‘I don’t see why. Even serial killers have women in love with them, it’s a known phenomenon.’ But at the thought of Pippa, Christy remembered the scene on which she’d eavesdropped and her conviction wavered: regardless of what she’d discovered since, the disagreement she’d overheard had been about infidelity, sexual jealousy, not assault. If nothing else, they had been in accord about the ‘nightmare’. You know I’d never discuss it, Pippa had said. Joe was right, she hadn’t given credence to the Frasers’ allegation, even if Christy thought she should have. But it was academic, Christy reminded herself, for she and Rob had broken up two weeks ago and she hadn’t been seen in the neighbourhood since. Pippa was safe.
But was she? Rob was at that moment next door, and he would be there day after day after day. She couldn’t expect Joe to take any more time off work, and yet she couldn’t countenance the thought of being left in the house alone while Rob paced about there, on the other side of the wall, knowing she was getting close to his hidden truth. Having strived for so long to share in the street’s secrets, she now felt crippled by their weight. There was no solution, no resolution. There was certainly no satisfaction.
‘I’m going to ask Caroline about this,’ she said, springing to her feet with sudden decisiveness. ‘It’s five-thirty, she must be back from her school trip by now.’
‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’ Joe said, his frown making it clear that he did not. ‘Shall I come with you?’
‘I’ll be fine. You stay here. You probably need to check in with work.’ And she touched his arm before she left, grateful that he was here today, at least.
Outside, the early evening shimmered as if nothing were awry; there was even birdsong. Marching down the Sellerses’ path, Christy was reminded of the previous time she’d blundered down it, back in the early days when she’d been so naive she’d thought the drama was to do with Joe and her, with planning permission.
‘Christy, hello! Come in,’ said Caroline. ‘Oh dear, I can see you’ve got something on your mind …’
All the Sellers children were home from school and there was the debris of toast and fruit on the kitchen table, discarded souvenirs from the museum, including a half-eaten chocolate mummy. Blurred figures dashed in and out, and Christy wished she didn’t have to destroy that easy mood by launching another fraught interrogation. She asked Caroline if it was possible to talk privately.
‘We can certainly try.’ Caroline pushed shut the kitchen door and placed a foot against it to bar entry to any curious youngsters.
‘I know about the rape,’ Christy said in an undertone.
‘Oh.’ At once, Caroline’s face slackened. She leaned back, her full weight limp against the closed door, and for a moment Christy thought she might slide to the floor and cry.
‘Kenny told me you’ve all been warned about spreading falsehoods, but this conversation goes no further, you have my word. You knew both of them, Rob and Amber. Do you think he’s guilty?’
‘You know I can’t answer that,’ Caroline said.
‘Don’t even speak then, just nod. He can’t stop you nodding, can he?’
And with a barely perceptible bow of her head, Caroline’s long period of self-censorship was over at last. When she spoke, the words were muttered low, as if she feared microphones had been planted in the pen pots and biscuit tin; she’d lived this way for months, Christy thought, appalled at having railed against her own ignorance when she should have been appreciating its benefits. ‘I can’t speak for everyone, though. Richard, for one, follows the letter of the law and says if he wasn’t charged then there can’t have been evidence, and if there was no evidence there was no crime. Kenny says the same.’
Which was Joe’s position. Gender lines were drawn here, it seemed. ‘You were all friends, weren’t you, before it happened? Was there ever anything strange about the way he behaved towards Amber?’
‘No, not at all. I must admit I hadn’t seen either of them much since before Christmas. He was away on work assignments and seeing Pippa a lot and then they were all on holiday, but the last time I saw the two of them together they seemed fine. They were being quite flirtatious with each other, actually, but Amber was like that with everyone so it didn’t mean anything. She was happy, glowing from her holiday.’
‘Was he normally flirtatious, though?’
