Our House by Louise Candlish (17)

17

‘Fi’s Story’ > 01:11:33

Were the women of Trinity Avenue control freaks? Is that a serious question? Because we pulled together as a community to prevent crime?

No, no, I know you didn’t mean to offend. Let me answer your question this way: if a control freak gets up every morning to dress and feed her children (herself too, if she’s really on form), take them to school and head straight to the station to cram onto a commuter train to Victoria and then a tube to the West End; if, after working a full-on day, she then comes home and gets on with the kids’ reading, bath-and-bedtime routine (sometimes still with her coat on for the first part), segueing seamlessly into making dinner while unloading and reloading the dishwasher, her email open on the iPad on the counter or, every now and then, a friend propped nearby with a glass of wine because it’s so hard to catch up any other time, even though she gamely signs up for book groups and residents’ association and, yes, meetings with community police officers; if she finishes the evening by making the kids’ packed lunches for the next day and sorting out the recycling and putting the laundry on and ordering groceries online or birthday presents or whatever else needs finding or replacing that day; if she climbs into bed thinking her greatest achievement of the day has been not to scream at her children, not argue with her colleagues, not divorce her husband . . .

If that’s what a control freak does, then yes, I was one.

Bram, Word document

Rog Osborne and I used to joke that it was like the Pink Ladies and the T-Birds on Trinity Avenue, everything done along gender lines. (The kids went with the women, of course, unless it suited the Pink Ladies otherwise.)

Fi was Sandy through and through, blonde and wholesome and hardworking. Moral in a sweet, old-fashioned way. Totally on top of her assignments. I’d failed as her Danny long before we separated, long before I had my own greased-lightning moment behind the wheel and consigned us all to purgatory.

‘Fi’s Story’ > 01:13:01

It’s not that I lied to Polly, I really hadn’t intended getting involved with someone new. Burnt fingers, better things to think about, and all the rest of it. But intentions are a little more fluid than you think, I’ve found, and though it was true that I had no heart for the Gomorrah that was online dating, I did still have a heart – and other body parts.

I met Toby the old-fashioned way, in a bar, the bar of our local restaurant La Mouette, where Alison and I were marking my new Friday night availability at the expense of hers. Both of us were surprised by the place having grown so much livelier since our last visit that it now had need of a bouncer.

Neither I nor the guy waiting next to me at the bar was having any success catching the bartender’s eye.

‘I’ve done a bit of bar work in my time,’ he told me, ‘and I’m wondering if I should offer to help out.’

‘If you were female and over forty you’d be used to waiting,’ I said. As lines go, it was not one designed to seduce, but he grinned as if in agreement.

‘This place is crazy.’ He was grey-eyed, dark-browed, uncomplicated in style, younger than me by about the same number of years that Bram was older (impossible not to make comparisons, much as I set out to avoid them) and my impression was of someone unafraid to be direct when he needed to.

‘It’s not as bad as the Two Brewers,’ I said, and then, at his lack of recognition: ‘The pub at the other end of the Parade? You don’t live around here, then?’

‘No, Alder Rise is a bit swanky for me.’

‘Swanky? You make it sound like Beverly Hills or something.’ So conditioned was my small talk that I almost ran on as if I hadn’t heard him say he didn’t belong: the way house prices are going it might as well be Beverly Hills. Isn’t it awful how we’re all suddenly millionaires? People don’t get how trapped we feel! Plus there are suddenly all these crimes. Will that affect house prices, do you think?

But I caught myself and, in any case, he was skipping the property talk altogether to ask: ‘Here with your husband, are you?’

‘No. We’re divorcing.’ I was better-get-used-to-it breezy. ‘You?’

‘Been there. Few years ago now.’

So far so abbreviated. But the way he looked at me was full and uncompromising. (Was this how Bram was now looking at other women? Maybe even did before—? Stop.)

‘Where’s he now then?’ he asked. ‘Your ex?’

‘Still in the area. We share a house, actually. We have two sons.’

‘So you’ve split but you’re living together? How does that work?’

I shrugged. ‘It’s an unusual set-up. I won’t go into details.’

‘No, I’m interested.’

‘You don’t have to say that. Other people’s children, is there anything less interesting? Oh, two mojitos, please!’ By the time I turned back from the bartender, my new friend had his phone out.

‘Why don’t I call you some time.’ Not a question. And, in a way, that’s what caused the abrupt lurching sensation of desire, the self-confidence of him.

I gave him my number. ‘Fi,’ I added.

‘Toby.’

It wasn’t awkward, it was natural and that was why I didn’t fight it.

When I returned to our table with the drinks, Alison was laughing.

‘Well, you certainly have a type,’ she said.

‘We were just talking, Al.’

‘But he took your number!’

