One evening, passing the door of her deserted master bedroom, Christy became aware of raised voices on the other side of the wall. It was unusually humid for the time of year, and both her window and the one to Rob’s living room were open, meaning she didn’t have to step far into the room to be able to hear every word being said; evidently she’d learned nothing from his previous reprimands.
‘I can’t handle this any more!’ Pippa was saying, audibly riled. Christy had not heard her voice properly before, and it came as a surprise that she was so well spoken, much more so than Rob. ‘Seriously, if I find out it’s happening again …’
‘“Seriously”?’ Rob echoed in a humourless tone. ‘All this because I’ve shaved ? That’s insane.’
Shaved? Did that mean that horrible thatch of a beard had been washed down the plughole?
‘Not just that, no.’ Pippa’s voice was sulky, her position oversensitive even to a stranger’s ear, causing Christy to feel a twinge of sympathy for Rob. Was this how women sounded? Was this how she sounded in discussion with Joe? She had a sudden disagreeable image of him pulling the duvet over his head to blot out her unwanted complaints.
‘What then?’ Rob said.
‘You know what.’
‘I assume you mean the new neighbour, do you?’
Christy’s nerve endings sizzled: which new neighbour? Felix, Steph, Joe … her?
‘Come on, I thought we’d been through this the other day? You can’t jump to conclusions every time a woman calls round. It’s untenable.’
She gulped. That meant Steph or her, and Steph had just had a baby, which presumably exempted her from the sort of conclusions a live-out lover might have jumped to.
‘I’m not jumping to conclusions,’ Pippa said, ‘I’m just saying if it happened again, then I don’t think I could handle it.’
‘“If”?’ There was an increased sourness in Rob’s irritation. ‘You don’t mean if, you mean when. Come on, admit it: you’re fucking willing it to!’
Christy’s jaw fell open. Quite apart from the unpleasant way Rob was addressing his girlfriend, this ‘conclusion’ Pippa had jumped to – and what was it if not the obvious, infidelity? – evidently had roots in some historic transgression. Here we go again, she thought; if this became any more circular she would go dizzy and fall to the ground. As a precaution, she dropped into her stake-out chair, its back to the window these days in mimicry of Rob’s, but still in excellent range of the private conversation she monitored. Both shameless and ashamed, she closed her eyes, lost to the drama.
‘You’re putting words in my mouth,’ Pippa protested.
‘But you obviously don’t trust me, do you?’
‘I don’t know what to trust any more.’
‘Does it not occur to you that it might be quite nice for me to have a coffee with a neighbour? Especially a woman? That it might be quite nice to be treated normally again?’
‘Does she treat you normally then? Not so long ago you were saying everyone was still giving you the cold shoulder.’
‘That’s the point, she doesn’t. And nor does the husband – he’s a really decent guy, actually, a lawyer, I like him a lot.’
Christy swallowed.
‘Seems like lawyers are the only people I can trust these days,’ Rob sniggered. ‘Who’d have thought?’
‘We’re not talking about the husband,’ Pippa said sullenly.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, listen to yourself. Do you have any idea how unattractive this is? This petty jealousy? Fine, if you want to talk about her, then let’s talk about her. She’s a bit dull, to be honest, though as I say I hardly know her. I’m not sure there’s that much to know.’
Christy flushed deeply, felt a wobble in her legs. A bit dull, not much to know: how humiliating (and no less than the eavesdropper deserved).
‘Not so dull she wasn’t trying to dig up the dirt a few weeks ago,’ Pippa said.
‘I don’t blame her for that. It must be pretty mind-boggling to have been dropped into the atmosphere around here. It’s fucking joyless. People dropping hints, making little remarks about what might or might not have happened. I’m amazed she hasn’t been told outright by someone by now.’
‘I assume none of them would dare,’ Pippa said, sounding somewhat chastened (and no wonder, given his damning appraisal of her ‘rival’).
There was a silence. ‘Yeah, well, for how long?’
‘You know I haven’t done anything like that, don’t you?’ Pippa’s voice sang out in indignation. ‘I’ve never discussed it with anyone.’
‘Then what’s this conversation about? Why are we even having it? Don’t you see this is not like before? You’ve got nothing whatsoever to be jealous about. I’ve chosen you.’
‘I’m just … I suppose I’m still upset about the overlapping.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, not that again! I’ve told you a thousand times, Pippa, I ended it as soon as we got serious. I asked you to move in with me, and you did. You’d still be here now if you believed me in the first place.’
‘I did believe you. I do.’
‘Well, it doesn’t sound like it.’
There was another silence. Christy wondered if they were eyeing each other or avoiding the other’s gaze. How close were they standing? Was this one of those arguments that was going to end in intense reconciliation? (Still she didn’t move out of range; it was deplorable, pitiable. She did herself a far greater disservice than she did them.)
‘I think I just need some time to think about it,’ Pippa said, at last.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake …’ Rob was explosive now, his fury acute enough to cause Christy – not before time – to get to her feet and shuffle a step or two away. ‘Go ahead,’ he sneered. ‘Take all the time in the world.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means I’m sick of this crap. I’m sick of having to plead my case over and over again, account for every move I make. Can’t you understand that I want to forget all about that nightmare, not rake over it constantly? It’s bad enough having to deal with the neighbours, without getting it from my own girlfriend.’
