found herself utterly ignorant. She had no idea which were moulters and which not, let alone which defied the conventions of their breed. It amused her to think of some Lime Park mutt luxuriating in the very sanctuary where Liz’s own sons were forbidden to tread.

  As she departed, Liz made her farewells with a certain remorse. ‘What I said about Amber, I don’t want you to think that I was in any way suggesting that she –’ Inevitably, she stopped herself before the ‘suggestion’ could be stated. ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ she said in resignation. ‘She’s gone now.’

  ‘Gone but not forgotten,’ Christy joked.

  ‘Oh, never that,’ said Liz.

  How peculiar it was to be back in the classroom, that same scuffed, scruffy zone of juvenile odours and images, its staff the all-too-familiar double-edged symbols of safety and ennui. The children, seated in groups of four or five, seemed as easy to label as if they had badges pinned on their pullovers: the restless one who wouldn’t be able to hold down a job; the evasive one who wouldn’t be able to get a job; the pretty one who would breed early; the watchful one who’d go far … and so on.

  Which had she been? Christy wondered. She liked to think she’d been the watchful one who’d go far, but that looked ambitious at this moment in time. A mile and a half east, that was how far she’d gone of late, to the borders of Lime Park and its more downmarket neighbour, where the junior school that wasn’t Lime Park Primary was situated. Lime Park Primary, it transpired, had an outstanding rating and more than its share of
volunteers among the well-educated community, including her neighbours and fellow book group members Joanne and Sophie. St Luke’s was not so well supplied, its rating the rather less desirable ‘requires improvement’.

  ‘Are you sure you should be influencing young minds?’ Joe had teased that morning. ‘You are a bit of a conspiracy theorist these days.’

  ‘Oh, shut up and go to work,’ she’d said, markedly better humoured now that she had a destination of her own, a role. And better rested, too, unlike Joe, who was now working so late she no longer heard his taxi pull up in the dead of night, only to have him complain in the morning that he hadn’t slept a wink. What was the point in dropping off, he said, when he was only going to have to be awake again in an hour or two? It was as if their long weekend by the sea had never happened or, worse, had been counterproductive, its contentments serving only to accentuate the woes he’d met on his return.

  The literacy programme co-ordinator had asked only for a commitment till half-term and Christy had given this willingly, fairly certain that no fairy godmother would be appearing with her magic wand any time sooner than that. Her only interview the previous month had gone encouragingly, only for the role to have been eliminated before any offer could be made, and there had not been, as yet, the stampede she’d been promised the moment August gave way to September, and she knew she had to ease her anxiety down a gear. Yes, she and Joe had less cash at their disposal than at any time before, but they were not – yet – homeless. They’d survived for nearly six months on their tightrope; they could survive a couple more.

  ‘Right, let’s start,’ she told her first designated child, Sam (the restless one), who was nervous of meeting her eye. They were alone at a desk in the corridor outside the classroom, all other spaces in the school fully occupied. ‘Do you like reading?’

  ‘Not really.’ Sam beheld the page in front of him as if it were an open fire that would singe his eyelashes if he leaned too close.

  ‘But do you like stories?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He looked suspicious of a trap: was she going to reveal that ‘story’ was another way of saying Spelling Test?

  ‘Stories can be in a book, a film, a play, even a song,’ said Christy. ‘People tell them to each other all the time. I bet your mum tells you stories about things her friends have done.’

  ‘She talks about people behind their backs,’ Sam said hopefully.

  Christy giggled. ‘Well, that’s a kind of story. I’m sure you do like them. So how about I start and then you join in when the action gets going?’

  A cautious nod.

  Guided reading: it was simple enough. (Guided living, that was what adults needed.) The child read aloud and she corrected any mistakes, noting difficult words in a little book and trying to get a discussion going about characters and plot. She’d been pleased to be allocated older children, Year 5, nine- and ten-years-olds, rather than the very young ones who stirred the reproductive urge in her most strongly.

  ‘Brilliant,’ she told Sam, at the close of the chapter. ‘You’re going to be the best reader in the class soon! Who’s your favourite character so far?’

  ‘I like the yak,’ he said shyly.

  ‘What would you name him if you were the author?’

  ‘Jack,’ he said at once, ‘Jack the Yak,’ and they were still laughing when the teacher came out with the next pupil.

  ‘Have you worked with children before?’ Mrs Spencer asked her at the end of the morning. ‘You’re very enthusiastic, exactly what we need.’

  Christy waited for the inevitable question of whether she had a family of her own, fearing what she might hear herself divulge in the sheer relief of having been useful when she had not been useful in so long. He wanted a baby when I didn’t, and now he doesn’t I do, and we never see each other because he works so late, and anyway we seem to be on the verge of bankruptcy so the last thing we need is another mouth to feed, perhaps? But Mrs Spencer’s attention was seized by an outbreak of cries in the corner of the classroom – ‘Amy’s crying!’ ‘Jess won’t be her partner even though she promised!’ – and she went off to investigate before Christy had the chance to embarrass herself.

  As she left the premises, she felt the opposite of embarrassment, she felt an emotion she had sorely missed these last months: pride.

