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‘Fi’s Story’ > 02:41:48
It’s one of the well-known ironies of parenting, isn’t it, that to arrange time away alone with someone who isn’t your spouse is a thousand times simpler than with the one who is. In the old days, a trip with Bram spanning three school days would have called for Churchillian cunning and an army of helpers, but now he was my ex all I had to do was issue a five-minute briefing and I was free as a bird.
On the Wednesday morning, after school drop-off, I popped into the flat to retrieve a pair of boots I’d left there at the weekend and needed for Winchester, assuming, correctly, that Bram would already have departed for work. Given the strict rules regarding access to Trinity Avenue on an ‘off’ day, there were laughably few, if any, for Baby Deco. Why would we want to go there unless ejected from the house? That had been the original thinking and yet this tiny studio flat had, in its own way, become a home.
Letting myself in, I was struck immediately by the smell of cigarettes. Bram was still smoking, clearly, and must be going to some lengths to air the place each time he left since I never noticed the smell on my Friday arrivals. The bathroom door was open, water pooled on the tiled floor from his shower, and worn clothes scattered on the floor by the unmade bed. On the nearby table lay a green-and-white paper bag from the pharmacy on the Parade.
I shouldn’t have looked inside, you don’t have to tell me that – it was both an invasion of privacy and an act of hypocrisy – but I did. In it were half a dozen identical boxes of prescription pills and I slipped one out to take a closer look. I didn’t recognize the name of the medication – Sertraline – which Bram was being directed to take in a 50 mg daily dose, and of course by the time I’d reached for my phone I’d convinced myself that he was gravely unwell. The lies he’d been telling, his excessive anguish when confronted: had he been protecting me all along from something far, far worse than fecklessness?
And that remark I’d made at the concert about him acting like he was terminally ill! How could I have been so callous?
I googled ‘Sertraline’, thinking that if I was right I would cancel this break with Toby and wait for Bram to arrive, as planned, to pick up the boys; we’d talk through how we were going to manage the situation, get through this together.
The search results were up: it was an SSRI, an antidepressant used to treat anxiety and panic.
I sat on the bed for a moment, immobile. Anxiety and panic caused by what? My having left him? I have to say the thought provoked feelings of sadness rather than guilt; after all, he’d brought his losses on himself, as I’d rather cruelly emphasized on Christmas night, and he’d been lucky to be forgiven that fracas with Toby. But he was still a human being and we all made mistakes, we all hurt.
I decided there was no need to cancel the break, but I’d talk to him on Saturday, as scheduled. I’d subtly discover if there was anything I could do to help lessen his load.
By now I was running late. I gathered up my things and headed for the door, abandoning the pharmacist’s bag on the table where I’d found it.
Bram, Word document
On the last Wednesday, the day before I cleared the house and – unbeknownst to my colleagues – my final day in the office, I had a call on my mobile from an unknown number.
‘May I speak to Mr Abraham Lawson, please?’
It was mid-morning and I was at my desk. I wasn’t hungover, at least not notably, and my brain was sparking normally. Abraham: no one used my full name, so this meant someone in an official capacity. It had to be the police. The caller was female, so not the detective who’d come to see me back in—
‘Hello?’
Speak, Bram!
‘I’m afraid he’s not in this week,’ I said in my own voice, casual, courteous. ‘Who’s calling?’
‘This is Detective Sergeant Joanne McGowan of the Serious Collisions Investigation Unit at Catford. So this isn’t his mobile I’m calling?’
‘It’s his work mobile,’ I said. ‘Company policy is to hand in your phone when you go on holiday.’ A lie – what company in 2017 would require that? ‘I can leave a message with his team, though, and have someone call you if they have another contact number for him?’
Don’t give her the landline at the house: Fi might still be there!
‘We have his landline number, but there’s no reply at the moment.’
‘I guess they’re not at home,’ I said with a polite sympathy that belied the succession of terror and relief her last remarks had caused. ‘Maybe his wife’s mobile?’
