Our House by Louise Candlish (12)

12

‘Fi’s Story’ > 00:46:21

So, back to the bird’s nest.

The first Friday handover was casual to the point of anticlimax, especially as the main event appeared to all intents and purposes to be Bram moving back in. As if we were reuniting, not separating. The sight of his clothes draped on the gingham-covered armchair in the spare bedroom was not so different from the times when he’d slept there after a night out, not wanting to disturb me with his snoring.

‘Can we camp out in the playhouse tonight?’ Harry suggested, the new favourite way to mark a special occasion (they sometimes lit a campfire), and I saw the quick look Bram sent my way.

‘It’s a bit wet out there,’ I said. There’d been rain for days and by now the drains had overflowed, the lawn become spongy. Streams ran down the slide and puddled at its foot, and when the boys took off their shoes after playing outside their socks squelched on the kitchen floor.

‘Maybe we can put up a tent inside?’ Bram said, and my departure was lost in the outbreak of excitement that this provoked. Still, that was the point of this set-up, wasn’t it? For the boys to scarcely notice who was there and who was not. Continuity.

I walked slowly through the park to Baby Deco. At dusk, with its windows alight, it was seductive, a white and gold confection against the pink-blushed sky. But when I let myself into the lobby, I found it all much smaller and blander than I had remembered from the viewing. The lift was claustrophobic, the corridor narrow, and I had the peculiar feeling of being an intruder, here without permission or purpose. There was the chemical smell of just-dried emulsion, far removed from the Trinity Avenue aroma of muddy trainers and leftover bolognese.

As for the unit itself, the space was so small, more like a hotel room than a flat. You could see everything it contained without turning your head: bed (three-quarters, not a full double), coffee table, shelving unit, two snug little armchairs. No dining space, only a short breakfast bar with the pair of cheap stools Bram had picked up at IKEA.

The shower ran cold and the fridge’s purr grew into a jet engine as the hours passed, but I did not phone Bram for instruction. Except in the event of an emergency, we’d agreed on a single text each night after the boys were tucked up in bed. Nothing more.

At least I had no trouble working the TV – it was an old one of ours, the small screen suiting the compact space. With an old episode of Modern Family to entertain me (the aptness did not pass me by) and a bowl of ravioli on my lap, I downgraded my earlier disquiet to the temporary flatness you feel in one of those corporate serviced apartments.

‘It will take a bit of getting used to,’ Rowan had warned. ‘You’ll wonder what on earth you’re doing on your own, how you can possibly spend a day there without the kids to run around after. Just go with your feelings. Don’t be hard on yourself for finding it strange. What you’re feeling is natural.’

Was this how Bram had felt these previous few nights, not to mention during his month of banishment to his mother’s? Isolated from the pack, a solo pilot forced into a holding pattern.

I added my toiletries to the few he had assembled in the shower room, using the shelf he’d left free. As agreed, he had put his bedding in the washing machine and, as agreed, I hung it to dry on the small clotheshorse in the kitchen.

Yes, I did wonder if it was going to be difficult to co-exist in this way, to scrupulously separate all those mundane elements we’d shared for so long (we each had our designated kitchen cupboard space for groceries, like students!). There would be times when it felt petty, beneath us somehow, and others when it struck me as deeply, profoundly sad. But I didn’t allow myself to think about that on the first night. I certainly didn’t allow myself to cry. I just cleaned my teeth, washed my face, changed into pyjamas, pottered as if in a hotel room. When I got into bed, I fell asleep straight away, though I’d expected to lie awake all night.

The next day, I FaceTimed the boys in the lull between their swimming lesson and the birthday party they were attending at a city farm. They were bickering about who had been the first to pick llamas as his favourite animal, because it was against the law that they should choose the same. That second night, I went to visit my parents in Kingston and told myself that it was too late to head back to Alder Rise on the train, that I should save the taxi fare and stay over.

If you had told me then that in a few months’ time I’d be moving back in with Mum and Dad semi-permanently, I would have thought you had lost your mind.

Bram, Word document

I surprised myself by liking the flat from the off, and not only because it was an escape from my mother’s place. Perhaps it was the knowledge that I would soon be back home for my rotation, but I didn’t feel lonely. I enjoyed its silent welcome, the fact that it demanded nothing of me. To my knowledge, the address had been distributed to no one but the utilities companies and it was a good feeling in 2016 to be uncontactable, off-grid.

It didn’t hurt that the car was back on Trinity Avenue and I could push that particular item of fucked-upness from my mind.

I was on my best behaviour now, ready to toe the line – however, wherever Fi chose to draw it. Okay, maybe later, when things got truly hellish, I indulged in the fantasy that we might get back together, that she’d save me from myself, once and for all, but for now I gained pleasure simply from knowing that the flat was something only the two of us shared. Even though it was the very space that facilitated our separation, I liked that we were the only people to breathe its air. In the beginning, at least, it felt like somewhere only we knew.

‘Fi’s Story’ > 00:51:18

The house had century-old sash windows, with beautiful watery imperfections in the original glass. The flat had state-of-the-art double glazing that I seem to remember was self-cleaning – not that I ever thought to notice.