‘I neither confirm nor deny it,’ I said. ‘And you couldn’t be more wrong about my type. That guy’s easy and uncomplicated.’

‘So is everyone when you’ve only spoken to them for two minutes,’ she said. ‘So was Bram once, probably.’

‘Bram was never uncomplicated,’ I said. ‘In fact, he was acting a bit weird the other night. Have you seen much of him on his days at the house?’

‘No.’ She pulled a face. ‘You know what weekends are like.’

Comments like this brought me up short: I was no longer at home at the weekends, at least not till Sunday afternoon, because we had chosen to do things differently from other people. Yes, our friends were supportive, but there was an element of spectacle to the dynamic, as if they were watching us from the stalls, any show of faith provisional.

‘Teething problems with the bird’s nest?’ she suggested on cue.

‘I don’t think it was that. I don’t know what it was.’

We looked at each other and I sensed what was coming.

‘So, listen, we haven’t really talked about how this is going to work.’

I watched her stir her cocktail with the straw, I hoped Bram wasn’t drinking on duty at the house.

Stop thinking about him!

‘For instance, can I invite you both to the same thing? I mean, I wouldn’t be so insensitive,’ she added, hastily, ‘but what about things that I’ve already invited you both to?’

‘Alison,’ I said. ‘I told you before – you don’t have to pick sides. You can invite whoever you like to whatever you like and I’ll be nothing but courteous to all concerned.’

‘I’m sorry, but no one can be this forgiving,’ she said.

‘I’m not forgiving, I’m just doing my best to control the impact events have on me. If I have to make adjustments to my life, then I’ll be damned if anyone else decides what they’ll be.’

I let my eyes drift to Toby, still standing alone at the bar and now in possession of a drink. Perhaps he was early meeting someone for dinner – her choice, then, since he was a newcomer to Alder Rise. An online date, no doubt. As if sensing my attention, he rotated slowly, missing me in his surveillance before returning to his drink.

Bram, Word document

I was with the kids at the farmers’ market on Sunday morning when I first saw Wendy. It was nine days after the Silver Road incident and frequent checks online at the internet café, as well as of the various local papers left on the train, had yielded no further news on the victims. I continued to function in a state of high agitation; as I surveyed the stalls of cheeses and honeys and wild boar burgers, it was as if I had never seen such a spectacle before, had been stripped of my middle-class credentials. My citizenship.

I didn’t fancy her that day. I was in a different mode (the mode of father trying to act normally, feel normally, while looking over his shoulder for the squad car at the kerb), but I noticed her noticing me. Fi used to say that a huge part of attraction was simply being made aware that the other person is interested in you, that deep down we didn’t develop much from our teenage selves, flattered by the first head to turn our way. In other words, we’ll take anyone who’ll take us. True, of course. This woman was interested and had she caught my eye two weeks ago I might have been interested in return.

Ten minutes of queueing for artisan fudge made with popping candy later, when I next looked, she’d gone. After that it was all about whose mouth explosion was the more violent and whether a piece should be saved for Rocky, the Osbornes’ dog, or would that be cruelty to animals and if it was cruelty to animals then didn’t that mean it was cruelty to humans too, since Mrs Carver in Year Three said humans were animals too, and maybe they should call the police and get Dad arrested.

‘Nine-nine-nine, you have to phone,’ Harry said.

‘No, one-oh-one if it’s not an emergency,’ Leo corrected him, with a tone of moral superiority he often used with his brother.

‘But it is an emergency. Someone could choke to death!’ Now Harry began chanting – ‘Dad’s going to pri-son, Dad’s going to pri-son!’ – loudly enough for people to look.

‘Don’t joke,’ I said and I made a passable job of finding the whole thing funny, as opposed to wanting to lean into the nearest bin and vomit up breakfast.

‘Fi’s Story’ > 01:18:44

In a way, I didn’t care if Toby phoned me or not. The feeling that I might like to sleep with him was enough, a feeling matched only by the exhilaration of knowing I was free to choose either way. I was no longer loving and cherishing and being faithful to Bram as long as we both shall live.

According to Polly, I had been institutionalized by my marriage. I’d laboured under a form of Stockholm syndrome.

Still, I was a free woman now – at least I thought I was.

Bram, Word document

Tuesday brought my semi-regular slot with Rog Osborne at the Two Brewers and I headed there straight from the station, even though we weren’t meeting for another hour. It was becoming obvious that I could deal better with the crushing weight of guilt and uncertainty if I avoided time alone and spent my idle hours with a drink in my hand.

Rog managed roughly half the number of pints I did before calling time on the grounds of being middle-aged and/or under his wife’s thumb, and he was just draining his last when, glancing past him, I saw her again: the woman from the farmers’ market. As I say, I’d had a bit to drink and I started making some connections: the flat was mine and, God, it was eleven days since the horror and it had been such a strain to be my usual self at work and with the kids and even here with Rog and I suppose I thought I deserved something to take my mind off it. (Even I wouldn’t use the word ‘reward’.)