Quick thinking, Bram. If she believes Fi’s away with you, she might delay any plans to phone her separately.
‘Thank you. We have her mobile number already. How long is Mr Lawson away for?’
‘I think someone said he’s back on Monday.’
‘Is he in the UK, do you know?’
‘Er, Scotland, maybe?’ Best not to give a destination that might send them checking the airlines’ passenger manifests.
‘Thank you.’ She hung up.
I remained calm. They knew nothing, I reasoned. At most, they’d discovered the car and had a few additional questions for me – few enough to ask over the phone. Even in the worst-case scenario, they’d give me till Monday. They’d wait till I was back from the Outer Hebrides before clapping handcuffs on my weather-beaten wrists.
*
‘Why are you putting everything into these boxes?’ Harry asked on Thursday morning when he and Leo came downstairs for breakfast. I’d got them up early so I could prepare them for the arrangements ahead.
‘I’m about to tell you, but only if you can keep it a secret?’
They gave their word.
‘I’m arranging a surprise for Mummy.’
If I’d anticipated that this would be one of the most unbearable moments, when I tricked my two sacrificial lambs into expressing delight at the prospect of slaughter, I needn’t have worried.
‘She doesn’t like surprises,’ Leo said, pouring his Shreddies into a bowl. ‘I wouldn’t do it, Dad.’
‘She hates them,’ Harry agreed. ‘Unless it’s when we’ve made her a cake with caramel icing.’
‘She’ll like this one. I’m going to have the house redecorated.’
‘When?’
‘Today and tomorrow. So you’re going to stay at Grandma Tina’s for two nights and – this is the best bit – you get to have tomorrow off school!’
Now they were pleased, or at least Leo was.
‘Did Mrs Carver say it’s allowed?’ Harry asked. For one so raucous, he was oddly keen on permissions.
‘Yes. I spoke to Mrs Bottomley and everyone is fine about it. So when I pick you up from school today, we’ll go straight to Grandma’s on the bus. We’ll call Mummy on the way, but remember, don’t say anything about the surprise. Or about having Friday off school. I don’t want her to worry.’
I had booked my mother a week or so ago to (unwittingly) abet me these next days. Wholly approving of my decorating scheme, she’d offered to take care of the school run on Friday so the boys wouldn’t have to miss their lessons, but I’d fobbed her off. I couldn’t risk her dropping by the house and finding strangers moving in. Not with the boys. That was not how they should find out.
After breakfast, I suggested Leo and Harry pick their three favourite things to take to Grandma’s. ‘I’ll bring them after school with your pyjamas and a change of clothes for your day off tomorrow.’
Though it was an irregular request, they rose to the challenge, not noticing their father watching dismally from the door.
‘I need more than three,’ Leo complained.
‘I’ve only got two,’ Harry said.
So I said Leo could have Harry’s extra one, Harry protested that he’d use his selections after all, Leo called him a selfish pig and I brought a halt to the argument by proposing we leave for school immediately and call into the bakery on the Parade for chocolate croissants.
Just ignore how bleak and depraved and heartbroken you feel, I urged myself.
It’s not real.
*
A passionate devotee of decluttering, Fi had purged the house regularly over the years, but it was still a gargantuan job to pack and remove our possessions. Even with two professionals to help me, it took all day to relocate the furniture to the short-term storage unit in Beckenham and to box up and deliver to the flat all our clothes and personal items.
It was raining, of course, as if the gods were sobbing in protest at my wickedness – either that or they were helping keep the neighbours at bay. Very few came out into the downpour to ask what was happening and those who did swallowed my cover story with half an eye on their own dry hallways.
Only an early-afternoon encounter with Alison taxed my nerves to any dangerous extent.
‘Not at work?’ I asked her, concealing my horror at her approach. Rocky was by her side – she’d just been walking him judging by her rain-slicked mac and wellies – and rather than tug her towards her door he settled obediently between us as if for the long haul.
‘I only work Monday to Wednesday, remember?’ she said. ‘Or at least I only get paid for those days.’