‘Sometimes, in his own way. They were quite similar characters, which I guess was part of why they got on so well. He knew the effect he had on women. Quite a few around here had a soft spot for him back then – God, I remember joking with Amber myself about having an affair with him. But we didn’t really know him. Before the Frasers moved in and Amber got him on the social scene, he’d been very enigmatic. We used to invent histories for him, say he was an assassin, stupid stuff like that. No one ever saw him with a regular girlfriend, not until Pippa. I told you she moved in with him for only a little while, didn’t I? Well, it was actually a matter of days. She can’t have known a thing about what happened with Amber until he was arrested.’
‘Maybe he moved her in to cover his tracks?’ Christy suggested.
Again, Caroline dipped her head in agreement. ‘I feel very sorry for her because I know she really cared for Rob. Enough to stand by him, obviously.’
‘They’ve split up now,’ Christy said.
‘I think that’s for the best,’ Caroline said. ‘If you were her, well, you could never actually be sure, could you?’
‘Were you there when the police came?’
‘Yes, I saw him being taken off. It was terrible timing, about eight-thirty in the morning, right as we were all leaving for school. The kids were excited about seeing a police car; people were looking out of their windows, coming out to watch. He was so angry, Christy, it was truly frightening. And then when he came back, for that whole period afterwards, he just went to ground, you never saw him. I actually felt some sympathy for him, because people were behaving appallingly; he was pretty much under siege up there. He’d been helping at St Luke’s and some of the parents found out his address and turned up screaming under his window, even throwing stuff up and breaking the glass – you’d think he’d been convicted of paedophilia the way they were talking.’
Perhaps it was one of these parents who had sent the hate mail, Christy thought; someone from further afield who’d made a mistake with the house number. It made sense too of the chaperoning she’d observed, the older girls being ferried to and from school when they might easily have made their own way.
‘And it wasn’t just them,’ Caroline continued. ‘I remember Kenny thumping at his door and yelling through the letter box for him to come out and explain to us why she’d gone. He was very fond of Amber, but I’m not sure that was the best way to tackle the situation. Especially since Rob decided to come down that time.’
‘They got into a fight?’ Christy asked.
‘Yes, they were shoving each other and Kenny lashed out. He hurt himself more than he hurt Rob – I think he broke a knuckle. That must have been just before you and Joe moved in. By then we’d discovered Amber and Jeremy had gone for good and the house was being sold. We were all in complete shock, of course.’
‘Was Felicity aware of all of this?’
‘Yes. She felt completely besieged, sharing a house with him. And she told me that she’d heard shouting the afternoon it happened – allegedly happened – and she’d seen Amber crying as she left his flat. She said she knew instinctively that Rob had hurt her.’
‘Then why didn’t she phone the police?’ Christy asked.
‘Oh, believe me, she wishes she had. But at the time she didn’t trust her instinct, said she’d always thought there was something a bit deceitful about Amber, which was of course ridiculous. When it all came out, she felt terribly guilty, really blamed herself. She didn’t want anything more to do with Rob.’
‘What about Amber? Did you speak to her after that day?’
‘No and that’s my greatest regret.’ Grief sha
dowed Caroline’s face, pulled its contours downwards, ageing her. ‘There was a week or so when I didn’t have a clue anything had happened, I thought she was just busy with other things. But then Jeremy was going away and he asked me to keep an eye on her. He said she’d been feeling low about not being able to get pregnant, hadn’t got out of bed for days. Of course I promised I would, but whenever I called round or phoned her there was no answer and I started to think she must have gone to stay with friends or maybe even flown out to join him. It’s so sad to think that she must have been in the house all that time, alone and suffering. And then Jeremy came back and they left for good.’
‘You still don’t know where they went?’ Christy said.
‘No. The one time Richard managed to speak to him he said they wanted a clean break and hoped we’d all respect that. He said to forget they’d ever lived in Lime Park, because that was what they were trying to do. We think he’s probably back in the office now, but Richard says we shouldn’t make contact.’ Caroline groaned, a guttural, animal sound, her fingers tearing at the ends of her hair. ‘As you can imagine, I’ve thought about this thing till I’m blue in the face. I’ve tried and tried to understand why they felt they had to disappear when I’m sure everyone would have preferred him to go.’
