15
Friday, 13 January 2017
London, 1.45 p.m.
Two days off, Bram’s boss Neil is saying. It wasn’t ideal, so soon into the New Year, but to be honest he hasn’t been himself since . . . well, since his marital troubles began. But anyway, they haven’t seen him since mid-afternoon on Wednesday and don’t expect him back until Monday.
‘I thought he was helping his mum put some stuff in storage?’ he says from his mobile, voice loud and bright. She can hear the Friday lunchtime laughter of a restaurant or bar in the background.
‘No, he’s definitely not with her,’ Fi says. She doesn’t tell him about the decorating ruse Bram used on Tina. The idea of storage can’t be a coincidence, though: if not Tina’s things, then surely theirs?
‘Hang about,’ Neil says, and exhales in a low whistle. ‘He hasn’t gone and checked himself into rehab, has he?’
‘Of course not!’ Even through the fog of shock, she’s taken aback by this suggestion.
‘Good, because that would be a hell of a lot longer than a couple of days. He’ll turn up, Fi. You of all people know what he’s like.’
But what if she doesn’t, she thinks, hanging up. What if she doesn’t know what he’s like? Not anymore.
‘They haven’t seen him either,’ she tells Lucy Vaughan, who is back at her kettle in a renewed attempt to civilize Fi with tea. Fi can tell from the subtle alteration to her manner since the business with the school that she thinks she might be dealing with someone of unsound mind. Not amnesiac, but psychotic. She is humouring Fi, managing her as best she can until backup arrives in the form of her husband, en route with the second van. She’s no doubt regretting telling the removals guys they can grab a coffee on the Parade while they wait.
In fact, Fi is managing herself better now. She must be because she’s started noticing details, like the fact that Lucy has a chrome kettle where hers is black, white mugs where hers are sage green, an oak-topped table instead of the industrial-style steel one Alison helped Fi choose. All items that have, like the rest of her Trinity Avenue reality, evaporated.
‘When was the last time you actually saw Bram?’ Lucy asks, pouring steaming water into the mugs and dropping the squeezed teabags into a Sainsbury’s carrier, her makeshift moving-day bin.
‘Sunday,’ Fi says. ‘But I spoke to him yesterday and Wednesday.’
The gulf between the innocent arrangements of the last few days and the nameless mysteries of today already feels unbreachable. Bram was leaving work after lunch on Wednesday to pick up the boys from school and allow Fi her early start to her two-night break, which was also supposed to involve a leisurely return this evening and an overnighter in the flat. She wasn’t due to relieve Bram of the boys until Saturday morning, a departure from their usual bird’s nest routine, but normal service was to be resumed the following week. Had she not needed to dash back for her laptop, or had she left it in the flat and not here, she wouldn’t have known the boys were at their grandmother’s; she wouldn’t have known the Vaughans were in her house. Not yet. She’d be in a state of grace.
Lucy unpacks a carton of milk and adds a dash to each mug. ‘Here, finally.’ She hands Fi hers with an air of it being a leap of faith on her part to expect that Fi will not throw it back at her. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll be back in touch soon and we’ll sort this misunderstanding out.’
She keeps using that word – misunderstanding – as if it’s some farcical mix-up, like when Merle’s Biscuiteers delivery went to Alison’s house and the Osborne kids ate them without checking the card. Easily solved, quickly forgiven.
Fi stares past Lucy, out to the garden. This, at least, is exactly as she left it, every plant rooted loyally to its spot. The goal net. The swing. The slide snaking from the roof of the playhouse to the patch of lawn worn to dirt.
‘I was planning on taking a sledgehammer to that playhouse,’ she says, ‘when the kids grow out of it.’
Lucy tries to conceal a look of shock, licks dry lips. As if pre-empting further violent impulses, she tries another helpful suggestion: ‘Should we phone the school and let them know the boys have been located? You probably gave them quite a scare.’
‘Oh yes, I should do that . . .’ Startled from her reverie and unable to locate her phone immediately, Fi starts to shower the table with the contents of her handbag before remembering the phone is in her pocket. Having redialled the school, she goes through to voicemail and leaves Mrs Emery a garbled apology.