She was wearing skinny jeans and a very tight pink top. You could see the outline of her bra, the way the elastic cut into her skin, and dark spots under her arms – it was humid for late September, more like late summer. Her eyeliner had run and maybe her lipstick too. Even in repose her lips didn’t quite meet.

‘What?’ I said, seeing Rog watching me.

‘I’m not saying anything, mate.’ He winked. ‘By which I mean I’m not saying anything to Alison.’

‘You can say what you like. I’m a free agent.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yep. We’re both allowed to see other people, it’s agreed. Just not at the house.’

‘Which gives you, what, five nights a week on the pull?’

‘You think it’s that easy?’

Gunshots of laughter from a group of women at a table by the window saved me from answering. The woman I had my eye on was not with this group – she was younger, in her early- to mid-thirties.

‘Oh,’ Rog remembered, ‘Alison said the mums’ book group are meeting here. Not theirs, a rival one. You’d think they could confine that sort of thing to the kitchen.’

‘I know. Is nothing sacred any more?’

This was the shtick among us emasculated husbands (and soon-to-be-ex-husbands): faux old-school chauvinism. In the same spirit, when Rog headed for the door and I said I’d hang about for one for the road, he just grinned at me like it was the 1950s and boys will be boys.

I crossed the bar and, without asking, bought the girl another glass of the white wine she was drinking. Caught her eye and held it, bold but respectful. Twelve years of marital devotion (those two lapses notwithstanding) and it was as if I was a bachelor in my early thirties again. Maybe it was this easy – so long as I didn’t think about the horror, of course.

She told me her name was Wendy and she lived in Beckenham, had come to Alder Rise that evening to help a friend paint the kitchen of her new flat on Engleby Close.

‘She’s not out tonight?’

‘Was. She went home. It’s been a tiring day.’

‘You’re not too tired, then?’

‘Not yet.’ She made no attempt to mask her desire, leaning close as she spoke. ‘Were they your boys at the market the other day?’

‘Yep. Leo and Harry, a real pair of rascals.’

‘I thought they were cute.’

She had a South London accent, with a slight ‘f’ to her pronunciation of ‘th’ and an attractively grainy quality to it.

‘You got kids?’ I asked.

She rocked back slightly. ‘No.’

I made no reaction to this. In any case, she was as keen to get on with it as I was and after half an hour of small talk, we left. In the street, she slipped her arm through mine, the first physical touch between us. It was a relief that even in the grip of my situation I responded like a normal man.

There was no moon that night, I remember.

As we reached Trinity Avenue, she gave a tug of my arm as if to turn.

‘Why’re you going down there?’ I said.

‘I thought you said this is your street?’

‘No, I’m in the block of flats on the other side of the park. The white building.’

‘Oh, okay.’ She moved closer, mouth in my ear. ‘Lead the way, sir.’

‘We’ll walk through the park – if you’re not afraid I’ll molest you.’

Fi would have said I should be very careful making jokes like that these days, but Wendy did not. I had the distinct thought that I was free to choose different women now, that they didn’t have to be the Alder Rise kind, with their educated, entitled, post-feminist sensibilities. Obviously, pre-feminist was too much to hope for. (Joke.) The thought sent a backdraught of optimism, for a moment generalized but then narrowing into the instinct that I might have got away with that thing that day. In the space of a few hours I’d downgraded ‘horror’ to ‘situation’ to ‘that thing that day’, and I had that last pint or two to thank for it. I had Wendy.

‘Cool building,’ she said, when we arrived at Baby Deco.

‘Lower your expectations,’ I told her. ‘It’s just a rented studio. Kind of the caretaker’s quarters.’

‘Wow, you make it sound like quite the lair.’

We’d hardly closed the door behind us and we were falling on each other, kissing with unexpected force, and she was pulling at my clothes and groaning about what she wanted me to do to her and I had the brief, ungallant thought that the less attractive a woman was the better she tended to be at this bad-girl sort of thing, which worked, it really worked, and I thought just in time to push out of my sightline the novel Fi had left on the table by the bed and that only the previous night I had flicked through, imagining the same sentences flowing through her mind and making her frown. The idea that I should have done that was excruciating now.

Yes, this was long overdue.

‘Something on your mind?’ Wendy murmured.

‘Why?’

‘You seem a bit distracted.’

‘Sorry. Allow me to show how hard I’m concentrating.’

She laughed. I could see she was pleased with the repartee (if you could call it that), that she wanted to make something memorable of this encounter, and I played along because I couldn’t exactly announce that what I wanted was something utterly forgettable.