‘And do you understand?’ Christy asked her.
‘Not completely. But I keep coming back to the same thing. To leave like that, literally overnight, not a word to a soul, whatever happened or didn’t happen she must have been scared out of her wits.’
‘I agree,’ said Christy. Noticing a tear rolling from Caroline’s eye, she touched her arm in sympathy, in apology. ‘Thank you for talking about it. It’s really helped.’
‘We didn’t have this conversation,’ Caroline said.
Not long after she returned home, darkness having finally fallen on that longest of days, the inevitable came to pass: Rob Whalen was on their doorstep. She could tell it was him by his outline behind the stained glass, the tall, broad-shouldered bulk of him, once menacing, then seductively benign, and now, all too soon, threatening once again.
Christy opened the door and planted her feet firmly apart, trying not to shrink from him even as she found herself incapable of drawing a full breath.
‘You know,’ he said, simply. They were the same words he’d used before, and hearing them caused a powerful sense of fatalism in her. To have convinced herself she’d had him wrong, when it now appeared she’d had him right all along: well, it pained and confused her.
This time, at least, she had Joe to speak for her. He was at her shoulder, one hand on her hip, steady and protective. ‘We know there was a police investigation and we know it was dropped. I for one don’t think we need to know anything else.’ His tone was laudably devoid of accusation or insult.
‘But you’ve filled in the gaps for yourselves,’ Rob said. ‘Go on, say it, it won’t be worse than anything I’ve already heard.’
‘We’re not going to say anything, mate. It’s none of our business.’
Rob looked directly at Christy. ‘But you, you think I attacked her, don’t you? You probably think I terrified her into not pressing charges, forced her to leave, and now you think you live next door to a rapist and are wondering how quickly you can sell up too. It’s written all over your face.’
‘I don’t know what I think,’ Christy said flatly, though he had in fact summarized her thoughts rather accurately. She didn’t want to think what she thought, however. And the fact that he plainly cared, well, that was not lost on her.
‘That’s the conventional line, anyway,’ Rob said. There was a tremor in his voice, the first inkling of frailty she’d observed in him. The fire had gone from him, that devouring intensity that had moved her one way or another right from the beginning, and he looked, for the first time, beaten. ‘And I can’t stop them thinking it any more than I can stop you.’
‘What I think is that you should come in,’ Joe said, and he stepped back, pulling Christy with him. ‘This isn’t a conversation to be having on the doorstep.’
So he was nailing his colours to Rob’s mast, Christy thought. He believed him and was inviting him into their home without having sought her consent, presumably because he suspected she would object; after all, she’d performed her own interrogation on the doorstep earlier that afternoon, too cowardly to take the discussion indoors. Trooping after the two men, she felt a chasm open between Joe and her – I for one, he’d said, not I speak for both of us – followed at once by a primitive instinct to close it. As long as she did not know for sure if Rob Whalen was craven and manipulative or unjustly misunderstood, he was a danger to them. She would not let him threaten their household as he had the Frasers’.
In the kitchen, Joe poured typically oversized glasses of wine, placing them on the table to draw the three of them into closer conference. It was the first time Rob had been in their house while they had been in residence.
‘You’ve obviously had a hellish time,’ Joe said, every inch the good neighbour and friend.
Rob’s chin sank towards his glass. ‘You could say that. Let’s see, I’ve had hate mail in every form of media you can name, I’ve had to change all my numbers and email addresses, I’ve had people spit at me in the street and scream obscenities at my window. I’ve been punched and kicked. For weeks I couldn’t leave the flat at all, and when I did I might as well not have existed because no one looked at me or answered when I spoke, which was almost as bad as the punches. You know they don’t allow their teenage kids to walk down the street on their own? It’s a real-life case of “lock up your daughters”. Lime Park Mothers Against Sex Offenders: never mind that there was never a conviction.’
‘But how did they all know?’ Christy asked. ‘It wasn’t in the press. I’ve checked online.’