‘I’m not –’
‘Let’s forget this, eh?’ Rob’s voice was receding; he must have begun walking away from the window, deeper into the flat.
Christy strained to hear. ‘It’s obvious you can’t forget a part of it, so I think we’re going to have to forget the whole thing.’
‘I can’t believe you’re willing to end it,’ cried Pippa, distraught. ‘You just said you chose me!’
‘Well, I unchoose you.’ Rob’s voice, cold and mean, was closer again; he must have returned to face her. ‘Go, Pippa. I’m serious. I’m not interested any more.’
‘But, Rob –’
‘Just go. It’s over.’
Seconds later, the door banged shut. When Pippa appeared on the path below, her back was to Christy and her head held low, so it was impossible to see if she was crying. And though she lingered for almost a full minute, Rob did not come after her.
The next day, as she left the house for her latest session at St Luke’s, Christy saw a young male figure stroll along the pavement towards her house, earphones in, head nodding faintly to the rhythm.
It was only after he’d turned into number 38 and gestured vaguely in her direction that she understood who it was. The difference was truly arresting. Not only had he shaved off his beard but he’d also cut short his hair, revealing the forceful, eye-catching bone structure of a hero, a leader.
So this had been the catalyst for his row with Pippa the previous evening, and Christy could understand why. A bold unmasking like this, it said something. It sent the message that the old Rob, the Rob in Caroline’s photograph, he was back.
Chapter 24
Amber, 2013
I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m psychologically prepared for the next section. Not yet. I will get to it, I promise – otherwise, there’s no point in this exercise – but not str
aight away, not in sequence. My trauma counsellor told me that in order to truly understand what has happened you sometimes have to break the chronology in its retelling, and while I’ve discounted almost everything else that woman has said, I do think that’s true.
The thing is, the aftermath is going to be hard enough to reconstruct without my first having to relive the worst day of my life (and there’ve been some bad ones to choose from, I think you’ve gathered that).
What I will say now is that I never expected us to finish the way we did. I’d imagined a lingering farewell, a parting no less erotic than the body of the affair itself. But when the time came, there was no kiss goodbye.
All along, I’d been the innocent one, the fool.
Because I never expected his anger, his malice, his cruelty. The way he behaved, it was so wholly inexplicable to me that there was even a moment that day when I wondered if he’d been holding a grudge against me since the beginning, that there might have been some unguessable slight on my part during our night together all those years before, that I’d hurt his male pride. But I know now that can’t possibly have been the case.
And finish we did.
It was the 15th of January 2013 when it happened, a date I would not forget. As I say, the worst day of my life.
Chapter 25
Christy, October 2013
Joe and Yasmin were in complete agreement, a position all the more infuriating for their not having had the opportunity to speak to one another in almost a year.
‘I don’t want to hear this,’ Joe said, holding up a hand to silence her.
One look at his expression – not only derisive of her Rob-related theories but also cross with himself, as if it pained him to have to downgrade his opinion of her – and Christy took him at his word.
‘Joe’s right. If I were you I wouldn’t give this stuff another thought,’ said Yasmin’s pixilated mouth on the laptop screen. The audio, however, was unbroken: ‘When you’re back at work, you won’t believe how much time you spent thinking about it. Anyway, it’s obvious to me what’s been going on. This Rob guy had an earlier relationship that overlapped with the blonde and she can’t forgive him. Maybe some of the others on the street were great friends with her and didn’t like the way he treated her? You said she moved in and then she moved out, so she’s probably embarrassed to have come back. That’s why she sneaks in and out when she knows she won’t be seen. We’ve all been there.’
I haven’t, Christy thought. ‘It’s more than that,’ she insisted. ‘He called it a nightmare and whatever it was it was bad enough for half the street to refuse to be in the same room as him. And don’t forget two households upped and left over it.’
‘So you say.’ Yasmin sighed and Christy knew she’d lost her last ally. ‘I think you need to forget about the rest of the street and concentrate on you. You and Joe.’
It wasn’t that Christy didn’t recognize good advice when she heard it; it was just that when your advisor was in another continent, turned on and off at your own technological whim, it was all too easy to choose to ignore it.
As September surrendered to October, the leaves on the neighbourhood limes grew yellower as the cherry trees began to blush. She was going to like autumn here, she decided.
In her fifth week of volunteering at St Luke’s, Christy was asked for the first time to take pupils in pairs rather than singly. The final pair of the morning, Leah and Zoë, were thrilled to escape class, and took every available opportunity to break from their reading and chatter.
‘Do you read much at home?’ Christy asked them, when she’d finally coaxed from them a page apiece.
‘Only books we get from school,’ Leah said. She was the more forthright of the two and of a more striking appearance, her hair honey-coloured and plaited to the elbow, brown eyes clear and large, almost bulbous. ‘We haven’t got any books at home.’
‘None at all?’
‘Not stories. There’s a cookery book in the kitchen.’