The house had cornicing and ceiling roses and geometric floor tiles in rust and beige and a beautiful cobalt blue. The flat had cheap skirting and that laminate flooring that glows orange in artificial light.

The house had tall French doors leading to a stone terrace with weathered teak steamer chairs and potted Japanese maples. The flat had a balcony overlooking a busy approach road to the park that was disliked by locals for its constant congestion.

But none of it mattered. This was not a situation for direct comparison, it was a question of horses for courses.

Houses for spouses, as Alison put it.

*

The second Friday, I invited Polly to come and keep me company. I’d been up to Milton Keynes for a meeting and had spent the homeward journey of signal failures and delays dreaming of my first glass of Prosecco (Prosecco was the elixir of the female community of Trinity Avenue; some among us wept when the newspapers warned of a shortage).

‘I don’t understand,’ she said, when we met at the main doors. ‘How on earth can you afford a flat here on top of the expenses of the house?’

‘Well, you know how being incredibly old means we don’t have a huge mortgage? At least not huge by current crazy standards.’ Old grievances on my sister’s part that I had bought a house back when prices were real-world had been laid to rest when our parents helped her with the deposit for her flat in Guildford, but there was still the occasional gripe.

As the lift delivered us to the second floor, it occurred to me there was no security camera. What happened if you got stuck? Who answered when the emergency button was used? There was no caretaker or concierge and I’d yet to make eye contact with any of the neighbours. Those I’d seen were young professionals, uninterested in interacting with a middle-aged crone like me.

I opened our door with the same sense of trepidation I’d felt the previous weekend and let Polly sweep in ahead of me.

‘It’s really cute, Fi. Wait, you’ve got a balcony as well?’

‘Yes, but it doesn’t get the sun and the road’s so noisy. Bram thinks there was some sort of affordable housing remit and this is one of those units.’

She laughed in scornful amusement. ‘So they’ve rented it to a couple who can already afford a massive house on Trinity Avenue? Hmm. Social housing policy at its most penetrating.’

‘Maybe Bram didn’t tell them that,’ I admitted. This was an element of doing things differently that I hadn’t anticipated: you weren’t quite sure if you were selling it to other people or apologizing for it.

She’d explored the flat’s remaining features in the time it took me to pour drinks and we settled in the two stiff little armchairs as if about to have an interview filmed. The upholstery, an insipid puddle-grey, was rough to the touch.

‘So how’s he handling it all?’ Polly asked.

‘Pretty well. In fact, I’d say he’s been almost, I don’t know . . .’

‘What?’

‘Well, almost submissive.’

‘Submissive? Bram?’ She gave a shout of laughter. ‘No, that can’t be right. That must be the good twin he never told you about. They’ve swapped identities. The real Bram will be at a beach party in Goa. Or at least down the pub.’

‘I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. When he came to the house on Wednesday he looked, I don’t know, grateful. I think he might really be appreciating what a lifeline this is.’

‘I should hope so!’ Polly exclaimed. ‘Even he must realize how close he came to losing everything. And would have with any other wife.’

Even now I’d split from him, even now scar tissue hardened my heart, I was deemed too soft on him. (How easy it was to imagine Polly telling her friends: ‘Get this, she’s finally sent him packing – to the room across the landing!’)

‘The thing is, Fi, this bird’s nest set-up all sounds great on paper, it’s very fashionably liberal and all that, but do you trust him to do his share? Every Friday and Saturday, sole charge? You’d have no problem getting full custody, would you? You could be in the house seven days a week and he could be here. Why throw him a bone like this?’

‘Because he’s the centre of the boys’ world – in many ways, he’s a better parent than I am. He makes them laugh and shout and dash around like mad things.’

‘That’s a good parent? I think I prefer the boring kind that keeps them quiet – oh, and protects them from the effects of adultery.’

I smiled. ‘Well, they’ve got one of each. And the boring one wants them to be able to stay in their home and sleep in their own beds every night, not on camp beds somewhere like this. She wants them to have what they’ve always had: football in the garden with their dad, building dens for the dog we’ll probably never get . . .’

‘Hmm.’ Her nephews’ welfare held Polly’s interest only so far. A year into her current relationship and not yet a parent, she was doubtless thinking she would never be foolish enough to find herself in my predicament. ‘How does it work if you or Bram start dating someone new?’

‘There’s no rule against it, obviously, but we’ve agreed no third parties at Trinity Avenue.’

‘Third parties?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s not what they call them on Tinder.’

‘Well, whatever they call them, I’m too old to find out, so it’s not going to be an issue.’

‘You’re only in your early forties, Fi.’

‘I feel in my early hundreds.’

‘That’s what marriage to Bram does to you. He won’t have any qualms about bringing people back here.’

‘And I won’t have any qualms about him not having any,’ I insisted.

My sister considered her verdict, which, when delivered, was in my favour only by chance. ‘I have to say, it really is the most perfect solution. You get the best nights here: Friday and Saturday. The grown-up nights. You can have a private life and keep it completely separate from him and the kids. From everyone.’

I laughed. ‘Did you not just hear me say there isn’t going to be a private life?’

‘Maybe not at first. I give you a month.’

That’s Polly’s way: she’s so certain she knows what’s going to happen before it does. She thinks she’s seen it all before.

But even she admits now that she could never have predicted this.