‘I’m sure you have.’ Rob looked at her with sorrowful resignation, as if her words had just proved his point. ‘My lawyers issued warnings, so the local forums and news sites took my name down. But it was too late: enough of them had seen the arrest. And now I’ve lost work, I’ve lost my girlfriend …’
‘So Pippa knew what you were accused of?’ Christy asked, interrupting. She was determined to discover the missing pieces of her own hypotheses, even if Joe chose to distance himself from them.
‘Of course she did. She didn’t believe it for a second, but the tensions of it all …’ Rob broke off, groaning. ‘To be honest, I still don’t know whether I can stay or not, even though I’ve lived on this street longer than most of the people here. And all because everyone is prepared to believe a lie. They want to believe it.’
None of this was uttered in self-pity.
‘Maybe what they want is to believe her,’ Joe said. ‘And that automatically means disbelieving you. She was very popular, wasn’t she, Amber Fraser?’
‘Oh, she was popular all right,’ Rob said. ‘The life and soul. They all worshipped the ground she walked on. Old Felicity had her measure, but she was the only one. When I heard that even she had believed Amber’s story, then I knew it was hopeless. I knew I was going to prison.’
‘But if it’s not true, why would she make something like that up?’ Christy demanded. For all her bluster, she did not dare speak the word ‘rape’; its utterance felt like an allegation in itself. ‘Why would she be prepared to lose her home just after she’d bought it and spent so much money on it? They hadn’t even been here a year, they intended staying long term. It makes no sense to make a false claim like that and sacrifice everything.’
‘She had her reasons,’ Rob muttered.
‘What reasons?’ Joe asked, but discreetly, mindful that he was leading a conversation and not an inquisition. He poured them each more wine, though his was the only glass that was finished.
‘It was to cover up what she’d really been doing,’ Rob said, his expression grim.
‘Which was what?’
‘Having an affair.’
‘With you?’
‘Of c
ourse with me.’
The admission stirred a physical response in Christy that was both curious and frightening, a blend of moral vindication and sensory agitation. Caroline and the others hadn’t know, she realized. No one had known.
‘I’m not clear how fabricating an assault charge covered anything up,’ Joe said, fingers tapping on his glass. ‘Wouldn’t it produce the opposite effect? Unless … the husband found out, did he?’
Rob nodded. ‘I’m not exactly sure of the chronology myself, but I think he must have done. And she came up with the rape story to save her marriage. I know how she got the idea, as well, because it was something we talked about. A similar thing happened to someone I used to know. That case was dropped early on, as well.’
What a strange affair they must have been having, Christy thought, if that was their idea of pillow talk. She was as sceptical of his version of events as her husband was – apparently – accepting.
‘She had nothing on her own,’ Rob continued. ‘Jeremy was the one with the money.’
‘If they were married, then all their property would have been jointly owned,’ Christy pointed out stiffly.
‘Sure, but he might have divorced her, screwed her over in the financial settlement. She wasn’t working, she had no income of her own. They didn’t have kids.’
It took a supreme effort for Christy not to note the parallels with her own marriage, to suppress afresh the memory of that sunny afternoon on the Parade, the sudden moment of understanding she and Rob had shared when left alone together. Was that how he and Amber had started? A cup of coffee, an unseasonably warm day, an unexpected shift in mood? Had all of this been born of that great suburban cliché: boredom?
‘She was the kind of woman who needed a wealthy man,’ Rob said, then corrected himself: ‘Actually, not so much wealthy as adoring. A believer, an acolyte, you know? She needed him to put her on a pedestal. That was their dynamic and they were both very happy with it.’
As he spoke about his accuser, the woman who he claimed had destroyed his life, it was impossible to read his emotions; there was loathing, yes, but it did not run as deep as you might have expected. The allure of Amber Fraser endured, perhaps. Or was it that his words were weighted with the guilt of what he’d done to her? Having damned her by driving her out, he sought to praise her by appearing to understand her motives for going.
The Sudden Departure of the Frasers Page 34