  So filled was she with a sense of reward that by the time she reached Lime Park Road she’d fantasized herself through teacher training and up the career ladder to Secretary of State for Education. How susceptible she was these days to wild dreams, and lengthy ones too, inviting them to fill whatever time she had to spare (which was plenty); she supposed their false pleasures replaced the smaller exhilarations of day-to-day accomplishment you had at work.

  Whatever their purpose, this one filled her with a euphoria so overpowering it caused her to forget everything she thought she knew about Lime Park Road and accept an invitation to have a coffee with Rob Whalen. Or – it would require some reflection that evening to be clear on this – might she have invited herself? Deep in that ecstatic reverie, when she’d seen him at his window, hand raised in acknowledgement, had she not reacted mistakenly, as if he’d gestured for her to come up, pacing to the door and ringing his bell, her mouth hovering over the intercom in readiness to announce her name? This must be how it felt to be dosed up on happy pills, she thought; to be emboldened, uninhibited, to misread signs in favour of your own popularity and desirability. Was this how it felt to be one of the Amber Frasers of the world? Well, if so it was marvellous.

  Rob’s voice came promptly down the line: ‘Yep?’

  ‘It’s Christy. Can I come up?’

  He buzzed her in and she bounced noisily up the stairs. ‘I thought I’d drop by and tell you how my first session at the school went,’ she blurted, even as the door was opening. ‘But only if you’re not in the middle of something.’

  Surprised, but commendably quick to adapt, Rob ushered her in. ‘No, I’m interested to hear,’ he said, and he led her into his living room, returning to close the door, which in her haste she had left wide open.

  ‘Please, sit.’

  The flat was more recognizably the pair to number 40 than Steph’s and Felix’s, the proportions and features of the living room – which doubled as an office, judging by the desk of disarrayed documents and electronics – identical to those in her abandoned master bedroom. It struck her that getting from her side of the wall to his, from scourge to casual caller, was a journey far more incredible than any daydreamed career rise.

  ‘I was just making coffee,’ Rob said. ‘Want one?’

  As she watched him operate a gleaming red machine, she wondered what was different about him and decided it was that he looked clean. Though dressed in his customary slovenly casual, he had just showered and had swept his damp hair from his forehead, exposing more skin than usual and making the planes of his face clearer. He was good-looking: at last she could see it.

  Shortly, she received a richly aromatic espresso and did not dare insult its purity by requesting milk. She felt herself smiling foolishly at him as he settled in a chair in the window that was uncomfortably similar to her own stake-out seat, though this one was turned inward, his legs stretched out towards her own spot on the sofa.

  ‘So which school have you been allocated?’ he asked. His mien was just as it had been in Felix’s and Steph’s flat, when he’d said, Sounds like a good move, Christy (tragic that she remembered the exact words). So it hadn’t been an act for the benefit of the others, he had changed his position about her; for whatever reason, he’d decided now that he could trust her.

  ‘St Luke’s,’ she said.

  ‘St Luke’s?’ He paused, something of his old darkness revisiting his expression, before his face cleared. ‘It didn’t do very well in the latest round of inspections, I’m afraid. It’s all about staff morale, you know. The contrast with the Lime Park Primary experience is iniquitous.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

&nbs
p; ‘It’s a vicious circle. Families on roads like this – including Steph and Felix when the time comes – will do everything in their power to avoid sending their children there, and yet a handful like theirs at St Luke’s is all it would take to make the difference.’

  As he continued, evidently well versed in the assets and liabilities of her new workplace, he spoke so passionately that Christy decided that if she had a child she would pledge then and there to send it to St Luke’s. What am I doing? she thought, as he quoted figures to do with Ofsted. Am I really sitting here offering up a child who doesn’t yet exist as a sacrifice to a man I distrusted on sight? The caffeine was reviving her, and she had a sudden unsettling sense of the exoticism of being alone with him, the sheer bizarreness of it.

  ‘You look tired,’ he said, surprising her with the note of kindness in his voice. ‘Children are harder work than you’d think. I’d far rather write about teachers than be one.’

  ‘Who do you write for?’ she asked, as if she had not already scrutinized samples of his work online, and when he mentioned a new regular column he was writing for a news site she promised she would read it. ‘I’ll look it up when I get home. Are you Rob or Robert?’

  ‘Actually, I’m writing this under a different name,’ Rob said, freely giving her the pseudonym.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Oh, you know, a fresh voice. Different angle. It’s common practice.’ He glanced at the wall clock above his desk, drained his coffee.

  ‘Just say if you need to get on with it,’ Christy said, though he was not exactly the type to suffer in silence.

  ‘No, I’m done for the day, but I am expecting my girlfriend any minute.’

  ‘Oh yes. Pippa, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’ve met her?’ Rob said, surprised. ‘She didn’t mention that.’

  ‘We haven’t been introduced, but Caroline told me her name.’

  ‘Caroline Sellers?’ All of a sudden the storm cloud was above his head again and Christy understood she’d made a serious misstep in this conversation. ‘What else did she tell you?’ he growled.