Of course. She sometimes picked up the boys for us on Thursdays, Fi returning the favour on Fridays.
‘What on earth’s going on here then? You skipping town or something?’
I gulped. ‘I’m doing some decorating.’
‘Decorating? Does Fi know about this?’
I petted Rocky’s damp ears, praying I didn’t look half as stricken as I felt. ‘No, that’s the point. I’m surprising her.’
‘Looks like a serious job,’ Alison said, peering past her dripping hood to my removals van. ‘Why do you need to move stuff out?’
‘Because I’m doing the whole thing at once, we can’t move it from room to room.’
‘Can’t you just pile it in the middle of the rooms and cover it with sheets? That’s what we always do. Where’s it going?’
‘Just to a storage unit on the other side of Beckenham.’
‘Wow. This is quite an operation. When’s Fi back from Winchester?’
‘Late tomorrow night, but not back at the house until Saturday morning. It’s a very tight schedule.’
She narrowed her eyes, twisted her mouth to one side. ‘It’s not tight, Bram, it’s impossible. Something on this scale takes weeks. How have you chosen the colours without her input? You’ve gone for rich blues and greens, I hope? None of those greigy mushrooms?’
Was it normal to keep answering questions like this or would it be more natural to call her out on the interrogation? ‘Alison, you’d have been great in the Gestapo, has anyone ever told you that?’
She laughed. ‘Sorry. I’d like to think Fi would be on Rog’s case if he pulled a stunt like this.’
If she had any idea what a stunt it was!
‘She’s been wanting to redecorate for ages,’ I said, ‘as I’m sure you know, and an old colleague of mine is starting a new business, giving me a great rate. He’s inside now with his team, cracking on.’
At this show of enthusiasm, a trace of indulgence crossed her face and she put a damp-gloved hand on my arm. She thought I was trying to win Fi back, had heard about Christmas, perhaps. ‘Bram, I hope this isn’t out of line, but you do know she’s away with someone else right now?’
‘I do. M—’ I caught myself. ‘Toby. Have you met him?’
‘Not yet. I think she’s waiting . . .’ Tact prevented her from continuing, but she needn’t have worried. Waiting till she’s sure it’s serious, I thought.
That would be never then, because after tomorrow Casanova would be gone and the pain of a break-up would be lost in the horror of dealing with the loss of her home, the mystery of her children’s father’s disappearance.
‘I’ll let you get out of the rain. You want me to pick up Leo and Harry for you later?’ Alison offered.
‘Thanks, but I’m good. I’m taking them to my mum’s actually, it’s a bit chaotic here.’ I didn’t mention that I was keeping them off school the next day. The mothers of Trinity Avenue viewed a missed day of primary school as damaging to their offspring’s Oxbridge prospects.
‘Well, good luck. I hope it works,’ Alison said.
I had the (perhaps mistaken) sense that by ‘it’ she meant something more than my decorating project and I indulged in a momentary fantasy of how things might have developed in a parallel narrative. There were people like her and my mother, and maybe Fi’s parents too, who would have supported a reunion – or at least not actively opposed it. If I’d kept my head down and waited it out, if I’d shown Fi I could change . . .
Soaked to the bone by then, I went back inside and arranged for the last contents of her bedroom to be boxed and removed.
‘Fi’s Story’ > 02:44:36
It was a nicely traditional dirty weekend in Winchester, albeit midweek: sex and room service, punctuated by visits to the cathedral and strolls through the old streets with half a mind on Jane Austen and half on each other.
I was tempted to tell Toby about the prescription pills, but I reminded myself that Bram was entitled to his privacy and, in any case, this of all times was not the right one to share with Toby my concerns about the mental health of the man who’d attacked him.
When I spoke to the boys on the Thursday after school, I thought nothing of it when Harry said he had a secret.
‘A good secret or a bad secret?’
‘A good secret. A surprise.’
‘A surprise for Leo?’
‘No, not Leo, you!’
‘I’m intrigued.’
