43
Friday, 13 January 2017
London, 5 p.m.
The kitchen door flies open and David draws himself to his full height before making his announcement: ‘The title is in our name. Ownership has been transferred. It’s definitely ours.’
To be fair, he speaks with less exultation than he might. There is no victory salute.
As Lucy cries out her thanks, Merle’s face expresses all the devastation that Fi’s own must – or should, if she were not too winded to react. The other three adjust their expressions and gaze at her with varying degrees of the same emotion: pity.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Fi whispers, finally, almost experimentally, as if the news might have robbed her of her voice as well as her property. She has the faint thought that even a judgement against you is preferable to the purgatory of not knowing, though she’ll think differently tomorrow, she knows, when the shock has lifted, when the true magnitude registers.
David resumes his update: ‘Emma is going to phone Dixon Boyle now and get to the bottom of where the money is, but it’s an incontrovertible fact that the required amount left her client account this morning and was confirmed as clearing theirs before noon. If someone got a digit wrong in sending it on to the Lawsons, that will of course be followed up and rectified – realistically, on Monday.’ He meets Fi’s eye, his compassion deepening. ‘In fact, this could be your chance to jump in and get them to ring-fence the funds while you sort out your situation? Or if it’s too late for that, Emma suggests you continue talking to the police and find a lawyer to help you with any fraud claim against your husband – or whoever the guilty party is – and try to recoup what’s owed to you that way. We’re all really sorry you’re having to go through this ordeal.’
When Fi fails to find any words, he looks to Merle for a response.
‘It’s not the money,’ Merle says in a new tone, no longer adversarial but as one equal to another, resident to resident, ‘it’s the house. I’m sure you understand that. This is Fi’s home, her children’s home, and it has been for a long time.’
‘I’m sorry, I really am, but it isn’t any more,’ says David.
There’s a silence.
‘We need to leave,’ Fi tells Merle, numbly.
‘You said there’s a flat?’ Lucy says. ‘Could you stay there tonight?’
‘We’ll go to mine,’ Merle says. ‘We need to be on the spot in case anything else happens.’
‘Perhaps we should meet again on Monday morning, like you suggested, try to make some more sense of it all? Whatever we can do to help unravel this, we will, won’t we, David?’
‘Of course,’ he agrees.
It’s already unravelled, Fi thinks, picking up her handbag. She remembers her overnight bag, on the floor in front of the oven, the only tangible evidence that her life before existed.
As she and Merle leave, it seems to her that the mood of the house has changed, as if it’s accepting the fact of its new owners. The Vaughans will soon start unpacking, treating it as their own, this mesh of complications slowing their transition, but not stopping it. She doesn’t allow herself thoughts of Leo and Harry, how they might never again come tumbling down the stairs, arguing, yelling, demanding to stay up late; how they’ve been deprived of the right to say goodbye to their bedrooms, to their first home. She does not allow those thoughts, but she is aware of a lurking instinct that they will arrive. Adrenaline will burst through the dam and drive her back to this door, fists beating.
It occurs to her that the Vaughans have not asked her for her keys; she wonders if they will change the locks for fear of her letting herself in in the days to come (she could camp out in the playhouse, perhaps, closing the circle that began that evening last July).
She can’t bring herself to shut the door behind her, using the edge of the lock to guide it gently into place as she’s done thousands of times over the years, and it is left to Merle to do this for her.
‘Don’t give up,’ Merle says, her eyes fierce. ‘It’s not over yet.’
Between Geneva and Lyon, 6 p.m.
The train is tearing through the darkness, passing from one land to another, neither one his own. It’s too dark to see the sights of the route, even if he cares to, though he is aware of the alteration in sound and pressure that marks the stretch of tunnel through the Alps. He makes no eye contact with the other travellers, the families and the skiers and the silent majority whose reasons for the journey he can only guess at.
His phone, SIM-less and, strictly speaking, the property of his (former) employer, delivers a slideshow of photos and video of the boys. He starts to watch the film he took of the carol concert, but the sound of their eager voices, the sight of their guiltless faces, is too painful and he has to close it.
Music, then, no pictures. He hits shuffle and the first song it brings up is an old one, ‘Comin’ Home Baby’ by Mel Tormé. He owns so few sentimental songs among the concept rock and the folk and the eighties and nineties favourites from his younger days, it seems cruel that this should be the one to play. It might have been selected by Mike himself to torment him.
I hate you, he thinks. I hate you with a depth that makes me see I have never hated before in my whole life. Only you.
Even now, if he could think of a way to do it without making things worse for Fi than they already are, he would get off this train, fly home and kill him.