Hanging up, she sees that Lucy’s attention is fixed on the items spilled from her bag, specifically on a slim box of pills lodged in its mouth. Her face is that of someone whose worst suspicions have just been confirmed.
‘They’re not mine,’ Fi tells her and she stuffs everything back into her bag, keeping the phone in front of her.
‘Right.’ Pity crosses Lucy’s eyes, followed by redoubled wariness. Perhaps she suspects that Fi has a personality disorder and has somehow appropriated the name of the former owner, presenting herself here in some dissociative state. ‘I don’t mean to pry, but is the medication new? Did the doctor warn you about side effects? Maybe short-term memory loss or something . . .’
‘I just told you, it’s not mine!’ Fi can feel her expression distorting, struggles to straighten it. She can’t predict her emotions any more than she can control the way they express themselves.
Lucy nods. ‘My mistake. Oh!’ At the sound of the doorbell, relief floods her face and she springs to her feet in near joy. ‘They’re here!’
She hurries to the door and soon Fi hears two new voices, one male, belonging to one of the removals team or perhaps Lucy’s husband, the other immediately identifiable as Merle’s.
Merle! She was at the window, watching. She must have waited until the second van arrived and then decided she could delay intervening no longer. She’ll be on Fi’s side, won’t she? See this as Fi does, know that Lucy is the deluded one, not her.
Lucy returns first, newly emboldened: ‘Right, now David’s here, I suggest we both try to get hold of our solicitors.’
Before Fi can protest that she doesn’t have one, because she hasn’t sold her house, Merle bursts in, all but forcing Lucy against the kitchen counter to take command of the space.
‘Have you invited these people to move in, Fi?’ Ardent with indignation, her scarlet top billowing, Merle is like a guru, her energy magical, transformative.
‘No,’ Fi says, with a surge of spirit, ‘definitely not. I don’t know who they are or why their things are here. This is all completely against my will.’
As Lucy begins to object, Merle silences her with a raised palm inches from her nose. ‘In that case, this is illegal occupation and harassment.’ (Merle worked years ago as a housing officer, which is always worth remembering.) ‘And I’m reporting them to the police!’
Geneva, 2.45 p.m.
He’s hungry, though it takes him a minute or two to recognize the sensation, because it’s without urgency or anticipation. It’s simply a variation on the new constant: rawest anguish. Grief. Loss.
But you have to eat, even if it is going to remind you of all the times you doled out sausages to ravenous boys, coaxed broccoli into their mouths while privately agreeing it was food fit for the devil. Or maybe it will remind you of a face across the table at La Mouette, the best restaurant in Alder Rise, back when the face still smiled at you, back when the woman the smile belonged to still believed in you. Wanted to know your story, defend your frailties. When you all lived together in the house the woman loved and to which both the boys came home from the maternity ward.
Stop, he thinks. You have no right to be sentimental. Or self-pitying.
He leaves the bar, the first he’d come to on exiting the hotel, and follows signs to the nearest restaurant. He finds himself climbing through a building in a lift, which makes him think of Saskia and Neil and of the resignation email that will be sent to them automatically on Monday at 9 a.m. The request that Fi be sent his remaining salary payments – for what it’s worth.
The top-floor restaurant has windows facing the airport and from his table he has a clear view of the planes coming in, touching down as if toys controlled by some capricious child. Everyone around him has the disengaged air of those in transit: too early to check in or too tired on arrival to make anything of the day. Might as well have some lunch.
He orders something with potatoes and cheese. Swiss mountain food. The glass of red wine doesn’t help the anxiety any more than the beer did, but at least the action of drinking it is familiar. He supposes he should be grateful for every last minute of this borrowed time, grateful it didn’t end at airport immigration when he negotiated passport control. Somehow, his impersonation of old Bram, family holidaymaker and occasional business traveller, had satisfied both the human officer and the thermal camera that scanned arriving passengers for fever and virus (though not, as he’d feared, guilt), and he’d been waved through.
Crazy, but even after he’d cleared baggage reclaim and customs and was out among the general public, he still expected to be approached and asked to step aside.
To be asked if the name on his passport was really his own.