‘Daddy’s—’
‘Don’t tell me!’ I said, laughing, but in any case Bram had cut him off at the other end.
Of course he had. In my naivety, I assumed it was some sort of ‘Welcome home’ cake – Bram was surprisingly willing to supervise baking – probably with blue icing and Maltesers, or failing that a portrait one of them had done of me at school, all sausage fingers and ears down by my shoulders.
I imagined the swearing of secrecy as a lesson in trust, not an abuse of it.
Bram, Word document
Even for those who aren’t preparing to abandon their family to the wolves, there is a particular bittersweetness to the act of picking up your children from school.
I discussed it with Fi once and she said that not only did she know the feeling but she felt it even more keenly than I did (she always said this: it wasn’t that mothers had the monopoly on parental devotion, they just felt it more keenly). She said it’s because small children are so unconditionally happy to see you at the school gate and yet you know, even as they’re bowling into your arms and nuzzling for treats, that one day, maybe not this year or the next but definitely sooner than you’d like, they will be embarrassed to see you there, or angry, or even fearful, because why would you come when you’ve been expressly forbidden unless there’s bad news of one form or another?
She said, at least it wasn’t an abrupt or vicious blow, but an incremental detachment: every day they need you less until the moment when they don’t need you at all.
If only Mike had come along later rather than sooner. If only he’d come when my sons no longer needed me, when saying goodbye was not the worst crime of all.
On our way to my mother’s on the bus, I took a photo of them together and then a second with me between them. Though I’d be destroying the SIM, I planned to keep my phone for music and the small depository of images of the boys. As I took the picture, cajoling Harry into the smile that Leo delivered obediently, I was aware of a young woman watching us from across the aisle, thinking, no doubt, I hope I get a husband like that, a great father.
Be careful what you wish for, sweetheart.
I couldn’t stay at Mum’s long because I was meeting cleaners at the house at 6 p.m. Believing they would see me soon enough, the boys tried to dash off, groaning when I reeled them back for a last hug.
‘Come here. Before you go in, I want to tell you something.’
They waited, only half-listening.
‘I love you and I will for ever. Never forget that, okay?’
Then I kissed them in turn.
They were puzzled, distracted, though the word ‘forget’ sparked an association in Harry, at least: ‘Dad, I forgot to bring my spelling book! I have to learn two from my list every night without fail.’
I kissed him again. ‘I’ll find it for you and you can catch up at the weekend, okay? And if you can’t, just say you’re sorry and tell Mrs Carver it’s my fault.’
I could tell he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t want to get me in trouble.
‘Can we go?’ Leo said, hearing his grandmother open the biscuit tin in the kitchen. And then she was there in the hallway with us, the open tin angled towards them, and they turned from me and I mouthed my last goodbye and closed the door and that was it.
The last time I saw my sons.
As I travelled back to Alder Rise, my brain wouldn’t allow itself to process what this actually was. To do so would be to render myself incapable of fulfilling the rest of the duties before me.
I had planned to sleep at the flat, but in the event I stayed in the empty house, a sleeping bag spread out on the carpet in Leo’s room. I felt an irrational compulsion to guard it from intruders, though of course none were coming – at least not until the next day, when the legally sanctioned ones would be here. (They would meet their own share of agony these next days and weeks, I suspected. I understood about ripple effects, even if I had no emotion to spare for the outer rings of my own.)
There was no satisfaction to be had from touring the denuded rooms, no avoidance of the reality of my asset stripping. If anything, staying overnight was a punishment; maybe I hoped I’d die of a broken heart in that sleeping bag on the floor.
Enough wallowing.
At ten, I phoned my mother to check that the boys were in bed.
‘You’ve just missed them,’ she said. ‘I let them stay up late because they don’t have to get up for school in the morning, but they’re asleep now.’
‘Thank you. Thank you for everything, Mum. I’m sorry if I haven’t said that as much as I should.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said.
I hung up, thinking there was a comfort in those final words of hers.
How do you say goodbye to your own mother?
The answer is, you don’t. Because it’s kinder that way.