Christy was pleased to hear that; she wanted all families to conform to the Sellers ideal, the spines of their recipe books encrusted with icing sugar, the kitchen a chaos of treats stacked higgledy-piggledy in Tupperware.
‘But my mum dropped it in the sink,’ Leah added. ‘She never used it, anyway, not once. She doesn’t like recipes. She says they take too long.’
‘How about you, Zoë?’ asked Christy. ‘What books have you got at home?’
Zoë, shyer than her friend, glanced to Leah before responding. ‘Well, we’ve got some, I think, but my mum’s always too busy to read with me.’
‘What about your dad?’
‘I only see him once a week and he doesn’t help me with my homework. My mum says he’s got no brain.’
‘OK. I’ll help you then, and you can show your mums how well you read and really impress them.’
They liked that idea. ‘You’re really nice,’ they said, which made Christy feel ridiculously happy.
‘Who did reading with you last term?’ she asked them.
‘Milly’s mum,’ Leah said. ‘But she had to go and work in Tesco’s. Milly’s dad lost his job and now he’s depressed.’
Fathers tended to lack heroism in the children’s anecdotes, and Christy allowed herself a brief, reassuring image of Joe, the intrinsic decency of him and the potential he had to be a good parent, even though he wanted nothing less in the here and now and the last words he’d said to her on the issue were: ‘I don’t want to hear this.’
‘Now Milly can’t go on the trip to Hever Castle,’ Zoë added mournfully.
‘What a shame.’ Christy, identifying Milly as a pale-haired girl who was as quick to please as she was to flush, wished she had the spare cash to pay for her place on the trip. ‘I’m sure the family will get themselves back on their feet soon and Milly will be able to go on all the trips.’
‘Before Milly’s mum there was a naughty man who came,’ Leah said, speaking with the air of spilling a secret she could no longer reasonably be expected to keep.
Christy was startled. ‘Really?’
‘Don’t tell her, Leah!’ Zoë hissed. ‘Mrs Spencer said we’re not allowed to say!’
But Leah, a girl after Christy’s heart, had the conspiracist’s gene, right down to the surreptitious glances she was casting down the corridor and the furtive, breathless tone she now adopted to defy Zoë’s advice: ‘The police got him.’
‘Goodness.’ Christy knew she should be closing down a conversation like this, reporting it discreetly to Mrs Spencer out of the girls’ earshot and putting it from her mind, but she could not. On the contrary, she was encouraging it, urging the girls to say more, asking, ‘What did the naughty man do to get himself into trouble?’
‘My mum won’t tell me literally,’ Leah said, ‘but she said he wasn’t allowed in the school any more. Not anywhere on the premises. They changed the code on the gate. My mum told Mrs Spencer that her and all the other mums would keep us at home if he came back.’
‘She and all the other mums. I see.’ Christy was beginning to understand the need for the references and police clearances that she, the most casual of volunteers, had been asked to supply. ‘Better safe than sorry, I’m sure she did the right thing.’
‘He was a writer,’ Zoë said, evidently having decided if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. ‘But not stories like this.’ She gestured to the forgotten book on the desk between Leah and her, an innocent tale of kittens lost in the snow.
‘A journ’list,’ Leah said, pronouncing the word as if for the first time, and with these uncertain syllables came the initial symptoms of suspicion in Christy, an effervescence of adrenalin in the veins, a thinning of oxygen in her throat. Leah’s expression intensified, a child’s mimicry of adult consternation as she pronounced, ‘My dad said he would find plenty to write about behind bars.’
‘Behind bars? You mean he’s in jail now?’ Christy asked, shocked.
‘No, he’s not,’ Zoë said, but Leah wa
s insistent.
‘My dad said he is. He said he can’t hurt anyone there because everyone’s bad in jail. It’s more likely he’ll get hurt.’
‘In jail, you’re not allowed to go for a walk or ride your bike,’ Zoë agreed. ‘You can’t play netball or go on the trampoline or anything good.’
‘You have to work in the kitchen,’ Leah said, confidently, ‘cooking horrible dinners for the other prisoners and mopping floors. But there wouldn’t be biscuits, would there?’
‘There might be some,’ Zoë said, ‘but not really good ones like gingerbread men.’
There was a brief diversion as the girls compared their preferred methods of tackling a gingerbread man, and to Christy’s shame it was she who steered the discussion back towards the subject of the bad man.
‘The police didn’t come to the school, did they?’
‘No,’ Leah said. ‘There was a lot of shouting one day and Mr Webber sent all the mums a letter.’
Mr Webber was the head. Christy had not yet met him but had glimpsed him once through the glass panel of his office door and been pleased to see a smiling, dynamic figure in place of the hunched, beleaguered cliché she had expected. She could just imagine his expression if he heard one of his volunteers encouraging this conversation.
‘We should get back to our reading,’ she said, and drew their attention to the open page in front of them. ‘Let’s see how the story ends.’
She had, however, one final question: ‘Just out of interest, girls, what was the man called?’
But who was she kidding? Even as they told her – voices in unison at last – she already knew the answer.
The Sudden Departure of the Frasers Page 29